What makes you smile? What changes your mood?

Your attitude Picture this: Just landed at JFK airport after an eight-hour flight from London. Me, Jessica, and Gabrielle, our one-year old daughter.

Gabrielle is already a seasoned flyer. Atlantic Ocean twice, Pacific Ocean three times, and on her maiden voyage to Europe, she collected six stamps on her passport. She made the London to New York flight whimper free, and now faces a three-hour layover to catch yet another flight home, to Charlotte, North Carolina.

We take the AirTrain from terminal four to terminal seven, and go through security again, not really looking forward to the three-hour wait.

NOTE: When you fly a lot, you can’t complain about jet lag. Over the years, I have created my own philosophy about time zones: I’m in my own time zone. When I land, it’s either daytime or nighttime. I make a mental adjustment to the time of day, and when I do, physical seems to follow.

Anyway, we get to terminal seven, hungry, and we are looking around for some tasty, overpriced food. We spot something that looks edible at one of those fresh made sandwich places.

I go up to the counter and spy a cut open avocado on the back counter. I get an egg salad sandwich, Jessica gets a ham and cheese sandwich, and I ask the woman who is serving us if we could please purchase some avocado to give to Gabrielle. “We don’t sell avocado!” she barked.

I challenged her a couple of times, and although there was an avocado cut wide open on the counter behind her, she stuck fiercely to her guns in a typical, New York, it’s my way or the highway, manner: without a smile, matter of fact, if you don’t like it go someplace else.

She walked away.

Another woman behind the counter, who witnessed the avocado exchange, and maybe felt empathy for the cute baby in my arms, came over to me and said, “Why don’t I make you an avocado sandwich?” “Great!” I said, “Thank you!”

She smiled, and in a minute and half had cut the entire avocado up, placed it between two slices of bread, and wrapped it.

I looked at the wrapper. It read, “three cheese sandwich.” The woman smiled at me and said, “We don’t actually sell avocado. This will help you with the cashier.”

I paid, sat down at our table, ate my sandwich, Jessica ate her sandwich, and we fed the baby. I went back to the counter to thank the woman again, and hand her a ten-dollar bill. She smiled at me, almost in tears, and said, “Thank you” as she looked me in the eye.

I love the exchange of random acts of kindness.

Meanwhile, our plane home is delayed another hour; the airport is full of people, mostly New York people, mostly New York people with an attitude that’s compounded by flight delay.

Finally we board. Because we have the baby, we board first. Sitting in row one, Jessica immediately straps in Gabrielle’s car seat, gets her DVD player rolling, and places the player between Gabrielle’s legs. Sesame Street begins to play, Gabrielle’s legs are now positioned above the player, and she looks about as laid back as humanly possible with red headphones on, bouncing and grooving to the Sesame Street sounds of, “Who are the people in your neighborhood?”

I am positioned across the aisle in seat 1D, so I can see people boarding the plane. As they’re boarding, every single person is looking glum, either angry at the delay, prices in the airport, or the world. As each passenger turns the corner to find their seat, they look at Gabrielle and immediately begin to smile. If two people are traveling together they begin to smile, point, and talk. “Look at that cute kid watching a movie!” They stop to revel in Gabrielle’s joy.

For the next 11 minutes, every single person who boarded the plane stopped, smiled, pointed, and even commented to total strangers.

Gabrielle, in her innocence, and being herself, had changed the mood of the entire plane. Even the flight attendants were marveling, and people were actually taking pictures.

What mood are you in? What changes your mood? How easy is it for you to go from good to bad, or bad to good?

Most people who are rarely in a good mood, don’t realize that they have a choice. Little Gabrielle created a rare opportunity to change 137 moods in an instant. And I’m challenging you, that in these economic times, everyone occasionally needs a mood change. Find yours, and employ it to trigger a better mood - even a great mood in an instant. e?

Are You Using an

Online Community to Help You

Manifest Abundance?

In the new energies that are emerging, especially through the social networks enabled by the internet, there is less and less separation among individuals. In these new networks, businesses delight in their clients/customers and joyfully engage with them in a mutually beneficial, respectful and upbeat way.

Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and Ning are all social networks that are great to use when connecting with your clients/customers. These social networks all either have groups you can join or

you can start your own.

These are places to share your knowledge with others that want to hear what you have to say. By interacting here you are showing your VOC’s (Vibrationally Called Ones) that you care and are interested in what they want to tell you. This is a way to grow your business and show your personality.

You are allowing your VOC’s to get to know, like and trust you and you are building a relationship and Transforming Selling into Serving.

Relationship building is what social media is all about. It is a way to share what you know and get to know the people that are interested in you. It is a way to shine your personality through to people that you may otherwise not be in contact with.

You want to be sure you keep building relationships and interacting. This is how you will find out what your VOC’s are seeking so you can help solve their problem. Really listen to what people are saying. Watch what is being posted and help them out when applicable or lead them to a source that you find valuable that you think can serve them in some way.

This is a way to manifest abundance in your business. Abundance of clients AND money.

Look through eyes of love at the people interacting with you on your social networks and you will be amazed at all the new opportunities you will find!

"Resistance is thought transformed into feeling. Change the thought that creates the resistance, and there is no more resistance."

Robert Conklin

Six Ways to Turn a "No" Into "Yes
By John Forde

"By focusing obsessively on how to make an idea smooth," says marketing maven Seth Godin, "You can dramatically increase its velocity."

But let me ask you...

What good is a juggernaut of a marketing idea if it's headed straight for a brick wall of buyer resistance?

It's common for even experienced marketers to leave the overcoming of buyer resistance almost to chance. "Push benefits, and they will buy." "Load up on premiums, and they will buy." "Turn cattle prod to stun, and they will buy..."

But make no mistake. Not only is that often not enough... the truth is that even good buyers come to you with hidden doubts. Fail to address them head on and you may fail to sell.

