Mitch Axelrod and I were recently thrown together in some slightly odd circumstan
ces regarding a cruise I had to miss out on – you’ll hear more about that at the start of the podcast. The situation may have been a little random, but sometimes these strange happenings bring us great benefits, and that’s certainly what happened in this case. As you’ll find out in our latest Hardcore MBA podcast, Mitch is an excellent speaker and author but also a wonderful philosopher of sales and business.
During our talk, Mitch and I discussed:
• The differences between the old way of selling, and the new way that Mitch encourages his clients to follow.
• The importance of building a high-quality list of customers, rather than just a huge collection of random email addresses.
• And the problems that come about when we compare ourselves to others, rather than focusing on our own unique attributes.
Like myself, Mitch also encourages new entrepreneurs to focus on their happiness rather than simply their profits. “Life is too short to spend it all chasing a goal that makes you unhappy,” he says, “and yet in the old way of doing business we were encouraged to do just that. You set a monetary goal and you chase it to the exclusion of everything else. So I take a different approach, and say leave the goal-setting for last. Start with the soul-setting and the role-setting, and then let your goals emerge out of that. What do you enjoy doing in life and what roles do you want to play in the lives of others? Those are the questions we should be asking first.”
This is just a small taste of the many nuggets of wisdom Mitch imparts during the full podcast, so make sure you listen to the whole thing. When you’re done, Mitch’s book The New Game of Selling is an excellent short introduction to his ideas, and you can check out his website for more information on the full course.
