chrishiller’s posterous

Two things stood out this week that made me really think about this topic.

Firstly, on Tuesday I took my beautiful wife to a spa and then out to dinner and a show to celebrate her birthday. We went to see Jersey Boys (this is a fantastic musical that I recommend everyone in Toronto go to!) live on stage and had a great time. And then today I read a great article about how “We Are the Five People We Associate with Most”

The reason I say these are linked is because making deposits into the emotional bank account is really about connecting with other people and taking the time to find out/do things/take an interest in their lives. I did this on Tuesday with the Spa and the Musical and actually had a fantastic time all the while doing things to make my wife feel special and important.

So lets bring this back to my business life. As a joint Venture broker, my aim is to be able to help to solve people’s problems. So here’s the question: How do you know what pains people if you don’t take long enough to find out what they do and who they are?

To me, making deposits into the Emotional Bank Account from a business perspective, is relationship based selling. It is doing more than a simple exchange of goods and services for money.

You see most salespeople are just trying to sell their product before (and sometimes without) even finding out if the prospect wants/needs the product. Relationship based selling is about building trust and integrity and the bottom line is this: the easiest way to build this is to make deposits into the emotional bank account. When i want to build a solid foundation of a relationship (much like building a house) I start slowly with the basics - who is the person really? What do they believe in? What are their kids names? In order to build this type of relationship you need to ask open ended questions. On top of finding out what motivates and pains the other person, you are also taking a genuine interest in their life and trying to find out more about them. Again, as in my last posting, I am not suggesting that you walk around with a questionnaire or a tick sheet, that you get people to fill out before you talk to them - your interaction needs to be personal and genuine otherwise you will come across as fake and they will NEVER do business with you.

Most people can see the importance of this from a personal perspective, however often dismiss it from a business point of view.
If you have a business (or are a good salesperson) let me ask you this question: Do you pay personal attention to your really good customers/clients etc? Do you take an interest in their personal lives/children/weekend activities etc? if your answer is YES then well done! If your answer is NO, then perhaps it’s time to take a look at Relationship Based Selling as a valuable tool.
If your answer was yes to the above questions, then here’s my follow up suggestion: everyday make an effort to get to know (make deposits into) one new customer/client/prospect. Grow that circle of people that you interact with more that just transactionally. You see we all love doing business with people that we know - it’s human nature. So the more people that you interact with on a personal basis the more prosperous your business will be.

Here's another example: yesterday I had a great conversation with a potentially new business partner that I am just starting to get to know. We haven't done any direct business together yet, however what is very clear is that this guy has a high morale and values system. This is essential for me to be able to comfortably do business with him - I won't work with shysters and sharks. So yesterday we did talk a bit about business, but actually I was more interested in finding about HIM - the person. We talked about his visions, goals, family etc. This was as powerful as doing an actual deal - by building a personal relationship, we can map out a plan to work together long term and do LOTS of things together!

I love relationship based selling and it is one technique that I ensure ALL of my clients at least have a solid grounding in.

For more information on Joint Ventures, and to get access to a ton of FREE stuff visit www.makingjointventures.com
If you would like more on training options email info@makingjointventures.com and lets start chatting.

If you are enjoying these posts, don't forget to subscribe so that you can get them all instantly!

Go forth and Joint Venture!

Chris Hiller

DollarMaker Certified Bussiness Mentor

info@makingjointventures.com

www.makingjointventures.com

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A coupe of posts ago I talked about performing resource audits to uncover underutilized assets, skills etc. Today I want to go into what might be hidden in your Network and why you should really be paying attention to the people around you.
This morning I was talking to my friend and mentor, Robin Elliott, and he and I were talking about why some people limit themselves by restricting their level of thinking. This got me really thinking about the old saying that goes -

Your Net-work determines your Net-worth

In it’s simplest form, this means that if surround yourself with positive and successful people then you will be positive and successful. Naturally, if you surround yourself with the opposite type of people, then that’s what you will get.
For anyone that knows a really successful person (or 2) then you will know that there a number of things that they do on a regular basis to achieve and maintain their success. We will go into some of these in the coming posts, however for now I want to focus on why it is important to be aware of who is influencing you.
You see everyday we are making endless numbers of choices. We choose what to focus and and what things mean to us (perception and perspective). We choose who to spend time with and ultimately whom to listen to. And it is this last choice that I want to discuss here - who are you spending time with and who are you listening to?

