6 Tony Robbins Insights That Will Change Your Sales Game

By Kyle Porter 

 

 

When it comes to helping people improve their lives there is nobody in the game with stronger credentials than Tony Robbins. The “Michael Jordan” of thought leaders, Tony has affected millions of people around the world through his performance coaching.  

Tony has certainly made an impact on me. Last year Marc Benioff invited him to be the closing keynote at Dreamforce, the largest software event in the world. There he laid down sales coaching like I’ve never seen. Through his books, videos, and presentations, Tony gave us each new insights into effective selling. 

Tony empowers his readers and audience to improve themselves. So we’ve scoured the web and found source after source of his advice: 

6 LESSONS FROM TONY ROBBINS: 

#1 Know Your Purpose
In your day-to-day sales world, you MUST have a sense of meaning. Walking into the office, grabbing a coffee, checking your email, and taking your day “on the fly” is just not gonna get it done. When you’re at the office everyday you have got to know what you’re going to get done that day. Knowing your purpose will make the biggest impact you can imagine.

# 2 Give positive meaning to everything
The sales rep’s life is all about risks. The more you take the more you win (and lose). It’s how you respond to the losses that makes you special. Keeping a positive attitude, regardless of the issue, will keep your head in the game and ready for the next opportunity. 

#3 Realize that everything you do has a consequence
A sales rep's interactions with customers can either be positive or negative. There’s no neutral in sales. Every action you take matters. It’s not just about being on your best behavior, it’s about knowing your strengths and lining them up to reach your desired outcome. 

#4 Know that everyone is unique, different, and amazing
Sales is a competitive world where people put themselves on the line every day. They often get shot down. Looking at the world through the lens that everyone has meaning will positively affect every facet of your performance. Don’t get deflated when buyers and competitors don’t behave like you want. 

#5 Be driven by your desire for adventure
What drives you? Your past? Your competitors? Or even your fears? Or are you focused on your successes - on solving the next client problem and taking the next step for your company? It’s important to know what moves us and makes us do what we do.

#6 Expect the unexpected
What are you going to do when something unexpected happens in sales? By the way, something crazy always happens in sales. Why do you think we’re always the storytelling life of the party? When any situation arises, it’s important to respond with the right action that helps you solve a customer problem and take the next step.

5 Incredible Entrepreneurs and What We Can Learn From Them

Ilya Pozin, 

Entrepreneurship is growing at a breakneck pace. And with our technological revolution, businesses are scaling and impacting the world more than ever before. For the United States to remain competitive, innovation and entrepreneurship must remain center stage. After all, entrepreneurship has been the primary engine of job creation in our economy over the last several decades – from 1980 to 2005, new companies (less than 5 years old) were responsible for nearly all net job growth in America.

 

But it is not only jobs and wealth which entrepreneurs create. Oftentimes, business creators bring forth solutions that solve society’s most difficult problems, provide inspiration and brighten our future. To celebrate entrepreneurship and its contributions, here is a list of five truly incredible entrepreneurs and lessons we can learn from them:

1. Bill Drayton, Ashoka

Lesson Learned: Incorporate empathy into your business

Widely considered the “father of social enterprise,” Bill Drayton has extended the idea of entrepreneurship into the spheres of education, health, environment and human rights. He regards empathy as the most powerful factor in forming an organization. The ability to see, understand and feel from the perspective of others, he says, is absolutely key in the process of creating a business that will be helpful and desirable.

Empathy played a role in Drayton’s founding of Ashoka, a global enterprise that identifies and invests in social entrepreneurs across the globe. Ashoka currently operates in over 70 countries and supports the work of over 2,000 social entrepreneurs making important contributions.

2. Oleg Firer, Unified Payments

Lesson Learned: Start young

As the founder of the number one fastest growing business on the Inc. 500 list in 2012, Oleg Firer’s career is a testament to the power of starting young as an entrepreneur. Firer started his first business at 17 and worked hard through successes and failures for the next twelve years, when he founded credit card processing company Unified Payments in 2007.

