America runs on small business!

Small business runs on

competition.

Competition runs on sales.

     It’s beyond me why no one in government has yet to figure out this relationship, or be able to translate it into the two following, near-unanimous, conclusions by leading national and global experts:

Free market price competition, state-by-state, is the only workable answer to healthcare reform.

Small business sales success is the ticket to job creation, and job creation is the only workable answer to economic recovery.

     I can understand that most politicians have little or no experience in business, but I cannot understand why they so adamantly refuse to acknowledge the truth of the two statements cited above … why they simply cannot deal with the simplicity of each. 

     They have political agendas. Who cares about their political agendas? Do you know anyone who cares about their political agendas? Our economy and our healthcare reform plans are sitting deep in the bottom of the toilet because our elected officials have agendas for self-aggrandizement, self-promotion, and self-preservation.

     Last time I looked, these people lugging around their agendas were supposed to be representing the taxpayers who have hired them. Hmmm, now there’s a unique thought! Just imagine how much would be possible to achieve if elected officials were not preoccupied with protecting their own butts.

     Imagine if politicians actually served those who elected them, instead of pandering to the government agencies, big business entities, and union constituencies who trip over themselves clinging to elected (and bought) coattails, seeking stimulus money to bail out of the holes they’ve dug for themselves.  

     In fact, ask any group of small business owners, and they’ll tell you that that federal and state government leaders are misguided, ill-informed, inexperienced, and completely unrealistic. They are trying to appease small businesses with a ridiculous, unnecessarily and overly-complicated loan program that no small business owner has time to deal with. And who needs a loan now anyway? Why do tax-incentives have to be Rubix Cubes?

     Government is trying to ramrod an unwanted, unworkable, astronomically expensive healthcare reform program down the throats of small business owners, and simultaneously smokescreen the public into thinking it’s in every one’s best interest when it clearly is not.

     Maybe America’s government and corporate giants and unions do run on donuts and promises and paybacks, but America’s small businesses are fueled by genuine competition, authentic innovation and accountable sales. 

• Small business owners know how to reform healthcare with free market enterprise price competition.
• Small business owners know how to fix the broken industrial manufacturing and financial communities with value-adding and innovation instead of cash handouts.
• Small business owners know how to turn the economy around by creating jobs that big business cannot. And frankly, it sucks that the government flat out refuses to give small businesspeople the chance to do these things that government is incapable of achieving.

     Competition makes life work. Sales are both the heart and the fuel of business. And small business is the engine of our economy. Small business owners don’t talk about “downsizing” and “cashing in political chips” and “taking loans to pay loans.”

     Small business ownerstalk about “opportunity costs” and “cashflow” and “innovation” and “asking and listening to their customers.” They equate sports with their businesses and use competitive terms like: Slamdunk! Goal! Hole-in-one! Gamepoint! TKO! Touchdown! Grandslam! to describe their sales efforts!

     Which sounds healthier to you?

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Product/Service Knowledge

Does Not A Sales Star Make!

     What makes entrepreneurs and sales professionals successful is having the ability to go waaay beyond the point of just knowing about the products and services they represent.

     It takes a very rare “geek,” for example (e.g., Bill Gates, Steve Jobs), to be able to come up out of the techie hole and have a clear vision of everything else that surrounds her or him.

     I’m not suggesting the need to be an expert at everything, but to instead appreciate and value what’s there (in your market, in your industry, in your universe), and know when to call on (and how to manage) others’ skills.  

     This “failure shortcoming” is unfortunately not something that’s easily adjustable because it’s more a product of the system than of the individual. It is the single greatest failing of academia that students are rarely if ever taught how to use what they’ve been taught to know.

     While touching on our misguided educational system, I should add that the best college for successful business career preparation (besides the proverbial “school of hard knocks”) is the one that fosters student internship and cooperative education programs and/or real-life experience opportunities. A taste of reality always beats none.