The good news is, once you identify those objections and set out to overcome them, one by one, you could be looking at your next breakthrough sales promotion.

A while back, I read an article in Inside Direct Mail by copywriter Dean Rieck.

Dean wrote: "Selling is simply offering the right product to the right people at the right time in the right way... you aren't forcing your customer to say yes, you're taking away his reasons to say no."

For most writers-in-training, that's a revelation.

Selling is not brilliant creative. It's not trickery.

It's not even brute force.

In fact, your customer -- if you chose him right -- wants to buy. The question at stake is whether or not he wants to buy from you...

Imagine that you just called your prospect during dinner. He answers. You start reading your sales pitch over the phone. What happens next?

You can imagine.

Even if you've called the right prospect, he doesn't want to talk to you. He doesn't have time to talk to you. His soup, my friend, is getting cold.

"No, no, no," he says. What would you have to say to get him to say "yes"? Studies show that if you can get a prospect to say "yes" to anything -- even a question about the weather -- they're more receptive to what follows.

But this is a cheap tactic, don't you think?

Far better is a targeted, personal reversal of the negative replies. A strategy that turns every objection into another selling opportunity. What might that entail?

With every product, there's an infinite permutation of objections. Here are just a few general examples:

• If your prospect says "It's not for me..."

This might just mean you have to target your message more carefully. Selling to the wrong audience wastes money. So does selling to the right audience with the wrong message. Dean Rieck -- in the article mentioned earlier -- called this "The Identification Barrier."

Opportunity: Show the reader testimonials from people like him. Or paint a picture of the person the prospect wants to be and show the idealized person using your product. Also, make sure you're targeting a specific audience. Overly wide appeals fall flat.

• If your prospect says, "I don't have time to read your offer..."

He's really saying that he's bored. And he doesn't see enough immediate benefit to go on reading your promotion.

But the truth is, we make time for interesting things. War and Peace, for example, at well over a thousand pages, has held many a reader.

Opportunity: Find the hook. Open with a benefit or jump right into telling a story. When the going gets interesting, people hang on to find out how things end. Quizzes, checklists, and fresh news keep readers involved too.

• If your prospect says, "It's more than I'd like to spend..."

Remember, it's never about price. It's about value.

When a prospect says your prices are too high, he's really telling you that the value of your product sounds too low. It doesn't have enough benefit to get him to pay the asking price.

Opportunity: Find services like yours that cost more and build a comparison. Sweeten the deal with better premiums. Put a value on the results of your service and compare them more closely to the cost.

• If your prospect says, "I don't know who you are..."

He's really telling you he needs to trust you and wants to see your credentials. Testimonials and track record are obvious solutions. But there are some others...

Opportunity: Try answering questions like these: Where do you do business and why? Who are your clients, especially your famous ones? Where did you get your training, learn your trade, and hone your craft? Give some success stories. Have you won awards or seals of approval?

• If your prospect says, "I've heard all this before..."

He's telling you to fix your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). How do you stand out in a crowd? You need to give him proof.

Opportunity: Check out your competition. Compare offers and make yours stronger. Offer a stronger guarantee. Look for ways your product or service out-paces, out-builds, or out-races your competitor's product or service.

• If your prospect says, "I'd rather take some time to think about it..."

Your prospect is not feeling the urgency of your offer.

Opportunity: Small issue -- layout. Bold colors like red and dark blue and bright yellow are more urgent than brown and orange and pastels. A much bigger issue the wording of your offer and close. Is there a deadline? If not, make one. Is the product scarce? Tell them. Is there a reward for early orders?

Even as a filtering device, making a list of possible prospect objections is useful. It can help you fill holes in your sales pitch. It can also help you SHRINK the pile of facts, figures, and other bits you've collected... so your message can focus on what counts.

In the end, what's the real benefit?

Knowing your prospect's potential objections gives you a better understanding of him... a better understanding of your product's benefits and how they relate to him...

Plus, it gives you much clearer opportunities to demonstrate your product's value... a test for holes in your arguments... and renewed confidence in what you're selling...

Frankly, wouldn't you have to be crazy to say "no" to all that?

Strongest relationships built in person, not online

By Bob Strasser The hottest topic around the media circuit continues to be social media. Everyone is discussing it, using it, hating it, loving it or simply trying to figure it out. Many of my friends spend hours each day texting information to each other. It may be a mixture of business, family, sports talk and gossip, but digital text spills out from their smart phones daily. The social media craze is big and getting even bigger among all social strata in America. My family is no exception. My wife, for instance, is a good example of a smitten woman. She was curious about Facebook, but resistant to embrace the idea of putting her life online. She aggressively fought off the urge to sign up for a long time. She would say, “It’s a waste of time,” or “These people who constantly go on these sites have too much free time on their hands.” Her curiosity, however, eventually got the best of her. I showed her my Facebook page and told her about all my friends who were connected to me, and that was all it took. Now she regularly visits Facebook sites of relatives, friends and neighbors – nearly everyone she has never met. She is not the exception when it comes to how social media has overtaken our country. Even former computer-phobic types have finally begun Twittering on their phones and computers. Most don’t share anything close to earth-shaking news, but they find great satisfaction sending messages about the day-to-day affairs of their lives. Business, including The Business Ledger, is embracing social media, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others. Businesses who haven not hopped on the social media bandwagon are now viewed as behind times. Facebook traffic has grown exponentially since it launched in February 2004. As of last month, there were over 500 million users. The business community was a bit slower than the general public to embrace Facebook, but that has changed. You now see Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter logo links all over the Internet, and advertisers include mention of their social media involvement in magazines, newspapers, TV, on product packaging – you name it. What does this phenomenal growth really mean for how we, as business owners and managers, communicate with other businesses and our clients? With this explosion of social media, are we becoming more social beings? I ask my colleagues and friends this question occasionally and I usually just get blank stares. They say, “What do you mean?” I then say, “Think about it for a minute, are the benefits of Facebook and Twitter worth the time you expend?” More often than not I hear, “I guess so” or “Everyone is using it and I don’t want my business left out.” Despite the fact social media includes the word social, is it really social? Or, to put in another way, does using social media in business make us more connected to each other? Does this connection lead to stronger business relationships? Will social networking replace tried and true business networking? Research on what effect social media has on personal and business relationships is still in its infancy. I did find one study that said, “According to a group of researchers at Korea's Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Twitter is not a very social network. After analyzing over 41 million user profiles and 1.47 billion follower/following relationships, the researchers concluded that only 22 percent of all connections on Twitter are reciprocal. On Flickr, this number is closer to 68 percent, and on Yahoo 360 it’s 84 percent. The large majority (78 percent) of connections between users on Twitter are one-way relationships.” From my own business experience based on years in publishing, face-to-face encounters still generate the strongest feelings and loyalties among businesses. I occasionally hear about companies that discover each other through social media, but much more often it is the face-to-face experience that leads them to do business together.

