Want to turn that spare tire into a six -pack? While I am a proponent of the tried and true, natural approach to a slow and steady weight loss using a healthy diet, portion control and exercise, sometimes using that approach can take a long time and some people end up getting discouraged. Stubborn fat around the midline is one of the most common complaints I get in my anti aging medicine practice. People have a harder time losing the weight when they get older despite diet and exercise. Others come to me demoralized that after months of deprivation, they could only lose a few pounds and they just give up.

The book the “The Weight Loss Cure” popularized and resurrected the HCG diet. HCG stands for Human Chorionic Gonadotropin. HCG is a hormone used for male and female infertility. This made me very skeptical, however when colleagues of mine encouraged me to look into it, I did. While I would never call it a cure or make some of the claims in the book, when used properly in qualified candidates, it is safe and effective.

Dr. Oz did a show on HCG as well. He had some of the same concerns as I do. A diet such as this one that is only 500 calories a day should only be done under medical supervision. A very low calorie diet with or without HCG can be complicated and it is important to have someone to guide you and address issues as they come up. Secondly, buying homeopathic drops on the Internet can especially be troublesome, as you don’t know what you are getting. It is recommended that you talk to a doctor before considering this type of diet. Only a doctor can prescribe the actual hormone made by a pharmaceutical company under strict FDA standards or compounded by reputable, highly skilled compounding pharmacists. This assures potency, purity and quality.

The controversy of whether or not it would work with or without the hormone may persist until we have better studies. Those that I read that were negative did not necessarily follow the protocol. Until that happens, I carefully monitor my patients and watch their waist waste away and put smiles on their faces. So, if you want to try the HCG diet, go to a qualified physician who can determine if it is safe for you and where you can be monitored and obtain pure, potent HCG. Waist away!

Many people fall victim to the addicting properties of alcohol and drugs. When they reach the point that they want to get help, it is important that they enter a quality program. The first step in the fight against alcohol and drug addiction is medical detox. This is a process that allows individuals to rid their systems of alcohol and drug poison. After these harmful toxins are out of the body, the individual has a much better chance of reaching recovery through drug rehab.

Duration

The duration of an individual’s detoxification will depend on how long and how severe their addiction to alcohol and drugs has been. In addition, an individual’s personality and body processes will dictate how long it will take to cleanse the body of toxins. Typically, detoxification can take from a number of days to a couple of weeks.

Withdrawal

During the withdrawal period individual will experience a number of symptoms. The symptoms that are most common are insomnia, depression, and anxiety. Individuals often experience irritability, sudden changes in their mood, and a severe craving for alcohol and drugs. There is the possibility of seizures during the process of detoxification that can last a number of days and range from mild to very serious.

Detox

Inpatient treatment centers typically include medical detoxification as part of their program. It is important that there is continuous stability between the start of the cleansing process through the end of the rehabilitation treatment plan. Individuals feel more secure in knowing that they have a skilled team of professionals who will care for them throughout the process.

Support

The support of dedicated counselors, nurses, and doctors who help people through this physical and emotional process is very important. These skilled professionals can help make this difficult process less traumatic and more successful. The success of the detoxification process can lead to long-term success with an individuals treatment program.

24-Hour Care

Because of the symptoms a person can experience during the withdrawal process, twenty-four hour supervision by medical personnel is vital. The medical team includes doctors and nurses that have extensive training and experience in all phases of the decontamination process. Once the individuals system has been cleansed of the harmful poisons from alcohol and drugs, they will be ready to proceed with their treatment program.

Individual Treatment

An individual treatment plan should be developed for each person before they enter detox. With a specifically designed treatment plan individuals will have a better chance at success. When the individual has completed the detox phase of treatment, they can move on to rehab. Rehab allows the individual to heal physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Individuals with many types of health conditions are often affected by the state of their oral health and hygiene. This is especially true of diabetics and there are a number of things your dentist wants you to know if you have diabetes. Diabetics have a dramatically increased risk of periodontal gum disease. While the disease itself doesn’t cause gingivitis, it can make the gum infection progress at a faster rate and cause longer consequences. In turn, this type of gum disease can end up making it harder to control your sugars and the end result is a vicious circle that is tough to keep on top of.

