Houston Leadership Journal - Issue 3

Houston Leadership Issue 3

JOURNAL

Robert Herjavec

18 Laws Of Success

Mike Michalowicz

Strategies To Help You Stop Selling And Start Serving To Increase Revenue Page 12

Page 4

This is a courtesy publication brought to you by Divergys

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Howdy Friends,

T

hank you for picking up this winter 2024 edition of Houston Leadership Journal, our first edition of the new year.

I’d like to start by saying that the beginning of the year is a good time to get an IT evaluation and to set out a plan for updating your technology. This way, you can factor any changes into your budget early on.

Serial entrepreneur, investor, and TV personality Robert Herjavec talks a lot about staying hungry and always loving what you do. That speaks right to my heart. As we go into this new year, I’d like to invite you all to remind yourselves why you love what you do and start the year off right.

In this issue, you’ll find articles from Robert Herjavec, ghSMART Chairman and Founder Geoff Smart, and the entrepreneur behind three multi-million dollar companies and author of numerous business books, Mike Michalowicz. First, Herjavec, in our cover feature, speaks on building your ragsto-riches story with actionable tips on page 4. After that, you’ll find our customer success story on page 8 (see more about this below). Geoff Smart then reviews negative archetypes to look out for in potential employees on page 10, and on page 12, Michalowicz goes over how to earn more by adopting a service rather than a selling mindset. Finally, on page 15 we find out how cyber thieves are mimicking the brands you trust to gain access to your personal and financial information.

Cybercriminals like those thieves on page 15 move fast, and it’s our job to keep up with them. That’s why at the end of the year, we always evaluate our security products and offerings to ensure we are staying on top of technology and the ever-evolving layers of security. Visit our website to find out what we’ve come out with for 2024 and see firsthand how we’re keeping you protected.

One significant change to our products and services towards the end of 2023 was the addition of co-managed IT. This service offering is perfect for midsized organizations with an IT person or department. With Co-Managed IT, we collaborate with your existing IT team to effectively and

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efficiently manage your IT needs. We’ve already onboarded a few clients to the program with great success, and we’re looking to continue expanding it this year. A perfect example is Colt Anderson with Refractory Construction Services, our Client Success story that you’ll find on page 8.

We are certainly on a growth path. In fact, we’ve just recently added a new technician to our team to keep up with demand for Divergys services. We were even featured in an article entitled “3 Tips to Get Unstuck and Break Through the Million-Dollar Barrier for Your MSP Business” for MSP Success Online. Thank you to everyone who has supported and continues to support our growth.

We look forward to what the future holds for all of us.

In closing, I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who has picked up and/or shared this magazine.

We created this to give back to the communities we serve by providing resources that we didn’t necessarily have, and your readership helps us disseminate this valuable business knowledge, so thank you.

I wish you all the best in your 2024 business endeavors and stay safe.

Dewayne Chappell CEO/Founder Divergys.com

PUBLISHER EDITOR GRAPHIC DESIGN COORDINATORS

Tulip Media Group Dewayne Chappell Jessica Embree Jen Kershaw Jeanne Romage Erika MacLeod

CONTRIBUTORS Robin Robins

Dewayne Chappell

Robert Herjavec

Dr. Geoff Smart

Colt Anderson

Mike Michalowicz PHOTOGRAPHY All images sourced

from Tulip Media

Group or iStock.com

unless otherwise

identified.

This magazine is published by Tulip Media Group.

All content, copyright © 2024, Tulip Media Group.

All rights reserved.

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Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of all content in this publication, however, neither the publisher nor Technology Marketing Toolkit, Inc. will be held responsible for omissions or errors.

Articles, reports and information contained herein reflect the views of the individuals who wrote or prepared them and do not necessarily represent the position of the publisher or Technology Marketing Toolkit, Inc. The material herein is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing herein is to be considered the rendering of advice for specific cases or circumstances. Communication of any legal information contained herein does not constitute an attorney-client relationship, nor convey legal advice or recommendation of any kind. Do not rely on information contained herein to replace consultation with qualified industry leaders or other professionals in your jurisdiction.