Give to Receive by Dan Jourdan You grown-ups are all hypocrites. How many times have you told your children (or been told as a child) that it is better to give than receive? Maybe a million? The statement falls out of your mouth at Christmas time so easily that you actually believe yourself for a while. That is until you go to your next networking event and sit in the corner with your friend complaining that you never get any leads at these lousy thing. Sound familiar? Yes, I am talking to you -- and I am right, aren’t I? The truth is that it is not your fault. You have never been taught the proper way to network or the reason to network. (Boy, are you lucky to have come across this article.) The first thing you must realize is that it is not the event…it’s you. You are the one that makes the event a successful experience or not. The mindset that you have going into the event will determine how well it turns out. Are you prepared? Have you thought about what you will say to a person that you meet? Have you ever heard yourself speak? How do you sound when you talk to someone? Have you ever recorded it just for fun? Or torture? You may be surprised or inspired to work on your craft. A networking event is for you to meet people. Not just people who can help you… but people… period. Your charge is to make a good first impression and to be remembered. Go to these events with the mindset of making new friends, and your success rate will go way up. Here are a few points to keep in mind when you are in the trenches: 1. Be ready with questions -- not answers. Ask people about them. Napoleon Hill made a fortune from taking interest in other people. You can too. 2. Be memorable. You must differentiate yourself from the crowd. Be the IT guy, the carpet guy, or the lady plumber. Your clothing or your actions should be a part of the show. Have a saying that you use all the time when you hand someone your card. “Keep this with you at all times for good luck” usually works to ingrain your face with the service. (On that point…your picture needs to be on your card!) 3. Go to events with the idea of giving leads. Your good deeds will go out to the world and come back to you in spades. Review your accounts before you go and figure out who needs help and in what areas. Then, when you find a person who can do the helping… pass them the name. Become a resource – and a welcomed and needed member of your community. The most important thing to remember is that networking is simply the act of making new friends. That happens more often before and after working hours. When you meet someone in the salad section of your local grocery store, it is very easy to start up a casual conversation…do it. See if you can help them. Then when they thank you with a surprised look on their face that you would help a stranger, you can tell them that it really is better to give than receive.

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

Victor Frankl

Discovering the "Role" You Play and How It Affects Your Reinvention

By Peter "The Reinvention Guy" Fogel

Did you see the HBO movie The Life and Death of Peter Sellers? Sellers was always transforming himself. The man slipped into a persona as easily as you or I would slip into a pair of gloves.

While watching the movie, I was reminded that, in today's turbulent and competitive job market, thousands of Americans reinvent themselves every day.

Many do it so they can move up in their careers.

And some have no choice but to reinvent themselves. Due to downsizing within their industry (unemployment, positions outsourced to Third World countries)... they are forced to chuck their old jobs and reinvent themselves into a brand-new career.

In both cases, reinvention gives people the opportunity to shed their skin and prosper -- with more purpose and control over their future.

So let's take a look at what reinvention can do for you.

Why You Want to Reinvent Yourself

Whether you work for someone else or are out on your own as an entrepreneur, reinvention allows you break the mold and change the perception society (your colleagues, bosses, friends, etc) has of you.

Best of all, it gives you a chance to stretch yourself and pursue interests that get you excited.

For close to two decades, I was a stand-up/improv comic, TV audience warm-up, and voice-over commercial actor.

Then, about 10 years ago, I chucked that life (for many reasons) and reinvented myself as a direct-mail copywriter.

Was it hard? Well, like anyone venturing into new territory, I had some doubts and challenges.

But by using the skills I'd acquired in show business to market myself -- skills that other copywriters didn't have -- I succeeded quickly in my new career.

And guess what? You can model that success with your own reinvention. You can take your past skills and adapt them to your new career.

I'm talking about skills that are unique to you. Skills that define you and announce to the world: I do this better than anyone else!

The first step is to examine the "roles" you currently play.

Roles? Yes! We all play roles, don't we? Especially when we want to persuade people to see our point of view... or get them to help us reach our goals.

What Characters Do YOU Play?

Notice the way you act toward your boss, your colleagues, your spouse. You're always having to "zig then zag" to persuade them to give you what you want -- or to accept you.

Notice that when you're with an old college chum you talk differently than, say, when you're with your daughter. Your history with people dictates your behavior with them.

Though you've certainly changed over the years, your buddy still remembers you as the guy who woke up naked with a hangover on the football field just as the marching band started practicing. (And, no -- that never happened to me... ever -- not even once. And you can't prove otherwise!)

But if you are going to reinvent yourself into a new career and new life, you might have to change the roles people now expect you to play.

New Career, New Beginning... or Is It?