The first thing your dentist wants you to know if you are diabetic is that any type of condition in your mouth will affect your entire body. Your mouth is literally an open connection to the rest of your body. Any type of bacteria that is ingested can easily travel to your bloodstream through your mouth and cause inflammatory changes in the rest of your body. Increased elevation is the body’s natural response to infection and can, in turn, decrease your body’s sensitivity to insulin. Diabetes is a disease characterized by your body’s decreased response to insulin and this makes it even harder to control your blood sugars.

If you have diabetes, your dentist also wants you to know that the early stages of gum disease are most dangerous because they are silent. There are very few symptoms early on and so it is a disease that is hard to catch before it is extensive. By the time gums are sore and bleeding, the gum disease has advanced enough to cause erosion and even loosen support for teeth. If you have noticed that your gums are sore and bleed easily when you brush, it isn’t too late to reverse effects of gum disease, but the disorder has already advanced.

Lastly, your dentist also wants you to know that it may be important to schedule visits more often if you have diabetes. Since early gum disease is so silent, it may be important to visit with your oral healthcare provider and schedule cleanings on a regular basis so that they can check for gum disease. While the general population should visit their dental office every six months, diabetics should visit more frequently. It is often recommended that diabetics schedule dental appointments every three to four months.

How often should sales team meetings be held?

I’m not a big fan of regularly scheduled sales team meetings. I find it boring to go person-by-person and discuss the status of specific opportunities, the percentage each individual is to quota, etc.

It’s one thing if a salesperson is doing something unusual or unique in pursuit of an opportunity and sharing what they are doing would constitute a good learning experience for other salespeople. However, I usually find that most discussions concerning individual opportunities are not very enriching for the other sales team members.

My philosophy is I prefer to bring the sales team together on an ad hoc basis when there is something to discuss that would benefit the entire team. This could be for sales training, product training, important announcements, etc.

With that said, if a sales team is more junior, or if you are in the process of changing your sales culture, or if you want to teach all of your salespeople a specific new skill, then regularly scheduled training meetings can make sense. However, if a sales team is more seasoned, or if it has a mix of people with substantially different levels of knowledge and experience, working with salespeople one-on-one tends to be more productive than group meetings.

How often should I meet individually with salespeople?

If a salesperson is achieving or exceeding quota, I like to schedule a weekly, one-hour meeting. The focus of this meeting is to:

• Discuss the progress (or lack thereof) of pipeline opportunities
• Discuss new opportunities that have been identified
• Strategize how to best pursue key opportunities

Often the greatest value a sales manager can add when dealing with a productive salesperson is suggesting creative ideas for advancing opportunities through the sales cycle more quickly.

For salespeople who are NOT achieving quota (including new salespeople), I suggest that management schedule one-hour meetings as frequently as necessary (including daily) to help the salesperson get on track. Going on “buddy calls” also provides great opportunities to observe the salesperson in action.

In these meetings the focus should be on determining:

• The quantity and quality of the salesperson’s activities
• Whether their activities are producing the desired results
• Sources of and solutions for any challenges they are running into

When performance issues are identified, conducting repetitive role plays is often the most productive way for management to help the salesperson become more comfortable executing specific skills and approaches properly. As the salesperson becomes more comfortable with, and more effective at executing, key steps in the sales process, meeting frequency can be reduced until you get to a single, scheduled, one-hour meeting each week.

Should members of the marketing team attend sales team meetings?

Absolutely… especially if you are trying to instill a “one team” mindset.

When hosting a joint meeting that includes both Sales and Marketing representatives, try to focus the meeting agenda on information that will help the members of the two organizations understand each other better and work together more effectively to produce the desired end result (which is usually increased sales, higher profits, etc.). For example:

• If marketing is conducting a campaign to generate sales leads, there should be discussion about what constitutes a qualified lead
• If marketing would like the sales team to report information to help marketing gauge the effectiveness of a campaign, there should be discussion about:
• The information that is being requested
• Whether the sales team is the best resource to provide the requested information
• Why marketing needs the information
• The accountability sales management will ask the salespeople to accept related to providing the requested information
• The frequency with which the information needs to be provided
• How sales management will inspect to ensure that the necessary information is being provided in a consistent and timely fashion

There could be many other agenda items, but they will generally fit under one of two umbrellas: (1) helping Sales and Marketing understand each other better, and (2) helping Sales and Marketing work together more effectively.

Conclusion

You have probably attended many meetings that did not feel like productive uses of your time. Don’t repeat this mistake with your sales team! Be very clear about your desired outcome(s) for each specific meeting. If you keep the desired outcome(s) firmly in mind, it should be relatively easy to determine who should attend each meeting and whether it should be a group or individual meeting.