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CONTENTS 8

“It’s Like A Perfect Match”: How Colt Anderson Of RCS Partnered With Dewayne Chappell Of Divergys To Create An Ideal Co-Managed IT Relationship

10 5 Tips To Stop Candidates With The Wrong Stuff DR. GEOFF SMART

12 Strategies To Help You Stop Selling And Start Serving To Increase Revenue MIKE MICHALOWICZ

15 Scammers Are Using These 10

Popular Brands To Trick You Into Revealing Your Private Data

4

Robert Herjavec 18 LAWS OF SUCCESS

DEWAYNE CHAPPELL

MEET ROBERT

FEATURE STORY

18 Laws Of Success From Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec Serial entrepreneur, investor, television personality, and Ferrari race car celebrity Robert Herjavec has lived the classic rags to riches story. Today he is one of North America’s most recognizable business leaders. But if you look at how the self-made multi-millionaire started off in life, you never would have imagined he’d end up where he is today.

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orn in Eastern Europe, he arrived in Canada on a boat with his parents after escaping Communism in the former Yugoslavia. “My dad escaped from jail in a communist country and grabbed my mom and me, and we came to Halifax when I was 8 years old,” he said. Arriving with one suitcase between the three of them and $20, they took a train to Toronto and lived in a friend’s basement for 18 months.

In his new country, he experienced a difference in economic classes and discovered for the first time that compared to everyone else, they were extremely poor. He spoke no English and was often bullied for his accent and unstylish clothing. To earn money, he delivered newspapers and waited tables in the 1990s. From those early jobs, he discovered that the relationship with your customer is the most important relationship.

He credits Warren Avis, founder of Avis Rent-A-Car, for showing him his potential as an entrepreneur and for helping him realize that he couldn’t be successful without help from others. “He was the first person to tell me that I was way (and I mean WAY) off base in my approach to sales, and I’ve never forgotten the lesson,” Robert wrote on LinkedIn. “At the time, he took me to the window in our office and asked me to look at the hot dog vendor selling at the edge of our parking lot. He told me that I was acting like the vendor—pushing product and doing all the work to make a living. He followed that statement with, ‘You need to be the guy supplying the dogs to all the vendors if you ever want to scale.’” When Robert left Avis at 25 years old, he received a $60,000 payout. It was the biggest check he’d ever seen, and at the time he thought it was the most money he’d ever make.

He got his start in technology after applying for a job selling IBM mainframes for a start-up company. Although he had

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zero qualifications, he convinced the founder to hire him by offering to work for free for six months. He eventually rose to become the general manager of the company. But when he was fired shortly after, he used that as his motivation to start his first technology company, BRAK Systems, out of his basement. BRAK quickly became the largest Internet Security firm in Canada, which he then sold to AT&T Canada (now Allstream Inc.) for $30.2 million in 2000. After selling BRAK, he became vice president of sales for RAMP Network where he helped facilitate the sale of RAMP to Nokia for $225 million.

Receiving options for his help, he became a stay-at-home dad for three years before founding the Herjavec Group in 2003.

Today the Herjavec Group is recognized as a global cybersecurity operations leader specializing in managed security services, compliance, identity services, and incident response for governments and enterprises. A $200-million company, his goal is to build it into a billion-dollar company.

Every book he’s written—Driven, The Will to Win, and You Don’t Have to Be a Shark: Creating Your Own Success—has appeared on best-seller lists. Millions seek his business advice as seen on TV, in print, on the radio, and in digital media— including as a LinkedIn Influencer. He shares his business expertise with other entrepreneurs as a leading Shark on ABC’s Emmy Award-winning hit show Shark Tank. He also invested in Dragon’s Den—a Canadian reality show where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to investors in an effort to make them business partners—and participated in the show for six seasons prior to becoming an investor on Shark Tank in 2009.

From a poor kid with broken English with nothing more than $20 in his pocket who didn’t even know he could own a

"TODAY WE DO WHAT OTHERS WON’T SO THAT TOMORROW WE CAN ACCOMPLISH WHAT OTHERS CAN’T." —Robert Herjavec business to starting up technology companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars and bankrolling entrepreneurs’ inventions, his drive to achieve has led him to the fulfillment of a better life for himself and his family.

We sat down with Robert to get his advice on how he did it and how you can too. Here are Robert’s tips on how to create your own rags to riches story.

