8 Ways a #Mentor Can Help You Win Right Away

I have been a business coach for almost six years and I hear the same question all of the time, “How do I make it, and will I be successful?”

I am always hesitant to answer that question because truthfully, there are a whole bunch of reasons why some people accomplish everything they put their mind to and why some people don’t. But, there is one thing that every successful person has in common, and it’s that they don’t reach their goals on their own.

Business could be booming or it could be slowing down, but the first step in your plan should always be to find a mentor.

Over the last half of a decade, I have helped people move their business forward, resolve problems, and completely change their industry focus. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at in your career path, or what growth stage your business is currently stuck in, a business mentor can provide a few different benefits that are essential to your success.

They are a levelheaded sounding board. Every business owner I have ever met; mentally lifts the Statue of Liberty every single day. A mentor can help alleviate some of that mental work. They are there to listen to your concerns, your ideas, and ask you questions to get you thinking in a different way. Consider it therapy for the entrepreneur.

They keep you accountable. A big struggle for young professionals and those branching out on their own is their ability to stay personally accountable. A mentor is someone that you have to answer to; they will hold you responsible to what you have made a commitment to achieve.

Help you stay focused on what’s important. It’s important to find balance, and as an entrepreneur that can be difficult. You need the time to renew and regenerate so that you can stay mentally and emotionally energized.

Keep you organized and productive. Having a scheduled appointment once or twice a month can keep you on track, especially if you know someone is going to ask what you’ve finished over the past few weeks. Having someone checking on your to-do list will make it much harder to justify procrastination.

They allow you to be better to your own clients. With a mentor or business coach, you feel emotionally supported in your business. When you feel supported, it makes it much easier for you to more efficiently prop up others.

Help you implement what you’re learning. It’s easy to take the notes and file them away for another time, but a mentor or coach can give you a plan that will help you implement what you’ve learned.

They increase your access to resources and network contacts. This is possibly the biggest ROI when it comes to a business coach or mentor. When you hit a crossroads in your business career, they will know who to put you in touch with. This industry experience and network size is invaluable to someone new to the industry, and will have you achieving your goals much faster than you would trying to do that networking on your own.

They are a cheerleader who is driven by their motivation to you. Working as a mentor and doing coaching sessions are some of the most motivating experiences that I can have on a day-to-day basis. There is absolutely nothing more inspiring to me than watching someone achieve his or her goals.

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Sign me up for a mentor, I need one right now!

I am a true connector and I love helping people achieve the success that they dream about. Whether it’s introducing you to the right people, or helping you focus your business, I am motivated by your success.

Whatever mentor or business coach you choose, your head, heart and bank account will thank you.

#MotivationMonday – From the Best Salespeople of All-Time

On Monday mornings, we all need a little bit of get up and go. Sometimes it helps to hear it from some of the best business minds of this generation and past. Get geared up for the week this morning!

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Top #Salespeople of All-Time: Ron Popeil

We’ve all heard or used the catchphrase, “But wait there’s more!” never knowing the man who started it all. Ron Popeil is an American inventor and marketing personality, probably best known for his appearances in infomercials and his direct response marketing company Ronco.

Coming from a family lineage of inventors, Popeil started his career selling his father’s kitchen gadgets before branching out on his own in 1964, when he became a direct competitor to his father Samuel in the same retail stores.

He is best known for his gadgets such as the Chop-O-Matic, the Electric Pasta Maker, Beef Jerkey Machine, and the Showtime Rotisserie & BBQ. Upon his retirement in 2005, he sold Ronco for $55 million, while still staying on as an inventor and spokesman.

Popeil’s success in marketing and infomercials has led to many pop culture appearances on shows like Sex and the City, X-Files, and even King of the Hill. He has been referred to as one of the Top 25 People Who Have Changed the Way We Think About Food.

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This is the ninth part of our 14-part series on the Top Salespeople of All Time. Are you afraid you’re going to miss an update? Subscribe to our mailing list to receive a weekly update from Curta Precision Recruitment.

