[Lessons - Updated]: Raking In Money Starting With No Money. CHALLENGE: Make money... starting with nothing... No wallets. No money. No Id. No phones. No contacts. No ready market to sell to. No nothing. Just the clothes on your back... your mouth... your skills. RESULTS: $5,000 sales with $1,000 cash-in-hand in under an hour! (Couldve been higher if we had more time.) Over the weekend I participated in a workshop conducted by a good friend on sales skills. During the workshop there were a few important exercises. In one of them: We were put into small random groups. Stripped of all our possessions; money, contacts, friends, phones and everything that can be important in a business/startup. All we had were the clothes we were wearing... the knowledge we have in our brain & our skills. Bare-bones essentials. We were tasked to make $1,000 in just one hour... starting with nothing. The scenario is an excellent simulation of the conditions that a lot of startups or new entrepreneurs face: Building a Business Starting with Little or No Money. Everyone wants to do that. Everyone wants to get the big money starting with very little money. Everyone wants to succeed. But is wanting enough? At the end of the challenge, the results were drastically varied. Our team brought in the most money - We Won. The closest to us made $63. The big difference didnt come down to motivation or hard work. The other teams were just as motivated and hard working as us... maybe even more. The difference came down to several key things... Heres how we did it and the lessons that crossed my mind in relevance to building successful businesses in the real world: 1. Have A Clear Objective: All our possessions were taken away. We were given very little instructions - make $1,000 in the 1 hour. And we were let loose to make miracles happen. While the instructions were bare minimum, it was also absolutely clear at the same time. Make $1,000 in 1 hour... with whatever we have, or dont have (our various limitations in the real world). With such a simple and clear objective, its easier to access the situation and think about what we must do to achieve the goal. There were no other external distractions like: - party with friends for 10 mins, - get to the hottest cafe and spend time to be seen, - or take a break and have a cup of coffee to discuss with others, - and many others... (Quick side note: Life-balance advocates might be cringing when they read this. Theyd be snapping back to their favourite go-to question: How about spending quality time with family? Just to clarify, Im not against having fun, decompressing and spending quality time with friends and family. Thats the reward we enjoy for producing good results. What Im against is wannabes using those as excuses for their procrastination and justifications for their failures and giving up.) The objective: - Make $1,000 - In 1 hour - With whatever we have ***In your business, do you have a clear, simple objective that you can focus on? An objective that is NOT convoluted. And objective that is challenging enough to stretch you. An objective that inspire you. Start with the end in mind. Without a clear goal, its impossible for anyone to get there... cos its nowhere. 2. Have A Strategy: The moment the challenge started instead of i) worrying and thinking of why this happened or how come they set up such ridiculous exercise, be paralysed by the challenge etc. OR... ii) immediately rush out and scatter with everyone doing their own things, We took a bit of time to strategise and assess the objective and how we can achieve it. It was a solution-focused discussion. We knew the objective. We assessed the challenges: - No money - No way to communicate with others - No way to communicate among ourselves if we split up - No access to other resources - Time is tight - Very limited area that we can cover for the time we had (size of niche market) - Other teams doing the same exercise (competitors) - etc. Due to the time factor of the exercise, we came up with a simple 2 pronged approach. We split ourselves into two 2-person teams. One team would focus on high $ value. The other would focus on lower $ value but high frequency. We quickly brainstormed each of our value propositions (the high $ value one & the low $ value), taking into account who are the people (target market) we had access to and could reach within the limitations that we had . Once we settled that, we set a time for a quick progress assessment. Our 2 teams would split up and focus on each teams mission. 30 minutes later well come back to the agreed meeting point to report and review our progress to each other. (Milestone check and review). Once that was settled, we split up. I was in the high $ value team. ***In your business, have you set up the right strategies for you to be able to achieve the goals that youve set out to do? Without the right strategies, youll be scattered all over the place. Youll be doing things blindly. Youll have hits and misses... mostly misses. Trials and errors... mostly errors. If you dont have the right plan, youll be wasting a lot of time figuring things out and finding the right path. Why waste time doing things blindly? Time is the most precious asset we have. It amazes me every time people choose to not cut short their learning curve and try to figure things themselves. Often times a few months down the road, theyre no better than where they were before and even worse situations. 3. Focus On Action: Once the planning and strategy was agreed on. Its time for action (with the objective clearly in mind). My partner and I (high $ value team) immediately went to the shops that were open near our vicinity. As we were within the CBD, and it was the weekend, most shops were not open. Cons - much lesser potential people we can sell to. (Smaller target market) Pros - much lesser customers in their shops so theyre not too busy and we can approach them to sell them. (Easier access to them) There are always pros and cons in any business, any niche. You want to find the pros that outweigh the cons. for our specific scenario, we didnt have much options. Beggars cant be choosers. So we took the lemon we had and made lemonade. We were also clear that we must speak to owners or high-level managers who could make decisions immediately and hand us money - $1,000 within the next 10-15 minutes after we meet them. It was obvious we needed to approach the individual boutique shops, instead of the big chains ran by employees who most