Now if you aren’t as successful as you want to be, I am not saying that you necessarily need to go out and get rid of all of your friends/family (although I have met some people that could probably benefit from doing this!). What it means is that you need to be aware of the influences that your network is having on your emotional and physical life. Ask yourself this question: Is this person helping me move towards my goals? If the answer is yes then great! If the answer is no then perhaps it is time to move those people to the outer circle. Truly successful people have others in their inner circles that are actively and passively helping them move in the right direction. And don’t forget that human nature (or God, or the Universe, or the “Secret”, or whatever higher plan you believe in) will make sure that you always meet your expectations. So if your expectations are low and you are hanging around unsuccessful people then you will achieve little. Have you ever heard the saying: "If you aim at nothing you will hit it every time"?

If however your expectations are high and you are striving towards a massive goal with purpose, and you are surrounded and supported in your efforts, then look out world because here you come!

I once did this exercise with a client and they uncovered amazing personal relationship resource - they were part of a church group that actually turned out to be very well connected with a politician. Talk about massive amounts of power and leverage!. One of the greatest things that I get out of taking on mentoring clients and teaching them how to set up Joint Ventures in their own business, is like-minded people that I can work closely with. I get to become part of their inner circle (which equals access to their networks) and they get to become part of mine. This creates a great win-win relationship.

So my suggestion to everyone here is to do an assessment of your network (and no, this doesn’t mean you provide everyone you know a 16 page questionnaire to fill out) - take a really objective look at the people that you spend the most time with. Find out who people are and what they do. I suspect that you might even be surprised at who you can get access to, but never really noticed before.

Again, sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees, so take a step back and look at the big picture.

As always, whatever you do, doing it with greatness - go hard or go home!

Chris Hiller

DollarMakers Certified Business Mentor

info@makingjointventures.com

www.makingjointventures.com

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I just got off the phone with a new business acquaintance of mine and he and I were talking about setting up a Joint Venture with an idea that he has. One of the thing that we talked about what how to use Joint Ventures to create massive differentiation from your competition. The reason we got onto this topic as he was speaking with a friend of his and posed the following question to his friend: If I was to bring you extra business from markets that you don’t have access to, would you pay me a commission of the ongoing revenues these new customers create?
What my friend is offering to do here is to set up a Joint Venture to drive traffic to his friends business. Now this could be quite lucrative win/win arrangement for both my friend and also for his friend. Our conversation then turned the next logical step in this thought process. I hear you asking "How can a bussines use Joint Ventures for differentiation?" Even if you weren’t asking that question, you are now :)

Before we go into that, lets look at WHY a business needs to stand out from the crowd.

If you (or someone you know) are in an industry sector that has seen a decline in business in the last 6-12 months (either less customers or customers spending less) here are my 2 questions:

1. Has there been a proportionate decline in the number of your competitors?
As an example, if there used to be 100,000 people buying from 1,000 businesses in your industry, and now there are only 10,000 people buying from the same 1,000 businesses there is clearly going to be a massive revenue reduction. Sure some of your competitors may have gone out of business but my guess is that this competitor decline has not been proportionate to your customer/spend decline.

2. What are you doing that’s different to your competitors?
Using the same example above, are you doing enough to make sure that you are getting the attention of the massively reduced customer base?

One of the challenges that I face with some of my clients is that they often want to do what their competitors are doing - now sometimes this can be effective, but generally is this really differentiation? Just because something is new to you doesn’t mean you are differentiating yourself.

One of the process that I teach is the practical implementation of Joint Ventures.

Joint Ventures has been, and always will be one of the most powerful marketing tactics ever! And for good reason:

• They are easy to set up, and generally they cost you nothing.
• Anybody can start using joint ventures to skyrocket their profits.
• It doesn't matter what you sell, or where you sell it.
• I recommend wherever possible to focus on the mandate of Joint Ventures are best when they are No risk, No time, No selling, Little to No Money

Consider this: If you could stand out from your competitors, add massive value to your customers and inspire existing and new customers to spend more money, what would your bottom line look like?

Lets look at these factors a bit further:

1. Differentiation - only 2% of small to medium sized businesses use Joint Ventures - nearly ALL big businesses use Joint Ventures
2. Massive customer appreciation - one specific strategy is to give away other peoples stuff for free, which in turn drives word of mouth referrals = more customers.
   
3. Increase customer spend - customers love getting a deal (if you don’t believe this statement then you have never bought a combo deal at a fast food restaurant...) and will pay more money if the see value in it.

AND if you could set these up to create additional streams of income for you and your business wouldn’t this make Joint Ventures an undeniably amazing value proposition?