Top #Salespeople of All-Time: Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison is an American internet entrepreneur, businessman and philanthropist. In 2014, he was listed by Forbes as the third-wealthiest man in America and the fifth wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of $56.2 billion.

Ellison is known for being relentless in pursuing what he yearns for and is not one to beat around the bush when selling the products of his company, the Oracle Corporation.

Ellison became famed for phoning sales managers even on weekends to ask about how their deals were coming through. His relentless and pursuant attitude makes him a sales force to be reckoned with.

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This is the seventh part of our 14-part series on the Top Salespeople of All Time. Are you afraid you’re going to miss an update? Subscribe to our mailing list to receive a weekly update from Curta Precision Recruitment.

Top #Salespeople of All-Time: Jordan Belfort

Perhaps the most famous on our list, Jordan Belfort could be one of the most controversial salespeople in history. The name might be familiar to you if you’ve seen the big screen adaptation of his life story, The Wolf of Wall Street.

Belfort, who is now an American author and motivational speaker, is a former stockbroker who plead guilty to fraud and related crimes in connection to stock market manipulation as part of a penny stock scam.

Belfort founded Stratton Oakmont with friends and they used it as a boiler room that marketed penny stocks and defrauded investors with the “pump and dump” type of stock sales. At one point he employed over 1,000 stock brokers and was involvec in stock issues totaling more than $1 billion.

Stratton Oakmont was permanently shut down in 1995, and now Belfort is a motivational speaker stressing business ethics and speaking out on his actions early in his career.

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This is the sixth part of our 14-part series on the Top Salespeople of All Time. Are you afraid you’re going to miss an update? Subscribe to our mailing list to receive a weekly update from Curta Precision Recruitment.

Curta Expands Recruitment Team With New Engagement Manager

Seasoned Recruitment Professional Vivian Rojas Joins Recruitment Team to Help Break Ground Across North America

Curta is proud to announce that Vivian Rojas has joined our growing team. Vivian will work as an engagement manager out of the Curta’s Canadian offices.

“I have worked with Vivian previously at Volt and she has been one of closest friends so I already know what she brings to the table,” says Rebecca Sargeant, CEO of Curta. “Her drive, energy and focus is invaluable to both clients and candidates, and is an enormous part of what has made her so successful. I’m very happy that she has decided to be part of the team and look forward to having her passion on board as we continue to break ground across North America.”

With over five years of experience in full-cycle recruitment and administration, Vivian is consistently working hard to create a great match for both clients and candidates. Her primary objective as a recruiter and main passion in her career is to find the best talent for her clients through direct recruitment, building a solid network across many industries, and providing excellent customer service.

She has joined the recruitment team at Curta as they continue to break ground in the United States, offering recruitment opportunities in locations across America including Seattle, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C.

“I am excited to have the opportunity to join the Curta family,” says Vivian, Curta’s newest Engagement Manager, “A big thank you to Rebecca and her team for welcoming me with a wonderful lunch on Tuesday afternoon, and I am looking forward to sharing my talent with the team as we continue to grow.”  

Reach out to Vivian to find out how she can further your career and grow your business.

 

About Curta

Curta specializes in the training, placement, and coaching of Recruitment Professionals across all industries and sectors.

Curta offers the only Recruitment Training Program that certifies Recruiters when they have demonstrated the implementation of the training through revenue generation. Certified Curta Recruiters are providing a more sophisticated service to both clients and candidates by being thought leaders in the Recruitment industry. Certified Curta Recruiters are filling more openings, being offered higher personal incomes, and commanding a higher rate from clients across all sectors.

Contact

Email: Vivian@curta.ca

Telephone: 617.396.4450

Never Skip Your Homework – #SalesTips

In Ardi Kolah’s book The Art of Influencing and Selling, one of the quotes that stood out to me most was that, “Success is dependent on doing your homework.”

I’ve written before that the art of selling hinges on curiosity and that requires a little bit of homework. Just being curious isn’t enough, but the willingness to put the work into searching for answers is what will win you a negotiation.

