Ten VIP Questions with Andrew Wood
Kevin Strom
1. What's The Goal of Your New Cunningly Clever Newsletter?
To engage in a general business & leadership dialogue with liked minded customers, partners and friends to help maximize their sales, marketing and management. Leading ultimately to increased profitability of their business! I will share my best ideas and hope through the forum others will share theirs!
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2. What's Best Book of the 20 Plus, You Have Written?
I love Cunningly Clever Marketing but my answer is about to change when my new book ships at the end of the month. The last book I have written, in this case Cunningly Clever Selling is always the best! The reason is simple, the last book I have written has all the ideas, concepts and experience I have ever gained, in that subject, right up to the day it was published! Not only does the book contain all of my experience but it contains the VERY BEST ideas, tips and strategies that I have gleaned from the hundreds of other sales books I have bought and read.
Cunningly Clever Selling is not only the BEST of Andrew Wood it's the best ideas Andrew Wood got from Tom Hopkins, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Joe Girard, Anthony Robbins, Dan Kennedy, Jeffery Gitomer and literally hundreds of others!
3. Who Was The Most Positive Influence For You In Building Your Business?
I think a lot of who you end up picking as a model or mentor depends where you are, at the time in your life. For me I was 28, running a small karate school looking to be a millionaire, when I discovered Brian Tracy. His books are so full of meat and great step-by-step advice that I really latched on to his stuff. He's easily the smartest man I have ever met and eventually I even ended up writing a book with Brian!
4. What were the three greatest things you learned from Brian Tracy?
- Set SMART GOALS
- Invest 3-5 % of your income in life long learning, at one point I spent $500 or more every month on books and audio programs.
- Turn off the TV; I watch less than an hour a week, except during NFL season!
5. What Was You Biggest Break Through In Turning One Failing Karate School Into a Chain of over 400?
Without a doubt it was the day I discovered I actually knew NOTHING about how to market my business and that all I was really doing was copying a bunch of my competitors, none of whom knew anything about marketing either!
Actually let me make it even simpler because a lot of people think that they are marketing when they are NOT! I did not know how to generate high quality leads!
6. What's The Biggest Mistake Most People Make With Their Marketing?
They try to sell the prospect in one shot rather than trying to engage the prospect by offering free information, a trial or a sample. Most great marketing today is a two or three step process some times far longer. Sell the prospect on engaging with you first, then sell him with your follow up!
7. What's The Biggest Myth in Marketing?
When I was a kid growing up in England the biggest bookstore I was ever in, in my life, might have been 5,000 square feet. Now the average Borders or Barnes and Noble store is 50,0000-60,000 square feet and YET 99% of my prospective clients will argue that NO ONE reads any more!
Who the hell is keeping all those book stores open!!!!
The more you tell the more you sell it's that simple! What people fail to recognize is that only a tiny percentage of people who see your marketing have any interest in what you are selling. The 99% who don't care won't read anything, the rest, the ones who want what you are selling want details, reasons, proof, motivation to act and you simply can't do that effectively without a good deal of copy!
8. What's the Number One Reason Most Businesses or Entrepreneurs Fail to Reach Their Potential?
That's easy, lack of sales. Lack of focus on sales, lack of attention to sales, lack of sales training, lack of sales systems. Sales scares people, it makes them accountable so they do whatever they can in the name of “marketing” so they don't actually have to pick up the phone! Which is a great shame, because anyone can become good at sales very quickly with the right training!
9. What Do You See As The Biggest Problem in Management?
Apathy to taking any kind of action. The majority of people would just as soon accept the status quo than take any kind of action that may result in more work or unknown consequences (like an increase in leads) for them, even if it makes PERFECT business sense! I actually had a CEO, from Harvard no less, turn down a marketing campaign because he thought “it was likely to be far too successful and jam our antiqued phone system!” He opted to do nothing instead. The golf business in particular is full of bloated management companies unable to get out of their own bureaucracy, much like the government!
Little people agonize over spelling, grammar, fonts where as all great leaders and entrepreneurs have a propensity to move an idea into ACTION quickly!
10. What's The Best Way To Innovate?
The best way to get great ideas is to look outside your industry, the golf biz, the karate biz or any biz you look at ends up with everyone more or less doing the same thing and accepting that as the norm. The real break through for any business is more likely to come from adapting an idea that worked in another industry. That's what I love about CunninglyClever.com it's a great combination of ideas and strategies from a multitude of different industries!
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