Dan Kennedy, a successful marketer and copywriter, points out that we get comfortable in the roles we play every day. And though we might be unhappy with the way our life is going, the fear and trauma of stepping outside and changing our "characters" is worse than the pain of continuing to play them.

In other words: We feel comfortable in our own uncomfortable skin. We continue to look at a bad situation through rose-colored glasses... 'cause it's easier that way.

Dan says there are four self-defeating roles that people tend to perform to perfection.

The Victim (a.k.a. the Whiner): "Why me? Why is life sooooo unfair?"

The Martyr: "I gave up EVERYTHING for you!"

The Last Angry Man: "I'm mad as hell at everybody and everything!"

The Misunderstood Genius: "No one gets me... they don't appreciate what I have to offer."

And I came up with this one...

The Placater: "Oh, this is just temporary. If I keep banging my head against the wall... I'll either pass out or break through."

Now do any of those roles fit you? I know they have fit me -- and quite well, thank you. Especially in my former profession, show business, I loved playing The Placater.

There's a novel called The Line of Duty, written by Michael Grant.

In the book, a story is told about a fisherman who bought a new anchor for his boat. As he's about to tie the anchor line, he falls overboard. Fighting for his life in 15 feet of water, he refuses to let go of that prized anchor. But eventually, he has to release the anchor so he can swim to the surface and survive.

One of the characters in the book uses that story as a metaphor for his life. He says, "The job has been my anchor and I've held on to it for 23 years. I also don't let go, but I've run out of breath."

Well, show business was my anchor. But I was getting older. And though I was just as funny as I ever was (maybe funnier, he says modestly), the venues for earning a living -- and the lifestyle I wanted -- had dried up like a raisin in the sun. And no amount of hoping, praying, or trying to wait out the blizzard was going to change the situation.

So I had to let go of my anchor and commit to my reinvention. Once I did, a flood of prosperity rushed into my life. I then went on to success as a freelance advertising copywriter/marketing consultant/speaker (Yes, a lot of titles... you should see my business cards.)

What's your anchor? If you want to really reinvent yourself... you're going to have to let go of your anchor, recast yourself, and play the role that you were meant to play -- with your heart as your acting coach. (Yikes! Another metaphor!) And when you finally do, you'll smugly smile and say, "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!"

Wanna raise your percentage of sales success? Change your prospect.

Where are you on the percentage scale of sales?

How many out of ten can you close?

Well, Mr. or Mrs. Sales-Big-Shot, forget your percentage. It ain’t all that good anyway. If you want to raise it by 50% - you heard me, FIFTY percent - just change the TYPE of sale you’re making.

Huh?

The type of sale you make has more to do with why you’re making it, and who you’re making it with, than your fancy, manipulative, pushy closing techniques.

The old sales adage goes, all things being equal, people want to do business with their friends. And to that I respond: All things being not quite so equal, people STILL want to do business with their friends.

Well, let’s look behind that adage.

What are the “types” of sales call you can make? Last week I listed them and gave some insight as to why. This week I’m giving you the insight and the reality.

THE Lowest percentage: Cold call. Face it, the cold call is diminishing. Voicemail and security have taken away all the fun. Successful penetration is sporadic and there are MUCH better avenues of approach. PLUS, cold calling pisses people off.
Low percentage: Appointed sales call from a cold call. If you are lucky (or good) enough to have made an appointment someplace, this is okay, but still a low percentage based on the lack of qualification as to need. Hard work needed: There’s no real formula for cold call success, but you can be smart about it - calling at the right times, a bit of pre-call research, and a ton of personal preparation in both sales training and category selection.
Fair percentage: A response from an ad, or direct mail, or an unsolicited email campaign. Better than a cold call, but not by much. Most of these inquiries are about “how much?”
Semi-good percentage: Appointed sales call from a networking event or trade show. At least there has been some contact. You have a name, a card, and a person somewhat willing to take your call and make an appointment. Hard work needed: A networking plan and a 30-second personal commercial to qualify the prospect faster. Then there is the networking itself. Invest the time and work the plan. It will pay HUGE financial and personal dividends.
Pretty good percentage: A social media inquiry. A report card on your presence, or lack there of. These people are saying, “I follow you, and like what you have to say, and want to know more. This is the new cold call, you just haven’t figured it out yet.
Pretty good percentage: A web inquiry. Someone asking for more info from your website either on a web-call or a direct call is also a report card. It says your site is both interesting and navigable.
Pretty good percentage: An email blast to your existing customers. These are people who have already purchased. You have already established value and built confidence – maybe even some trust.
Good percentage: Proactive call from a prospect. Knows of you, interested, and wants more help. Can you convert?
Real good percentage: A referral from another customer. Should be a sale every time.
Real good percentage: An unsolicited referral. Hard work needed to get them: easy to convert once they call.
Highest percentage: Sale or reorder from a present customer they know you, like you, trust you believe in you and have confidence you’ll deliver. Hard work needed: Service between the sale. Stay in front of with value. Develop a relationship. Build trust through performance. Help them build their business. REALITY: None of this occurs making a cold call and running to the next.

Make the Sale! Three Surefire Ways to Avoid Communication Static

by Stacey Hanke

Most sales professionals are unaware of the static they create when they communicate. Not only does their static prevent them from influencing others to take action, they also run the risk of:

• Minimizing the perceptions clients create of them.
• Grabbing and keeping their clients attention.
• Communicating a message that's unclear and misunderstood.

What do I mean by static? When what you say isn't consistent with how you say it. For example; you're having a face-to-face conversation with your client and you say, "I'm so excited to have this opportunity to work with you." While you communicate this statement you sound boring with a monotone voice. Your facial expressions are lifeless. You never look your client in the eyes and you're fidgeting with your pen. Why should they believe you? Most likely they'll question your credibility, knowledge and not take action on what you have to say.

