On a conference call with two of my best customers and now great friends, the topic turned to “John, what would be great is if you had a series of regular tele-seminars on sales”. From that idea from John Rinaldi and John Jaworski, came what is today SpeedStart Monday. We talked for over an hour on what could be done. My thinking was that what most sales professionals, business owners and entrepreneurs lack is a weekly sales meeting.
So it became my goal to provide a forum that would allow anyone to get new insights, techniques and develop skills for selling. It took several weeks to lay out what I thought is the correct format for the call. Like anything you do in life you must move from the idea to action. So it became my goal to provide not only very useful information and to also set the bar high in the experience area. Next I needed to set the time of day, I came up with 7 AM Pacific time as the best possible compromise, giving participants in the most time zones an opportunity to join live. Next came what day of the week. This was a very easy decision. Every good sales meeting should be on Monday. There is some magic in this selection, as most sales professionals have a hard time making Monday a great sales day. With a hang over from the weekend. It is time to get back to work and go out and sell something!
With a time and day of the week set, it was time to get a format that would solve my other goals. Now this came from the fact I have sat through a bunch of very bad meetings where every one would walk out of the meeting and say what a total waste of time. That means it had the opposite effect than what it was supposed to have. Now as moved up the ranks in my sales career I had the job of having sales meetings fall on my shoulders. I did not want the team to leave and say what a real disaster. I wanted to take all that I had learned and put that in fast a paced session. That the best response would be “wow did I learn a lot and my hand is tired from taking notes”. Armed with that I set out what I thought was a good format, fully understanding that no matter how well crafted it would have to be tweaked as it went out to real customers.
Time to go live. But, how would I write the scripts and get the work done on time? Seeking advice from several sources, they all have good ideas. None had what I really need which was how could I do it my way. Most were perplexed to say the least when I told them that this would not be some canned 6, 10 or 12 session program that would then just repeat and repeat. So, I took matters into my own hands and came up with a path to get what I knew would be the right amount of information and drive per session. And with the energy to drive home the point.
Now if you are like me you have all these ideas to get something done. The best of intentions and then life intercedes. Then before you know it a month has gone by and nothing has happened. How to defeat that demon? Many suggested an appointment with myself. Didn’t work, because I let the interruptions get in the way. I own it yes I could have found a way to make that work, but and here’s a lesson for everyone. At some point in time you HAVE to find the path that works for you! So I did just that, now this may or not work for you. Here is what I came up with.
1. Create a format outline.
2. Use that as a guide for writing out the script.
3. Each session had to answer a question(s) or solve a problem
4. Focus was on real world.
5. Packed with as much as I could cram into about one hour.
6. Asked myself how many pages of a script will get the job done?
7. I got smart, I couldn’t remember how many sessions into it I was, so I put together a script master. I print this out every week for the next session.
8. I hand write the script, it is the only way I can get it done, hey it works for me.
9. Now for the real magic – how to get it done on time and be ready for the call on Monday @ 7 AM PST. The best way became that I get up by 4AM and that gives me 3 hours before I go live. That deadline really pushes me and it gets done…