1. USE YOUR FAILURES TO PAVE THE WAY TO SUCCESS Robert attributes his success to learning from his own personal failures and being resilient, saying, “I’m a big believer in falling down 7 times, but getting up 8.” He also believes that you create your own success and that the only thing the world owes you is opportunity. “People always think success comes easy, but if you are an entrepreneur, you know how much hard work goes into your business,” Robert said. “Being an entrepreneur always comes at a price. The key is to use every challenge that comes your way as a source of motivation.”

2. LEARN TO SELL The difference between really big companies that grow and really small companies that stay the same size is sales. “My biggest challenge when I started out was that I was a very geeky technical guy, and I knew nothing about sales,” Robert said. “And I thought that as long as I was great at what I did, the world would beat a path to my door.” But that didn’t happen.

Fortunately, when Robert was 23, his friend, Ross Marsden, who at the time was a global VP of sales for HP, took him aside and told him that despite knowing the technical side extremely well, if he didn’t learn sales, he’d never be successful. “That was a wake-up call for me,” Robert said.

3. LOVE WHAT YOU DO Building a business requires a lot of time and hard work. If you don’t love what you do, you’ll put off what needs to be done. Robert enjoys his work so much there’s almost nothing he’d rather spend time doing. “Fundamentally, I owe my success in business to the fact that I really love what I do,” he said.

4. SHOW UP While investing in yourself through coaching, attending events, and so on takes time, Robert says you must make the effort.

“The key to success is to show up,” Robert said.

“If you don’t show up, you can’t win.”

FEATURE STORY CONT.

5. PUT A SALES SYSTEM IN PLACE Business owners who don’t have a sales system in place will not be able to scale their business and are at risk of going out of business.

When looking to invest in a company, Robert takes the business owner out to dinner and asks them questions to see how good their business is. “One of the questions I always ask is, How do you guys get customers? How do you guys find new business?” Robert said. “And if the answer is anything along the line of word of mouth, I’m like, yeah, these guys aren’t going anywhere. Because, you know who uses word of mouth or thinks that’s how sales are done? It’s people that don’t know sales. Word of mouth is very difficult to scale and it’s not in your control. Sales is not a foreign object that controls you. Sales is an extension of what you do.”

6. REJECT MEDIOCRITY To make a lasting impact in your field, the most important decision you can make, according to Robert, is to reject mediocrity. Robert says “the road of mediocrity leads to failure,” and “In the long run, ‘good enough’ is never good enough, whether in our personal lives or in our careers.”

7. OUTSOURCE WHAT YOU’RE NOT GOOD AT If you’re not good at making phone calls, outsource someone to do that. If you’re not good at follow up, outsource it.

Do the things you are good at and outsource the rest.

8. GET SALES COACHING As the owner or CEO of the company, you must understand sales so you don’t get taken advantage of by someone. The way to get better at sales is by getting a coach. “I used to race cars, and I was an okay race car driver, but I never won a race,” Robert said. “I noticed that everybody who was winning races had a coach. How can you get somewhere if you don’t know what ‘good’ looks like? As soon as I got a coach, he got in the car with me and he said, ‘Don’t do that.

That’s bad.’ And I’m like, ‘But it feels good.’ And he said, ‘Well, do you want to feel good? Or do you want to win races? My job is not to make you comfortable. My job is to coach you.’ And I started winning races. You’ve got to have a coach. You must get better at it. You can never outsource the knowledge of sales. You can outsource salespeople, you can outsource calling or campaigns, but you’ve got to know it to the degree that somebody can’t con you.”

9. STAY HUNGRY As you become more successful, it’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling comfortable and becoming complacent. Always remember that there is another company looking to take business away from you. “One of the hardest things about becoming more successful is success,” Robert said. “Because you know what happens when you have a little bit of success? You’re not that hungry young person looking to take on the world. You get to a point where you look around, and say, ‘I love my Tesla. I love

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my house. My significant other loves me most of the time. Life is really good.’ Don’t forget, there is somebody out there like you were many years ago that wants to take it away from you . . . The bigger you are, the bigger bullseye is on your back.”

To remind him to stay hungry, Robert has a granite sign in his office that he sees every day which reads “Every day, somebody wakes up with the sole intention of kicking your ass.”

