Back in the early days of building my original Proforma distributorship, I had an appointment with the owner of a furniture store chain. I was on time. He was not. After waiting for half an hour, I asked the receptionist if the owner knew I was there. She informed me that he was filming a…
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Over the years I have developed what I call the “Muzzillo 10 Percent Rule.” Simply stated, the rule is that, at any point in time, only about 10 percent of folks are dissatisfied enough with their current situation that they are wide open for change. This is true for end-user customers. Only about 10 percent…
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Back when I was growing my original Proforma distributorship, I was teaching one of our newer sales reps how to conduct field calls. In my view, field calling is a lost skill. Sadly, in this day of email and voicemail, salespeople think they don’t need to get out and do field calls. I strongly disagree…
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About 25 years ago, we purchased a great 30,000 square foot office building on a beautiful eight-acre campus. Soon after, I met with the signage company to finalize the wording for our sign. At first it seemed like a no brainer that the sign should read “Proforma Headquarters,” but that wording didn’t align with the…
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Early on in building my distributorship to $20 million (I sold that business in the early ’90s to focus on our franchise model), I realized there were only four activities that would make me wealthy. Today at Proforma we call these the 4 Pillars of Success. Earn new customers. Sell more to current customers. Hire…
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When we first started franchising Proforma in the late 1980s, most people in our industry scoffed at our business model. So, we reached out to people outside our industry to start building our franchise concept. In the late 1980s, there was no internet! So we relied on advertising in business publications and attending “own your…
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There’s one reason why most people in our industry aren’t rich. At the end of the day, the business we are really in is the “know, like and trust” business. That’s right. Our real job as industry professionals is to get people to know us, like us and trust us. It’s true if we are…
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All business owners and sales reps know they should have a plan, right? We’ve all heard the saying, “If we fail to plan, then we are planning to fail,” right? There are three types of business plans, and in my next three articles I will address them. The first and most common type of plan…
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This article is the last in a three-part series about using visualization to achieve your goals. Last time, I mentioned that, during our waking hours, we deal with approximately 8 million bits of information. Our brains filter out the information they’re not aware we need. When we practice visualization by vividly picturing our goals, we…
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In the Rolling Stones’ famous song, they say, “You can’t always get what you want, but … you get what you need.” We all know that’s wrong. We don’t always get what we need. I believe we get what we see. Getting what you see is the practice of visualization—creating vivid pictures in your mind…
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