The Mirror

The Mirror. How often do you use it? For many, you might use it in the morning before you take off for work or head out on a date, but how often do you turn a mirror onto your business and how you are doing in it?

I find many people are quick to put the mirror (or blame) on someone else, and not so quick to turn it onto him or her to expose the REAL reasons they aren’t succeeding. 

I think it’s always important for us to look in the mirror first. Case in point:  Vickie Musni and I were conducting a sales training in Milwaukee recently where we analyzed a virtual sales meeting. In my prep for the training, I went back and looked at the video of my sales meeting and I realized “Oh I shouldn’t have said that there.” This is the mirror for me in my business. The mirror doesn’t lie. It exposes all of your thoughts.

It’s not just your thoughts of your meeting after the fact.

If you haven’t recorded yourself in a while (especially video) I would STRONGLY recommend you to setup a virtual meeting via Zoom (Zoom.us) for your next sales meeting and ask your client when they get on the call with you if you can record it. How do you do that without it being weird? Simple. Put it in benefit to THEM. “Hey, do you mind if I record this so this way if you decide to go with us we can have it to look back on and use in our prep for you,” Said in a friendly tone and smile will almost always get you a “yes” and now you have it so you can turn the mirror on yourself and get critique as well. 

The mirror for me is looking at footage from a sales meeting or from a planning meeting or from your performance. If you ever worked on radio, this was air checking your show back in the day and your Program Director would call you in to go over your work. That really doesn’t happen anymore but consider this your invitation to use ME as your Program Director to get critique if you’d like. Call 906.280.8467 or shoot me an email and mention “The Mirror” and I’ll give you a F R E E 15-minute critique of your recorded sales meeting. (Man I’m feeling generous today…my accountant is going to hate me). 

How can you bring this mirror concept into other parts of your business, not just the sales process?

Always be a student. Get a coach. Have someone from the Small Business Administration review your business plan. Get into a performance workshop. Send your marketing materials to 5 past clients, 5 event colleagues and get their feedback on what they like and what they don’t.

Survey your current clients on what is useful and what could be improved on in your process with them. For production, ask your team or fellow entrepreneurs what they are using and how they are leveling up their game in this area. These are just a few of the ways you can turn the mirror on yourself. Here’s the key. It’s UP TO YOU TO DO IT. Self-reflection and introspective is important. Set the ego aside and open yourself up to the possibilities that exist. No one else can do it for you. I promise your future company will thank you for it.