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Sales Masters Guild Founder, John F Kettley tells us why the guild started, what it does so differently and why it’s still here today.

As often happens when you run into an old friend, the conversation quickly focuses on what you’re doing these days, “turning businesses around and mentoring business owners” I said.

“Really?… How did you get into that?”

“I fell into it to be honest, I’d had a few years out of the business world and was starting to look at either starting or buying another business, this was around 2009 just as the recession was kicking in.”

“I was getting a few calls from old contacts asking me if I’d take a look at what they were doing because they were struggling and things were looking bleak. I was also blown away by how many so called ‘business coaches’ there were out there who had clearly never stated built or sold a business and yet were selling business advise!”

A few days later while in the car on a long drive north, I began thinking about my journey of the last 10 years; why I started the SMG (Sales Masters Guild) the many, many people we have mentored and trained.

The principle reason that I started the SMG was because I was (and still do) meet so many solopreneurs and small business owners who simply have no idea how to make money in business and as a result have a horrible work-life balance and constant anxiety about their future prospects.

Having built multiple businesses over the years I know what it feels like to have my back up against the wall financially and to have a company that is doing well but just can’t seem to make it grow to the next level, and it’s for this reason that I love what I do i.e. see someone in front of me quickly turn their business life around and take it to the next level, there really is no other feeling like it (even better than the feeling I’ve experienced from achieving the successes I have).

It still amazes me how someone with a massive passion for what they do, huge knowledge of their subject and a genuine desire to succeed rarely ever take the time out to learn how to build a business that works?

They’ll spend a fortune on learning their core subject and on getting a great looking website, yet when you ask them what business courses they’ve been on to learn ‘how’ to build a high-income business the default answer is NO!

I’m going to be really honest with you here my friend, the reason why we get such fast results from those who invest in our mentored courses and peer groups is because most business owners have not even learned the business basics which is why they get almost immediate traction in selling more of what they sell…

I think a big reason why we get such great results with our clients and why we are still growing 10 years down the line is the unique combination of installing the right ethos in the mind of a business owner as well as the real world core strategies that attract clients to repeatedly buy.

This is not to say that everyone wins, that would be a lie, we definitely can’t help those who are not open to making massive change where it’s needed, or those who have such a strong opinion that they want to constantly do it their way.

The secret to becoming an extraordinary success lays in three areas

1. An open mind and landscape perspective
2. A dogged determination to take action every day to the next milestone
3. The ability (it can be learned) to make decisions quickly

Practice makes perfect, we see this on a regular basis across the country in the hundreds or workshops that we run every year, where a business owner begins with trepidation at learning business tactics that they initially think they’ll never get the hang of and then just a few months later we start to see them fly.

Please don’t think of this as business coaching, because it’s not what we do, which brings me to the current business coaching and consultant landscape.

I’m sorry to say that there are a huge number of people out there who are calling themselves a business coach and giving the ‘term’ a bad name, mainly because those individuals simply don’t understand that they are ‘not’ what they think they are i.e. someone who helps a business grow (because most are incapable of doing that because they don’t have the skills to do that).

From the many, many hundreds of business coaches I have met, 95% are ex corporate with a field of expertise in some form of people or project management, they rarely ever have first-hand experience of sales (or business development as they call it these days) and next to none have ever started built and sold their own business or acquired their coaching skills directly from someone who has.

This I believe is why so many business coaches struggle and fail, when they start up their business coaching practice they have no ideas that the core business coaching model is a famine or feast model, which is why you see so many of them on the networking circuit over selling their services.

The shame of it is that most will fail for the sake of investing in learning the skills they need (much like most business owners).

The core difference between the vast majority of business coaches and our team here at the SMG is ‘entrepreneurial knowledge base’ and span of connections to achieve the goal of building a high-income business that works.

Whether you’re a business owner who just can’t make it pay what you want it to or a business coach who just can’t work out how to get a constant flow of clients, the good news is that as long as you have an open mind to learning, you’ve still got a world of opportunities open to you, all you need to do is make a decision to invest in you and your future by learning the architecture of success.

If you are interested in one or more of our training courses they are regularly run by our Mentors across the country.

You can find out more about Sales Masters Guild founder, John F Kettley over on his profile page.

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John Kettley

John F Kettley is the founder of the Sales Masters Guild

 

A serial entrepreneur from his teenage years, John and his companies have sold a vast range of products and services across just about every market sector and medium there is, both here in Europe and the USA.

 

Find out more about John on his Sales Masters Guild profile page

 

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