Today’s marketplace is still exciting, vibrant and tolerant.  Every day, across the country, small groups of designers, sales people and application specialist who have great market niche ideas step forward to start the next killer company.  Unfortunately, these new companies are often like roving mobs, rather than armies planning to win on the battlefield.
Two years after their formation, fewer than five out of every 100-marketplace contenders will still be around.  The dazed, battle-worn founders will walk the scarred landscape wondering what went wrong.  As the industry continues to grow at a rate of 20-25 percent or so per annum, the defeated wonder how and why they not only lost the skirmish but the entire war.

Wrong Focus
These people blow it because they don’t have “the right stuff.” These founders assigned responsibilities and authority without considering true capabilities.  Just because someone handles the checkbook at home is no reason to believe he or she can be the finance officer for the company.  The best technical guru may not be the best to be VP of engineering or design.  The person who had the idea may not be the best person to be president.  The most outgoing individual, or the salesperson with a record of outstanding sales, is probably not the one to guide marketing and sales. Being able to talk technically, or having a good sales sense, has nothing to do with being an outstanding marketing person.  Outstanding salespeople generally think that good marketing is belly-to-belly selling or increasingly a solid Web presence.  Their marketing plan is to double sales next year.  They fail to understand the total marketing concept.  They believe that advertising, PR, selling and the other marketing activities are separate and independent functions.

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During the course of the sale of a business, you will need to find out exactly what documents are needed and when they will be needed. There are a lot of legal processes involved and skipping or failing to carry out one of these areas properly can be disastrous for your future plans. Escrow documents are just one of the types of documents that you will always come across. They are vital when selling or buying a business because they are fundamental for the transaction to legally occur. They also ensure the fulfilment of both the seller and buyer’s right to change his or her mind. As such, escrow documents are a must.

What are Escrow Documents?

Escrow documents are the documents that govern the final payment structure or arrangement for the business to move from the seller to the buyer smoothly. Escrow is an important period of time because it is the last chance both buyer and seller have to formalize their agreement. There are various functions that take place during this time, but all arrangements are specified in the escrow documents.

Escrow documents detail the amount of money that has been placed in the hands of a third party, which is usually a broker or a licensed escrow agent. It also stipulates when the escrowed funds are to be released and to whom, as well as any payment schedule that may exist. It may be that the seller has agreed to pay the buyer in instalments as each part of the transaction has been completed. It may be that so much is held back until 6 or 12 months down the line. This is determined in negotiations and then recorded in the escrow documents.

The main item of importance that is contained within the escrow documents though is the sale terms. The terms of any business sale have to be fulfilled before the escrow can be released, so all of that information has to be recorded in order to ensure that the transaction is a smooth one.

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Negotiating can be done in a professional manner that can increase customer satisfaction while helping to protect both parties’ interests.

Let’s first look at some of the problems that give negotiating a bad name and then look at the solutions. A lack of training in negotiating in the automotive industry has put sales people at a disadvantage. Usually, a sales person is taught how to negotiate in a learn-as-you-go method. Although all learning must be accomplished by doing, some preparation has to be done to make the learning experience more effective. All sales people and managers should go through a course on basic and advanced negotiating. Assuming that sales managers can automatically teach your sales people to negotiate professionally is asking for trouble. How did the managers learn to negotiate?

Sales people should be taught the expected procedures. I like to call these routing procedures. Routing procedures will define everyone’s responsibilities, from the moment a customer is greeted until they are delivered, including the necessary paperwork and who initiates what. Included in the routing procedures are items known as, black and white items. Black and white items are the things that should never vary at your dealership. These items are to be defined by your top management and can include such things as not quoting discounted prices on the lot or never low-balling on price.

Another source of problems in negotiating is the misuse of traditional negotiating techniques. The “higher authority technique” is a technique of always deferring to a higher authority for a decision. The technique is a solid negotiation tactic that has been run into the ground by automotive people. Having your sales people run to the manager more than once or twice in negotiations is a crime.

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All sales people need to have a monthly sales goal for themselves. They also need to know how they arrived at that specific goal. Many times, these goals are based upon their past sales performance, but past results may not be indicative of performance.

You can increase your sales by 25 percent or more. Identify what causes mental barriers that produce limited results and how to overcome them. Many barriers are caused by conditioning, circumstance and emotions. Many people associate money with the following phrases: “Do you think money is grown on trees?” “Do you think we are rich?” “You can’t afford that.” “Money is the root of all evil.” This is why many people have limited and negative beliefs about money.

Examples of the three limiting factors are:

Conditioning. The US is the richest country in the world. Money is printed every day here. So in reality, what’s the difference between it growing on trees or on a printing press? 

Circumstance. All people have negative experiences and setbacks in their lives, these experiences can lead you to let circumstances limit your beliefs about success or money. When you anchor your future to the past, that’s exactly what you get. History is meant to be a rudder not an anchor. 

Emotions. Emotions are some of the most powerful sources of energy in nature. Negative emotions are also caused when your conscious mind and subconscious are in conflict with one another. Example: If you set a goal to lose five pounds, it is done in your conscious mind. If later that day, you walk by a bakery and smell cookies and walk in and eat a half-dozen, that action was controlled by your subconscious mind. Can you see the conflict? Your subconscious reacts to information and emotions given to it without regard to your goals.

