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The 9 ways to LEVERAGE Yourself and Win.

12/25/2014

The world is a chess board.

Every decision and move you make causes openings and closings.

Openings that can create opportunities of a lifetime… or leave you open for attack.

And Closings that protect your position and strengthen your leverage… or leave you trapped and under siege.

Which comes to the main point of this week’s blog post, the continuation of last week’s post of Questions to Ask Yourself to Leverage Yourself.

What are the 9 best ways to leverage yourself?

As we spoke of last week, Leverage is Key to success.

And asking yourself last week’s questions will give you a great idea on which techniques will be your best fit to build yourself leverage.

Now without further ado.

The 9 ways to leverage yourself…

Relationships

The easiest way to leverage yourself is to become the human rolodex or social connecter.

Having the ability to contact anyone or everyone someone else needs is a powerful position.

For example,

Business is all about who you know from investors, business partners, and clients. If you need someone to help you distribute a product, your advertising, referrals, or get you a spot on the show you always wanted. You need to know someone.

So the 1st way to leverage yourself is with relationships.

Go out and sincerely help connect others.

How do you do it:

1.       Become an interesting person who can effectively entertain others in conversation.

a.       Do interesting things that create stories you can pull from.

b.      Read classic literature and interesting books on Philosophy, Politics, and History

c.       Read the news so you can talk about the latest news

2.       Next, you need to be able to have an entertaining conversation with anyone, anywhere and be able to convince them (if interested) to give them their/your contact information so you can help them with your service or product.

a.       This can be established with practice by talking to strangers at events, bus stops, or anyone who happens to be standing next to you

b.      And PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE

3.       Tactically network at events, groups, and other locations with others that are your ideal clients

a.       When your there, don’t try to sell people on anything. Instead tell stories and entertain them.

b.      This makes it that much easier to tell them about what you do and let them know to give you a call if they need your services.

c.       Or even better, get their information so you both can stay in contact if they are interested in the future.

Expertise

Another way to leverage yourself in any organization or in the job market is to have the expertise that others need.

This is best spelled out by the constant need for engineers, doctors, and many other professions.

If you have the skill, then they will come.

For example…

·         Vocational Skills – Plumbers, Electricians, and others

·         Technical Skills – Programmers, Engineers, and others

·         Licenses – Lawyers, Doctors, and others

With these skills, you can leverage yourself as an expert and use it as a way to gain access to the field of your choice, be held in a high regard by others, and able to be a productive member of society.

The best part of this leverage is being sought out by others for your technical knowledge, making you indispensable to their lives.

Experience

This best translates as being mentor for others.

Become the person that people in your life or company come to for advice.

This leverage is similar to Expertise except it relates more to soft skills and knowing things that people don’t learn at school like relationships, ethics, and other wisdom you only get from experience.

How to gain experience:

1.       Learn it.

a.       Just crack open a book, fiddle around with the tools of the trade, or even take a class

2.       Find someone who you can get it from

a.       Find a person with the skill you want and turn them into a mentor

3.       Just work the job

a.       This is finding someone who needs workers and experiencing it on the job.

Build a Following

This has always been my favorite way to gain leverage.

Become the leader for others who believe in what you do and focus it into a community, forum, or organization.

This can be from a following of people who love your products, service, personality, beliefs, stories, or anything else you can build a community around such as books, movies, and feelings.

How to build a following:

1.       Find something that others will rally around such as a product, service, or piece of culture such as art, events, or happening.

2.       Recruit a strong initial group of followers (Make them loyal and others will follow)

3.       Have your strong followers recruit with fervor

4.       And let the natural order of things take its hold as you grow your following

This all can happen gradually or overnight.

For example, it can take years to build a successful Fortune 500 company, or you can build a massive following with just one YouTube video or event.

Be in the Legal Right

Another way to leverage yourself is to understand the law and how to work it in your favor.

This can be as simple as having a copyright and taking the royalties for others to use it.

Or having clauses in contracts that protect you and your service.

Too many times have people tried or were able to run out of paying me for my work.

How to be in the legal right:

1.       Have a lawyer.

2.       If you can’t afford one, make friends with one.

Or…

1.       Have a Technical Writer do it.

Otherwise, you may have to read/write legal documents yourself. Which can be very hard and boring for some.