Ardi Kolah continues on letting their readers know that sales are about, “being ruthless in qualifying in and qualifying out…” and any good recruiter knows that qualifying means doing some research. If you’re focusing your resources on those you know may have already opted into your product, then there is a great chance of achieving a positive sales outcome.

As a recruiter, I am constantly trying out new tools to optimize my business and in turn have tried out some great software systems, and some less than great. Anyone who has followed me for more than a year knows that I dislike Bullhorn as a product and that there is definitely room for improvement.

Any account manager doing their homework would know not to waste my time when it comes to pitching Bullhorn as my main ATS system.

This however, didn’t stop a rookie salesperson from calling me one morning and all but admitting that he had no idea who I was and definitely did not do any research on my brand or history with Bullhorn.

This is what will not only lose you potential customers, but also damage your brand in the long run.

If you want to make a sale, do your homework. This could be a quick Google search, to an in-depth brand analysis. When you call someone to pitch your services, you are taking up their time. Nothing will annoy a business owner or potential client off more than someone who starts their business relationship by wasting their time.

If as a customer I can understand that your product will save me time and money, then I will buy from you. But if I have to wade through endless follow-up calls and run-on pitch right off the bat, you are already showing me that you and your product have no interest in my business. Don’t waste my time, because my time is money.

Quoted directly from The International Negotiation Handbook:

One of the most important aspects of a successful negotiation is preparation. A negotiation can be won or lost in the preparation phase… Inadequate preparation can cause irreparable damage to relationships and the possibility of future negotiations with the parties involved.

In much less words, not doing your homework will damage sales and your brand in one fell swoop.

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Curta will be holding our Selling in the Knowledge Era again on October 19th from 9-12 PM EST. We had great feedback with our last class and cannot wait to get feedback from our follow-up coaching call. For information on the course click through here.

Is Email Dying? – No It’s Just Not Winning the Race

I seriously just got a handle on social media, am an expert on my Blackberry, and have become dependent on my email. But now they’re saying that email is dead?

When Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz ran the company’s engineering team, he complained that email often passed along information that was no longer relevant and was just filling up his inbox, “I would spend weeks collecting information about the state of the world,” he says, “And by the end it would be a couple of weeks out of date.” (WIRED)

Subsequently, all of my staff is trying to move me away from email and onto the multitude of apps that are trying to replace it, but I just don’t want to! Apps like Asana, Slack, and SnapChat are trying to pull group chat into one place but it’s just not effective for me!

After speaking with Recruiters across the industry, we’re finding that many independents are moving to text messaging to communicate with candidates and clients alike. This seems like all the benefits of email, with none of the excuses.

While these apps trying to promote communication do well in a team environment, let’s face it, email comes in handy when you need to make last minute contact with a client or candidate. Text messaging? Even better. How many times have you shot off an email to a candidate just to have them pretend that they didn’t receive it, or it didn’t arrive? That excuse no longer exists when you move to text messaging.

Everybody has texting capabilities on their phone. My Blackberry Curve may be over six years old, but guess what I can still text on it. I may not be able to receive emails, but texting will always work.

It’s less intrusive than asking a client, candidate, or team member to download an app to their phone. Plus, you’ll never have to worry about it not being compatible with your Windows phone.

There is a sense of urgency attached to a text message. If you send a text, you will almost always receive a response. We have a social media manager whose phone is attached to her hip with texts being pushed to her computer. I know that if I send her a message, I will get an almost instantaneous response.

There are no excuses. There are no spam filters to get stuck in; there is no excuse for you to have not seen my messages.

I know all of the benefits, can see how it will work for me better than email in many situations but come on, I just got used to Outlook! What do you use primarily as a communication tool? Let us know on our Facebook group!