The purpose of this article is to increase your awareness of the static you may be creating for your clients and to give you practical, immediate skills you can apply when you're communicating face-to-face, over the phone or during a sales presentations.

1. PAUSE

Um, what perception, like, do you create, you know, when you hear, um, a sales professional using, uh, words that clutter, you know, their language? Knowledgeable, credible and confident probably don't come to mind.

These are non-words or filler words. As I travel the country, the number one challenge sales professionals need to overcome if they want to sell with influence, is the ability to replace their non-words with a pause. We use non-words to buy ourselves time to think about what we want to say. These words become distracting and your client misses your message. Instead, give your client time to hear, understand and absorb your message. Speak in shorter sentences to communicate a clear and concise message.

Benefits for You

• Think on your feet.
• Get to the point and avoid rambling.
• Hold your client's attention.
• Gain control over your message and how you communicate your message.

Benefits for Your Client

• Hear and understand your message.
• Act on what you say.

2. Eye Connection

When I met with a new client to help him enhance his ability to influence others, I asked him; "What do you feel are your selling strengths?" He responded, "Eye contact." As he responded his eyes were darting everywhere! Most sales professionals don't lock their eyes with their client long enough to create a relationship.

The only way to build a relationship is through trust. When you forget what to say, you will look at the ceiling, floor, PowerPoint slides or anywhere away from your client. When you disconnect you'll say: "uh" "um" "so" "and", etc. You communicate to your client you don't know what to say.

When speaking to more than two individuals, connect with one individual for a complete sentence or thought. Take a moment to pause as you transition your eyes from one individual to another.

3. Get to the Point

Stay focused. When you find yourself going down the path of saying too much and you begin to feel like a train about to derail, put the brakes on and get yourself back on track…PAUSE!

Keep your objective in mind. Think in terms of what your client needs to know rather than what you want to tell them.

Focus your message on no more than three significant points that will provide your client with value.

Pay attention to your listener. Are they hanging on your every word or are they dazed? Are they attentive or fidgeting?

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."

Les Brown

Mind Games: How to Program Yourself for Success
By Clayton Makepeace

The simple, objective fact is, there is absolutely, positively no reason why you shouldn't have it all.

Billionaires are not a billion times more deserving than you are. Nor are millionaires a million times smarter than you.

If IQ points were dollars, Steven Hawking would be lots richer than Bill Gates. Plenty of people who are dumber than you are living spectacularly successful lives. Not to mention folks with less talent.

People who started out poorer than you make it to the top every day. So do folks with lousier health and severe physical limitations.

Want to light a fire under your career? Examine and then disabuse yourself of the false beliefs that block you and the excuses you use to let yourself off the hook.

Once you fully realize -- deep down, with every fiber of your being -- that you deserve success just as much as the next guy or gal, there is no obstacle you can't surmount. Nothing -- repeat, NOTHING -- will be beyond your grasp.

It's completely up to you.

Nobody cares as much about your success and happiness as you do. Nobody's willing to work as hard to make you successful as you are.

If you wait for some guru, some philosophy, some deity, or "the universe" to make you successful, you're probably going to be waiting a long, long time.

It's only when you invest the time and effort to do the practical things required to succeed that true miracles begin to happen.

Case in point:

In 1968, I was a high school dropout earning $1.40 an hour.

Today, I'm a high school dropout who (in a good year) earns nearly 1,000 times more than that. That's a 96,328% raise in pay.

Pretty miraculous, huh?

Want to know the secret? Want to know how I did it?

By working my butt to the bloody bone for nearly four decades -- that's how:

Investing the skull sweat required to learn every blessed thing I could about my craft...

Enduring the humiliation of rejection -- repeatedly -- by companies I would have done just about anything to work for...

Slaving over a hot typewriter 40, 60, sometimes 80 hours in a week to produce the best sales copy I was capable of...

Quietly enduring pride-shattering criticism of my beloved work product -- often by pompous morons who couldn't write a winning sales letter if you'd held a gun to their heads...

Rubbing my own nose in my failures until I'd painstakingly extracted every last lesson I could learn from them...

Doing it all for peanuts at first, and scrimping and saving just to keep my family fed, housed, and clothed...

And, of course, by finding the strength and the stones to get up each morning and do it all over again... for years... and even when my own family doubted I'd ever make it to the top.

I guess I could have just stayed in bed and "thought" or "believed" my career into existence.

Lucky for me, I didn't do that.

Visualize Triumph

So how did I -- and every other top copywriter and marketer on the planet -- willingly, even eagerly, endure what you must endure to succeed?

By understanding that while the human brain may not be able to create new universes on demand or alter objective reality, it is capable of doing more than just reasoning, learning, remembering, and keeping your hat up.

I'm constantly amazed at how many great copywriters use visualization to unlock their creativity and to find the motivation to keep going when it would be easier just to quit.

Fact is, most top writers I've interviewed hold four visual images in their minds during the creative process...

1. Visualize your prospect. Live salespeople have a huge advantage over us. Since they're eyeball to eyeball with their prospect, they know precisely how he's responding to everything that's happening in the sales conversation.

They can read their prospect's body language... facial expressions... and even the inflection in his voice. And they can use that information to identify unspoken objections... sense skepticism and assuage it with proof elements... judge when the prospect is growing tired of the conversation or becoming distracted... and much, much more.

So after I've consumed my research and before I begin writing a promotion, I like to take a few minutes just to think about the person with whom I'm about to have this conversation.

Who is your prospect? Where is he when he is reading my copy? What else is going on in the room at the time?

What core beliefs does your prospect have about companies like yours, products like yours, and/or about the subject at hand? What dominant emotion is your prospect most likely to experience as you raise this subject with him?

If you were attempting to make this sale in person, what would you say? More important, how would your prospect respond to the things you're saying?

After considering all that, instead of attempting to write red-hot sales copy, have a simple chat with your prospect -- all the while sensing how he is most likely responding to each proposition and promise you make.