But if you’re interested, you need to:

1.       Read simple business law books that cover contract law, tort law, and the laws that govern your particular industry

2.       Read the blogs of lawyers.

This will help you understand the nature of the law system and be able to protect yourself from bad business dealings and people who don’t fulfill their side of the bargain.

Opportunity Seeker

Another way to leverage yourself is be at the right place at the right time by seeking opportunities.

This is the entrepreneurial leverage in seeking to establish yourself as the first in this business or creating something that everyone needs or wants.

The best way to do this one is to continuously keeping yourself in the loop. Looking for industry problems, people’s problems, or any problems really that you could solve and ultimately build a business solving those problems.

How to seek the opportunity leverage:

1.       Keep your eyes peeled for the opportunity of a lifetime such as the invention of something new and great.

2.       Keep on the lookout for someone else’s great idea and either help them achieve it or execute it better.

3.       Create your own opportunity with a Pet Project.

Become a Trendsetter

Another way to leverage yourself is to be a trendsetter (Think Famous People).

This leverage is created by having people emulate what you do by either being a role model or creating something new and creative that people can get behind such as viral videos, art, and other culture pieces.

Being in the position of role model makes it easier to build a following, relationships, and opportunities.

This is a little harder than the rest as it relies mostly on luck. No one really knows what the next trend is, but once you strike gold and become one. It’s a lot easier to ride your trend and continue building off of it to do it again and again.

How to become a trendsetter:

1.       Continuously build your repertoire of things that can become a trend such as writings, films, audios, acts, or other medium.

2.       Continuously put them out there on the market until it is discovered by someone or goes viral on YouTube or other media site.

3.       Get discovered and ride your trend.

4.       Don’t let your 15 minutes of fame die.

5.       Keep yourself relevant and ride your trend again and again.

6.       Becoming a personality that you can leverage more.

A perfect sample of this would be a stand-up comedian.

He is funny, but you never know which routine will skyrocket him to the top.

But once he is there. It is easier for him to leverage himself as an actor, director, and create a new trend.

Finances

If you have the money or know someone who does, you can leverage yourself by being the biggest spender or at least being able to take bigger financial hits than others.

This leverage allows you to do more by being able to pay others for their expertise, reach further by being able to brand yourself through marketing, and be the biggest fish in the pond.

As the saying always goes… You need money to make money.

You can do this quickly or very gradually.

How to do it quickly:

·         Get lucky.

How to do it gradually:

·         Learn Long-term Investing in Stocks

·         Make something that you can collect royalties off of every time it is used (Art, Music, Films)

·         Create a business and grow it

·         Get into Real Estate

·         Leverage YOURSELF

Confidence

One of the best and for some, the hardest way, to leverage yourself is to build a confidence about you.

Have confidence that no matter what you do. You will do it well. And if you don’t, you will do it until you are.

Resilience to know that even if you fail. You will make it look good. Because you are the Champion.

The best way to build this leverage is by reading my article about Joe and his journey in Becoming the Champion.

Now.

Isn't that exciting?

You now have the knowledge you need to effectively leverage yourself.

Albeit, you will most likely not be able to use them all, you can however figure out the best combination for you as you only need to be leveraged correctly in one or two to create value for others and come out on top.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s blog post.

Please leave suggestions for more blog ideas in the comments.

Best,

L. Thomas

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The 5 Questions you have to ask yourself...

12/18/2014

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How does one become king?

How does one go from being a nothing to slowly tipping the scale in their favor, until it falls into their lap?

Making them the King?

There is only one answer.

Leverage.

Leverage is the only way to go from being the bottom of the barrel to the king of the hill.

But how does one gain leverage?

Gradually.

One gains leverage gradually.

By pining their resources and time.

And through time, the strategies themselves have not changed, simply the ways to implement them. Coming to the point of the conversation.

The 5 Questions you have to ask yourself to figure out how to leverage yourself.

1. What are my marketable skills/talents?

You have to ask yourself what marketable skills I have that others need.

This can be anything from numbers (Accounting, Finance, etc.), relationships (Business, Management, Sales, etc.), hard skills (Programming, Engineering, Medicine, etc.), soft skills (Customer Service, Public Relations, etc.), creative skills (Artists, Musicians, etc.), and more.

2. What are the skills/talents of the best and how can I realistically compete?

This is where you set the stage for a realistic look at your talents and how you can realistically compete against the best in your industry.