10. ALWAYS BE SELLING One of the best ways to avoid becoming complacent is to make it a goal to sell something every day. “You can have the best accounting system,” Robert said. “You can have the best CRM. You can have the best tools, but nothing happens until you sell something . . . so if one of your top three tasks every day isn’t to sell something, you’re going to fail. You may not fail tomorrow. You may not fail next year. But inevitably, you will.”

11. CREATE A SALES CULTURE IN YOUR ORGANIZATION While quality and customer service are important, too much emphasis on these and not enough emphasis on sales can be a problem. Robert tells his entire company that every employee is a salesperson and continually repeats this message to keep it top of mind. “We seem to have permeated this culture where as long as we do a great job for our customers, it is just going to work out,” Robert said. “And I’m like, WHOA, it’s all about sales. Everybody in this room is a salesperson.”

12. WHEN STARTING OUT, PUT ALL YOUR ENERGY INTO SALES When Robert started his company, he made the rookie mistake of thinking his reputation would bring in business. If he were starting out today, his approach would be to make selling his #1 priority.

“Our first year forecast was $5 million in sales,” Robert said. “And that was because I had sold the biggest security company in Canada and was a big guy in the security business. My head was this big. I figured I’ll put a shingle on the door and people will beat a path to us. We won’t have to sell because people know who I am. It will be easy. We sold $400,000 our first year. It took us five years to get to $6.2 million. In the next five years, we got to $100 million. In the next three years, we got to $200 million. If I was starting out today from zero, I would put all my energy on sales. I would try to really differentiate what I am, how I go to market. And I would have the confidence that once I got the customer, I’ll take care of them.”

13. LET BAD EXPERIENCES BE YOUR INSPIRATION, NOT AN EXCUSE It’s not uncommon for people to shy away from something after having a bad experience. For example, some people say they hate sales or dislike selling because of a bad experience with

salespeople. But Robert encourages you to use these experiences as your motivation rather than an excuse for why you don’t have a sales system in place or why sales isn’t a high priority. “I had a very negative experience when I was 12 years old when this door-todoor salesman sold my mom a vacuum cleaner,” Robert said. “She didn’t speak any English. She couldn’t read English. So, she signed a contract for five years—a layaway plan. The layaway plan was more than our rent. It was really devastating for us.” Robert vowed that he would never let his family be in the position to be taken advantage of again. Today, realizing that you’ll be extremely limited on how successful you can be without a sales mind-set, he uses it as a lesson about how people expect you to sell them something when you call on them. “One of the things we’re trying to teach our people is when you call somebody, they know you’re there to sell them something,” he said. “It’s on a subconscious level, but that’s why you're calling them.”

14. DON’T LOSE MOMENTUM You must keep moving the ball forward and driving revenue.

“Only the road to success leads to greater success,” Robert said.

“And you cannot go down that road without sales.” On the days when he is struggling with a lot to do and none of the things on his list are sales, he has a mantra to motivate himself. “One of the mantras I always say to myself is ‘Constant forward momentum, constant forward momentum, constant forward momentum,’” Robert said. “The only momentum in a company is sales . . . There are multiple ways to drive revenue. For example, with existing customers, you can go wider, but it’s all in the bucket of sales.”

15. STOP WORRYING ABOUT SELLING TOO MUCH If whether you have enough bandwidth to fulfill the sales you make is holding you back, motivate your technical people with a pep talk to let them know that you can’t stay the same and hold off on sales—unless they want to keep working at the same salary without any benefits or bonuses. “Technical people go to our sales kickoffs and say, ‘But what if we sell more? What will happen then? We’re struggling servicing the customers we have now; what if we sell more?’ My answer to them is: ‘Would you like a raise one day? Would you like to make more money? Would you like more opportunity? Would you like more opportunity for your family, for your kids, for you? How are we going to do that unless we grow the company?’”

16. DON’T WAIT TO START SELLING Many IT people believe that their product or service must be perfect before they start selling it. But Robert says this is a huge fallacy. “Engineers want to make it perfect before they sell it,” Robert said. “True entrepreneurs jump out of the airplane and have the confidence that they’ll figure out the parachute on the way to the bottom.”

