What is selling? In its simplest terms, selling is the process of helping a person to conclude that your product or service is of greater value to him than the price you are asking for.

How Markets Work
Our market society is based on the principles of freedom and mutual benefit. Each party to a transaction only enters into it when he feels that he will be better off as a result of the transaction than he would be without it.

The Three Options
In a free market, the customer always has three options with any purchase decision. First, the customer can buy your product or service. Second, the customer can buy the product or service from someone else. Third, the customer can decide to buy nothing at all.

Convincing the Customer
For the customer to buy your particular product or service, he or she must be convinced that it is not only the best choice available but he must also be persuaded that there is no better way for him to spend the equivalent amount of money. Your job as a salesperson is to convince the customer that all these conditions exist and then to elicit a commitment from him to take action on your offer.

Customize Your Sales Presentation
The field of professional selling has changed dramatically since World War II. In a way, selling methodologies are merely responses to customer requirements. At one time, customers were relatively unsophisticated and poorly informed about their choices. Salespeople catered to this customer with carefully planned and memorized sales presentations, loads of enthusiasm and a bag full of techniques designed to crush resistance and get the order at virtually any cost.

Treat Them With Respect
But the customer of the 1950s has matured into the customer of the 21st century. Customers are now more intelligent and knowledgeable than ever before. They are experienced buyers and they have interacted with hundreds of salespeople. They are extremely sophisticated and aware of the incredible variety of products and services that are available to them, as well as their relative strengths and weaknesses of those products. Many of them are smarter and better educated than most salespeople and they are far more careful about making a buying decision of any kind.

The Need For Speed
In addition, they are overwhelmed with work and under-supplied with time. Because of the rapidly increasing pace of change, down-sizing, restructuring and the competitive pressures surrounding them, customers today are harried and hassled. They are swamped with responsibilities, impatient, suspicious, critical, demanding, and spoiled. To sell to today's customer requires a higher caliber of sales professional than has ever before been required. And it is only going to become tougher and more complicated in the months and years ahead.

The only real measure of business leadership is results. This requires the ability to act boldly with no guarantees of success. The greatest obstacle to overcome is fear of the unknown.

The Key to Confidence
Most fear however, is rooted in ignorance. The more knowledge or skill you have in any area, the less fear it holds. Napoleon Bonaparte is considered by historians to be perhaps the greatest single military leader who ever lived. More than 100,000 books have been written about him since his death on St. Helena.

Pay Attention to Detail
Napoleon's courage was legendary but it was not vain or impetuous. Napoleon was famous for his fastidious attention to detail, for taking pains to study and thoroughly understand every military situation he ever faced. He led the French army in hundreds of minor and major engagements and lost only three, the last one being Waterloo. The more you know about what you face, the lower your level of ignorance, the more courage and confidence you will have naturally. The more time you take to think through a situation, the more capable you will be of dealing with it when it arises. Napoleon planned for every contingency.

Think About the Possibilities
He carefully considered and followed through to its natural conclusion every setback or possibility of defeat he might encounter and then he prepared against it. To be caught unprepared for unexpected setbacks is a mark of weak leadership. Confidence comes from the constructive use of pessimism, thinking about what could go wrong long before it does.

Action Exercises
Here are two ways you can apply Napoleon's strategy to your situation.

First, become an expert in your field. Never stop learning and growing. The more you know, the more confidence you will have.

Second, get the facts. Double check everything. Be prepared for unexpected setbacks and reversals. The more prepared you are, the more confidence you will have.


By: Brian Tracy

Want to make more money, get more enjoyment from your work and have a more enthusiastic, successful team?

For many people in management positions, their dreams are on permanent hold, while they struggle to encourage their team and build their sales force. They work for a “boss” 40-60 hours a week and at the end of the year, what do they have? A lot of stress and little time or energy to enjoy the rest of your life.

The key to success is to stay on top of trends â?" especially ones that are absolutely free to use, but will still generate tons of new clients. Do you know what the current trends are that are bringing in boatloads of cash?

1. To Make Money You Need Social Currency

Over the last few years, both the economy and the way people communicate have changed. And the new currency is your social network. It’s the people who know you, like you and trust you.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re managing a team of 500, starting a business or looking to scale up your already successful business. Your biggest competitive advantage is the same thing.

It’s the number and strength of relationships you have with friends, employees, prospects, clients and suppliers. And the more social currency you have, the more people know, like and trust you, which means the more money you’ll make.