By 2012, Unified Payments was processing $10 billion worth of transactions for 100,000 merchants a year – with a mind-boggling three-year growth rate of 23,646.3 percent.

Firer undoubtedly achieved his success in large part due to the hard lessons learned from being in business at such a young age.

3. Halle Tecco, Rock Health

Lesson Learned: Pick a specific niche

It seems that accelerators, incubators and other startup-boosting programs are popping up everywhere. So when Halle Tecco graduated from Harvard Business School in 2011 and set out to create an accelerator program, she picked a specific niche to tackle: healthcare technology.

Today, Tecco’s accelerator — known as Rock Health – has provided dozens of health tech startups with millions in collective funding.

Rock Health tripled its revenue last year and has solidified itself as the first accelerator exclusively focused on health startups.

Tecco’s success proves the importance of picking a specific niche and sticking to it. In the words of marketing genius Seth Godin: don’t be a generalist that is pretty good at lots of things, rather be a specialist that is great at one thing.

4. Aaron and Karine Hirschhorn, DogVacay

Lesson Learned: Use personal pain points to inspire your business idea

When husband and wife Aaron and Karine Hirschhorn couldn’t find the right overnight kennel for their dogs, they decided to take matters into their own hands and created a marketplace that pairs traveling pet owners with local pet-sitters. Since being founded last year, LA-based DogVacay has raised over $6 million in venture capital and is increasing revenue 60 percent monthly.

The online service, dubbed “the Airbnb for pets,” has already booked 50,000 nights for pets and has paid over $1 million to pet-sitters signed up with the site.

The Hirschhorns identified a simple pain point in their own lives and created a business that solved the problem. Entrepreneurs should remember that great businesses are often born from observations of and attempts to solve personal pain points.

5. Jake Nickell, Threadless

Lesson Learned: Build a community around your business

Jake Nickell founded Threadless over a decade ago on the premise that a community of individuals would contribute and determine the T-shirt designs his company would print and sell.

More than two million artists have submitted their designs to Threadless and collectively vote on which designs will go to print. The company, which is rumored to be at $30 million or more in annual revenue, sells millions of shirts each year and gives previously unknown artists a spotlight.

Nickell says his goal is to “give the creative minds of the world more opportunities to make and sell great art.” His constant focus on community building and collaboration has been at the heart of Threadless’ success.

7 Simple Social Media Moves That Work

 
Before he started to dole out social media advice for entrepreneurs like you at Inc.'s recent GrowCo conference in New Orleans, Dave Kerpen, chairman of Likeable Media and now founder of offshoot Likeable Local, had a few things he wanted to get out of the way.

First, he said, social media is not free. Second, it won't bring you immediate results. And, third, it can't make up for a bad product or service.

If you can cope with all that, you're ready to learn how--and why--Kerpen still recommends you get involved:

1. Listen, Then Talk 
A couple of years ago, when Kerpen went to Vegas, the check-in line at the Aria hotel where he was staying "took forever," he said.

So Kerpen did what he does best--took to Twitter, and quickly posted: Waiting on line for 45 minutes at the Aria. Not worth it. #fail

Did he hear anything from the Aria? No. But he did hear from the Rio, a hotel down the street. Within two minutes, the Rio Tweeted back to Kerpen: Sorry you're having a bad experience, Dave. Hope the rest of your time in Vegas goes well.

Kerpen didn't switch hotels on that trip, but where do you think he stayed the next time he went to Vegas? The Rio. And he "liked" the Rio on Facebook. And sometime later, a friend going to Vegas saw that Kerpen had "liked" the Rio, so asked if Kerpen would recommend the hotel. His response? "I don't think it's the fanciest, but I know that they listen," Kerpen recalls telling that Facebook friend.