Cultivating Curiosity – How To Sell Effectively

In Chris Guthrie’s I’m Curious he starts with pushes a good negotiator forward:

Good negotiators must understand their counterparts’ perspectives, interests, and arguments to do well at the bargaining table. To understand one’s counterpart a negotiator needs to be curious about what her counterpart has to say. In other words, a negotiator should cultivate a stance of curiosity. (I’m Curious)

My curiosity is what drove me to recruiting. My urge to know what’s going on in every industry, how the marketplace was shaping up, and how big business ran on a day-to-day business has help me close more deals in my career than sheer talent. I’ve always wanted to know how your business works and how it could be more effective. I want to know every piece of your business from top to bottom, and it’s this curiosity and willingness to learn that has made me a great salesperson.

From a training point of view, curiosity is the holy grail of education and what makes you an excellent student. It’s this curiosity that endears you to clients, candidates and team members. It is the attribute that makes you seem genuinely interested in what any given person is telling you. Curiosity is one of the most overlooked attributes any given person can have, but this modesty gives others the idea that you would like to genuinely know them and their business. (TeachThought)

Self-taught designer Tobias van Schenider says that everything starts with a willingness to learn and curiosity, and that cultivating and sustaining your curiosity starts with surrounding yourself with people who are “better” than you and make you feel good about what you’re doing. (LIFEHACKER)

Tobias is right, cultivating curiosity can come from having a genuine enjoyment and interest but there are also other ways to open your mind and feel that same urge to learn about business around you.

It’s important to keep an open and curious mind. Be open to learning, and relearning about your potential client or candidate. You should be prepared to adjust the profile that you already have in your head.

Don’t just accept things at face value. If you take everything as you see it, you’ll never push beneath the surface and really figure out why is something works that way.

Ask questions. Part of actively listening to your client is hearing what they are saying to you and asking questions about why it’s like that, or where that comes from.

See learning as something fun. Don’t walk into this as a sales call, don’t stress about business development. This is just a conversation with someone in your industry. This is a networking call and you’re just taking the time to dig into their business and how it works. Enjoy the learning process because even if you don’t pick up business, you’ve learned about yet another company in your industry.

Curiosity is the basis of my sales training and what has made me so successful in my career. While I can’t teach curiosity, I can foster it and this is ultimately what will make you an elite sales professional.

We are holding a Sales Training Course on September 21^st, 2015 for information about the syllabus, please visit our website or contact us directly for more information.

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Our Selling in the Knowledge Age is going to be running from 9 AM EST – Noon on September 21st. For an in-depth look at the syllabus, please check out our website or contact myself directly at rebecca@curta.ca.

We All Know Someone Who Suffers From This…

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who has, and sorry to gross you out, verbal diarrhea? They just talk and talk, and they’ve made so many other points so many times that now you’ve lost their original message? These are the people that are often so long-winded that they leave you yearning to exit the conversation.

 

If you are this person I only have one thing to say, if you are talking you’re not listening! When you are constantly monopolizing conversations you aren’t leaving any room for your co-workers to share their ideas or opinions. Each time you dominate the empty air with a convoluted message, you push others away because they assume that you’re not saying anything of value.

If you need any advice on active listening, feel free to read one of our last blog posts.

Did you know that in 2000 the average attention span was only 12 seconds and has since fallen to eight? The average goldfish has a longer attention span coming in at a whopping nine seconds (Independent). When you’re halfway through one of your speeches, do you think anyone is still listening?

The average person stops listening attentively after 20 seconds, and actively tunes out after 40 seconds if the conversation has gone off topic.

An easy way to make sure you’re getting your point across is to make sure that you are able to get around to your message in less than 20 seconds. Everyone has heard of an elevator speech, you should start operating under the 20-second rule in each one of your conversations. Get your point across succinctly.

We’ve all been guilty of over-chatting or rambling at some point, but it can be a deadly habit in recruiting. If you need practice getting to the point, get yourself a Twitter account. This may sound silly, but if you can’t get it out in less than 140 characters, then maybe it’s not that important.

If you ever need any advice on how to slow down your speeches, feel free to tweet me for advice at @RebeccaSargeant.

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If you really feel the need to vent to your heart’s desire, feel free to join our Recruiter’s Breakroom. It’s a place where everyone in the industry can privately vent their frustrations, share news, or tell jokes.

We’re excited to have you.