The equation is simple:

More Social Currency = More Monetary Currency (money in the bank)

Let’s face it. The bigger your social network, the easier it is to get clients and to grow your business. In case, you missed it, it’s called social media marketing.

2. Everyone Can Benefit From Increased Social Currency

It used to be if you wanted to get started in business or grow your business you could do some direct mailing, use the yellow pages or even use telemarketing.

That’s all changed and social media is where you want to be if you want to get results and see your income grow. That’s what BlendTec did to increase it’s blender sales by 500%, and even Domino's Pizza did to see their pre-tax profits surge by 29%?

And guess how Starbucks attracted one million customers in one day, and Dell Computer generated a $3 million bump in sales and Coffee Groundz increased sales by 20-30%?

Yes these smart businesses used social media to leapfrog their competition, which is exactly what you can do too.

3. Only A Few Will Prosper

Now before you go away thinking I’m telling you that social media is a cure all or an instant way for anyone to get rich, I want to be clear.

Thousands of people are trying to build their social currency, and 94% are wasting their time. They are trying to figure this new communication medium out on their own.

Big mistake!

Social Media and the social currency it creates is the secret weapon that can give you an unfair advantage but I want to tell you straight up, like anything new, it’s gotten a lot of hype and I know for a fact that lots of companies have poured a ton of time and money into trying to increase their social currency and achieved little. 

It’s been like a black hole for them, while a few others have used it successfully to see their income soar.

Which is why when I heard that my colleague, Charlie Cook had lined up eight of the top experts in social media, the ones who have succeeded in creating social currency and converting it into millions, and had persuaded these top experts to reveal how they did it I was delighted. It was just what I needed and now that I’ve reviewed it, I wanted to share it with you.

4. Success Isn’t An Accident

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot of things, but one of the most important lessons I learned years ago was that success isn’t an accident. It doesn’t just happen by chance. As a leader, there are clear goals you can take and actionable steps you should follow.

The same is true with social media marketing. If you want to succeed, it’s not going to happen by accident.

If you want to be truly successful, you can’t just wait and hope. And it doesn’t pay to reinvent the wheel and figure out what works on your own.

To be successful you need to find out who are the smartest most successful people online who are willing to share their knowledge of what works with you. The person I turn to for online advice is Charlie Cook. And in this case he’s tapped the top social media experts in the world to show you what works.

Here's an exercise for you; imagine that it's possible for you to earn ten times your current annual wage. If you're earning $25,000, imagine for a moment that it's possible for you to earn $250,000, a 1000% increase.

Don't Sell Yourself Short
The first reaction of most people to that exercise is to smile briefly and then to begin thinking about why it isn't possible. One man said to me, "If you knew how many years it's taken for me to get to what I'm earning today you wouldn't be suggesting that I could earn ten times as much."

Never A Good Excuse
Mark Twain once wrote that there are a thousand excuses for every failure but never a good reason. The tragedy of the average American is that whereas his or her main preoccupation seems to be money, or the lack thereof, the average person has the inherent potential to earn far more than he or she is doing currently.

Is the manager earning $250,000 per year ten times as smart as the manager earning $25,000? 10 times as experienced? Does he or she work 10 times harder? Of course not. None of these are physically or mentally possible, but there are people in every business earning many times more than others with the same average age, experience and intelligence.

The Results Are In
In fact, a few years ago in New York, a thousand men and women were selected at random and tested for I.Q. Between the one having the highest I.Q. in this sample and the one with the lowest, there was a difference of only 2 1/2 times. But between the person earning the most, who by the way, was not the one with the highest I.Q. and the one earning the least, who was not the one with the lowest I.Q., there was a difference of 100X in income.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to start increasing your earnings.

First, identify the highest earning, most successful people in your field and find out what it is that they are doing differently from others who aren't doing as well. Copy them every day.

Second, set a goal to double your earnings over the next two or three years and then figure out how to accomplish that goal.

Everyone wants to be popular with others. You want to be liked and respected among your friends, family, and associates. Above all, you want to like and respect yourself, and to feel yourself to be a valuable and important person. Fortunately, everything you do that makes other people feel good about themselves makes you feel good about yourself as well. You can actually improve the way you feel by making other people feel important. This is the key to great personal relationships. 

The Easiest Way
The first need that each person has is for acceptance. Whenever you express unconditional acceptance of another person, his or her self-esteem goes up. The person feels valuable and important as a unique and special individual. 

