If you haven’t felt assaulted by bad economic news lately, you live in the woods with no TV, no newspaper, and no Internet service. The stock market has lost trillions. Real estate values and sales have declined at record rates all across the United States. Layoffs are epidemic, small businesses can’t get loans they need to make ends meet, and retirement 401ks have plummeted 30 percent on average. And to add insult to injury, banks and automakers have had their hands out, imploring Uncle Sam to rescue them from their own incompetence and bad judgment.
If you’re an insurance professional or salesperson, you may well be wondering: Who’s going to bail me out? The answer, of course (unless you’re AIG), is “no one.” Not the government, not the president, not your employer, not your customers.
According to George Ludwig, you, as insurance professionals, must use smart, time-tested business and sales strategies to bail out yourselves
“Each and every one of us must do our part to conquer this crisis,” said Ludwig, the author of “Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code.” (Kaplan Publishing) “We must participate in our own rescue by not giving up, by refusing to use the slow economy as an excuse for poor performance, by staying in front of our customers, and by continuing to use proven ‘best practices’ to reach sales success.”
Ludwig compares the current situation to a whitewater rafting trip he took years ago on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. “We were about to head out, and our instructor was giving us last-minute safety lessons,” he said. “He warned us that if we should capsize, he might not be able to get to us immediately and that we had to participate in our own rescue. He told us to be resourceful and do everything we could to save ourselves until he could get to us. And I think that’s what we salespeople must do now. We must participate in our own rescue, be accountable for our actions, and realize there is no point in waiting for the government or anyone else to throw us a lifesaver.”
Your Own Rescue Plan
So how do business and salespeople conquer this crisis and orchestrate their own rescue plan? Here are eight fundamental keys:
- Put the economy in perspective. The economy has been falling, not failing. It’s down, but it’s down from the biggest economic boom of all time, the biggest housing boom of all time, and the easiest loan requirements of all time. Sure, home sales are down 33 percent, but even with this negative statistic, 5 million homes were sold last year.
- Replay the crises that you’ve overcome in the past. Virtually every person and business has conquered at least one crisis. Now is a good time to reflect on those memories and remember how you came through those crises and found yourself stronger. Remind yourself that tough times never last, but tough people do.
- Decide that you will make it through the slow economy. This economic crisis is like a crucible that provides us an opportunity to do what’s necessary to recast and forge ourselves into something bigger, better and stronger. We can’t control the events of our lives, but we can control what we decide to think, believe, feel and do about those events.
- Strengthen your body and your mind. Because fear and worry hijack the mind, one of the best ways to stay healthy and focused during the economic crisis is to strengthen yourself both physically and mentally. Start today on a committed exercise and fitness plan that will not only condition you to feel stronger than ever before, but that will also help you manage the stress and anxiety that you are feeling these days.
- Focus only on your goals. One of the laws of the universe is the law of attraction. Perhaps you read about it in the recent national bestseller, “The Secret.” Simply stated, it’s the idea that everything that comes into our life, we’re attracting into our life. And those things are attracted to us by virtue of the images we hold in our minds. Unfortunately, most people spend more time thinking about what they don’t want than what they do want, and then they wonder why what they don’t want keeps winning out. In a down economy, people’s powerful fears about what might happen are even more likely to become self-fulfilling prophecies.
- Keep training to get better. If there’s ever a time to keep getting better at what you do, it’s during a down economy. Continuously learning and improving is the only way to be more effective and efficient than ever before, and to ensure you are doing everything in your power to out-do your competitors.
- Step up your high-impact sales activity. During a tough economy it becomes critical to spend a greater percentage of time performing high-impact sales activities, which involve selling or prospecting to well-qualified ideal buyer types face-to-face or on the telephone. In other words, stop wasting so much time on things that don’t matter.
- Take the modeling-for-success shortcut. One other fundamental for achieving success rapidly in tough and uncertain times is to find a mentor, coach or colleague who’s achieving the outcomes you desire and model his approach. Or find someone who has experience overcoming past economic crises and ask her what strategies she plans to employ. Spend time with this person so that you can observe the skill sets necessary to achieve success.
Topics Training Development
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