Kerpen pointed out that all the Rio did was pay attention to Twitter, and respond with empathy.
Kerpen recommends you do the same thing, regardless of the business you're in. "If you're an accountant, go to Twitter and search 'need an accountant'," he said. "Your customers are asking for you." 

 

2. Respond (to Everyone!)
Kerpen said 60 percent of brands--mostly big ones--currently do not answer customers or prospects on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media. As a result "you have a huge competitive advantage if you respond to your customers--and theirs," he said. (Case in point: the Rio hotel in Vegas.) 

If a customer complains, don't delete. Instead, you have an opportunity to respond publicly that you're working to solve the problem, and will send a private message to the individual so it can be fixed.

"We all know that companies are going to make mistakes," said Kerpen. "The problem isn't when companies make mistakes, it's when companies don't say, 'I'm sorry.'"

Instead, if you delete a complaint, you're sending a message that the person who wrote it doesn't matter, and you're, in essence, "inviting him to go tell someone else, to start a petition," warned Kerpen.

The only types of posts you should consider deleting? Those that are obscene, or bigoted.
When you respond, do it in your brand voice, whatever that is: serious, funny, full of puns, scientific, whatever. As long as it's true to the brand.

3. Tell, Don't Sell
Social media is most powerful when you use it to tell personal stories, not to sell your products, Kerpen said. 

Kerpen likes to tell the story of how, when he and his then fiancé couldn't afford a lavish wedding, they raised $100,000 from sponsors and got married at Brooklyn Cyclones park. That personal story, he says, helped propel Likeable into a $7 million business.

Didn't get married at Shea? Consider your humble beginnings, your personal leadership characteristics, customers who have overcome obstacles, employee challenges, community or charity partnerships. Look at your employees, products, or customers, and identify a story people will want to talk about, and disseminate it across social media.

If yours is a business-to-business company, tell a story on social media using webinars, e-books, and white papers. 

"The only thing better than telling your story on social media is to inspire your customers to tell your story," said Kerpen.

 

4. Just Be You

On this, Kerpen quoted Oprah Winfrey, who said: "I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I've become. If I had I'd have done it a lot earlier."

As Kerpen puts it: "When I am authentic, when I am vulnerable, when I am me, customers want to do business with me." 

Who does a lot of this on Twitter, according to Kerpen? Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley, who has even posted about where he lives.

 
5. Advertise (Better)
Social media is not just touchy-feely, said Kerpen. It can drive leads, and sales. 

On Facebook, rather than just get your ad in front of huge a swath of people, you can target the right people--based on job title, interest, age, location. "Every single piece of data that Facebook's got on people you can target based on that," Kerpen said. "What's cooler than reaching a billion people on Facebook? Reaching the right 1,000, the right 100, the right 10, or the right one."

Another perk of advertising on Facebook? Word-of-mouth endorsements. You can target ads against just the friends of people who have "liked" your brand on Facebook, and when those people see your ad, they will see listed the names of their friends who like your brand, too. 

6. Give Stuff Away
If you take 10 percent off, you're marketing, 50 percent off, you're giving away value, 100 percent off, you have loyal customers for life, Kerpen quipped.

Give away good content, webinars, articles, and white papers. "I've had two people come up to me and say, 'Thank you for all that valuable information you gave away, I'm starting my own social media agency,' but I also got dozens and dozens of inbound leads because of all the value we put out there," said Kerpen.

Recently, a new client told Kerpen she had $250,000 to spend on social media marketing she'd move to Likeable because of all the free, yet useful information the company has made available.

 
7. Be Grateful
In your social media posts, regularly thank your customers, and partners.

According to the non-profit organization DonorsChoose.org, Kerpen said, of those people who received a thank you note, 38 percent were more likely to donate again.

He writes three thank you notes every day. 
"It puts me in a great mood every single time," he said.

Allison Fass is deputy editor of Inc.com. A longtime business journalist at Forbes and The New York Times, Fass has also held roles in venture capital and innovation at Hearst Interactive Media and digital strategy at a start-up consultancy. @alliefass