An Attitude of Gratitude
The need for appreciation is a deep subconscious desire of every person you meet. When you satisfy this need, you will become one of the most popular people in your world. And what is the key to expressing gratitude and appreciation? Simple. Just say, "thank you" on every occasion. 

The Deepest Craving of All
Perhaps the deepest emotional need that people have is the desire for praise and approval. Each person is deeply affected by the quality and quantity of approval they get from others, especially others who they respect very much. 

Looking Good
Another way to build self-esteem in others, and to make them feel important, is to express admiration on every occasion. Make it a policy to admire people for their accomplishments, behaviors, possessions, and personality traits. 

Practice "White Magic"
This means practice listening closely to others when they are talking. It is one of the most powerful self-esteem building behaviors of all. Whenever you listen attentively to another, their heart rate speeds up. They feel happier and more valuable. They like and respect you more as a result. The more you listen closely to another person, the more that person feels that you are important and valuable as well. 

Four Keys to Listening
The keys to effective listening are simple. First, listen attentively, without interrupting. Second, pause before replying. Don't rush in with whatever is on your mind. Third, questions for clarification by asking, "how do you mean?" Finally, feed it back in your own words. 

The Great Design
As Aristotle said, "Man is a social animal." We live our lives within the context of our relationships with others. The more and better relationships we have, the happier and busier we are. The more you stay involved with other people, the longer you will live and the more enjoyable will be those years. 

Action Exercise
Pick out the person that you like the least that you deal with on a day to day basis. Next time you see that person admire something about them. You can comment on their dress, grooming, work or even their possessions. You will be surprised how differently that person will react to you in the future. 

Competition is a fact of business life, regardless of whether you work for an organization or for yourself. Price setting (either as a part of salary negotiation or a marketing strategy) is a good example. How would you answer this question: Who determines the prices you charge or the salary level you set for yourself? Would you point to your level of sales or your market share, or perhaps your years of experience? Many people would say that their customer or employees set the prices. Others would insist that they set their own prices. In fact, all of these are key determinants of your ultimate professional or business success. 

Marketplace Competition
But the primary determinant is none of the factors mentioned above; it is actually your competition in the marketplace that sets your prices. You have competition whether your company sells its goods and services in the open market, or inside an organization where you are competing for advancement or scarce resources. For this reason, it is essential to thoroughly research your competitors and know them as well as you know yourself. 

Don't Dismiss Your Competition
Many people in a competitive market situation make the mistake of dismissing the competition. The smart competitor does not look down on the competition, find fault with them, criticize them, or make light of them. She respects her successful competitors and makes it her business to study and learn from them.

Look for Opportunities
How do you find a new product or service, recognizing that 80 percent or more will be new in five years? Here's a series of ideas. Number one, begin with yourself. Begin with your own talents, your abilities, your experience, knowledge, interest, background, education, and so on. Look carefully at your current work, your current business, your current position, or your current product or service. Seek for what is called your own acres of diamonds. Look under your own feet.

Look Into Yourself
Here's a question. What qualities account for your greatest successes in life so far? What personal qualities and abilities have gotten you to where you are? And how could you apply those qualities and abilities to starting and building a new business?

If you already have a company, ask what are your companies' talents, abilities, experience, knowledge, interest, background, and so on. What qualities and talents and abilities have enabled your company to succeed up to now? Where can you specialize? Where can you make a difference?

Identify What You Really Enjoy
Number two is look for a product or service about which you can really become enthusiastic. Sometimes people become wealthy by translating or transforming their hobbies into a business. You will be most successful doing something or marketing something that you really love.

Every product must have a champion. Every product or service must have someone in the business who really, really loves the product or service and is eager to get out and tell other people about it.

Improve On Something Else
Number three, look for something that is an improvement on an existing product or service, not something brand new. Look for something that's cheaper or better quality. Or that has additional features or functions. Look for something that's an improvement.

Remember improving an existing successful product or service is the fastest and surest way to build a successful business. An idea only needs to be ten percent new and better to capture substantial market share. Brand new products or services are very risky.

Be Willing to Work Hard
The fourth key to finding a new product or service is this. Don't look for easy money. Don't look for gimmicks or useless knickknacks. Don't look for get-rich-quick schemes or rewards without working, because they're aren't any.

More people have wasted more time and more life and more money trying to find quick ways to make easy money than you can possibly imagine. So be willing to put in a lot of hard work before you start making real money in a business.

Success Takes Time
It takes two years to break even in the average business. It takes four years to show a profit. It takes maybe eight to ten years before it starts to generate real cash flow. So you have to be patient. If you're impatient, what will happen is you'll end up setting yourself further back than you can imagine.