What is in a closing ratio? The experienced business owner will know immediately that it is not just the percent of sold vs the number of possibilities that tells whether or not a sales rep is profitable. Sometimes that same owner or manager may not be able to tell you exactly why, but their gut tells them whether or not a sales rep is profitable.

What should we examine? Well, for starters, if you are a company that pays for leads to come in the door, those leads vary in cost. If you have a sales rep that is given expensive leads and a sales rep that is given inexpensive leads, the one given expensive leads will have to either sell at a higher close rate or close at a higher price. If you are giving leads that cost minimal to nothing, the close rate or sale amount of the next person does not have to be as high.

Let’s take an example: Paul and Mark are salesmen. Paul has been given 50 leads that cost about $100 each, or $5000 worth of leads. Mark has been given 50 leads that cost $50 each, or $2500 worth of leads. If they both close 30 leads, they both have a 60% closing ratio. If their contract sizes are the same, Mark has been more profitable for us because we have spent half as much on advertising for his sales as we did for Paul.

Of 50 leads again, if Paul’s closed five leads at $30,000 each, he made $150,000 in gross revenues at a 10% closing ratio. On the same token, if Mark sold 30 leads at $3000 each, he had a 60% closing ratio and gross revenues of $90,000. If we were looking at just the closing ratio, we would say Mark is our high closer, but in reality Paul should be considered the “high” closer. It is his closes that are bringing in better revenues.

Now the trick for you as an owner or manager is to use the data you collect to your benefit in growing your business. We need to step up Paul’s closing ratio because he is bringing in the higher contracts. Put a high close and high contract together and you get some winning numbers. On the same token, find out why Mark is not getting higher price sales. Could it be that he is timid in asking for a sale on higher price products or services? Step over the timidness, put the shoulders back and ask for bigger sales! Increased prices with his closing ratio, and you will see increased revenues.

The whole purpose of tracking closing ratios is so that you have some system in place to hire, fire, train and assign. Hire based on the fact that you will track salesperson effectiveness on items other than just a simple closing ratio; fire based on the fact that if expectations are not filled by the numbers that tell the story, then they are shown the door. Training can be adjusted when you start to see trends within the sales team or individuals. Lead assignment can certainly be streamlined when you see salesperson strengths and weaknesses, and you can clearly see that certain people sell certain leads or types of sales better than others.

There aren’t as many books or movies that are as well-known, and loved, as The Godfather by Mario Puzo. Following the life of an Italian-American man who becomes a mob kingpin, it has everything from romance and betrayal to action and suspense.

Believe it or not, it also has a couple of lessons for sales audiences.

If you’ve never thought about The Godfather in that way, I can understand. Over the past 20+ years of helping men and women in all kinds of industries to find new business, I have developed a somewhat peculiar way of looking at popular literature. Still, if you’re looking for inspiration in your sales career, you could do worse than this Mario Puzo classic. Not only does it have some tips for growing your business – although you might have to look for them – but it’s also wildly entertaining.

Here are just a few of the things the smart salesperson or sales manager might be able to learn from The Godfather:

We all need people we can trust: The Godfather doesn’t manage everything himself; he has a small team of trusted professionals who help him stay on top of his growing empire. It’s the same in any business. You don’t just need vendors and assistants you can count on to find success in sales – you also have to be someone your clients can absolutely count on, too.

Loyalty and discretion are important: Even if you don’t deal in high-level secrets or conspiracies, it’s important that the salesperson knows when to keep quiet about company details. Through the course of your career, you’ll be exposed to information that your employer, or your clients, would prefer that you keep to yourself. Fail to do that, and you’ll quickly gain a reputation as someone who can’t be trusted.

Always let your business grow and evolve: Just as Don Corleone was always trying to find a way to grow “the family business,” so should you be looking for new avenues to expand yours. From social media to speaking events and new product lines, it’s the salespeople who can adapt and find ways to integrate changing ideas and strategies who inevitably come out on top.

Stay on the right side of the law: This one kind of goes without saying, but it’s worth mentioning that you should probably stay out of trouble in both your personal and professional life. This doesn’t just go for breaking the law, but also for ethical “gray areas.” If you never do things you shouldn’t, then you don’t have to worry about getting caught doing them.

If you haven’t read The Godfather by Mario Puzo, I highly recommend it for the entertainment value alone. And if you keep a close eye on the details, you might even just learn a thing or two about selling along the way.