Use this right now

Alrighty folks. Totally against the urgings of my internet marketing friends, I'm going to lay the cards on the table as to how I go about living my business life. I've thought about doing this for over a month now, but I've heard consistently that what I'm offering is worth too much to just lay out there for the world to see and use, for nothing. But, here goes....

What I plan to do in this blog post is give you a good chunk of my business strategy, with a solid amount of reasoning behind it, so that you can see what I'm doing, create something like it for yourself, or whatever. Up to you. Again, I have never claimed to have all the answers, but I'll let you be the judge. You may read it and say it sucks. Refer to Bobby Brown if so. That's quite alright. But, if this helps you, do me a solid and let me know. The only thing I'm asking in return is for you to drop a note about what you think of it, and to spread the word for anybody and everybody to see, again, if you think it's something that can help them. Sound fair? Cool, let's get it on..

The philosophy behind this, from 40,000 feet above it, is that we must know exactly what we're after, where we're headed and how we plan to get there, if we wish to live our business lives at the highest level. If you want to be a follower, then ignore everything in this post. If you want to lead, if you want to produce huge numbers, if you want to be a revenue producing machine for your company, plug in. This is a body of work from the past seven or eight years of my life - the result of thousands of hours of study of success principles, philosophy, strategy, and the lives of great men in history.

So, here's the deal....

First, I'll outline the financial vehicles I utilize to earn a living. I have interest in two separate businesses, both are in the same space - home restoration and remodeling. One is a manufacturing business, that I'm part owner of, there I lead the sales and marketing efforts. The other is a residential and light commercial remodeling contracting business which I own solely. The majority of my focus is geared toward the manufacturing business.

The reason I spend more time here is for long-term salability. Our industry is forecasting significant mergers and buy-outs over the next decade or two. We fit a nice niche within the high end of our industry, at Winstrom. I anticipate some large manufacturing outfit wanting to buy us, in order to gain entry into the high end market. The brand they carry will keep them out of this niche. Their only way in is through M & A. We expect to receive a high multiple at some point in the future.

So, I know what I wish to earn for 2010, in order to achieve the investment goals, the lifestyle goals, the charitable goals I've committed to. I won't share all of my objectives for the year, but I'll offer some, so that I can derive the numbers aspect of my plan. In the end, the numbers are the deal. It's not all dollars and sense, by any means. But, I won't stroke you here, I would be lying if I said I did all of this solely out of the goodness of my heart. Well, I am doing this blog out of the goodness of my heart, but anyway. The numbers are as follows:

My income goals require that I hit the following numbers, based on what I earn from sales and profit at both companies. These numbers come from the sales commission and profit dollars. Hypothetically, if a sales person is earning a 10% sales commission on what he sells and he wishes to earn $50,000, then he needs to sell $500,000 for the year. Pretty basic math. Well, in my deal, I need to hit $6,000,000 this year in my territory and $1,220,000 with MBJ. These are the primary objectives, the broader strokes that will pay me what I've established as my goals for this year.

But, I like to break this down to much smaller chunks, so I don't leave anything to chance. Here's a further look at the manufacturing numbers. I break it down into goals for new business and for retention growth. We need to bring in new dealers, as new business is the lifeblood of any business, young or old. But, I'm a big believer in the philosophy that it's much easier and much less expensive to get a current customer to grow than it is to go out and convince somebody who knows nothing about you to buy from you. I focus on both. That being said, I'm looking to experience $2,000,000 in new business and retention growth of $900,000(over what I sold last year from that same group of dealers).

The first thing I've done is go through my list of dealers and, based on what I know of these guys, outline a list of the top half dozen guys that #1..have the capacity to grow significantly with us and #2...we have a chance to land more of their business with some good hard work and creativity. When I say significant growth, I'm talking about at least $100,000 over what they gave us in 2009. My list looks like this:
1. Milwaukee Builders ($250,000)
2. Lisbon Storm and Screen ($400,000)
3. Hardy & Jensen ($300,000)
4. Kroll Siding Supply ($600,000)
5. City Builders ($150,000)
6. Murphy's Windows ($100,000)
7. Landmark Exteriors ($150,000)

Total Sales Growth Opp. ($1,950,000)