By: Brian Tracy

Goal Setting Success
Yet, for all the initial enthusiasm, keeping yourself motivated, committed and moving toward the accomplishment of your goals, is often tough. Tired of setting goals and making resolutions which fade fast from your daily thoughts and actions? Consider adopting some or all of these tips to experience awesome success in accomplishing your goals and living your resolutions.

The Goal Is Yours – You Own the Goal
Whether the goal is a promotion at work, a streamlined work process, a new customer, a published article, an exercise program or weight loss, the goal must be your goal. You are unlikely to achieve your manager’s goal, your spouse’s goal or the goal you think you “ought” to work on this year. Your goals must generate excitement when you ponder their accomplishment. You must believe there is something in it for you to accomplish them.

Sometimes, especially at work, if you perceive the end reward is worth the work, you will take on challenges in support of the organization’s goals. These goals might not be as close to your heart as your personal goals, but you work to achieve them for the good of the organization and your success there.

Base Your Goals Firmly in Your Values
Hyrum Smith, the founder of Franklin Quest, later Franklin-Covey, Inc., developed a model for goal setting. Smith's "Success Triangle" puts governing values at the base of the goal setting process. Smith recommends that every goal is linked specifically to a governing value. For example, if diversity in the workforce is a value espoused by your organization, then at least one goal must further diversity. Every goal should be linked to a governing value.

Short-term, mid-term and long-term goals are then established based upon the solid foundation of your values. If the goal you set is congruent with and allows you to live your most important values, you are more likely to accomplish the goal.

According to Gene Donohue, of TopAchievement.com, set goals in all aspects of your life, to maintain your life balance. The balance also helps you accomplish goals as each aspect of your life is represented in your goals. You are less likely to experience warring priorities if every aspect of your life has a value-based goal. He suggests goals in these arenas.

• Family and Home
• Financial and Career
• Spiritual and Ethical
• Physical and Health
• Social and Cultural
• Mental and Educational

Believe You Can Accomplish the Goal
Each of us has a little voice in our head. It is the voice of our sub-conscious, judging self. On a daily basis, we engage in self-talk; we comment on each situation we encounter. We discuss events and plans in our minds. Our commentary is both positive and negative. Positive thoughts and planning support the accomplishment of our goals. Negative thoughts and comments undermine our self-esteem and self-confidence, and negatively impact our ability to accomplish our goals.

Listen to your voice. You can change its tone by believing in yourself and in your ability to accomplish your goals and resolutions. Use this unconscious critic to positively support your goal setting success.

If you are a manager, one of your more important tasks is to support the development of positive self-esteem by your staff members. Your positive outlook and belief in their ability to accomplish great goals fosters their increased self-esteem and self-confidence. This, in turn, magnifies their ability to accomplish more and contribute more to your business.

Paint a Vivid Outcome
Traditionally, goals were established around measurable outcomes. This works well when the outcomes are measurable. Don’t tie yourself to setting only measurable goals, however; you may find yourself concentrating on the trivial, because it is measurable, rather than on your most important outcomes. Sometimes the most important goals, the non-urgent, critical goals, are hard to measure.

“Explore alternatives for a business in the World Wide Web,” is tough to measure, whereas the steps, once you make a decision, are easy to measure. “Learn about new options and thinking around performance management,” is tough to measure in any significant way. The next step, “design a new appraisal system,” is easier to define and measure.

As you move up the management ranks, you may find more of your goals are harder to measure. The key measurable aspects of your job will likely be the results produced by your reporting staff.

With goals that are hard to measure, start with a picture in your mind, that you commit to paper, that describes the outcome you are seeking. Make the picture as vivid as you can. I have a published book in my mind, while I am still thinking about and exploring potential topics.

Write Your Goals
Writing out your goal is your commitment to achieving the goal. Writing a goal is a powerful statement in comparison with half-formulated thoughts in the back of your mind. It is the conscious promise to yourself to pay attention to the accomplishment of the goal. Writing out potential action plans and due dates makes the goal even more powerful.

Share Your Goals With People Who Are Important to You
If you are certain your significant others will support the accomplishment of your goals, share them. Your manager is likely to support your goal accomplishment as your success is her success. Honestly assess the ability of family members, peers and friends to provide support. In close relationships, many different feelings, experiences and historical events are at play. If you don’t believe you will have whole-hearted support, keep the goals to yourself.