Perhaps the greatest difference between "A" level copywriters and everyone else is that top writers have developed a sixth sense that tells them what their prospects are most likely to be thinking and feeling as they move through the sales copy.

What's the best way to develop this sixth sense?

Two suggestions:

First, practice on real folks in the real world. Next time and every time you have a conversation with someone, have your "feelers" out. Look for clues that tell you what they're thinking and how they're feeling about the conversation. Make this a habit -- and before you know it, you'll become a pro.

Second, make it a habit to read promotions written by other copywriters through the prospect's eyes. Instead of looking for techniques the copywriter used, visualize how you think a typical prospect is most likely to respond, both intellectually and emotionally, to every headline, subhead, and block of body copy.

I think you'll be amazed at what you learn... how much stronger your copy becomes... and how much higher your response rates climb as you develop this skill.

2. Visualize your client. This technique has to do with energizing you, motivating you, and unleashing your creativity...

As I'm writing, I hold a mental image of my client being absolutely blown away by the brilliance of my first-draft copy.

I see myself delivering my copy... the phone rings... and my client raves about how powerful this promotion is.

See, I only tell folks I do this for the money. The truth is, the ego boost I get from impressing my clients is every bit as rewarding for me.

And visualizing that emotional reward gives me more than enough motivation to do what's necessary in each draft to produce the highest-quality work I'm capable of.

3. Visualize your payday. Every top writer I know does this.

The mental image goes something like this: The phone rings. It's the client. My promotion is blowing the doors off of everything else they've ever mailed. His phone's ringing off the hook. Each call is a new customer placing an order.

Plus, every day, the post office pulls a huge tractor-trailer up to his offices and unloads bags stuffed with more orders. They had to add two more shifts just to count the money that's pouring in.

Best of all -- my $150,000 royalty check is in the mail!

I see myself walking out to my mailbox and finding the check. Proudly showing it to my wife. And I lose myself in all the cool things I'm going to do with that money -- and all the other royalty checks that promotion is going to earn me in the year ahead.

Hey -- if that isn't enough to make you pull out all the stops, nothing will!

4. Visualize how your success will change your life. When I first began freelancing, the money wasn't so good. I barely made enough to provide for my family.

So I went on a shopping spree.

Not a real one, mind you. It was just a fantasy. A friend and I sat down and made lists of all the things we wanted and all the things we wanted to do.

We designed our dream lives in painstaking detail -- and put it all down on paper.

And when I say "painstaking detail," I mean I wrote down where I wanted to live (Prescott, Arizona), then researched how much my dream house would cost me there.

I picked out my dream car, went down to the dealer and worked out what the color, options, price, and payments would be.

I wanted to become a private pilot, so I visited a local flight training school to see what that would cost, how long it would take. And I wanted my own airplane, so I shopped around for just the right one.

Then I added up what all the things I wanted would cost. And figured out that when I got my income to just $75,000 per year ($223,917 in today's dollars), my dream life would be mine.

Because if you don't have a clear vision of where you're going, you'll never get there.

Until I went through this exercise, I had only half the picture. I knew what the vision was costing me. But the rewards I was working for were fuzzy, unfocused. Now I could see my dream house, smell the leather in my dream car. They were real.

From that moment on, I had a crisp, crystal clear mental image of why I was going to work every day. Why I was putting in the long hours. Why I was enduring the humiliation of rejection and failure.

And then, I did something else. I began bringing my rewards forward.

Rather than waiting years to realize my full vision, I gave myself small rewards along the way. I took my first flying lesson. Moved the family to Prescott (although not to my dream house). And every time a piece of my dream life fell into place, I was reborn.

Give it a try. You'll be amazed at the energy and enthusiasm it brings to your work!

"I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I
ever doubted it for a minute."
~ Warren Buffett

How Women Business Owners Can Obtain Clients Who Always Pay On Time By Denise Gosnell and Jynell Berkshire

Most women business owners do not realize that there are billionaire companies out there looking to do business with women entrepreneurs. These billionaire companies include the U.S. federal government and large corporations.

In fact, most people don't realize that government agencies and large corporations buy every type of product and service on the planet. Yes, they even buy toilet paper too! They also buy office supplies, computer equipment, training seminars, pay-per-click advertising services, and more.

And these billionaire companies have huge budgets, and are REQUIRED to award a certain percentage of their projects to women-owned business. This also applies to Corporate America - like the big box retailers. Whenever these companies take federal dollars, they are also required to award a certain percentage of their projects to women-owned businesses.

Here is the sad part. Most women-owned businesses are not even aware that these opportunities exist.

Today we're going to pull back the curtains on the world of "WBE certifications." We'll look at the different types of WBE certifications and how to use those certifications to land your own billionaire clients who always pay on time.

What Is a WBE Certification?

WBE stands for "woman business enterprise." A WBE certification is a type of business certification that can be obtained by any business that is 51% owned, controlled, and operated by one or more women.

A WBE certification lets government agencies and Corporate America know that you have met the required ownership threshold. It also lets them know that if they award business to you, that it will help them meet their requirements for working with women-owned businesses.

But there are different levels of certification, so it can sometimes be confusing on what certification you need.

So let's walk through some of the levels of certification and how to obtain then. We'll also look at how to use each certification to grow your business with billionaire clients.

There are basically four different levels of WBE certifications:

Federal WBE Certifications

Federal WBE certifications are probably some of the most misunderstood certifications. That is because there is actually no formal certification process for becoming a WBE to sell to the federal government.

Federal certification is basically a "self-certifying" process, which means that if you say you are 51% owned, controlled, and operated by a woman, they will accept your word for it. If you are later awarded a contract, they may ask you for proof of this fact, so don't say you are if you are not.

But the great news is that you can get started doing business with the federal government immediately - without waiting on a WBE certification.