Here's my list of New Business Targets for this year:
1. Lumberyard Suppliers, E Peoria IL ($1,000,000)
2. Jarvis Exteriors, Chicago IL ($100,000)
3. Wilson Colonial, Chicago IL ($250,000)
4. Aspen Exteriors, Chicago Il ($500,000)
5. Lumberyard Suppliers, Champaign IL (1,000,000)
6. Lumberyard Suppliers, STL (1,000,000)
7. Cardinal Home Imp, STL ($500,000)
8. Midwest Siding, Des Moines, IA ($200,000)
9. Omaha Door & Window, Omaha NE ($600,000)
10. Obermiller Seamless, Lincoln NE ($250,000)
11. ABC Seamless, Lincoln NE ($200,000)
12. Stronghold Construction, Chicago IL ($250,000)
13. Evergreen Windows, Chicago IL ($750,000)
14. Brew City, Milwaukee Wi ($100,000)
15. Advanced Window Systems, Milwaukee ($200,000)
16. American Thermal, Chicago IL ($300,000)

Total Sales Opportunity $7,650,000

So, we need a little less than a third of this volume...

I've outlined 15 targets, as you can see. What I'll do is focus all of my Winstrom efforts on this group of seven retention targets and fifteen NB targets. My phone work centers around setting appointments with these owners of these businesses, and following up with this same group. When I'm working a specific geographic segment of my territory, I'll use this accounts as the centerpieces of those trips. From these meetings, I'll fill in with other local companies to take full advantage of the time I have in each market. If I find another good company to work with, then great. I just need to make sure I'm spending every minute of my day, from 7:00 am to night time, face to face with somebody I can add value to and get some volume in return.

So, a quick summary....

So far, I've got a list of 22 targets that I plan to focus 90% of my face time with. I'll build trips to each market segment around these specific accounts, and then add other quality opportunities around them.

Let's go through the geography of it all...

I'm responsible for all of the Midwest, from Kansas through Minnesota. I personally cover Illinois, Milwaukee, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana. Here's how I've labeled it, into five segments:
1. Chicago
2. Milwaukee
3. Downstate
4. STL
5. Iowa/Nebraska
6. KC
7. Indiana

This is obviously too much ground to cover for one sales person. My plan is to partner up with independent rep groups in Indiana/Ohio/Michigan and KC, for now. I'll personally cover the remaining segments, with a focus on Chicago, Downstate, Milwaukee, Iowa. I have Lumberyard Suppliers on board and plan to leverage their outside sales force of 15 good reps to grow market share in STL and Downstate. In these other segments, I will focus on dealer direct accounts. These accounts are much more profitable and are easier to land, ultimately.

My strategy to manage this territory is simple....manage my focus. I've never bought the notion that we, as sales professionals, have to manage geography. In order to grow a territory...any territory, we have to manage what we choose to focus on. I'm going to focus on a specific group of great targets and pour my heart and soul into adding so much high-level value to them that they feel they HAVE to do business with me. This is my primary "Time Management", "Territory Management" philosophy and strategy. Find the people you want to do business with and can do business with and add tremendous amounts of value to them without any expectation of anything in return. You take this approach, and you'll have more deals than you've ever dreamed of. I promise.

MBJ Breakdown:

The way I like to look at this business is through the number of projects we need to close in order to hit our objective of $1.2 million for the year. Our average project cost is roughly $10,000. So, we need 120 project for the year, to get us there. We can work 44 weeks per year, due to harsh winter conditions. That means we need about three per week....

My closing ratio is about 33% overall. It seems to be down this year, so far, as folks are just not pulling the trigger the way they have in previous years. But, for the sake of planning, I'll budget it at 33%.

MBJ needs 360 leads per year, chances to pitch a deal, to get us the 120 we need. That's about seven per week, really.

A canvasser can generate, as our metrics tell us, one lead per hour. We need seven hours of canvassing per week to get us home. I like to play it safe, so we've hired a crew that will have anywhere from 2 to 6 college students working 6 hours per week. We should be able to generate at least 20 leads per week. Boo Yah.

I'll end up needing a salesperson or two by mid-April, according to my plan, just to be able to run these leads, assuming they're out there....that many people who want and need roofs or windows right now. I'm certain they're out there. We just have to look.

I've mapped out my Personal Focus Plan for the month of April. Hopefully, you can find something in it that you can use to grow your business

This week, April 5-10:
Monday - MBJ primarily, with some WW scheduling
1. Get two MBJ leads personally
2. Measure two leads from Saturday - Ed Riehl, 2801 Park Ridge
3. Estimate these two leads
4. Create proposals for these two leads
5. Face to face calls with Ed R and Cathy Vale for MBJ
6. Schedule calls for Wednesday and Thursday for Winstrom.

