A few things I learned at the Growth Conference

Thursday, January 20th, I went to the Entrepreneur Magazine Growth Conference sponsored by UPS. It was INCREDIBLE! I love going to seminars, conferences, or meetings that not only gives me new knowledge to take back to my business, but also inspires and motivates me to take my business to the next level. The Growth Conference was just that type of event where you normally would have had to pay top dollar for the knowledge they provided and the perks that you get, but it was FREE!

Now this post isn't a true review or event plug for the Growth Conference, even though I can't wait until the next one, I wanted to share my insights from one of the sessions I went to.

"How to Build a Selling System in Your Company" by Tom Black showed me something that I had previously thought about. No matter what you do, who you are, or what you are trying to accomplish you are in the business of sales.

Think about it, when you are a student you have to sell yourself and abilities to your teacher in exchange for a good grade. When you are an entrepreneur, you sell your services or product for both money and recognition. When you are applying to that job, you have to sell yourself and experience to the company in exchange for a job. No matter what path you are taking, you need to know the basics of how to sell and how to sell well.

Tom gave us a brief overview of what it means and what it takes to be a "professional seller"

1. Find your own personal definition of success: progressive realization of a worthwhile goal or dream


2. Realize that "We're ALL in sales"


3. Four things determine results in sales: foundation of values, number of people you see, quality of your presentation, quality of your prospect


4. Values of successful sales people: law of averages, happiness is a way of traveling, you can control your attitude, persistence is all powerful, constant improvement is possible, think BIG, growth means leaving your comfort zone, change is good


5. Goal Setting: write it down, set a time frame, tell someone important to you, daily activity equals results, set high and low goals, use small increments, don't stack goals, do track results, NO EXCUSES

And I know what you're thinking "I'm not in sales, why does this matter to me?" Like I said in the beginning of the post, no matter what you do or what business you are in, you have to sell yourself, product or service in order to get the type of result you desire.

Definitely check out Tom Black's book Boxcar Millionaire and his website.

The Unemployed Entrepreneur