Banks are unable to differentiate between successful car dealers and the automobile industry. treating all dealers the same, assigning high risk labels to everyone, and looking for reasons not extend floor plans and thereby penalizing the successful car dealers in order to balance out their concern about exposure. Successful dealers that depend on borrowed money to grow their inventories, their companies, and ultimately the economy, are unable access credit because banks are unable to see the difference between profitable companies and damaged industries. Banks are not assigning any positive value for profitable dealers and treating all dealers the same.  This is insane and a non judicial way to lend money. I know auto dealers that have been in business for 50 years that are still profitable in the current economy and are being treated like they have the plague. This is yet another example of the lender being unable to differentiate between a business and an industry. And this inability to differentiate between successful businesses and damaged industries extends to real estate and other small businesses dependent upon retail sales. The Small Business Administration doesn't even cover floor plan loans for car dealers but recognizing that dealers need help, the SBA began rolling out new programs tailored to them. So far they have approved just one loan. Mr. Banker just because a carton of milk spoils in the refrigerator you would not trash all of the contents in the refrigerator. Just because one of your kids is late coming home you wouldn't punish all your children. Banks should be assigning an added value to the small business entrepreneur that proves profitable while the industry and the economy shrink. Maintaining a profit today requires much more skill as a business person than it did a year ago yet no bank places any measurable value on it. For banks to lend money again they must sanely distinguish differences between the borrower and the industries they are in and assign a positive value for those of us who can stay profitable despite a contracting economy. We aren't talking about credit card consumption here we are talking about proven small business entrepreneurs that already made it through the worst of the economy's contraction and will be the one's to grow the economy going forward. Grant Cardone, Author and CEO

Nothing will get you through these economic unusual times more than getting back to effectively selling your products, your services and your company. It is more critical at this time than ever that you learn everything there is about selling, negotiating and closing.

Those that are able to effectively sell will survive and those that can not will suffer. At no time in my life will the mistakes a company and its people make with regards to selling be more expensive than right now. Even the smallest mistakes in selling will be greatly expensive running off customers and opportunities. SELL SELL SELL-nothing else matters. The management teams that spends less than 95% of their time on selling will find itself going backwards. "The only reason a business or an individual will fail is the inability to sell their products and services at prices high enough and in quantities great enough!"

95% of all the energy and efforts of the company, management and its people has to be on selling. Advertising and marketing are important but if they don't result in sales the company will abandon those efforts due to its lack of sales.

Management's daily attention must be on:
1) ensuring people's attitudes are positive,
2) effective 21st Century selling skills (not just old school tactics),
3) effective negotiations in order to maintain gross profits,
4) how to close the deal so that your efforts actually hit your books

While much of management is looking for ways to figure out how to reduce expenses nothing will get a company through these times more than increasing the gross sales line of its income statement. Nothing else matters at this time more than selling. ONLY THOSE TRAINED DAILY ON HOW TO SELL WILL SURVIVE!

Grant Cardone, (about Grant)
Author of Selling Is the Secret to Success

Your Future is Determined by Your Actions Today!

What you do today, not yesterday, is what will determine how you live your life tomorrow.

Its unfortunate that so many people spend time regretting yesterday, stewing over it, planning their life around it when its over, gone, finished! Yesterday in no way can impact tomorrow. "Yesterdays" only ruin your ability to create a tomorrow.

Consider your marriage: For a marriage to prosper you have to keep your attention on the future of it. Things like dates, dinners, plans, vacations, new adventures, mutual goals and projects are what will ensure its future. The marriage will not survive on the love of yesterday, but only on what is created in the future.

Take your business. Let's say you want to build your customer base and haven't been doing that for some years. The only thing that matters now is that you see how you want your future to look and then take the actions necessary today in building your customer base from here on out. No reason to spend time on yesterday as it is only filled with regrets, remorse, guilt, etc.

This is why newspapers are so damaging for people to read! Because they are focused on yesterdays not tomorrows. And the only time they discuss tomorrows is when they are projecting something negative and then compare to some other past devastating event!

Your future is a summation of your actions today, not what you did or did not do yesterday! Read newspapers and you are less likely to take positive actions at creating a positive future. Because the newspaper is written with the past in mind! This is why thousands of people are benefitting from my training CD's, as the material I teach constantly gets you to focus on your next action, thereby causing the listener to take positive actions today and create a great future tomorrow!

You can learn from the past but what you do today, not yesterday, is the only thing that will determine your success tomorrow! You can learn where you picked up the nail that gave you a flat; which would be good to know so that you avoid that spot of the road in the future, but right now, I suggest you change the tire as quickly as possible, be thankful you didn't have an accident and get on with your trip! Put your attention on where you are going, not on the nails of the past, and step on the gas pedal of action!

