Power Up Your Income and Your Company’s Profits
Issue #2143
- WEALTHY: Listen to Wal-Mart (Rick Pendergraft)
- HEALTHY: A bona fide wonderfood? (Dr. Jonny Bowden)
- WISE: Jay Abraham on being in sales
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Why you need to turn yourself into a "growth guy" (Michael Masterson)
- The battle between "that" and "who" (Suzanne Richardson)
- It’s Good to Know… another reason to avoid TV
- Add "relict" to your vocabulary
Imagine Knowing of a Casino Where the Dealer Tipped His Hand Before You Made Your Move and Didn’t Care How Many Times You Beat Him.
When would you stop going there?
This is nothing to do with games of chance, but I hope your answer to that question would be a resounding, “NEVER!!” Assuming you’re sane that is… Well, that is a virtually PERFECT analogy of the power of the insider signal!
It’s often said, “The Stock Market is just a big casino”. And it’s true. But the important omission in that statement (to keep the masses out!) is the dealer in this casino tips his hand to the select few… the insiders.
Such powerful knowledge could make YOU very rich indeed… Click here to learn more…
Not Just Another Corporate Warning
Investors should take note – the largest retailer in the world just made a move that could make or break your profits. Back on August 14, Wal-Mart adjusted their earnings forecast for 2007 from $3.15-$3.23 per share to $3.05-$3.13 per share.
The company cited poor economic conditions as the reason for the lowered guidance. Any other company warning might not concern me that much, but when the poster child for consumer spending warns of an earnings shortfall because of poor economic conditions, I have to sit up and take notice, especially when economists have been on a recession watch for the past few months.
You should consider this move from Wal-Mart to be another warning about the economy and where we are heading for the rest of the year. With the credit crunch affecting all levels of consumer spending, look for corporate earnings as a whole to be impacted.
[Ed. Note: Rick Pendergraft is a market expert and two-time winner of the "Top Trader" award at Schaeffer's Investment Research. In ETR's free e-zine, Investor's Daily Edge, Rick and a select group of market specialists will give you to-the-point analyses and tell you how you should act TODAY to make the most money with the least risk.]
"The fact is, everyone is in sales. Whatever area you work in, you do have clients and you do need to sell."
Jay Abraham
From Operations to Sales: Power Up Your Income and Your Company’s Profits
Of all the skills you can have – the ability to speak like Winston Churchill, the talent to paint like Rembrandt, whatever it takes to calculate like Albert Einstein – none will help you achieve wealth as well as knowing how to sell things.
Every private enterprise functions the same way. To keep doing what it wants to do (and make a profit from it), it has to (1) attract customers at a reasonable cost and (2) convert them into repeat buyers. Learn how to do one or both of these things, and you will help your company grow. And you’ll find that your income grows right along with it.
Selling is, by necessity, a priority for every business. As a result, the concerns of employees who aren’t in sales are sometimes ignored. Bruce James, an ETR reader from Dallas, has just such a problem.
Bruce started out in sales for the business he works for – a company selling a type of expensive home-improvement equipment – but has now "made the change to operations management." ("I was quite successful in business-to-business selling," he says, "yet I tanked badly in direct selling to consumers.") Bruce’s transition happened, he says, "mostly by default" because "nobody else wanted to be responsible for the operations side of the business."
Bruce’s company is growing and profitable, but he has noticed a serious issue developing. Due to a "looming problem with follow-up service calls – most of them to explain how to maintain the equipment that, quite frankly, may be oversold as being maintenance free," he feels that he "very much need[s] to set up a department to handle these calls."
"The boss, who I describe affectionately as a minimalist, thinks we can just ’swing by’ on the way to tomorrow’s job and clean up the situation and go on to the next installation," Bruce explains. "This approach is not very successful. The numbers on callbacks are growing like interest on a bad car loan. We are always behind. There are no resources for service calls. I believe I can set up a service department that can double as a lead generator and complement the sales efforts. How would you advise this operations guy?"
I am very sympathetic to Bruce’s situation. My first two mentors had a similar attitude toward customer service problems: Don’t pay attention to them and maybe they will go away. This is a big mistake – a fatal mistake.