17. LEARN HOW TO SELL YOURSELF FIRST More important than your product or service, he says, is selling yourself. “On Shark Tank, entrepreneurs have to sell themselves just as much as their business because we invest in them . . . If whomever you’re selling to doesn’t like you, they’re not going to listen to you . . . be the salesperson you’d buy something from.”

18. STAY LASER FOCUSED For several years, Robert competed as Ferrari #007 for Herjavec Group Racing in the Ferrari Challenge North America Series. He achieved multiple podiums and even won Rookie of the Year in 2011. To Robert, building a successful business is a lot like racing cars. “You have to stay laser focused when driving a car over 200 miles an hour,” he said. “And the same approach is required when growing a business in today’s world of rapidly changing technology.”

Robert’s principles are valuable in today’s competitive IT environment. His story demonstrates that anyone can succeed if they are willing to take control of their own future. Of course, from our conversation with Robert, it’s obvious that getting good at sales played a key role in his rags to riches story. The good news is that anyone can get better at sales. Just like Robert, who admits he knew nothing about sales when he started out, you can become an expert too. In fact, he says there is no such thing as a “natural-born salesperson.” In his book You Don’t Have to Be a Shark, Robert makes the case that “great salespeople are made, not born, and no one in life achieves success without knowing how to sell.” Remember to sell yourself first, listen more than you talk, know who the right person is to sell to, understand what motivates your prospect, and keep it simple. And if you’re struggling with sales, get coaching and follow Robert’s sage advice to get out there and sell something. Your business growth depends on it!

CLIENT SPOTLIGHT

“It’s Like A Perfect Match”: Company Name: RCS

Name & Title:

Colt Anderson, Safety Director

Location:

Deer Park, Texas

Website:

RefConServ.com

Industry: Oil & Gas

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How Colt Anderson Of RCS Partnered With Dewayne Chappell Of Divergys To Create An Ideal Co-Managed IT Relationship

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hen you’re the Safety Director of an organization that provides integrated project solutions in the oil and gas industry like Colt Anderson is, you can’t be the only one keeping an eye on your information technology needs. No, with a robust business like RCS, you need an IT company that’s up to the challenge. Enter Dewayne Chappell and his team at Divergys. Although this partnership is still fairly fresh, RCS has made great strides with its cybersecurity protocols while striking the perfect balance between in-house and outsourced IT services with a Co-Managed solution.

TECH TROUBLES Colt joined RCS in 2007, only six months after the company’s creation, and worked his way up from being the low man on the totem pole to where he is today. Fast forward to a few years ago, and the company’s in-house IT person was ready to move on to another position.

Before leaving, the employee promised to help find an IT firm to outsource their services to, which led Colt to recommend Divergys. “I had heard about Divergys through my wife, so I mentioned their name. I was pretty disappointed when our previous IT tech didn’t choose them, but I figured he had chosen a good alternative,” Colt explains. Unfortunately for the organization, this alternative option didn’t turn out to be a great fit.

After about two years with this other IT firm, Colt and his team had had enough. “Our organization has over 300 employees and many moving parts. The problem was that this previous firm wasn’t very quick to resolve problems, and they were only on-site once a week,” says Colt. “If we had problems on a Thursday, but they were just here yesterday, we’d have to wait basically a whole other week for them to come look at our problem. Obviously, this was frustrating, so I started to think there had to be a better way to organize our IT.” Colt adds, “I’m pretty good with tech. I’m not professionally trained or anything, but I can handle basic technology fixes.” As a result, Colt reached out to Dewayne and his team at Divergys to see if they could help. “I told them that we missed having the benefits of an on-site IT person but that we needed additional support with things like cybersecurity,” says Colt. “It was at this point that Dewayne and I talked about the logistics of a Co-Managed solution, and I remember thinking immediately, ‘This sounds like exactly what we need.’” And thus, their partnership began.

DOWN WITH DIVERGYS At this time, it’s only been a few short months of their partnership, and already, the benefits of the Co-Managed IT relationship are beginning to permeate throughout the organization. Says Colt, “One of the biggest hurdles we had was actually our staff. At first, they took some time

to get used to the changes we were making, especially with things like multi-factor authentication and website browsing. But, funny enough, now I’m getting reports back from the people who were very vocal about hating it that they are actually loving it. I think it’s because Divergys does cybersecurity training that highlights the importance of being diligent and the potential risks, so they’re starting to realize that a cyberattack could impact not only their work but also their personal lives.”