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There is a revelation that is shocking and, quite frankly, scary. A dangerous and potentially fatal mistake is being made everyday in businesses. The mistake is the confusion between strategy and tactics. Strategy is your overall goal for your business and your overall marketing philosophy to achieve those goals. Tactics are executable actions you take to achieve those options. The good news is that once you have clarity about your strategy, and then apply emotional direct response marketing methods, you can create a continual stream of customers to your business. The scary part is that it is as easy as flipping on a light switch, and yet very few people know and understand the simple secrets to make this happen.

Your business is actually comprised of two businesses: the people business and the marketing business. You can be great with your people skills and handling of customers, but if you don’t have the customers to be great with, it won’t matter. Lead generation equals dollar creation. You live and die by the success or failure of your marketing efforts to create new customers and retain existing ones.

There are three simple things you can do immediately to make a dramatic impact on your customer flow and sales: Market, Message and Media.

Step One - Define who your market is.If you were asked who your average customer is, do you really know? Do you know where they live, what they do for a living and what their hopes, dreams and fears are? Have you begun to break down every element of what makes up your best potential market of customers? Many dealerships open the doors every day and spend tons of money to drive customers through the door without ever giving extensive thought to who their market really is. Successful businesses don’t try to do business with everybody. If you believe your market is everyone, you are wasting tons of money. You must match your message to your market.

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You are who you decide to be at any given moment. It does not take money, a degree, a certain age, a certain appearance, tons of experience, knowing the right people, past success or any other qualifying factor that you may be currently using as a subconscious roadblock to your desired success. Your belief system creates your results both past and present. If your current belief system is not what it should be to support your success, you must fake it, till you make it.

If you currently don’t appear to be on the path that will create the level of success in the form you desire, you must begin to identify the mental programming that is limiting your success before you can change your resulting limiting actions.

You must pay close attention to your inner dialogue when you write goals or have thoughts about anything you desire. When thinking of your goals, if you repeatedly think of the specific reasons of how and why your goal may be hard to obtain, you are creating the “When-Then Syndrome.” Your subconscious identifies your current programming that tells you that for X to occur you must first have Y. If that is the case, your current mental programming is limited and will not allow you to break through your current barriers to further success.

Write down the first twenty mental images or messages you heard or were taught about money. When closely examined, most of the images and messages remembered will be limited, negative, and fear based. Those negative messages and images have taken a life of their own and have been accepted in your subconscious as absolute truths. To increase money, you must identify your current limiting messages and rewrite the messages to create accepted new truths.

Every person you come into contact with tries to define you based upon his/her own thoughts and beliefs.

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“You are not given a dream without the capacity to make it a reality.. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.

This piece is about choosing where you are going to be in 1000 days (i.e., three year’s time). Before you sceptics come up with your “yeah, buts,” let me say that part of me agrees with you! I’m usually wary about the idea of having a grand plan knowing that plans and reality can be very different. Real life can sometimes turn out to be much better than our plans! But the idea behind this piece is to identify key areas in your life and to really visualise what you want in them. After all, this is about looking at who you would like to be 1000 days from now and making your fantasies a reality.

Step 1
The first part of this is actually writing down all the amazing, wonderful ambitions you have for various parts of your life. This is the first part of making them real. It may take a couple of days to do this. The end of a holiday is an excellent time to do this; the chances are you will feel relaxed, positive and more open to change. Then choose a quiet place to do this by yourself. Get some blank paper or open a new file on your computer. Then choose a page for each of the following areas: Career, Relationships, Money, Spirituality/Meaning, Health, Personal or whatever areas you want to create goals in. Write the heading at the top of each page. Then close your eyes and fantasise about what you really really want in each of these areas of your life. Write them in a series of bullet points. Leave the “yeah, buts” at the door. There will be time to look at them later! Then just write and write about what your ideals/fantasies would be under each of these areas. For example, under career you want to be earning 150,000 a year, running your own business, being a manager. Under personal goals, you could have that you want to visit Egypt. Do not censor yourself.

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We are frequently told about how we should ignore fear and go for what we want and to some extent that’s really true. However, I think fear (like ice-cream) has more than one flavor and some fears can actually help us. There are times when fear is appropriate…like when we are faced with physical danger or someone is threatening one of our nearest and dearest. I like to distinguish between four types of fear.

Raw, visceral fear: This is the fear we experience if a threat to our own lives or the lives of our loved ones is imminent. I believe most of us in the Western world will rarely experience this, except perhaps in a car crash. Our instincts bring us through this one.

Irrelevant fear: For example, I am afraid of jumping out of a helicopter or going skydiving. However I do not have the slightest desire to do either of those things so the fear does not impinge on me. To be honest, this is one fear I certainly wouldn’t be bothered trying to overcome!

Limiting fear: When most personal development experts talk about fear, this is the one they talk about…the fear that stops us doing the things that will help us bloom and grow…going for that interview, asking that man/woman out on a date, public speaking. We know it’s a limiting fear because while it feels visceral we also feel excited and wistful about the action. People experiencing this sort of fear say stuff like “I’d love to do X, Y or X but…” and feel envious of those who do embark on those tasks. Here are some ways to get around this fear…

• Get out of your head: Talk to some supportive people about it. Speak honestly about your fears…get the fear out of your head. If you do not have some people like this in your life…sit down and write what is in your head until it begins to repeat itself.

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