Always have a toothpick handy!

Here’s the deal. 

If you want to start making more sales….quit trying to make more sales! 

Think about that for a moment.  It might dawn on you that there is a reason that most salespeople enjoy a less than stellar reputation among the buying public. 

Why do you suppose that is? 

Could it have something to do with the idea that most salespeople look at the sales process as a contest.  In other words, if they sell you…they win and you lose!  If you don’t buy…. you win and they lose.  The more competitive the salesperson is the more they try to win the contest and thus also earn the well earned reputation of being “high pressure.”   Try this on for size.

Selling is something you do FOR your customer… not something you do TO them!

It is no wonder that many customers approach  the sales environment with anxiety, fear and trepidation.  As salespeople we have to remember that:

We salespeople pay the sins of every salesperson who has come before us! 

If our customer’s past history with salespeople has been nothing but a litany of disrespect, high-pressure and a total disregard for what is important to them then obviously the customer will approach the sales situation with a pre-conceived idea of what is going to happen.  They have already reserved a litle “pigeon-hole” into which they tend file away ALL salespeople.  You may be the total exception to the rule and a true professional but you still are going to be stuffed into that little pigeon hole unless you do something different to earn your customer’s trust. 

What can I do?

Well, for starters, say nothing important for the first 2 or 3 minutes you are with your customer.  Why?  Because when you first meet your customer there is going to be some tension.  You don’t know each other yet.  You are feeling each other out.  If you start in with your sales presentation too early or before that “relationship tension” has been reduced you are just acting like every other salesperson who couldn’t wait to make a sale.  Now your customer is thinking… “Yeah, this guy is just like the last one!  He doesn’t care about me… he just wants to make a sale.”

So what do we talk about instead?

How about talking with your customer about their most important subject!  Them!!!  You will discover what makes them tick and what is important to them!   They will love you for it!  Talk about their job, their family, hobbies, back-ground, future plans etc.   Take the attitude that you just met your customer in your favorite social setting and get into a conversation and not a presentation. 

Really listen to your customer! 

All of us love to be recognized.  Find something about them to compliment that you sincerely like.  Maybe it is a piece of jewelry, shoes, their yankee ball-cap or just about anything else other than your product or service.   Remember, that the compliments must be sincere.   Whatever you talk about… don’t get into your presentation until you have established common ground.   Actually, what will probably happen is that your customer will eventually ask you about your product or service once he feels comfortable with you.   You then will have permission to begin your sales process.   Remember this always:

More sales are lost in the Opening than in the Closing!

If you handle your first 2 or 3 minutes like a true professional you will find that everything else will just fall into place and you will also find that:

People love to buy… they just hate to be sold!

Go make it a great day! Rick

PS.  I need your help!!  What can I do to make my blog better and what more can I do to advertise it?  I will cherish  your comments and/or advice.  Let me know.  Thanks for sharing some of your valuable time with me!  Rick

……….pero incluido un viaje gratis alrededor del sol cada ano!! 

My spanish tutor in Ecuador shared that saying with me a few years ago.  Translation:

 Life is dificult… but it does include a free trip around the sun each year!! 

Isn’t that a wonderful outlook on life!  It was typical, I learned, of the Ecuadorian people and the way they approached the challenges they were faced with each day.  Even though a high percentage of them don’t enjoy the bounty, comforts and conveniences that we take for granted here, they are truly a happy and joyous people.   They seem to always look at their situation with optimism and confidence.   They can handle anything!  Talk about a glass half-full way of thinking! 

I was reminded of that Spanish refrain last night as I lamented my recent achilles tendon injury.   No matter the misfortune, there is always a positive side.   Here in the land of plenty, we many times seem to focus on our setbacks and, thereby perpetuate them, which envelops us in those downward spirals where we feel the whole world is plotting against us and everything is going wrong.   Many times we will try to solve our problems with sheer force of will which can cause us stress, worry and feelings of  low self worth….especially if we are unsuccessful.

What we could do is take a little different approach when we are faced with those little “bumps in the road” that are sure to show up from time to time as we journey through life. 

One idea is to remember that we are each very unique, talented and creative organisms with abilities that, if given the chance, will amaze even ourselves.   We are success oriented beings.  I recommend that you not try to overcome your next challenge with  iron-jawed will power.   Don’t picture the things that are likely to go wrong.   Instead of trying to fix everything by strain and effort, just simply relax the pressure you feel and picture to yourself the target you really want to hit and “let” your unique creative mechanism take over.   And it will, if you just let it! 

In the meantime, let’s just enjoy our free trip around the Sun!

PS.  I need your help!!  What can I do to make my blog better and what more can I do to advertise it?  I will cherish  your comments and/or advice.  Let me know.  Thanks for sharing some of your valuable time with me!  Rick
 

Have you ever been going along smartly….loving the direction your life was taking, thinking your goals were within reach, when all of a sudden, unexpectedly, the wheels come off and you seem to lose your compass? 

It happened to me just this week!

I was at the gym on Wednesday and thought I would try for a “little extra” during my run and I stepped up the pace a bit.  Unfortunately, my right achilles tendon was not on the same page as me.  It thanked me for my effort by seizing up and presenting me with a bad case of tendonitis, which, if you have never had it is, in my opinion, the worst injury an athlete can have.