Not to mention, these upgraded cybersecurity protocols began to catch cyber threats to the organization immediately upon implementation. “The previous company we worked with set us up with an antivirus, and that was about it,” Colt recalls. “When Divergys came in, I noticed a big difference right away. For example, as soon as they started implementing their DNS, we discovered that a rogue search engine had overtaken one of our employees’ computers.

There’s no telling how long this had been going on or what these cybercriminals could have done had they gotten any sensitive information, but it felt good to know that Divergys had identified and eliminated this threat.”

THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS Regarding the overall experience, Colt says “[c]oming from our previous situation with the other IT company, it was like a breath of fresh air partnering with Divergys. Their communication is seamless, they have fast response times, and their customer service is unparalleled. Our Co-Managed relationship has been operating perfectly, with me handling things like printer malfunctions and computer problems in-house and them handling the security side of things. And honestly, it’s like a perfect match.” When people first hear about Co-Managed IT, they often think it means that their IT person is going to lose their job, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. As Colt explains, “you’re not going to get run out of your job. They’re more of a help and a resource than anything, and, in our case, it was a big money saver that also made us more efficient. It was a win-win. The only thing I wish is that we had started working with them sooner.”

Now, Colt can focus on his safety position while helping his colleagues with their in-house IT needs without worrying that the background technology services need covering.

He knows that Dewayne and his team are constantly working to bolster their cybersecurity to keep them as protected as possible. Ultimately, by taking the bulk of the cybersecurity services off Colt’s plate, he and his team can get back to doing what they do best—providing integrated solutions for specialized projects throughout the oil and gas industry. So, if you need an experienced and dedicated IT firm to help strengthen your cybersecurity protocols and formulate the perfect Co-Managed IT solution, contact Dewayne Chappell and his team at Divergys today!

9

HIRING

5 Tips To Stop Candidates With The Wrong Stuff

BY DR. GEOFF SMART

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recently had the opportunity to sit down with Carter Cast, the author behind The Right— and Wrong—Stuff: How Brilliant Careers Are Made and Unmade. Hiring success has a great influence on career success, and we discussed five negative archetypes that confront employers while filling a job opening. Together, Carter and I discovered some telltale signs that your interviewee may fall into one of these categories.

“CAPTAIN FANTASTIC” While it might seem like Captain Fantastic would be a vital part of your team, they often cause division.

Someone who is a Captain Fantastic is usually overambitious and has no qualms about stepping on others to get ahead. If you’re interviewing a candidate and they mention that their greatest accomplishments revolve around beating others rather than delivering value or developing teams, you probably have a Captain Fantastic on your hands.

SOLO FLYER Have you ever worked with someone who thinks their way is the best and only way to do something? It’s very frustrating. While this type works well individually, this can be detrimental to a team environment.

They usually claim to have no time or are too busy to accomplish their tasks. In reality, they may fail to hire and delegate properly. I’ve met with many people who fit this category and end up leaving their job due to burnout after taking on too much work.

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VERSION 1.0 Change is a necessity in the workplace, but sometimes people prefer to stick to their routine. To spot these people in interviews, listen to their stories and pay attention if they mention changes in the workplace and how they responded. If they stayed on the same path, that’s a red flag. I knew a manufacturing executive who failed to adapt to new technologies. This caused him to lose some of his biggest clients, and the business fell into a tailspin.

THE ONE-TRICK PONY These people usually get stuck in a rut because they rely on their greatest strength to solve all problems. They will often aim for lateral moves rather than trying to broaden their horizons. I interviewed a one-trick pony recently who wrote amazing copy but struggled when meeting with clients face-to-face. His communication skills weren’t strong enough to work with clients or lead large teams. His career became stagnant even though he was eager to grow and move up.

WHIRLING DERVISH Energetic employees improve morale and production in a workplace but sometimes lack the follow-through needed to complete projects. You can usually spot these people in interviews if you notice them avoiding your questions. They often come up with excuses for why they didn’t achieve results. Great ideas and strong morale do not make up for a lack of completion.