So that is the first thing Bruce needs to know. If he doesn’t succeed in changing his boss’s attitude toward customer service, the company will gradually deteriorate. Problems will mount. Complaints will increase. Legal action will be taken. And eventually the business will have to spend millions of dollars trying to rectify matters. But it will probably be too little, too late.
If Bruce accepts this view of the future, he will have accomplished something important. He will have realized that he should leave the company if he can’t accomplish his goal. He should use his talents and connections to join another company, perhaps one of his boss’s competitors. Or he can start a competing business himself.
There is obviously a demand for the equipment they are selling. If Bruce can supply that demand and add good customer service to the offer, he will be successful.
But that is Plan B. Plan A is to make the changes.
The first step is to convince his boss. The only way he can do that is by making the case that they will grow faster and eventually reap higher profits if they are more honest about the maintenance requirements of their product and provide better customer service. Bruce should make this case theoretically, but he should back that up with financial projections – i.e., a spreadsheet that shows profits going up as operational issues are smoothed out.
This may be easier to do if Bruce comes up with an add-on product to sell to new customers after the first sale is made. The obvious choice is some sort of maintenance insurance or service contract. It doesn’t have to sell for a lot of money, but it has to be enough to cover the company’s cost of doing the maintenance, provide a nice commission for the salespeople who sell it, and include some profit for the company.
While Bruce is figuring out how this add-on product would work, he will likely think of other supplemental back-end products that could be helpful for their new customers. By putting together an attractively priced group of such products that the company’s service people could offer to new customers when they install the equipment – and coming up with a sample sales script for them to use – he will have done his business (and its customers) a lot of good.
Another thing to consider is to make the team that installs problematic equipment responsible for fixing the problem on their own time. They would be willing to do this only if they have both positive and negative incentives for doing so. The positive incentive would be the commission they’d make on the bundled, back-end product offering. The negative incentive would be the absolute requirement that they have to keep their customers satisfied or else they will be fired.
The most important thing that Bruce must do, however, is to change his role. He gave up being on the cash side of the business to take over operations – and if he’d read any of my business books he would have known why he shouldn’t have done that. In Seven Years to Seven Figures, , for example, I explained why this is the wrong direction to go in if you want to make a lot of money quickly. And in Automatic Wealth for Grads, I talked about how there are only a few positions in any company that can rapidly increase your income. These are positions that directly impact the company’s bottom line – jobs in sales, marketing, product creation, and profit management.
Basically, the best way to make a super-high income – and have the power to influence your boss’s decisions – is to become a significant contributor to your company’s profits. Since Bruce already has some experience in sales, it seems obvious that he should get back into selling. But he shouldn’t leave operations entirely.
Bruce should tell his boss that he wants to be in charge of growing the business. He should come up with a growth plan – one that will make his boss salivate – and confidently state that if he is allowed to be in charge of both sales and operations (in other words, to play the role of acting CEO, under his boss), then he will make those beautiful spreadsheet numbers come to life.
If he makes such a presentation, his boss will want specifics. He will want to believe in Bruce, but he will be skeptical. Bruce should come into the presentation with those specifics in mind. Included among them would be the back-end sales ideas I spoke about earlier.
Once Bruce’s boss sees him as a growth guy – and not as an operational busybody – he will get the power and respect he needs to fix the business. After he fixes it and produces profitable growth, he will become the effective CEO and will start making lots more money.
[Ed. Note: Get dozens of proven business-building strategies and sales-boosting techniques from Michael Masterson and a group of the world's leading Internet marketing experts this fall at ETR's Info Marketing Bootcamp: Making a Fast Fortune on the "Other Side" of the Internet. Sign up today.]
Make Over 541% from the Silver Supply Crunch!
If you can spot which commodities are undergoing huge supply shortages, you’re on track to make huge gains. Consider:
- Uranium Prices soared over 1,200% in the past five years as new nuclear power plants went online.
- Copper prices have zoomed over 426% as world demand hits unprecedented levels.
But had you owned resource companies that took advantage of these supply crunches, you could’ve made MUCH more.
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Flaxseeds: Protecting Bones and Breasts
Flaxseeds may very well be one of nature’s wonderfoods. For one thing, phytoestrogens, which are abundant in flaxseeds, have been shown to exert hormonal effects that may affect chronic diseases. And research reveals that they could help protect both breasts and bones.
