The attitude of farming, gardening, and business deals.

I am blessed to live in the middle of a 22 acre Almond Orchard.  My home is at the end of a long crape myrtle lined driveway.   I have a fence full of ivy around our home, and back yard.  Beyond that I have a large Koi pond, and a horse corral.   I spend my quite time sitting by our pond watching the fish, horse, and goat play looking beyond them into our orchard.   It is a very affective spot to find clarity and God.

Running a large insurance brokerage is a real full time job so I hire a real farmer to take care of my orchard.  That leaves me responsible for about 2 acres of landscaping and horse corrals.  Although I have a gardener, they limit there activities to about a quarter acre of the manicured landscaping.  Mow and blow usually.

For the most part the rest is pretty low maintenance.  Clean out the pool and check the chemicals once a week.  Spot check sprinkler systems, and keep the weeds down.  Pretty much like any other homeowner.  Except a few acres of distance to cover, and instead of one or two systems to check I have a dozen or so to keep track of.

Weeds have gotten my attention lately.  Normally once a month I jump into my mule which has a 15 gallon spray rig mounted on it full of round up and some misc bug sprays mixed in to keep the ants and other crawlers down.  This last year I haven’t had the time to keep up with the weeds.  And of course when you don’t pay attention to weeds they tend to grow!  Similarly when you don’t pay attention to business problems or poor attitudes they also seem to grow.

I see some great similarities between business and weeding.  I started clearing out my 2 acres of weeds.  Some up to two feet high!  I would like to share with you a few of my thoughts about weeds.

When weeds first pops up they are very small and week.  Just like when a bad attitude at work first pops up.  If I tend my land, and spray the seedlings of these weeds when they are just getting started they quickly die, and wither away leaving no trace that they were ever there.  I have many ways to deal with seedlings.  One it chemical sprays, the other is a torch attached to a large propane tank.  I don’t need to burn the seedlings completely to kill them; just the increased heat from the torch passing over them is enough to kill the weed when it is just sprouting.  So a little heat works well on weeds and bad attitudes.

If I wait a bit and let the weeds grow even just a little, and then spray them when they die they leave more of a mess.  I then have to clean up of dead grass, and stems that have to be dealt with after the weed gone.  When we allow the bad attitudes of people to mature in our businesses even for a bit, they to leave behind bigger messes that has to be cleaned up once we get rid of them.

The biggest mistake I seem to make from time to time is to allow a weed to grow.  In fact sometimes I have gone to the extent of allowing weeds to be fertilizing and watered along with my orchard.  The funny thing is that no matter how well I take care of a weed it never magically morphs into a fruit bearing plant.  Instead of course what happens is the weed gets bigger and stronger and then starts germinating spreading seeds of discontent throughout my orchard.  This of course causes more weeds to begin to sprout.   Funny how letting weeds grow in my orchard does about the same damage as letting bad attitudes grow in my agency.

On my farm, and in my business the best way to deal with weeds is to have a formal weed control system to find weeds as they sprout, and deals with them right away.

I have never seen a problem get better by ignoring it, or hoping it will get better on its own.  Weeds and attitudes are the same way.  If I let the weeds just do what they want, soon my entire orchard would be full of weeds and choke out even the healthiest of my trees.  Stealing their nutrients, and taking their water.

Someone once told me they could work with anyone and make them successful.  The only thing they couldn’t fix was a bad attitude. 

How to get leads.  The easiest part of a professional sales persons job!

No matter what business you are in, or what product or service you are selling you must have people to talk to about your product or service.  AKA: Leads.

I have worked with lots of sales professionals over my 30 + years, and early in on I bought into the common thinking about lead generation.  But as I learned more, tested, retried, and most importantly noticed what was and wasn’t working for others, as well as myself I made several key distinctions that I want to share with you and hope it helps you with your business so your business will bless those it serves, your family and your community. 

1.        Most focus on lead generation is incorrect.  It is like taking a telescope and focusing it on the moon when you want to see Mars.  You have good equipment, and can see clearly, you just have it pointed in the wrong direction.

Lead generation starts with having a great story to tell.  Not a fictional story, but more of a great documentary.  Usually your story can be developed as you develop your proposal systems, and presentation books.  (Both a topic of other posts I have made and will make). 

If you have a good story, that describes clearly how your product or service will help someone else, and you can see it clearly using simple math, and terms then you develop your story into a mission. 

It starts by caring about others.  (I call this a back porch sales technique).  Most can’t really pull this off as they can’t stop thinking about what they get if they make a sale.  The key is to help no matter if you get paid or not.  I count it as a “sale” when I leave a family or business better off for having met me.

Once you have come to this pure calm place where your sincere desire is to simply help make another person or businesses life better, easier, and more profitable then generating leads will become easy. 

How do you start?  Once you have your story ready to tell, you tell it.  If you do this right, each person you tell your story to, will have more people for you to tell your story to.  AKA referrals. 

I have a lot of cool techniques and activities you can do using good lists, and sales systems to generate leads once you have your story ready.  So please keep following my blogs, and podcasts I promise to share them with you.  Also if anyone has a specific product or service that you would like my help with to develop leads for you, just reach out to me and I will respond directly here.