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You can always improve your business results and sometimes the best way to do this is to get help from someone else who is already successful in your field.
Just asking this person for advice can save you a huge amount of time and often make you a large amount of money.
Example:
Many years ago I decided I wanted to be a business speaker and be paid to talk to business groups on sales and marketing.
I joined Toastmasters, read a lot of books on public speaking and gave a number of live talks.
However after a year of doing this I was not doing that well.
So I rang up a very successful business speaker called Des who had been speaking professionally for twenty years.
I asked Des if I could sit down with him and get some ideas on how to better.
Des invited me around to his home and spent two hours showing me what I could do to improve my speaking results. In particular he gave me some very simple marketing ideas on how I should package and charge for my speaking services.
Des did this all for free and seemed very glad to help me.
I put into practice everything he has showed me and in the next six weeks I made thousands of dollars in new speaking fees.
This was a huge improvement in what I had done before and all it took was a couple of good ideas on marketing from someone who was already very successful in the speaking field.
One of the best reasons for asking successful people for advice is that it can save you a huge amount of time.
In one ten minute conversation with someone who is good you can often get ideas that might have taken them years or even decades to learn.
Here are the types of questions you want to ask successful people:
- What are the most useful books you've ever read that have contributed to you doing so well and what did you get out of these books?
- If you were starting out in your field again today what would you do differently?
- What are the most useful learning lessons you've had about doing well in this field?
- What advice would you give someone who wants to do really well in this business?
- How do you get new customers for your business?
- How do you get repeat and referral business?
- What little things do you do that you find make a big difference to your sales results?
- Who else would you recommend I talk to?
And so on.
Action Exercise:
Contact at least two people in the next week who are getting better results than you in your type of business and ask if you can take them out for coffee or lunch and get some ideas on how you could improve your own business results.
You will be pleasantly surprised how approachable a lot of these people are.
When you sit down with these people ask them some intelligent questions and listen carefully to what they tell you.
You may even want to ask if you can take notes or record what they say.
Put into action some of the ideas they share with you.
'I've seen that phenomenally successful people believe they can learn something from everybody. I call them 'mavericks with mentors.' Richard Branson, for instance, is a total maverick but he surrounds himself with incredibly successful, smart people and he listens to them.' Brendon Burchard
Special Bonus to all Herald Readers:
On May 10, 2011, I had my first marketing column published by The New Zealand Herald online.
Since then I've had the opportunity to share over 180 marketing columns with Herald readers.
I'd like to say a big 'Thank You' to everyone who has taken the time to comment on any of these marketing columns.
To celebrate the fourth anniversary of these marketing columns I have a fun gift called 'Priceless Business Wisdom' that I'd like to give to all Herald readers.
'Priceless Business Wisdom' is a 60 page Ebook that contains valuable lessons on business success from 21 top business people around the world.
To get your free copy just contact me using the email link at the top or bottom of this article.
Tell me the type of business you have and the city and country you are based in.
I'll send you a copy of 'Priceless Business Wisdom' by return email within 24 hours.
(I'm sure you will find it useful.)
Danica Burghout talks to Tom Raynel about her surf products business Gypsea Sol.