Process vs. Profit

-Darryl Turner

In today’s rapidly changing business environment People seem to think that all they have to do are certain steps and that the magic will just happen.

Perhaps along the way they have been sold on the concept that if you build it he will come. The problem of that is the only place I’ve ever seen that work is in a movie.

The reality is if you build it you will have just built it and then you get to sit there and just look at it. Zig Ziglar put it best one day when he said “you can have the best product in the world but if you can’t sell it, you still got it”.

So as you’re following steps of process in order to build your business never forget the most important element of all not what you’re doing but why you’re doing it.

It’s like making the perfect Thanksgiving dinner spending hours preparing it then putting it on the table. Imagine what it would be like if everybody just sat there and stared at the turkey and wondered why it has not yet jumped in their mouth. All the steps of the process of been completed they just have forgotten why they did what they did.

If you want more customers than make every step of the process contingent upon the reason or the motive that you’re doing the process in the first place. Remember busyness is the enemy of business. It’s not about activity but at the end of the day will be about results.

I don’t say this because I think that we should be so results driven that we don’t have any friends and we can’t smile about the work that we do in a day. I say this because too often I see people following steps of a process but not following all the way through to accomplish the goal that the whole process was originally designed to help them to accomplish.

Let’s take making sales calls for example. To just go out and make sales calls and follow an interview process and to take people to lunch are all steps of a process but they will not get you business or at least if they do they will not get you enough to make a difference.

In our research of interviewing tens of thousands of realtors we have discovered that the number one reason that they do not use a service provider such as a mortgage company, a title company or a home warranty company would simply be because that individual did not ask them for the business. They’re going to state that the people made sales calls on them, they visited they, dropped off desk calendars, they even offered to take him to lunch but they did not ask for any business.

When discussing this with people within the industry we ask them the question of why they did not ask for the business and their answer most often is “they know why I’m there”!

Well I have to tell you that I love this answer because it brings up another question and the question comes from me. I look at salesperson in the eye and say “they may know why you’re there but it appears as maybe you have forgotten…am I accurate”?

So when asking the question “what’s more important process or profit?”, the answer to that question is simply one word, yes.

In other words they’re both important and the one that becomes the most important today is the one that you might be weakest at implementing. If you’re great at process but not closing the deals then profit becomes more important.

If you’re great at remembering why you are there and always asking for an order but not following a process, then that makes you pushy and focusing on process or comfort level of your prospect becomes most important.

At the end of the day the answer is very clear, be balanced.

So what’s more important process or profit?  Well, go back to the part about  Thanksgiving and ask yourself this; “if you’re hungry what must you do”?!

You can do this!

Darryl Turner

www.darrylturner.com

“Process Vs. Profit”