I speak from experience here.  Nine years ago I was stupidly playing a strenuous game of handball only 4 months after enduring total left hip replacement.  As you might imagine, that was a recipe for disaster and I suffered the consequences.   Just 10 minutes into the game I went down like I had been shot and immediately knew that I was the victim of a 100% rupture of my left achilles tendon.    Two days later I was in surgery prompting my Orthopedic surgeon to remark that it was like sewing the ends of two mops together!   In other words, it was bad.  That foolish stunt laid me up for 9 months!  I didn’t listen to the warning signs!  I was 53 years old…I hadn’t exercised in 4 months due to the hip surgery and I jumped in a court and put major stress on a tendon that wasn’t ready  for it.  That was an example of my competitiveness getting me in trouble.

Fast forward to today as I limp around the house with a very painful and tender right achilles that I can’t put any weight on.  How long I will be laid up I have no clue but it sure puts a cramp on my running and brings back painful memories of 9 years ago.  The lesson to be learned however, is what do we do when these “speed bumps” show up on our life’s journey.  We all suffer them from time to time.  How we deal with them is the challenge.   As far as my aerobic exercise goes, I will switch to swimming or the stationary bike which won’t stress the achilles and will give it time to heal.   It’s like boxing.  We have to be able to “stick and move!”  When a roadblock occurs we need to be flexible enough to head in a different direction.   Our yardstick measuring our success should not be the end result, but rather, the things we are doing along the way.

Set performance goals and not results goals!

The problem with results goals is that if something happens that is beyond our control it can keep us from reaching the result we had planned on.  Performance goals, on the other hand, are totally dependent on our own efforts which we CAN control.  For example, if I were a salesperson that made my living by door to door selling and I had set a certain goal for number of sales made this month, I would find myself failing to reach my goal this month because I can’t walk.  That might be very discouraging if I measure my sales success only by my results.  On the other hand, if one of my goals each month was to make sure that I never short-changed a customer and gave a complete presentation to every one of them, I would be in complete control of that goal no matter how many customers I talked to.   As far as my aerobics goes, my goal is to get my heart pumping 30 minutes, 6 days a week.  That is a performance goal that only I can control!  Although my injury has taken away the running, I still have other options that are in my control.  If my goal, on the other hand, had been to run 20 miles a week I would have failed and possibly gotten discouraged. 

Goal setting, like life, is about the journey and not the destination.   It’s the choices we make and the things we do.  Make sure you are doing the things that you can control….. as well as you can do them….. each and every moment of the day and, believe it or not,  everything else will take care of itself. 

PS.  I need your help!!  What can I do to make my blog better and what more can I do to advertise it?  I will cherish  your comments and/or advice.  Let me know.  Thanks for sharing some of your valuable time with me!  Rick

Remember the movie,  “CITY SLICKERS” with Billy Crystal and Jack Palance?  Remember on the cattle drive when Jack Palance’s character Curly holds up his forefinger and says “The key to life is just one thing!”  Well, A few days ago I received a gift of the book, “THE LAW OF ATTRACTION”  by Esther and Jerry Hicks and I now know that “one thing” and am ready to pass the secret on to you.   First, allow me to say that what has struck me most in reading this great book is how similar the Law of Attraction principles are to the more common principles of goal setting.

For those of you who don’t know, the Law of Attraction says,  “that which is like unto itself, is drawn.”   In other words, we receive those things in life, good or bad, that we think about most.  I thought that goal setting is based on the very same concept. 

Why do people with goals succeed in life…and people without them fail?

Well, let me share something with you that can alter your life immediately.  If you understand it totally like Curly did, your life will never be the same from this moment on.  You won’t see everyone else having all the good luck because if you understand what I am going to share with you, you’ll suddenly find that good luck just seems to be attracted to you also.  You will find that the things you want will just seem to fall in line and from now on you won’t have the problems, the worries, the gnawing lump of anxiety that we have all experienced before.   Doubt, anxiety and fear will be things of the past.

Here is the key to success and the key to failure that Curly was alluding to:

  We become and achieve what we think about most!

Throughout all history, the great wise men and teachers, philosophers, and prophets have disagreed with one another on many different things.  It is only on this one point that they are in complete and unanimous agreement.

Consider what Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”

Benjamin Disraeli said this: “Everything comes if a man will only wait. I have brought myself by long meditation to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson said this: “A man is what he thinks about all day long.”

Well, it’s pretty apparent, isn’t it? And I will bet that every person who discovered this believed (for a while) that he was the first one to work it out.

We become what we think about.

So whether it is called goal setting or the Law of Attraction, the principles are exactly the same.  What we think and focus on most defines who we are and our station in life.  Thanks, Curly!

Have a great day! Rick

PS.  I need your help!!  What can I do to make my blog better and what more can I do to advertise it?  I will cherish  your comments and/or advice.  Let me know.  Thanks for sharing some of your valuable time with me!  Rick

This is not really a new post but more of an update.  In my article of Feb. 16th, I said that I hit a landmark weight of 180lbs which was a loss of 16 lbs in 9 weeks!  Today after my workout I was 177 3/4 which is another 2 pound loss in the last 10 days!  Overall, my average has been 1.8 pounds per week since I started my program!  What is really encouraging is that the loss has been  pure fat because the weight training I have been doing has been adding muscle which weighs more than fat.   All the experts say that losing between 1 and 2 pounds per week is a great target for weight loss and one that is very doable for anybody.  

 Just think….if I keep up this weekly rate of weight loss  I will weigh NOTHING, ZERO, ZIP, NADA in a little over 98 weeks from now!  Seriously,  I am going to start maintaining my weight when I hit a trim and slim, lean and mean 175.

  I think the best part of this last 10 weeks has been that I have been doing it all in the dead of one of worst midwest winters in recent memory.  We woke up to 5 new inches of snow this morning which has almost become a regular expectation around here.Don’t you wish you were here!   Have a great day, Rick