In one study (published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition), postmenopausal women supplemented their diets with either a placebo, soy, or ground flaxseed for 16 weeks. After the 16 weeks, the flaxseed group – and no other – had a significantly higher ratio of 2-hydroxyesterone to 16-hydroxyesterone, which can potentially protect against breast cancer. Also, despite the previously held belief that this hormone ratio leads to decreased bone density (a precursor to osteoporosis), the researchers found that the higher concentration of 2-hydroxyesterone did not have a negative effect on bones.
Make sure you buy cold-milled, 100 percent organic flaxseeds. One reliable brand is Barlean’s Forti-Flax, widely available in stores.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Jonny Bowden is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition, and health. He's a board certified nutritionist with a master's degree in psychology, and the author of the best-selling book, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth. For more information, go to www.jonnybowden.com. To read more of his articles on healthy living in ETR's new natural health e-letter, click here.]
ETR Insider Report: My "Fight" With Michael Over "That" vs. "Who"
"Hey, Suzanne," Charlie said to me the other day, "I noticed something interesting about your edits to Michael’s articles. Almost every time he uses ‘that’ in a sentence, you change it to ‘who.’ What’s the deal?"
I don’t have to remind you that Michael Masterson is a successful, wealthy, and very knowledgeable businessman. And, as a best-selling author, master copywriter, and former English teacher, he knows how to write. So why is it that he and I keep "arguing" about this one tiny grammatical rule? Could I be wrong?
I did a little research, and here’s what I discovered…
"Who" and "that" (along with "which," "whom," and "whose") are known as relative pronouns. And the purpose of relative pronouns is to connect a relative clause (a mini-sentence inside a larger sentence) to a noun (or antecedent) in the main clause. The relative clause ends up revealing a fact about the antecedent.
The general rule for deciding whether to use "that" or "who" in your dependent clause depends on the noun you’re relating back to. If the noun is a person, use "who." If the noun is non-human, use "that."
For example, "The copywriter who completed the AWAI program earned $100,000 last year."
"The business that used direct-marketing techniques boosted its sales 30 percent this quarter."
Purdue University, however, points out that you can use "that" and "who" interchangeably with human antecedents in two cases: When speaking or when wanting to project a certain informality in writing (which is certainly true in Michael’s case).
According to a Rutgers University Guide to Grammar and Style, "who" should only appear with a non-human antecedent in the possessive "whose" construction. For example, "the program that was written by Michael" is correct, but so is "the program whose sequel was written by Michael."
"The program whose sequel" sounds okay to me, although I’m not a big fan of passive voice.
[Ed. Note: Get Michael Masterson's insights into becoming successful in your business and personal life, achieving financial independence, and accomplishing all your goals on his brand-new website. You'll find updates on all of Michael's books, news on upcoming ETR events, Michael's blog, and room to send in your comments and questions. Check it out today.]
It’s Good to Know: Another Reason to Avoid TV… Even If You’re in the Hospital
Infections acquired by patients while they’re in the hospital are estimated by the New England Journal of Medicine to cause 90,000 deaths a year and cost $9.5 billion in medical bills. One of the culprits? The TV remote controls in patients’ rooms.
A recent study by University of Arizona researchers found that the remote control in a hospital room is the item that carries the most disease-causing bacteria (including drug-resistant strains), trumping the toilet and faucet handles, bathroom door, and other more obvious suspects. The study recommends the widespread use of disposable remote controls to protect patients during their hospital stays.
(Source: PR Newswire)
Turn the Tables on Microsoft, AOL, & Time Warner!
Oh no! Yet another mandatory upgrade from Microsoft. On top of that, they say you probably need a new computer too. Then there’s your Internet provider hiking rates and fees again. Meanwhile, more time flushed down the drain surfing the web for endless hours.
There’s got to be a better way.
Shhhh… There is…
Let me take you on a trip to T.O.S.O.T.I.
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Relict
A "relict" (REL-ikt) – from the Latin for "to leave behind" – is a remnant, something that has survived.
Example (as used by Francine Prose in a New York Times review of Bearing the Body): "Sol is no more forgiving in his attitude toward the fellow relicts who wander about the locker room, with or without towels."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007
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