With knowledge of these archetypes, you can avoid hiring the wrong candidate for your team and, instead, focus on finding the perfect fit.

Dr. Geoff Smart is Chairman & Founder of ghSMART, a leadership consulting firm that exists to help leaders amplify their positive impact on the world. Dr. Smart and his firm have published multiple New York Times best-sellers. He stays active in his community and has advised many government officials.

GeoffSmart.com

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INCREASE REVENUE

Strategies To Help You

STOP SELLING AND START SERVING To Increase Revenue

BY MIKE MICHALOWICZ

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D

uring a time when people are buying less, you still need to create sales and build profitability in your business. The problem? No one likes sales calls. No one likes to make them, and few enjoy receiving them.

of your service until they buy from you. Their introduction to you—that first impression—will be based on how you’re selling to them. How you communicate with prospects will influence their decision whether or not to become your customers.

The process of selling can be intimidating and carries with it a negative stereotype—the main one being soliciting and manipulating prospects to buy something they don’t need. When approaching sales, people tend to think they have to be so persuasive they end up on the border of manipulation.

The first step is to begin making service calls and stop making sales calls. If you’re simply calling to be of service, it changes everything.

During the sales process, consumers will be asking themselves if they trust you and if you’re offering something to genuinely help them. Service over sales will gain that trust.

WHAT IF YOU COULD CHANGE THE WAY YOU SELL, RESULTING IN MORE SALES?

Now that you’re coming from a place of service, it’s important to carry over that mindfulness to your sales communication. Everything you say in your sales communication will build your customer relationships and business reputation.

Increasing sales in your small business is going to require a refresh. Here are three simple ways to reboot your sales strategies for results that everyone can feel good about:

•

Listen first. The most effective communication is born from listening. This takes active practice and requires less thinking about a response while someone else is speaking. Make sure your potential customers feel heard and that you understand their needs.

Let them speak and then . . .

•

Ask questions. Questions show you’ve intently listened, are engaged in the conversation, and are interested in thoroughly covering all of the requirements your prospect may have.

•

Then offer. Your offer should be less about sales and more about informing and educating what your product is and how it will solve a customer’s problem.

Upgrade the conversation by eliminating the old sales phrases that don’t sound integral. Ask if they would like your assistance.

If they say yes, then you may proceed with closing the sale.

1. REFRAME YOUR SALES MINDSET. Before anything else, you must start elevating your sales techniques by flipping the script from selling to your customers to serving your customers.

Once you make this small but powerful change, your sales will occur more organically. If you know that your offering will improve their life, you have a responsibility to get it in their hands. That’s being of service. Now let’s talk about implementing that mindset into the sales process.

2. ELEVATE YOUR SALES SKILLS AND COMMUNICATION. Your sales call may be your first impression. Your customers may not yet know you and, ultimately, won’t understand the full benefit

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INCREASE REVENUE CONT.

Your potential customers need to feel their concerns are understood and that you are the trusted expert that can give them a solution to their needs. Illustrate that their well-being is more of a concern than the sale. Have a sincere discussion to determine what your prospect needs and explain how you can serve them now.

Conversely, if you feel you may not have the solution they require, be honest about it not being a fit for them at the moment. This transparency will give you a trustworthy business reputation, create stronger customer relationships, and ensure customer loyalty.

3. AUDIT YOUR SALES PROCESS AND CONSUMER JOURNEY. When you make a sale, that’s only the beginning, not the end. Your customer needs to feel confident in their decision to work with you from start to finish. This means every financial transaction, email, phone call, and delivery date needs to be met with continued, thoughtful service and zero friction.

While your customer is waiting for their product to be delivered, be sure to stay in communication if there are any changes along the way. And, after the deliverable is met, follow up with them to let them know you care about how it served them and if they require anything more.

Your customers’ experience with your entire sales process determines not only if they become loyal customers but if others do too. While you don’t want to rely on word of mouth for future sales, you must also remember that reviews and conversations about customer experiences will directly affect your future sales.

Your reputation is only as good as the action you take. How you serve is everything. Be of service.

For free chapters, resources, and keynote speeches from Mike Michalowicz, scan the QR Code.