What is even better news than this is that the federal government has mandatory goals for awarding 5% of their contracts to woman owned businesses. So if you are a WBE, then you can also look for special projects are set-aside just for women owned businesses. And this is in addition to all of the other projects that they have available for any type of business.

There are 3 ways that the federal government buys goods and services. Projects that exceed $25,000 are posted on FedBizOpps (www.fedbizopps.gov). You can search for projects and submit your responses for those projects directly on FedBizOpps. Projects that are less than $25,000 can be located on the procurement forecast and negotiated directly with each agency.

Here is a golden nugget that most certified businesses aren't even aware of. There is also a third way that the U.S. federal government uses to buy goods and services. That method is called FedBid (www.fedbid.com) and is a reverse auction (kind of like eBay) where you can bid on what you are willing to provide the product or service for.

The government then awards the project to the bidder who best met the requirements. The winning bidder will usually be the bidder who offered the lowest price. If you wanted to, you could have an entire business that just focuses on supplying the federal government with what it is looking for on FedBid.com.

State WBE Certifications

State WBE Certifications can be obtained in most states through a state certifying office. You should obtain a state certification if you want to increase your chances of getting business from one or more state government agencies.

To obtain a state WBE certification, then you will need to contact the certifying office in the state in which you want to be certified. Most states have a WBE certification program, but some of them do not.

We have compiled an index of state certifying offices that you can consult as a starting point. Note that these links may change from time to time, so please don't use this index as the final authority on what certifications may be available in your state. With that said, here is where you can find our state certification index: www.innoventum.com/mbewbe.html

Local WBE Certifications

Local WBE certifications can be obtained by a local government certifying office, such as a city. You should obtain a local certification if you want to increase your chances of getting business from that particular local agency, such as the city where your business is located.

For example, we used our WBE certification to help obtain a contract with the City of Indianapolis. The City of Indianapolis is licensing our training materials for the Department of Minority and Women's Business Development to help minority and women businesses grow.

National WBE Certifications

National WBE Certifications are generally needed when you want to have large corporations as clients. Some large corporations will accept either a National Certification or a State Certification, so before you rush out and get a National Certification, you would first want to see what the corporations that you want as clients would require. Large corporations always have a section on their web site called "Supplier Diversity," and this program always talks about what they look for and require.

To obtain a National Certification, you must file an application with the Women's Business Enterprise Counsel (www.wbenc.org). WBENC is an agency that processes WBE certifications on a national level.

But before you rush out and get any of these types of WBE certifications, you should first think about who you would like to have as a client. You can then apply for the type of certification that you need based upon the client you want to obtain.

But hopefully you now see just how many opportunities there are for women-owned businesses. If you are interested in working with government agencies or Corporate America, it is definitely worth considering a WBE certification.

Once you become certified, you then need to take action and find how you can serve their needs. But the opportunities are endless. So I truly hope you will obtain and leverage your WBE status at every opportunity, and get the billionaire clients that you deserve.

Are You Building A Business Without Fear?

I know you’ve had this feeling…It starts in the pit of your stomach, you feel a little queasy, you start to notice your hands shaking a little and maybe you’re breaking into a cold sweat. Are you getting sick? No…this is fear overcoming you. How do you know? You decide to not go ahead with whatever it is you were doing when it started and you start to feel a little better. Fear got it’s way and you stopped the exciting new venture you were about to leap into.

The problem here is that by letting fear rule your decisions, if you are taking a step forward in your business and halt out of fear you aren’t going to get anywhere except right where you are… doing the same thing you’re doing right now.

How do you progress?

You can change this by choosing what you want and believing you have the excitement and energy to create it. That is the way business grows. Wanting to share that excitement and energy and then doing so without fear allows you to serve from the heart. You know your next inspired actions based on your values. You know what to say and do to attract clients/customers.

Radiate what you want and declare it. If your business is not where you want it to be or you can’t seem to take the next step, you need to look at where you are focusing your thoughts, feelings and actions. Are you letting fear stop you? Are you managing your energy and finding out what the root cause of the fear is on an inner level?

It really doesn’t work to blame anyone or anything outside of yourself if you are not where you want to be. You need to take absolute vibrational responsibility for all of it and move in loving gentleness from where you are to where you want to be.

Moving forward at anything requires both an inner and an outer approach. You have to start with the inner and solve the issues inside you so that you can take action on an outer level to move toward what you desire.

The con man works harder and pays more for what he gets out of life than any other person, but he kids himself into believing he is getting something for nothing.

There is a fundamental rule in sales: You must sell yourself first before you can effectively sell others. If you can't believe in the value of your products or service, no one else will either. If you are conning others into an unfair deal, you must work mightily to overcome your internal resistance to doing something wrong. A deal is a good one only when it is good for everyone involved. When each participant has an equal opportunity to profit and the risk is shared among partners who care about one another's welfare, not only is the likelihood of success far greater, but the journey toward it will also be much more enjoyable.

