Social Skills | The Barefoot Spirit

How Social skills can Reduce Your Need For Cash

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 18:56:21 +0000

Business owners want to know, “How do I raise more money?”

We ask, “Why do you need more money?”

The answer is usually, “To pay my bills” or “To grow my business.”

But we have found that more money may not be the answer. What if you could get more investors, increase your credit limits, extend your terms of payment, and close more prospects — all by using better social skills?

To read the complete article, please visit The Business Journals

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Social Skills Can Reduce Your Need for Cash

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 17:00:07 +0000

Business owners want to know, “How do I raise more money?” We ask, “Why do you need more money?” The answer is usually, “To pay my bills” or, “To grow my business.” But we have found that more money may not be the answer. What if you could get more investors, increase your credit limits, extend your terms of payment, and close more prospects – all by using better social skills?

By developing and using good social skills you can reduce your need for capital. Conversely, poor social skills will increase your need for cash. Why? Because people simply don’t know you, like you, our trust you enough to take a chance on you. And people are ultimately making the decisions… not algorithms!

Here are a few examples of how poor social skills will increase your need for capital:

Increased turnover because of poor relationships, resulting in loss of knowledge, skills, and critical supplier and buyer relationships.
Increased need for prospects, because you will be closing (or converting) less.
Reduced opportunities to extend lines of credit because of poor communication.
Everything you want to do takes longer because of lack of cooperation.
Reduced knowledge of your industry because folks simply don’t want to talk to you!

Have we become so dependent on email, social media, and texting that we have forgotten how to communicate in real time? Are we so afraid of personal rejection that we need that constant security “screen” that gives us the lag time to ignore, delay, or delete any uncomfortable or negative communication? Are we afraid to face a person in real time because we may not have all the answers they want? If any of this sounds familiar, get out your wallet! You’re going to need a lot more money!

Perhaps, instead of asking for more money, you should be asking “How can I improve my real time, face-to-face communication skills with vendors, suppliers, employees, and buyers? How can I improve the first impression I make with total strangers in real time?”

Not too long ago before email, social media, and texting, the Baby Boomers had to do their communication in real time. Just imagine! Phones were used only for verbal, real-time communication; meetings were in person; sales calls were in person; and suppliers gave credit if they felt you were trustworthy based on your face-to-face meetings! Personal relationships built trust, and business relationships are built on trust.

So how did these Boomers build the greatest economy, the greatest infrastructure, and the highest standard of living the world has ever seen? They did it by building trust through real time relationships. What are the social skills that made them so powerful and effective in real time? Basically they practiced what we call today the Humanities (AKA the Liberal Arts or Human Studies). They learned how humans tick! They learned through formal education, their upbringing, or just plain hard knocks!

We speak internationally at universities that teach entrepreneurship. Each school of entrepreneurship comes from a different place. They come from the school of business, the school of technology, and from the school of engineering or agriculture. But all have one purpose, to teach their students how to succeed in their own businesses.

Students ask us, “What else should I be taking beside business courses to be successful?” We always answer, “Communication, Psychology, Philosophy, Social Studies, History, Culture, Religion, Literature, and Political Science.” Why? Because it is through the mastery of these Human Studies that you will be better prepared to conduct more fruitful, real-time conversations that will save you money, time and effort. It is through these Human Studies that you will be able to turn real time into real money!

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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National Entrepreneurship Week – Early Exposure Builds Confidence

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 18:00:39 +0000

Gary Vaynerchuk says entrepreneurs are born, not made. We disagree! Early exposure to the entrepreneurial mindset can be the difference between young minds knowing that entrepreneurial success is possible and never finding out. Sometimes something happens at a very early age that opens the door to entrepreneurship as a valid alternative. What is that?

The Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education (EntreED) promoted Congress to designate the last week of February to answer that very question. Dr. Gene Coulson, the organization’s Executive Director, has some educational programs he is encouraging. He wants to make young people aware of entrepreneurship as a career alternative in grades K-12.

Sure, in kindergarten and the 1^st grade it might be just a definition of what entrepreneurship is, how to spell it, and how it’s distinguished from employment. Exposure progresses and by the time the students are in middle school and high school, they will be aware of entrepreneurship as an option for their future. The key is every student learning more about entrepreneurship every year.

Some of the groups he works with encourage high school students to get involved in a business plan and other types of entrepreneurship competitions. Others bring in real entrepreneurs for the young folks to see, hear, and question. They thus expose the students to successful entrepreneurs who overcame their risk adversity, solved a problem, and improved the community.