The short answer of course is YES.

Don't freak out if this doesn't make sense to you right now - it will after you expand your comfort zone and increase your learning.

For anyone that wants to learn more about the power of Joint Ventures and to get some practical strategies, you can download a FREE eBook titled Joint Adventures, written by Robin J Elliott by visitng http://makingjointventures.com/freeoffer

Go forth and Joint Venture!

Chris Hiller

DollarMaker Certified Bussiness Mentor

info@makingjointventures.com

www.makingjointventures.com

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As I mentioned in my last blog posting, today I will be talking about "Hot Buttons". It's kind of funny because I was talking talking to my friend and business partner Patrick Giesbrecht yesterday and we were discussing his 2 latest blog postings - "The Lifetime Value of a Client" and "Solving vs Selling" (if you haven't read his great blog yet, check it out here http://patrickgiesbrecht.posterous.com) and I thought that my topic for today ties in very nicely with this

A "Hot Button" is something that triggers an emotion in someone that causes that person to take action. From a sales perspective, it's a cue that causes a person to buy something you're selling. A hot button could also be dejscribed as an emotional pull. The bottom line is, when you know what someone’s hot button is, you are in an ideal position to work very closely with that person. Look at this way: in today’s society we are bombarded with literally thousands of advertising messages all day from so many different sources. Generally all of these advertising and marketing strategies are trying to either trigger a hot button or to get us to change how we think, believe, feel and do, to the benefit of the advertiser.

We all chuckle at the thought of the guy standing on a street corner in a long trench coat who comes up and says : Wanna buy a watch (rolling up his sleeve with 10 different watches to choose from) or opening his coat to show dangling jewelry, sunglases, hats etc. But why do we find this amusing? Well because we all know people in real life that try to offer to sell us stuff that we don't want or need.

But wouldn’t it simply be easier to ASK us what motivates us? Wouldn't it be easier to ASK us what what we want?

Obviously that isn’t possible from a mass marketing perspective, but the problem is that most people take the mass marketing approach even when they are talking to one person. Instead of trying to get the person in front of you to change to fit your solution, why not find out a bit more about them and then provide them a solution to their current problems. Remember that people will always do more to avoid pain than gain pleasure!

It's much more effective to work within another person’s mindset instead of trying to bend them to your will.

Here's a great example: If anyone has ever visited Bali you will know that the street merchants are notorious for hounding people to buy their wares. They will literally stand in front of you without moving, trying to get you to visually engage with them so that they can get you to buy the watch/trinket/hat/scarf/ blah blah blah. They can be so rude and obnoxious that it can be very annoying for some people. Well on one visit to Bali I encountered a completely different type of street merchant - this young man started the conversation with this: "What are you looking to buy today? Tell me and I will find it for you" WOW talk about a paradigm shift from all the other merchants - suddenly I had my very own personal shopper. And by him linking me up with other merchants he was able to get commissions on each sale - by doing this he made so much more money than trying to sell me one thing.

Basically when you find someone's hot button, you are essentially putting yourself on the same emotional playing field as that person. This is very powerful as subconsciously, you have created a connection that can be cemented in place by identifying and solving their problems.

The other real advantage of finding out someone's hot button is that it is much less expensive than traditional “throw as much crap against the wall and hope something sticks” approach. Think about it - what does it cost you to ask a few questions?

Their hot button could be money, it could be a trip or vacation; a toy or gadget; recognition or an award; a relationship or an introduction. It doesn’t matter what the hot button is, what is important is that you find out what it is so that you can work with that information and help people to get where they want to go.

So in a nutshell, do as my friends Patrick Giesbrecht and Robin Elliott say: Stop Selling and Start Solving

Live Long and Joint Venture!

Chris Hiller

DollarMakers Certified Business Mentor

www.makingjointventures.com

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What is a Resource Audit?

A Resource Audit is quite simply taking the time to sit down and find out what people have and what they have access to. You will be amazed at the types of things that can lie around dormant.

Resources can be both physical (or tangible) and intangible. You can ask specific questions about what people might have in their basement for example, or you could do some probing to see what sort of contacts someone might have.

As an example of common underutilized resources, a person might have financial resources (the ability to raise or secure funds), memberships to clubs and organizations, downtime in equipment or idle staff, inventory that isn’t moving, reputations, brands etc.

Remember that the person you are speaking with doesn’t have to have the resource themselves. They will have their own network of people who might have things that are useful.

The best way to see if someone has what you are looking for is to ask. Just ASK.