Tuesday - MBJ focus
1. Secure contractor for Chanel and Carl's projects.
2. Measure P.R lead and B.M. leads
3. Estimate and create proposals.
4. Face to face call with Todd Smith for roof project
5. Close deals with Kate McCarthy, Kevin McGuinness, Kevin Maguire, Brendan
6. Meeting with Alex
7. Meeting with Tim from Peoria

Wednesday - WW Focus Milwaukee
1. Meeting with Lisbon, Milwaukee Builders, Advanced, and Brew City
2. Calls to schedule for Friday
3. Fill ins with Pro-tite windows, WeatherTite, All About Windows & Siding

Thursday - SE Wisconsin, Chicago
1. Meetings with targets: Hardy & jensen, Southway Supply, Patrick Windows, Lakeland
2. Schedule for Monday and Tuesday next week
3. Follow up calls on proposals from this week's MBJ leads.

Friday - STL
1. Follow through on private label details for new customer in STL with LS
2. Relationship building dinner and drinks with new clients.

Week of April 12-17:

Monday - Chicago WW Targets, Wilson Colonial, Aspen Exteriors, cold calls // Canvassing Team out for MBJ - should generate 3-4 leads
Tuesday - Chicago Murphy, Stronghold Construction, Siding 1, Jarvis Exteriors
Wednesday - Downstate with LS, training reps in Champaign in morning, MBJ in pm // Canvassing team out for MBJ - 3-4 leads
Thursday - STL with LS reps in morning, joint sales calls in afternoon
Friday - MBJ all day, running face to face sales calls on leads from team(estimated by my production mgr)
Saturday - MBJ all day, face to face sales calls the leads from the team(estimated by prod mgr)

Week of April 19-24

Monday - Quad Cities today Kroll Siding, Cold calling in IA City all afternoon, drinks with Dewey in Cedar Falls at night// MBJ Canvassing Team out for 3-4 leads
Tuesday - Cedar Falls, IA City Builders, Midwest Siding Des Moines, cold call Des Moines
Wednesday - Cold Calling in Des Moines
Thursday - Omaha Door, ABC Seamless, Obermiller Seamless
Friday - MBJ face to face calls 4 leads
Saturday - MBJ face to face calls 4 leads

Week of April 26-31

Monday - Kansas City, Deriek Braun(independent rep), cold call, Struckel drinks // MBJ Team out canvassing
Tuesday - KC, cold call all day long
Wed - KC, cold call all day long MBJ Canvassing Team out canvassing
Thursday - L/S E Peoria sales team training, joint calls
Friday - MBJ all day, face to face calls
Saturday - MBJ all day long, face to face calls

Again, during these trips, between sales calls or cold calls, I'm making lots of phone calls to existing dealers, prospects trying to get appointments scheduled, follow ups on promises, anything I can to add tremendous value to those I'm trying to serve. My whole deal is to build the Greg Mote brand within each person I meet and serve along the way here.

The results I'm expecting to get? What I'm fully EXPECTING is to close 3-8 projects per week, as a minimum, with MBJ, for a total of at least 12 for the month of April. Maybe as many as 20. At the same time, we should be in serious negotiations with at least 8 qualified, high volume new biz targets for Winstrom Windows. These eight will be from the target lists. We should also have an additional 8 from outside the lists, which will be smaller volume dealers we can earn a greater profit margin from, boosting the overall gross profit percentage of the business. These should blend out for a handsome GP number for 2010. So, when we beat the projections and show them to the bank in December, they'll see that we not only kicked the crap out of the top line revenue number, we significantly grew the profit margin percentage as well. My partners will be floored and will throw a huge fiesta in our honor.

So, what will April look like for me, personally? Fan-tastic. Enough said.

So, then, how can I break this down even further, to make sure I'm leaving nothing to chance? Let's look at each day...to make sure we're investing our time in only the tasks that will make these dreams real for the month of April.

