www.Sales Is a Contact Sport.blogspot.com: Be Brilliant at the Basics

I was asked by a small business owner what I thought was the key to business success. He was just starting out in business; trying to manage a small sales force while managing the day-to-day activities of payroll, expenses, marketing, IT support, recruiting ...all the moving parts that come with running a small business. I knew what he was feeling after having had several business starts of my own most recently.

He was overwhelmed and his question was more of a plea to me to make some sense out of all the chaos that comes with small business ownership. He was stuck in a fog and needed help.

Immediately, I thought of a story I read about Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the first Super Bowl Champion football team, the Greenbay Packers. Every start of the practice year, when the players returned to training camp in preparation for the start of the Fall season, Lomabardi would say this, Gentleman, this is a football.

What was that all about? He was speaking to a group of adults, wasn't he? These were grown men; big grown men! They were professional football players...not peewee league ball players! These guys had been playing the game for a very long time...and for money, I might add. And they were a part of an elite group of men who made it to the top of their profession; a feat the vast majority of would-be professional players could never boast of. So, they were accomplished professionals in their chosen career, and here is coach Lomabardi telling them, Gentleman, this is a football. I think they knew that what he had in his hand was called, a football.

But what Lombardi was really trying to do was remind these professionals that it is important to maintain the basics. It was being brilliant at executing on the fundamental skills or systems that are known to bring success that matter most. What it takes to be successful is not elegant, nor is it overly clever or sophisticated.

In fact, I would offer that most times, the secret to being successful is very simple and very basic. And that's the lesson I think Lombardi was trying to teach to his men; to be brilliant at the basics...Be the best you can be; to get serious about the fundamentals of the game.

In Lombardi's case, blocking, tackling, running the ball, passing the ball, working as a single unit called a football team, being able to go from one end of the football field to the other end of the football field, that is what they needed to be able to do better than any other team if they were to be champion. Hey, it wasn't glamorous work running and sweating in practice before each game, but it was honorable work and it earned Lomabardi, and many of his players, a place in history by being inducted into the National Football Hall of Fame...All that for just being brilliant at the basics.

So, I advised my friend of a couple of basic things he should consider in order to be successful in business; and how to be successful in life, for that matter. And all my recommendations centered around the simple things, the basics.

* Marketing is all those things we do to get people in front of us...So spend the majority of your energy on that one task; getting people in front of you.

* Most marketing will center around two activities. Those activities are: looking for reasons to speak to people and looking for reasons to meet with people. Most every marketing activity imagined by mankind will fall into either one of these two activities. Don't over think on how to market.

* If marketing is all those things we do to get people in front of us, sales is what we do in front of people. Therefore, practice your part because sales is a little bit of theater. Make sure you know your "lines."

* Freedom regarding your time as a business owner is great...But freedom can kill some people. Don't let the freedom of owning a business kill you.

* You're only as lazy as you dare to be...and some dare bodly! Don't be that bold...

* You are not responsible for results...You are responsible for right activities. So focus your energies, not on the endgame results of production and income, but on the activities that give you production & income.

* Don't boil the ocean. Resist the urge to do everything at once or else you will burn out. Build your business incrementally.

* The will to win is not as important as the will to plan to win. Probably the most important piece of basic advice. Be deliberate in what you do, plan, consider, reflect, modify that plan and then put it into motion.

* Ideas are a dime a dozen...It's their execution that is priceless. As the famous quote from a shoe company goes, you need to just do it.

* Successful people know their numbers. They have a line-of-sight to their goals. Are your goals within sight? Are you aiming in the right direction as a result?

* The sole purpose of business existence isn't to make a profit...It is to create a customer; plain and simple.

Want to be successful? Then take a lesson from what has been written here today. I did not provide any specific secret formula for success...Nor did I give you any step-by-step process to follow. What I did provide was some basic rules, or tenets, to follow and build a foundation for business success.