Gene feels strongly that it’s the entrepreneurial mindset that really distinguishes the true entrepreneur from the business school students learning form and function. And that mindset can be encouraged at an early age. He says young folks need to take inventory of challenges and problems within their own communities, see them as opportunities, and imagine ways to solve them. Encouraging young people to begin to notice these problems and ask, “Who else do these problems effect?” is the beginning of ideation.

One member of EntreEd is the Generation E Institute which is promoting the “Entrepreneurs Interview” during National Entrepreneurship Week. During the event, middle school and high school students have the opportunity to meet local entrepreneurs and business owners. Smaller groups of students ask them questions in an informal conversational setting, then explain what they have learned to others.

This approach incorporates social skills, writing, communication, and public speaking – all essential entrepreneurial skills in themselves. But the contacts these students make will also become opportunities for future job prospects, mentor relationships, and community goodwill. Check out more ideas for the Generation E Curricula for K through 12 in Teaching Success: New Directions in Entrepreneurial Education.

We love this whole concept! These young people grow up thinking of entrepreneurship as a valid alternative rather than something reserved for the elite or well born. We feel that the entrepreneurial mindset can be taught and with that education comes the courage to take risks and see ideas through to success. It can help young people look at problems as opportunities and can give them the communication, social, and other skills necessary to engage and empower others to make their ideas a reality.

Gene is promoting these K-12 programs in the rural parts of Appalachia. Instead of resistance to these ideas, he was met with enthusiastic support. With the demise of the coal mining culture, the community has welcomed these programs. “Entrepreneurship is the only hope for this region,” they say.

Big companies and industries come and go. And when they do go, like coal in Appalachia, those who have been dependent on them for employment will be looking for solutions. Perhaps those solutions are in our schools right now! Let’s take out an insurance policy on our future. Let’s celebrate National Entrepreneurship Week by supporting ideas like those encouraged by EntreEd to build some great entrepreneurs!

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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Demonstrate Sales to Your Salespeople to Give Them Confidence

Michael Houlihan & Bonnie Harvey — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 17:00:01 +0000

As an entrepreneur, you and everyone who works for you, and with you, must be a salesperson in one way or another. Even so, the official sales staff is under a lot of pressure to perform. But have you shown them “blood from the beast?” In other words have you actually demonstrated that sales are possible?

Have you put them in the same room with a top performer so they can listen, observe, and learn the techniques, subtleties, and nuances necessary to close a sale? Many salespeople say they have their own style but unless they perform, that style needs improvement. New salespeople are sometimes skeptical about whether anybody can achieve your sales goals, which often are set by folks who have never sold themselves.

When we were in our growth phase building the Barefoot brand, many sales to out-of-state distributers were done over the phone. We had a key salesperson who was not closing. He was busy alright – phoning, emailing and taking copious notes, but not closing. We paired him up with a super performer and put them in the same room for a month so they could hear and see each other work.

The super performer continued to close sales, but now the underachiever was watching this happen right in front of him. So now he had peer pressure and daily demonstrated examples of how it was done – with a variety of tough customers. He improved big time! In fact, he went on to become our top salesperson!

We have a friend who was looking for ways to reward his salespeople for hitting and exceeding their sales goal. He thought a great reward would be to have the performers get their own office and no longer have to work in a big bay with other salespeople. The plan seemed to work at first. Everyone tried harder and sales went up. The top salespeople got their own offices and were the envy of the rest of the sale staff. Many of these top performers became even better performers as a result of having the privacy of their own offices.

But a funny thing happened out on the main sales bay. Sales started falling off. Why? Because the folks the salespeople were looking up to, the top performers, who were inadvertently teaching them and supplying the peer pressure to perform, had been moved out of the room! Now the room was filled only with newbies and low performers. Comments were made such as, “It was just a bad day,” or, “Nobody else in the room was capable of hitting the numbers,” or even worse, “The goals are unreasonable.” They certainly had a majority in the room with which to commiserate.

Ultimately our friend changed the policy and kept the top performers circulating through the main sales floor. He also paired up newbies with established salespeople one-on-one in their offices where the experienced salesperson could show the newbie winning sales techniques and give them friendly support by critiquing their calls and offering suggestions about alternative ways to handle objections. Sales improved all the way around.

A key ingredient necessary to turn a good salesperson into a great salesperson is confidence. When they hear and see a top performer demonstrate pride in their product, empathy for the customer, and social skills in action, they know it’s possible for them to do the same. They’ve seen “blood from the beast,” and now they want it for themselves too!

Who We Are

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

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