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Mike Michalowicz, is the entrepreneur behind three multimilliondollar companies and is the author of several business books, including Profit First, Clockwork, The Pumpkin Plan and his newest book, All In. Mike is a former small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal and business makeover expert for MSNBC. He regularly travels the globe as an entrepreneurial advocate.

MikeMichalowicz.com

Scammers Are Using These 10 Popular Brands To Trick You Into Revealing Your Private Data

BY DEWAYNE CHAPPELL

C

ybercriminals know the easiest way to sneak under your radar is to pretend to be a brand you know and trust.

These large companies have spent years on marketing, customer service, branding and consistency to build a trustworthy reputation, and hackers leverage this to go after you.

The most common method is to use phishing attacks. These thieves set up URLs that look scarily similar to the real company’s website. To slip by your watchful eye, here are some of the simple switches hackers make that can go unnoticed: 1. Switching out a zero for the letter “O” or a capital “i” for a lowercase “L.” If you’re quickly reading an e-mail, it might look legit.

2. Adding in a word that seems like it could be a subdomain of the real company, like “info@googleservice.com.”

3. Using a different domain extension, like “info@google.io.”

Some criminals will take it a step further and set up a web page that looks identical to that of the real website.

When you click the link – via e-mail, SMS or even through social media – several dangerous results can occur.

The first is that malware can be installed on your computer.

Clicking a bad link can set off an automatic malware download that contains malicious files with the ability to collect personally identifiable information from your device, like usernames, credit card or bank account numbers and more.

The second is the fake website will have a form to harvest your information. This could be login credentials, passwords and, in some cases, your credit or bank information.

The third most common issue is an open redirect. The link might look legit, but when you click on it, you’re redirected to a malicious website where the intent is to steal your information.

What brand impersonations do you need to look out for?

Well, all of them, but according to Check Point’s latest Brand Phishing Report, there are 10 companies that top the chart in overall appearance in brand phishing attempts.

Here are the top 10 most frequently impersonated brands in phishing attempts in Q2 of 2023: Microsoft (29%), Google (19.5%), Apple (5.2%), Wells Fargo (4.2%), Amazon (4%), Walmart (3.9%), Roblox (3.8%), LinkedIn (3%), Home Depot (2.5%) and Facebook (2.1%).

Take a minute and ask yourself how many of the companies on this list send you regular e-mail communications. Even just one puts you at risk.

Cybercriminals go the full mile with these scams. They know what types of messages work best for each company to get your attention.

Here are three common phishing attacks cybercriminals have used under these brands’ good names to gain access to your private information.

1. Unusual Activity – These types of e-mails will suggest that someone gained access to your account and you need to change your password quickly. They leverage fear so people will click without thinking, hurrying to change their password before they’re a victim of the attack.

They usually have buttons that say, “Review Recent Activity” or “Click Here To Change Your Password.”

These e-mails can go as far as to show fake login information detailing the region, IP address, time of sign-in and more, like real messages from the companies do to convince you to click.

2. Fake Gift Cards – These e-mails suggest that someone sent you an e-gift card. When you open the e-mail, they either redirect you to a website to “claim your gift card” or have a button to “redeem now.”

3. Account Verification Required – These e-mails suggest that your account has been disconnected, and they need you to verify your information. As soon as you enter your login credentials, the hacker has access.

These scams are happening every single day. You’re a target, but so are the unsuspecting employees in your company. Without proper training, they might not know what to look for, panic and try to resolve these “issues” under the radar, ultimately causing the problem.

There are multiple steps to making sure your network is secure. One would be getting e-mail monitoring to help reduce the likelihood of these phishing e-mails ending up in your inbox. It’s also important to make sure employees know what to look for so that if an e-mail does get by the phishing detection system, they can still keep your company safe.

The best thing to do is to call us or visit our website to schedule your FREE Cybersecurity Risk Assessment. We’ll evaluate your network and provide a full report on areas where you are vulnerable and what to do to fix them. There’s no obligation, but you should know where you’re at risk. Call us to schedule your assessment now.

Dewayne Chappell is CEO/Founder of Divergys. We are based in Houston and to find out more about what we do and how we could help you, please visit Divergys.com.

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