And even if your main talents are dwarfed by the best in your industry does not mean you are out. It simply means you have to position and leverage your other talents in such a way to take advantage of the opportunities to overcome the best’s strengths. As no one is invincible and they always let their guard down. Always.

3. What am I not good at, but have to be good at to gain leverage to become the best?

This is the hardest question people have to ask themselves because the answers are usually the most painful.

Mostly because many people don’t want to do what they have to do to become successful.

This includes public speaking, taking risks, sacrificing, and many more.

But truly ask yourself, what the skills I need to be successful are.

But always keep in mind…

Do you need to learn them or can you buy them?

4. How can I effectively leverage my talents to become the best and triumph over those who are?

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses.

And with the first three questions, you found what yours and the best in your industries are. Now that you know both. You can plan strategies to leverage yourself with the best of your industry.

This can include finding a way to partner up with the best in your industry, emulating what they do and doing it better, maximizing your own talents to become the best, or a myriad of other ways to leverage your position.

Leaving us with the last question:

5. What are the Top 9 ways to leverage yourself?

Which will be answered next week so subscribe today so you don’t miss it.

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Techniques of the Week: The Lucky 7 Interation

12/12/2014

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Morning,

This is my 7th iteration of “Techniques of the Week” which is an ode to simple writing and marketing techniques that can be used immediately with measurable results in the Before, During, and After of your sales process.

Today however, I am running a Twilight Zone special where everything is running backwards!!!

With that said, let’s be off…

The After

Your customers and clients will not always need you. This is a fact.

But they need to remember you when they do. This is why it is so important to have them on a Contact Drip.

A contact drip is a way to maintain contact and keep you in the forefront of their minds so when they are in need of your services. They know who to call.

Now a contact drip can be any form of communication between you and your customers.

To include:

·         Direct Mail, Emails, Phone Calls, or even In-Person depending how important they are to your business as some business has and needs only 3 or 4 BIG clients to maintain their success.

Now how does it work…

First you need to have your customers or prospects contact information such as an address, email, phone #, or other way to contact them.

It is most preferable to have a Customer Relationship Management System where the emails are automatically sent so you don’t have to worry about it. All you have to do is put them in the database.

Second you need to build a drip campaign of marketing material (Mail) or emails (Email).

For the more personal connections, you need to have a fleshed out system where with every client, you meet with them periodically to ensure you are still there working hard for them.

Here is an example of the material and timeline for a Drip Campaign:

                                EXAMPLE Timeline: Mail/Email

1.       Month 1 = Letter announcing new service

2.       Month 2 = Newsletter highlighting tips and company news

3.       Month 3 = Phone Call to discover opportunities

4.       Month 4 = Reprint of an industry magazine article

5.       Month 5 = Case Study of a Successful client

6.       Month 6 = Request for a critique on proposed sales letter

7.       Month 7 = Another newsletter

8.       Month 8 = Reprint of an article you submitted into an industry magazine

9.       Month 9 = Announce a new service

10.   Month 10 = Invite them to a workshop

11.   Month 11 = Phone call to introduce them to someone in your referral network

12.   Month 12 = Checklist of helpful tips for your industry and service

Here is an example to keep them in constant contact if they are very important to your business.

EXAMPLE Timeline: Personal (Phone/Meetings)

1.       Meet with them periodically.

2.       Phone call every month.

3.       In-person Meeting every 2-3 months.

Third you have to make sure it’s working. You have to track to see that those in your Drip Campaigns are not opting out because they think you’re annoying or are referring you properly.

Contact drip – maintain contact with prospects by mailing something 8-10 times a year

Yes = Sales, and No = reminders funnel

The During

This is called the High Price, High Value Approach to Pricing Strategy.

The way it works is that you sell products that are essentially the same as everyone else’s except you convince people that the higher price equates to higher value.

And once they are convinced, you take the more money you make over your competitors and use it to fuel your marketing to continue to convince others that your product is “different”.

Therefore, it becomes a virtuous circle where your customers believe that your product is much better than anyone else’s, fueling the hype and belief inside your marketing. Making you more and more money.

This is essentially the pricing foundation for most luxury products. Where you are not paying more for the materials to make the products, but are paying for the privilege to wear the brand itself.

The only differences are when the item is rare or made out of rare raw materials like cashmere.

High Price, High Value – Raise your prices because you’re worth it and clients know they are getting better service

The other approach is the opposite and equates to Low Price, Good Value.