It is the single greatest failing of academia that students are rarely if ever taught how to use what they’ve been taught to know.”

     Why should this matter? Having a single purpose and collective goals is one thing, but no business is successful that is run with closed-minded fantasy-land controls. Product / service knowledge is just one part of the success equation. Having the vision and organization skills to apply that knowledge is what counts.

     No sales professional has ever made it on having total command alone of her or his company product or service features. No one “buys” features. Buyers may justify their purchases by itemizing features, but what makes the sale are emotional triggers to benefits. Product and service knowledge can only serve as the launchpad for those triggers. 

     What are the answers? I believe they vary with each set of circumstances, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers … BUT:

     I CAN tell you that if you and your sales message have been heavily focused on what goes into a product or service and how it’s made, and you see all the guys down in the trenches (the scientist /technician / analyst types) smiling up at you and nodding agreement, you need to adjust what you’re communicating to the rest of the world!

     Like the dentist ads promoting mucosal blade inserts, which would only have a recognition factor and be a point of interest among other dentists, many businesses go down the tubes grasping for receptivity to jargon that only they and a handful of staff (and competitive!) “experts” understand.

     Real Business “Power”— the Power of entrepreneurial and sales success, comes not from merely knowing — comes from knowing who, how, when, and where to put the knowledge that you have to work.    

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Not sure of yourself?

You are breeding failure!

     Data fusion company Jigsaw says, “Sales success depends on sales rep productivity, management effectiveness, and the ability to collaborate…with customers, partners and colleagues.”  

     What’s the connection with self-doubt? Sales rep productivity, management effectiveness, and the ability to collaborate ALL depend on the ability to eliminate self-doubt. Consider the following which you’ve certainly heard, but probably don’t believe. Maybe you think it’s not important enough to actually addreess for more than ten seconds. But it is.

Everything in existence is in existence

only because it exists in your brain.

     If you think you’re not sure of yourself, or your ideas, or your abilities to pull off that big sale, or achieve that far-reaching goal, or dig yourself out of the hole you’re in, you can be sure you’ll succeed at not succeeding.

     Every single second that your mind drifts to doubtful feelings, you are pulling yourself deeper into defeat. Every second you can reverse that feeling counts for getting two seconds closer to success. How can you reverse a negative tide that’s sweeping through you, or under you, over or around you? The answer may sound trite, especially to those low on energy or willpower, but it is fact.

     You must start by learning and using every tidbit of information you can possibly know about you! You are the only person on Earth who knows what makes you tick, but you’ve probably set yourself up thousands of times to sweep what you know about the real you under your own rug!

     If you can know the thoughts, ideas, circumstances, people, environments, feelings, comments, memories, awarenesses, and emotions that weaken you, you are half-way to conquering self-doubt. Work at it. The most self-assured people in the world work at this nonstop for their lifetimes. Fears never go away, but the awareness of what triggers fear can be controlled.

     We’re not talking about simple rationalization here. You can’t read this and then go about your merry way being suddenly transformed and confident. You CAN, however, make a commitment to yourself that you will work at it and keep working at it because fear sucks! Because fear creates self-doubt and self-doubt will make a loser of you, and that itself is a fear to eliminate.

     How successful do you truly think you could be with both hands tied behind your back and a bag over your head? Yet, being afraid and choosing to set yourself up for self-doubt to keep creeping in is creating the same impossible, insurmountable degree of handicap. So the next step is to keep reminding yourself that the feelings that are holding you back, that are threatening to you are ones you somehow choose.

     Take some deep breaths http://halalpiar.com/?page_id=35 and collect yourself and remind yourself that no one knows more than you about you and the ways you do the things you do, so no one else can make choices for you. Choose to rise above it all. Choose to make it work. Choose to make it easy. Choose to be the success you are capable of being. Choose to appreciate your SELF! 

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      . . . I’m open to your input anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thank you for visiting. Good night and God bless you! halalpiar  # # # 

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