Only your actions of today will impact and ensure your future! The next thing you do or don't do is what will create the future for you! Taking any action to build your client base is better than none at all. And the more action you take the more your future will look like you want it to.

Anytime things get a little slow for me, these are the five steps I take to make sure my future shows up the way I want it to:

- Put my attention on and write down what I want my whole future to look.
- Then I put my attention on and write what I want certain areas to look like, for example a specific project.
- Do ONLY those actions necessary to create that future.
- Do those actions in massive proportions.
- Hire someone else to help me promote and continue those actions!

Forget yesterday, forget five seconds ago, and take action right now on your future.

TO BE SUCCESSFUL YOU HAVE TO BE TRAINED TO SELL PRODUCTS IN QUANTITIES LARGE ENOUGH AND AT PRICES HIGH ENOUGH.

Price and volume are critical to reaching high levels of success. You can not be good at just one or the other but need both!

This article is about the myths regarding price and later articles will be about increasing volume.

If you were to survey all of the salespeople in the world, you’d find that most of them believe that the number one reason they lose a sale is due to price. This is absolutely not the case and in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Price is not only not the buyer’s biggest concern but is at the bottom of the list of reasons why people don’t buy your product. Most sales are loss because you are not on a product that the buyer truly loves or because the buyer lacks confidence in the product solving his/her problems.

Mistakes:
1) Most sales people are not even on the right product.
2) Don’t know what would motivate the buyer to value the product more than the money required to purchase the product.
3) What problem the customer is trying to solve.

It is the unspoken objections, not the obvious and apparent price, payments, terms or budgets objections that stop the sale. 90% of sale is getting the product right not getting the price right. This requires you to know what iit is that the buyer truly values from a point of passion (love) and logic (solving a problem).

Getting the sale is first about getting the buyer to a place where he/she has confidence in you, your company and the product you are presenting. If there is a price difference between you and others, (and their should be), then you have to build value in your product by increasing the confidence the buyer has in making a decision with you.

Reasons People Buy:
1) Love the product to the point that I have to have it now.
2) Need this product now to solve a problem.
3) Confidence that this product will meet their needs
4) Confidence in the representative and choose to buy the product in order to help the person they like and are willing to pay more in order to do so.

To learn more about how to get a higher price for your products you should consider my book, "Sell To Survive", and my audio programs Maximizing Every Opportunity and Rules of Success.

Thanks for reading, see you next week

Grant Cardone
800-368-5771

I have been telling business owners for years, do not rest on your laurels just because things are good. Any problems you are experiencing today was because you didn't properly prepare yourself yesterday. The reality is the problem existed years ago, but because the economic wind was at your back you didn't know it, until now.

Now it is back to basics; hard work, daily training, everyone pulling together and a relentless persistence t0 get the job done. Your daily efforts need to be a laser focus on moving you toward your destination, everyone KNOWING the destination you strive for, and the entire team pulling together! You have to knock off all foolishness, playtime, negative talk/think and pull together like it is a life or death matter!

1) Know where you want to go.
2) Know what it takes to get there.
3) Know how to do what it takes to get there.
4) Know through inspection that you are doing what it takes each day.

Neither a Democrat, a Republican, or anyone else can help you more than your daily effort to KNOW more and DO more. The more you know, the more you can do. The more you can do the more you will do! And more is critical during times where there appears to be less.

Grant Cardone, Author Selling the Secret to Success and Business Coach

You need to treat the current economic climate as you would a terminal disease! If you were told you had a terminal disease what would you do? Unless you are ready to surrender and die, you would seek every possible solution? You would spend your last dollars in order to find a cure? You would travel to every corner of the planet seeking a solution? You would learn everything you could about the disease so you could find a solution to it!

Now is the time to getUNREASONABLE and EXTREME with your business!  You must get unreasonable with how many calls you make, how many clients you contact and how you insist on getting business in today's market.  Management must get unreasonable, even extreme, in their expectations,  in order to keep production at levels necessary to keep those same people employed!  

"YOU MUST GET UNREASONABLE, EVEN EXTREME AT TIMES LIKE THESE TO INSURE SURVIVAL."

Reasonable is defined as, having sound judgement, fair and sensible,  

Unreasonable would then be defined as, NOT having sound judgement, NOT fair, NOT sensible. Now is the time to NOT have sound judgement. Now is the time to NOT be, what you consider, fair. Now is the time to throw sensible out the window.   That is right I am telling you to not be sensible as sensible will not get the job done as the marketplace contracts!   You have to get unreasonable in every regards now in order to survive!  