I once performed a resource audit on some of my network and found someone that had a surplus of airline frequent flyer miles. I subsequently found out what that person wanted (their Hot Button – more detail on this in my next blog posting) and was able to make a trade with them to use the airline miles for flights.

And don’t forget about the things that YOU have as a resource. Don’t assume that something that is of no value to you, isn’t of value to someone else. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. You might have a stack of magazines in your basement, or a pile of cd’s that you recorded that someone else might be interested in. You (or someone you know) might have timeshare points that they would be happy to offload and trade for something else. This is a great opportunity for you to be the broker here.

The advantage of using Barter in this instance is that you can list the items for sale through your Barter exchange whether you have physical possession of them or not.

Let me explain this point: As an example, you have a friend who has a cottage that he rents out and he needs his carpets at home to be shampooed. Well what if you were to rent out his cottage through your Barter exchange, thereby generating Barter dollars, and you then turn around and pay for your friend’s carpet cleaning with trade dollars? You would of course need to make sure that you price his cottage rental (or whatever the item is) at a price that allowed you to make a profit taking into account the cost of the product/service you will be providing to your friend.

Here is  another example: I once performed a resource audit on myself (a great experience that I recommend EVERYONE do at least once a year, as it will clean out your old stuff!!) and found that my wife and I had a commercial grade stove in our basement. The reason we had stored it down there was because it really wasn’t  safe for our 12 month old son as it got very hot on the outside of the oven (too hot for little hands...). So I did some investigating and found that the retail price for our stove was about $2700.

If I wasn’t a member of a Barter company, what would my options have been? I would have to list the stove for sale in the newspaper, maybe on free second-hand websites etc right? Then I would have to field calls and email enquiries as people would invariably have questions and want to know more. In addition to this I would probably have listed the stove for around $1000 (it was about 4 years old) and may have been lucky to get that as someone would surely have negotiated me down.

Plus I would have had to make sure that I was home when someone wanted to come and look at it, at which time they might have said that they wanted to think about it and go away.  If, and when, I did eventually find a buyer, they would probably want to give me a cheque which would make me a little hesitant (in case it bounced), so I would probably insist on cash, which would slow the transaction down further.....

Feasibly this process could have occurred 2, 3 or even more times and it could take weeks or longer (and it is obviously possible that I might have never sold it).

But luckily for me I am a member of a Barter exchange. Here’s how the transaction went.

At 3 p.m. on Thursday I took a digital photo of my stove and I wrote a 6 line rundown of the specs/model etc and emailed the information and image to my Trade Broker. I priced the stove at T$2000 (using the theory of start high and bargain down). By 10 am on Friday morning I received 1 phone call from a member that owned a catering business ad he asked me some specific questions which I was able to answer. This member then said that he wanted to purchase it (unseen) and that he would email his Trade Broker to finalize the transaction and that he would be at my house on Monday to pick it up.

So what just happened here? I sold my stove, that really wasn’t of use to me anymore, for T$2000 in less than 24 hours with me doing nothing more than taking a photo, sending 1 email and taking 1 phone call.

For those of you that are now saying, Yes, but what did you do with the T$2000, download my eBook for free at www.jvbarter.com and make sure you read the section on Using Trade in your Personal Life (Chapter 7). My wife and I use Barter constantly to do the everyday things and the extra special things that make our life as fantastic as it is!

So as you can see, when you perform a resource audit either on yourself or on others in your network, what you are actually uncovering is opportunities for you to generate Barter dollars with very little effort.

In fact approximately 70% of my entire Barter dollars generated comes from activities that are outside of my regular business practices that I perform on barter. I generate Barter dollars by performing resource audits and partnering up with other people to sell their goods and services through Barter and we share the profits.

Again, you will be amazed at what you can uncover if you ask!!!

Another great reason to perform resource audits is because it opens you up to people and opportunities within your network that you may have either forgotten about or didn’t even know existed. One of my resource audits is a Joint Venture club called DollarMakers, This club was started by a man called Robin J Elliott, who has been a successful Joint Venture Broker for over 20 years. Robin J. Elliott started this club to bring like minded people together and to teach them about how to set up and maintain Joint Ventures. You can download a FREE e-book called Joint Adventures, by visiting www.makingjointventures.com, that will give you some practical strategies and insight into the world of Joint Ventures.

The examples I have drawn from above focus on how to use Resource Audits in your Barter business. But if you think about it laterally, you can incorporate Resource Audits into your everyday life and reap the massive rewards of finding truly hidden gems within your own network!

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