Who hasn’t said it? But how few have acted on their ideas?

A survey by Knight-Ridder newspapers found the odds that an American believes he has a good idea for an invention is 1 in 3. If you’ve seen ‘The American Inventor’ television series, you realize that some peoples’ belief in their invention ideas may be misplaced! But let’s assume, that 1 in 25 do have a worthy idea. How many ever get their ideas to market? How many are successful?

Many fine products lie around gathering dust in a disinterested marketplace until entrepreneurs and marketers arrive – and they make all the money; the inventor gets but crumbs. This is neither fair or unfair. It is simply the truth about what must be done to be financially rewarded for a great idea.

Thomas Edison holds the records for the most patents held: 1,093. But Thomas Edison was NOT just an inventor, he was an entrepreneur and a master salesman and an often criticized, aggressive promoter.

Most inventors are none of these things and want nothing to do with them. Instead, they hope their idea alone will be sufficient; that someone else will step in, to invest, risk, promote; that they’ll be paid for doing nothing more but coming up with the idea itself.

And 99% are bitterly disappointed. That is just not how the world works.

The cliché is true: ideas are a dime a dozen. Every single time someone has brought me a “revolutionary” and “unique” idea for a product, I’ve been able to reach to a shelf or go into my storage rooms and find ten others just like it to show him. And “idea people” are notoriously poorly paid. The writers in in Hollywood, for example are at the bottom of the financial totem pole, not the top. There’s reason for the common term, “starving artist”.

Little success ever comes from waiting for others to act on your good ideas.

— Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy is an author, consultant and business coach. Additional information at http://www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com.

How can you get your salespeople to be more productive? Recent research* says that having confidence in the product or service being sold has the greatest influence on salespeople’s productivity, followed, in order by, the individual’s competitive nature (hiring the right person), on-going training and coaching, and, last, financial opportunity and incentives. There are three important lessons here.

#1: The majority of people have integrity, are basically honest, and try to do the right thing. To sell well, they must feel good about what they are selling, the value to the buyer, the integrity of the company. It’s important that managers motivate salespeople with true stories of customer satisfaction and happiness, testimonials; and teach salespeople about the virtues of the products; and support salespeople with good customer service, fair customer dispute resolution.

#2: It’s hard to beat genuine “want to”. I own racehorses, and some of the best bred, most physically perfect horses just don’t care enough about winning to win. Some of the poorly bred, conformation handicapped, injury prone horses overcome all their disadvantages and win – because they want to. There’s just no point in keeping salespeople around who don’t care a lot about winning.

#3: Training is not a one time event. Huge, common mistake. The manager as teacher, as supervisor, as enforcer, as coach…the processes of role-playing and rehearsal, review of presentations, review of skills must occur daily. Further, salespeople need to be “plugged into” good coaching programs, attend seminars, get audio programs and read books.

Another way to think about this: confidence matters. Confidence in the products being sold, the company represented. Confidence in the selling skills learned and the selling tools relied on – confidence follows competence. Increase your salespeople’s confidence in you, your business, your products and themselves. Their sales performance will increase automatically.

(*Source: MOHR Access, reported in Research Alert)

— Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy is an author, consultant and business coach. Additional information at www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com

There are fundamentally only four types of businesses:

1: PRODUCT Driven
2: SERVICE Driven
3: MARKET Driven
4: SYSTEMS Driven

Only the third puts the focus where it needs to be: on the customer. Instead of asking: how can we sell this thing we want to sell? – it’s smarter to ask:

What does our customer or prospective customer (passionately) desire? And how we give it to him?

As customers, we’d be a lot happier if more businesses were focused outward, on us, instead of inward, on themselves.

Lee Iaccoca once told me that, at Chrysler, and throughout the auto industry, the focus was always on more appealing physical designs, new grilles, more efficient engines, better safety, dashboard features. When they were designing the mini-van, they spent an inordinate amount of time talking with mothers of three kids, car pool parents, and similar consumers about what they really would like to have in a van.

The #1 winner: cup-holders.

He later said they won big by selling $20,000.00 cup-holders with a van attached. That’s what I mean by being Market-Driven.

— Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy is an author, consultant and business coach. Additional information at www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com