"You must get unreasonable in the market place or the marketplace will punish you." 

Most people only take enough action to get by and when the marketplace contracts they start paying painfully in the forms of reduced production. The marketplace punishes those that are reasonable in times of contraction!  The marketplace punishes those that only take enough action as they never reach the level of action necessary to survive and prosper.  These people get punished because they are still taking the same amount of action as when the marketplace was expanding and are not compensating for the change in the market!   

There are three sets of people exerting different levels of action in the workforce and each group will suffer in different ways.

1) Weak employee's that has never exerted enough effort- the first to lose his job.

2) Good dependable trustworthy employee's that only exert reasonable amounts of effort- (this represents most of the workforce). They are at risk and will probably lose current pay plan unless they become unreasonable.

3) Those willing to do whatever it takes.  These people will not get cut, not be at risk and become even more valuable to the company.  They will actually be better off when contraction ends!

These three levels can also relate to management and entire companies.   The difference in these three levels comes down to creating enough action to get the job done regardless of the obstacles!   

So what is enough effort? This is the first thing NASA gets the answer to when figuring out what it take to get a rocket to launch, how much effort is necessary.  In business enough effort is when you create new problems for yourself!  Not enough action or effort yields familiar or the same problems.  

Example of familiar problems- (not desirable)

 

1. not enough production, results or income
2. appointments cancelled 
3. customers satisfied but not enough of them.

 

1. too much production and can't deliver it
   
2. too many appointments showing up all at the same time, 
3. customers angry because you called them too much
   

You will have created enough action through your efforts when you get new problems.  Most people and businesses have the same problems over and over and never seek new problems. 

GET UNREASONABLE WITH THE AMOUNT OF ACTION YOU ARE TAKING IN THE MARKET PLACE AND THE MARKET PLACE WILL REWARD YOU.  BE REASONABLE AND YOU WILL BE PUNISHED!   

Grant Cardone, Author  Sell To Survive

More on Grant Cardone

I recently did a book signing to a packed house at the historical Book Soup in Los Angeles and I told the audience that while the great business schools of America will tell you that one of the top reasons for business failure is undercapitalization, I believe that the number one reason a business or for that fact an individual fails in accomplishing its endeavors (regardless of the endeavor) is "it’s inability to sell products in quantities great enough, at prices high enough and at speeds fast enough to capitalize the business, the idea or whatever it is the company or individual’s survival depends on."

Take any failure you have had in your lifetime or any business failure that you have witnessed and you will see the individual or company was unable to gets its products into the marketplace at quantities great enough, fast enough and at prices high enough. While cash is necessary to fund any business it cannot be the determining factor! No matter how much cash the business or individual has, sooner or later you have to get your products and services funded by others through selling or you will burn through your cash. (See my article at Huffington Post where I am now blogging weekly.)

Consider the fact that selling is not even taught at these business schools and that alone would suggest that this is the great weakness of individuals and companies. Apple sits on 15 billion in cash because it sells its products in quantities great enough. Other companies, like UA, burn through cash due to it's inability to sell product at prices great enough. (See Price Myth Article).

This formula also proves true for individuals and households, and is not limited to just business. Every person has products and services that they either exchange or don't exchange with the market! Regardless of how superior your product, service or idea may be, your survival depends on your ability to get your products, services or ideas into the marketplace and funded. If you wanted to get a promotion, an idea, then you would have to sell someone on that. And if you can't sell the idea you will not be assured of the promotion!

Selling is not an activity of the business but the life-blood of it! Selling is not something you have a choice to do, anymore than you have a choice to breathe or eat. If you have any disdain or dislike for this thing called, selling, it is only because don’t know how important it is to your survival and/or don’t understand how to successfully get the job done.

Long time oil man, J. C. Walter, III – President of Walter Oil & Gas Corporation wrote me after reading my book, “No matter where you fall in the “food chain of life”, you need to be able to sell yourself to others.”

Kerri Kasem, radio personality says after reading the book, “Selling the Secret to Success should be put in the hands of anyone who wants to run a successful company and should be the "Bible" for anyone in sales. This book is so amazing, YOU HAVE TO READ IT.“

If you haven’t read it ,Selling the Secret to Success get it. If you have read it, read it again and then make sure your spouse reads it. The book that is being described at The Think and Grow Rich of the 21st Century will be released on audio at the end of July.

Order yours now so you can listen to it in your car as Grant expounds on each of the seventeen chapters! Call 800-368-5771 or by clicking on the title above.

Grant Cardone, Author and CEO

Also see Grant on Fox Business