Check Goal Setting and Achievement Progress Regularly
One of the weaknesses of any annual appraisal system is the lack of frequency with which progress and success are measured and tracked. You are most likely to accomplish the goals you set if you review them daily as part of your normal planning process. (You do have a normal planning process, don’t you?)

Whether you use a paper planner or a hand held computer, you can enter your goals, and schedule daily and weekly actions that support their accomplishment. The discipline of the daily review is a powerful goal accomplishment tool.

Take Action to Identify and Eliminate Obstacles to Goal Setting SuccessSimply tracking your goals daily is not enough. If you’re unhappy with your progress, you need to assess what is keeping you from accomplishing the goals. Ask yourself questions such as, “Is this goal really important?” (If not, why did you pledge to accomplish it; maybe it’s not important, or less important than other goals.)

”Are there specific obstacles you are experiencing which are interfering with your ability to accomplish the goal?” (In this case, make action plans to remove the obstacles or seek help from a co-worker, friend or family member.)

If you are not making progress on a particular goal, attempt to do a root cause analysis to determine why. Only by honestly analyzing your lack of progress can you determine steps to take to change this picture. In this era of the hand-held computer and PDA cell phones, picture your goals automatically forwarding for 365 days. Talk about a daily reminder about failure!

Reward Yourself and Celebrate Goal Accomplishment
Even the accomplishment of a minor goal is cause for celebration. Don’t depress yourself with thoughts about all you still have to do. Celebrate what you have done. Then move on to the next milestone.

Goals Change
Periodically look at the goals you have set for this year. Are the goals still the right goals? Give yourself permission to change your goals and resolutions based on changing circumstances.

Don’t spend an entire year failing to achieve a particular goal. Your time is better spent on achievement than on beating yourself up for lack of progress. Maybe you made the goal too big; maybe you set too many goals. Do an honest assessment; change what needs to change periodically, and move on.

Paying attention to these ten guidelines can make all the difference in your year. Will this year be a year of triumph for you, a year of awesome success? Whatever your goals and resolutions, these tips can help power your success.
By Susan M. Heathfield

Build Your Own Business
The high road to becoming a self-made millionaire in America is starting and building your own business. But this is not as easy as it sounds. Most businesses started by inexperienced people fail.

Probably the primary reason why people don't start businesses is because they're afraid that they're going to lose their money and for good reason. 99 percent of businesses started by people lacking business experience fail within the first two or three years.

Why Businesses Fail
And why is that? It's because they don't know how to succeed. They haven't the slightest idea how to make a business successful. They may have an idea for a product or service, but they don't know all the things that they need to know to run a successful business.

Why Businesses Succeed
However, surprisingly enough, 80 percent of businesses started by experienced businesspeople succeed. Now why should this be so? The reason is because experienced businesspeople know what to do. They know how to purchase their products and their services. They know how to negotiate with their suppliers. They know how to raise money. They know how to negotiate leases. They know how to sell and to market. They know how to manage their finances. In other words, experience is the key. In order to start your own business and succeed, you have to learn how.

Competence Makes the Difference
Now according to Dunn and Bradstreet, 96 percent of businesses in America that fail, fail because of what is called "managerial incompetence". Managerial incompetence means that the people running the businesses don't know what they're doing. And here are the two critical areas of managerial incompetence that cause business failure.

First is sales and marketing. 48 percent of businesses that fail in America fail because the business cannot sell enough of its products or services. Very few businesses fail when they have high levels of sales and revenues coming in.

Control Your Costs
The second reason that businesses fail, 46 percent, is because of poor cost control. They may be selling enough on the front end, but they're losing so much on the back end that they go broke anyway. Sales and marketing, financing and cost control, both require experience. And if you're serious about becoming financially independent, you have to learn how to do both of these.

Put Luck On Your Side
You must learn the skills you need to be successful. Business success is not a matter of luck. Business success is a matter of application. It's a matter of ability. It's a matter of experience and skill and intelligence, and wonderfully enough, you can learn what you need to know to be successful. And you can start by learning through on-the-job training, which is called OJT. Most successful businesspeople become successful because they get all their training by working for someone else.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to make sure that your business succeeds greatly:

First, take the time to get the knowledge and experience you need in business by working for someone else where you can learn a lot in a short period of time. Go to work in an area in which you are interested and learn everything you possibly can.

Second, read and study in business, especially entrepreneurial business, all the time. Read one or two business books per week and read every business magazine that is published on your subject. Never stop learning and growing.
Source: Brian Tracy