Weekly Success Tip

What I learned from the first episode of Australian Apprentice...

I’ve always said, your number one skill in business (and arguably life) is your ability to sell. This was again confirmed for me watching the first episode of Australian Apprentice last night...

In it, former Wizard CEO Mark Bouris, challenged the two teams to make the most money as a Premier gardening service. The teams of six were split into two, to each focus on commercial and residential services and were then put under time pressure of completing the project in two days.

To me, whilst both teams got stuck in and had a good go, I feel they both failed dismally on the challenge. You see, the challenge was to run a PREMIER gardening service, yet when the pressure was on, both teams sold purely on price. Not only this, but both teams were focused clearly on their own agenda, to get the job at any cost. The word ‘premier’ says ‘high quality’ to me and that always means, ‘higher price’. If it doesn’t I would question your definition of premier!

Sadly, however, when both teams were under time and competitive pressure, they sold their services for between 60 – 40% below market value! Now I don’t know about you, but having run businesses for over 20 years now, and knowing that your entire profit is in the last 10 or 15 percent, these ‘Apprentices’ just trapped themselves into life-long jobs at those rates.

If they had simply got off their own agenda (that is winning the job) and asked some quality questions of their customers, they could have doubled or tripled their profits in seconds.

A couple of obvious questions to me would have been:

• What do you normally pay for this service? What does that include?
• Has anyone else quoted you on the job?... Really, tell me more.
• Who have you used before?
• What did you like about them?
• What didn’t you like about them?
• If I could guarantee you this job done on time and on budget is there any reason why we couldn’t get started today?

In summary, the challenge was to run a PREMIER gardening service, yet when the pressure was on, both teams sold purely on price. Cutting your price is in my opinion the #1 way to go broke fast. I would have fired the lot of them.

Now, being as mean as that, maybe I could get a gig on a reality TV show? ;-)

ACTION STEP:

In each of your transactions today, make a point of considering the other person's point of view first and only.

Ask them this question: ‘What else can I do to help you today?’

I’m not saying you have to answer their every request, but if you ask this question, something magic will happen.

Of course, if you want to turn this question into a personal fortune, the skills you need to learn are available at my final Property Entrepreneurs Conferences! You can secure your seat now at: www.TGRProperty.com.au