The one thing we all have that is equal is time. We're all given the same amount of time in which to work and earn for our family. Some of us choose to use every single minute of the day to maximize what we get for ourselves, our wives and our kids. Some of us take our work seriously enough to plan each day and try to not waste even a moment. I've recently awoken to the notion that until we've got enough cash and liquid investments to never have to work again, we owe it to ourselves, our families to man up and quit wasting time. Far too many guys and girls I know are spending far too much time fucking around when they should be making money...so that their kids don't have to work every second of their lives in college and actually enjoy the process, so that they can actually take the family on vacation instead of making up a bunch of bullshit as to why they can't, so they can pay cash for a house instead of begging a lender to give them the 100% financing on the house they
don't really want because they'd rather have the house their friend is living in. Harsh, I know. But, if you are wasting time and you're aware of it...I have to ask...are you worthy of the job you have now, even? Let alone the job or the business you say you deserve and have been dreaming about...Do you deserve the job you have now? Do you deserve the few customers you have managed to cling to? Food for thought.

Anyway, we all have equal time to get whatever it is we do, done. So, it's up to us as to how we spend it, or invest it. We should choose to invest our time. I'll show you my schedule. Time is what it is, it's time. We become effective, we become great by controlling our focus. My reco is to move around in your business in highly concentrated blocks of time, in which you perform the highest producing, highest value, highest revenue generating tasks that drive your best results. For me, it's prospecting, face to face sales calls, canvassing, and following through with creative, high value solutions to my customers' and prospects' problems. Knowing these are what drive all of my results, I've planned each day to spend hours and hours on these tasks, in a focused and undisturbed manner....

Monday, April 26 -
5:00 am Arise for Hour of Power, visualize for 15 minutes, work out hard for one hour
7:00 am - Focus and Planning, plan each minute of today, including who, when, where, why, how, and details of targets and their locations for cold calling
8:00 am - Breakfast with Deriek Braun, candidate for ind rep in KC market and MO market. Planning to grab a list of dealer direct targets to cold call
10:00 am - Cold calling KC market, with a well-planned approach to hit as many good targets as possible. Hoping to spark some interest with three or four good guys there.
4:00 pm - Conference with Bridge, Nicole, and Skip to get them started canvassing in Bloomington/Normal. Their goal is to get 6-8 leads tonight.
4:30 pm - Wrap up today, go through all notes from today's action. Make sure all emails are sent and all details are accounted for from everything....
9:00 pm - Write blog
10:00 pm - Write five pages in book

All day - While in vehicle, listen to personal development disc
All day - Between stops while cold calling, make phone contacts to follow up and schedule meetings, and work out details with staff at home.

So, if you notice, I've got every important aspect of my life accounted for in this plan. I'm working out early, planning and visualizing the vision, selling and growing the business(new business targets $2M), I've got team out canvassing($1.2M in MBJ sales), writing blog and book(internet mktg dream). It's all there. This plan will absolutely produce everything I'm looking for, minus the personal relationships at home. But, I can't do much about that aspect while in KC. I'm sure I'll talk to Bridge several times each day, as I always do.

The real value of this plan is that I am able to wake up every single day and be crystal clear as to what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and how I plan to get it done. Nothing is left to chance.

Now, this may seem rigid as hell. It is. It's rigid for a reason. If I were to be like everyone else in how I manage my "time", I'd be running around all day, answering phone calls, texts, emails, buzzing around at 100 mph, getting shit all done. We can't mistake activity for progress. They are two totally different things. The more we react, the more we lose. I choose to work in these highly focused blocks of time. You'll find you'll still be able to chat up your buddies or your girl, you'll still be able to plug in to talk radio/politics, whatever. But, you'll be able to do it without any reservations or guilt because you haven't done shit all day long.

Thursday, April 12:

5:00 am - HOP, visualize, work out balls out, strength training
6:45 am - Breakfast
7:00 am - Focus, Planning(plan every detail, who, when, why, etc)
8:00 am - Meeting with Milwaukee Builders
10:00 am - Meeting with Lisbon Storm
11:00 - Meeting with Brew City Home Improvement
1:00 - 4:00 pm Cold Calling Milwaukee Area (from list of 20 stops)
4:00 pm - Check in with crews back home, making sure jobs are ok.
5:00 pm - Wrap up day
9:00 pm - blog
10:00 pm = Book


This plan, this sort of legitimate planning is the path to freedom. It will not only set you free financially, it'll strip away all of the noise and junk in your head, so that when you walk through the door in the evening, you can give all of yourself to that team at home, that wants nothing more than your attention.

Flip the switch