probably couldnt make decisions. (Know your target market well. ) The new smaller objectives (that are still congruent with the overall objective), for our team are: i) approach as many of the available boutique shops as possible during the time we have, ii) be as convincing as possible to sell them our idea and get them to give us $1,000 right then and there A lot of people will think about the scenario and get scared. Theyre afraid to get rejected. Theyre afraid to look stupid approaching strangers and selling to them. Theyre afraid of not knowing what to say, of fumbling, of screwing up, etc. It takes guts to be in business. And I guarantee that youll be tested to do things that you hate. A real entrepreneur will step up and get things done. Im an introvert by nature. I dont like approaching strangers, making small talk or being friendly. But I acknowledge that I didnt have that luxury during that challenge. I had to do what I had to do, to get the results I wanted. We were in mission-mode. Everything else faded away. It was all about achieving the goal and putting in the work. We had no time to think about feelings, fears, etc. Time was ticking away. Time for action. ***Plan your strategies, then take massive action on them! Planning, discussing, strategising should be done earlier on. Then focus your efforts on action and get things going! Set aside any distractions, fears, etc. Just take massive action and get things done. 4. Be Aware & Be Flexible: We crafted a strong value proposition on the fly. And when we entered the boutique shops we immediately explained our strong value proposition to hook their interest (my students would know this technique). And then we immediately asked whether we can speak to the owner or high-level manager there who can make the decision on our ridiculously interesting offer. (Qualifying the prospects). Those who said the managers or owners were not in, we thanked them and moved on from them quickly. Even if they were very interested with what we had to offer, we knew they wouldnt be able to make the decision. Our irresistible message improved a little after each approach. We incorporated the feedback (direct or indirect) from the previous approaches and how the prospects reacted, and made the pitch a little better each time. (Practice makes perfect.) But we were not only aiming the $1,000 target. We were aiming higher. (Think bigger!) Of course, the value that we were offering was much, much higher than what we were offering it for. ***If you dont have a strong value proposition, (I call it UVO -Unique Value Offer, then youre just like anybody else in the marketplace - white noise, irritatingly buzzing in the background.) But when you have a UVO and an irresistible offer, youll get your marketplace sitting up and paying attention. If you dont have one right now in your business, drop everything else and create one right now. Thats just the beginning. Next you need to pay attention to market feedback and continue to tweak and improve your offerings. 5. Perseverance Yield Success: A lot of the people we approached were very interested with our value proposition. They even asked for contact details, etc. and discussion time in the future, etc. but they were just uncomfortable with committing to us within such a short period of time - giving us (strangers) $1,000 after 10 minutes of meeting us. We we had a lot of interested prospects who were probably great leads. But no one was biting yet... This is when a lot of times entrepreneurs start to waver and their goals suddenly become blurry. All the rejections and failures (learning experiences) will start to weigh down on their initial zest and confidence. This is exactly when we must dig deep and march on. (Provided youre getting positive market feedback. Positive proof of concept. The never say die attitude applied on the wrong things can be dangerous and fatal too.) In our case, we knew people were biting. They were just uncomfortable with making immediate decision, especially when they must give us $1,000 immediately. So what else can we do? Time was running out... We continued to tweak our pitch and focused on the value and urgency of the offer. My partner was walking past one of the earlier shops that we approached. The lady owner called out to her and asked, So what can you offer me? Aha! Pitch time was over. Negotiation time. My partner did an awesome job and sold $5,000 worth of services. With no sales kit. No brochures. No case studies. No nothing. Just from her knowledge of what can be delivered to the prospect. Focusing on the prospects needs and continuing to give her assurance. The prospect was impressed enough to close her shop for a while, walked to the nearest MRT station across the street (accompanied by my partner) to draw the $1,000 cash deposit. Time was almost up and our full team went back to the workshop just in time, so we didnt get disqualified. ***Sometimes... A lot of times, the situation can be trying and frustrating. There are only 3 core things you can do: a) Recheck whether there is proof of concept to ensure that youre offering what your market wants. (This is crucial!) If there is... b) Tweak your approach, pitch, closing, etc. Continue to tweak them till the right combination hits and the floodgates open up. c) Know that all the nos will only bring you closer to the yeses. Time to explode: If we have more time, things would have gotten a lot more interesting. Why? Because now we have 3 critical things: 1. Proof of concept - we know what we did works and can work again. Its a matter of scaling up. 3. We have social proof on our side now. And we can use it in many different ways. 2. Now we have a little capital that we can use to our advantage. So, $5,000 (with $1,000 cash-in-hand deposit) starting with absolutely nothing... in under 1 hour, was pretty awesome. But the result was not by accident. We laid out the right strategy. We took massive action. We got the results. There were still a lot of lessons and distinctions from the exercise that I might share with you in future posts when I have more time to write a long post. Meanwhile, have a great one! :) Useful? Share it with your friends so they benefit too. If youre interested to craft strategies to explode your business, watch these videos on the exact strategies I used to build million dollar businesses fast: bit.ly/1hkydPV
Posted on: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:32:22 +0000
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