This Pricing Strategy is more about just selling as much product as possible and have it be durable enough that people don’t think it’s cheap. Because no one likes the Low Price, Low Value strategy where people hate your product because it doesn’t work or doesn’t do as advertised.

This strategy entails less marketing and more operational efficiency of the company. Meaning to keep the prices of your product low, you have to be better at everything else.

So pick your pricing strategy based on the goals you want from your company.

Low Price, Good Value – Have your prices reflect how good you are at producing your product and your operational efficiency

The Before

What makes you want something more than anything?

Not being able to have it… or even worse… told you can’t have it.

If you’re like me, that always strikes a nerve. And I end up doing everything in my power to prove them wrong.

This psychological phenomenon known as Boy/Girl Theory is great in business because you can use it to present a challenge to your prospects and customers.

For example, you have a roller coaster or a product that is extreme.

This is useful to know for your product because now you can market your products as a challenge saying that they can’t handle it. Like a food eating challenges and other competitive type products.

Another example is a little more subtle. You just have to convince people that they can’t have what you sell. By having high prices or a 5-Star-Experience. This entails creating mystery around your product, scarcity, or other gimmicks.

Boy/Girl Theory – Make customer want what they can’t have

And there you have it.

Three ways to get your prospects and clients to knock down your door for your products and services.

Let me know how you get people to knock down your door for everything you do.

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How to get people to talk about you.

12/4/2014

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How to turn your clients into Champions And become a Referral Business.

First off,

You need to provide good service, be open, honest, and fair with your clients, and teach them from the beginning that you are a referral business.

To begin,

You need to find out the potential of your current client’s ability to become a champion for your business. As some people just are not good at referring others. That is why during your business process with your current client you find out who they are, who they know, and how much they enjoy sharing their business experience with you.

After you develop an idea of how successful they will be as a champion for your business, you put them into one of these 3 categories.

Gold – (2 referrals per year) these clients are your champions. They seek out and exploit every chance to tell friends, family, and strangers about you and your services. And tell them just how smooth and easy you made it for them.

Silver – (1 referral per year) these clients are your regulars. They do not actively seek out every hint of an opportunity to billboard your services, but instead will refer someone if someone is blatantly looking for help to purchase or sell their house.

Bronze – (Roulette Referrals) these clients are passersby. They kind of forget you exist except when someone asks them who they used to buy or purchase their house and then they refer you.

Next then,

Once you decide how effective your current client will be as a champion. You can put them through the process to teach them that you are a referral business, what services you provide to your ideal clients, and the tell-tale signs of someone looking to enter the real estate market.

Such as pregnancy, recent adoption, promotion, transfer, trouble with aging parents, a recent empty nest, or trouble in a marriage or relationship.

After that,

You need to ask.

And not ask in an off the cuff remark at the end of a conversation like…

“Oh yeah, could you tell any of your friends to give me a call if they are looking to buy and sell their home. Thanks!”

It needs to be a real conversation. Started out with…

“I have an important question to ask you.”

Because a quality referral request should be take least five minutes maybe even ten minutes to emphasize how important it is to you and how much you value them to help you out.

And in those ten minutes you must…

Ask for help
•         Say “I need your help” or “I value your help” and watch as they do everything they can to make sure you get the referrals you need.

Ask permission
•         Ask permission to see if they are willing to help and that you can ask about referrals
•         Say “I’m glad that I’ve been able help you. I was wondering who else you know that could benefit from my service. Do you have a few moments to talk about it”

Get specific
•         Get specific about who they know, how they know them, and are they currently looking to enter the real estate market or in the near future.
•         Going as far as to ask specifically about churches, clubs, associations, etc.

And finally,

Once they refer someone thank them profusely and ask:

•         How do you know this person?

•         How would you describe your relationship?

•         What type of a personality will I encounter with this person?

•         What are a few of this person’s personal interests?

•         What organizations does this person belong to?

•         Do you see anything that we have in common?

This way you can have an idea of how to convert them before you contact them.

And there,

Now you have it. The Step-by-Step Procedure to turn Clients into Champions. And your business into a Referral Business.

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The 9 ways to LEVERAGE Yourself and Win.

The 5 Questions you have to ask yourself...

Techniques of the Week: The Lucky 7 Interation

How to get people to talk about you.

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