Once upon a time…
I wrote a business plan that was hailed by the loan manager at the bank as the best he’d ever seen.
He granted me £40,000 unsecured loan (unsecured - unheard of!) and two weeks later quit his job and stole the idea. He actually took the franchise area detailed in my plan. Imagine how that felt at the time. I wasn’t pleased with my ‘great business plan’ I was seething with rage.
Why was it the best business plan he’d ever seen?
Because I covered all my bases. Selling an idea is no different to selling a product or service. You need to know everything about the idea.
I did my SWOT analysis, researched my competitors, studied my market and market trends. I read the 70 page franchise document frontwards, backwards, sidewards!
Selling is like playing a game chess. To succeed you have to anticipate the opponents moves.
If you want to sell anything you have to anticipate every question they’ll ask you. Questions won’t just cover you, they’ll compare you to the competitor so you need to know their every move as well as your own. I’m not reinventing the wheel here, this is OLD news.
I started reading about ‘how to sell’ when I was eight.
My mum took me to work with her during the school holidays and all I had to read was her bosses books on ’selling’. I must have read 20 of the darn things!
All that great information sunk in deep.
I anticipated every question the loan manager would ask and had an answer in that plan for all of them.
Another time I needed to raise £40,000 for the continuation of a charitable trust for each year, three years running. £120,000 in total.
I sent out 5 proposal letters and got 5 sponsors. 100% result! My letters were successful as I researched the target market and sent them to people who I identified as being the most likely to sponsor us.
With thousands of sponsors to choose from this wasn’t easy and took weeks!
When I found my targets. I read in detail every word of their lengthy terms and conditions and tailored every single letter to meet them all, telling them WHY they should give us so much money.
This wasn’t easy, we were a NHS organisation asking for charity. I had to set up a charitable trust to separate the two, re-write the legal contract (as the solicitor couldn’t hack it) and only then could we proceed legally and to the sponsors satisfaction.
That’s what makes a person unique.
Go that extra mile.