Are You Tweet-Worthy by Patrick Henry Sitting in the office of the A&R Director of Curb Records many years ago, I thought "this is it." This was the magic moment I had been waiting for -- the tipping point that I had worked for since I first picked up a guitar, strung three chords together, and sang my own home-grown lyrics. With eyes closed, I played what was sure to be Tim McGraw's next chart topper. I hit every note, added the appropriate amount of emotion and pathos, mixed texture and melody, and envisioned the excitement building two feet away in the expensive-smelling leather chair. I opened my eyes expecting to see a face full of jubilation and exuberance, but was instead confronted with crossed arms and an expression devoid of emotion. I was stunned. How could this person not see the songwriting brilliance that my mother and her bible study were so quick to acknowledge? I was instead told something that changed my thinking for life. "Patrick, your song is good. However, hundreds of good songs come through my door every week. A hit song has to have a quality that will make the listener get up off his butt, drive to the record store, and pay fifteen dollars just so he can hear the song again. Your song doesn't have that." Even though the relevance of mainstream record stores has disappeared, the relevance of that statement has not. I call it being tweet-worthy. My concept of tweet-worthiness developed not long ago after a speech in Charlotte, North Carolina. I was speaking on the topic of customer loyalty and had just tried out a new bit of material that I had written specifically for this audience. It was a five-minute poem that illustrated the creation of a peak customer experience. I was a little nervous because I was out of my comfort zone, but after much rehearsal and memorization, it came off better than expected. After my speech, a woman excitedly approached me asking, "What is your twitter address?" "Why?" I asked. She told me that she enjoyed my poem so much that she was tweeting during my speech and wanted to let people know how to reach me. WOW! That was an AHA moment if there ever was one. I now create presentations with tweet-worthy moments in mind. As I'm preparing a talk, I visualize impactful moments throughout the speech that will make audience members reach for their smart phones and tweet to their followers about what they just heard. Are you tweet-worthy? Are you engaging your customers, clients, and co-workers in a way that will make them stop what they are doing, pick up their smart phones, and share with the world how wonderful you are? Who will testify on your behalf? Your customers will. As Jeffrey Gitomer says, "When you say it about yourself, it's bragging. When someone else says it about you, it's proof." Here are three ways to create tweet-worthy moments: DO THE UNEXPECTED. Observe what the other sales reps are doing and do something different. Delivering gourmet cupcakes to the office staff is nice, but hardly original. PROVIDE VALUE. Do you spend every moment in front the decision maker detailing your product? Look for opportunities to help their business succeed. Send articles, blogs, and resource links that will help them achieve their goals. When you become a person of value to the customer you create a buying atmosphere…not a selling one. BE SINCERE. If you become known as a slick salesman…you are finished. As Gitomer says, "You don't need more business, you need more friends". If you treat your customers the way you treat your friends, you will soon be tweeted to prosperity. Just don't get your tweet caught in your twitter.

The cold call is THE lowest percentage sales call. It's an interruption, it's a fight, it's often a lie, it's maximum sales manipulation, and it's a rare appointment and a rarer sale. Wanna go from low to lower? Cold calls are made by people who are new to the job and have limited capabilities. Or worse, they are made by seasoned salespeople convinced that "cold calls work, they have made me a lot of money."

We differ on the definition of the words "a lot."

"But Jeffrey, you don't understand, I HAVE to make cold calls, it's a job requirement," you whine.

It is not.

Suppose you doubled your sales quota for the month and made more sales than anyone else in the company. If you sheepishly went to your boss and said, "I didn't make one cold call," is your boss going to fire you?

Or is it likely that he could CARE LESS. He'll hoist you on his shoulders. He'll tell everyone in the company how great you are. In fact, he'll want to know how you did it. In fact, you may be put in charge of training. In fact, you may be next in line for the boss's job.

Let's get the facts straight:

Cold calls are a great supplement.

Cold calls are a great place to practice.

Cold calls are a great place to learn sales skills.

But, cold calls are a LOUSY place to make a sale. Let's go one step further - of all the sales opportunities, options, and scenarios, cold calling is worst one.

Everyone wants to "make more sales." And most salespeople have a monthly goal or quota. The question remains: What's the BEST way to make that happen?

ANSWER: Look at the value of your sales call. Or, better stated, the valuable-ness of your sales call. In other words, which sales call will produce the best results, the most sales, the greatest return on time and money, and be best for building a great relationship and loyal customer? And oh, by the way, which is the most profitable?

Ranked in order - here are the categories of sales calls, both outgoing and incoming, for your painful pleasure. BE ADVISED: The more valuable they are, the harder you have to work to get them - but the easier they are to make the sale. The fact is - most salespeople won't do the hard work it takes to make sales easy.

Worst - the cold call

Almost as bad - an appointment made from a cold call

Fair - a response from an ad or direct mail or unsolicited email

Semi-good -- an appointment made from a trade show or networking event

Pretty good - a social media inquiry

Pretty good - a web inquiry

Pretty good - an email blast to your existing customers

Real good - a referral from another customer or friend

Real good - an unsolicited referral

Great - an unsolicited call from a prospect wanting to buy

Best - an unsolicited call from an existing customer wanting to buy more

OK, now that you know the types, write the percentages that go with them. No, no -- not the percentage you close. The percentage of each that makes up the type of sales call you make or sales inquiries you receive. What you’ll discover is that if you change the TYPE, you automatically change the percentage.

Eliminate cold calls and concentrate on earned referrals and your sales completion ratio will skyrocket. A hundred cold calls or a hundred referrals? You tell me, Bubba. And while you're telling me, tell your boss to read this.

"OK, Jeffrey," you say. "Now that we have established the types and percentages, tell me how to get from the lowest level to the highest level."

OK, I will... Next week. But let me give you a clue - it has more to do with networking, positioning, personal reputation, business reputation, web presence, social media presence, Google ranking, and service than cold calling. Stay tuned...

"If you're attacking your market from multiple
positions and your competition isn't, you
have all the advantage and it will
show up in your increased
success and happiness."
~ Jay Abraham

Easier, Faster, Cheaper By MaryEllen Tribby

My parents bought their first home in 1957, 53 years ago. Back then, the only way to buy a home was to look up a real estate agent in the phone book and call them. The real estate agent would come to you and tell you about homes on the market (homebuyers didn't even have the advantage of browsing through listings). And if a property that the agent knew about sounded close to what you were looking for, you took a ride together on a Sunday afternoon to check it out.

My dad loved to tell me his story about going through this process. He'd told his real estate agent, Margaret, that he wanted a three- bedroom ranch-style home in a nice neighborhood. A good public school system was a must. And he wanted at least one nice park nearby and easy access to shopping. The last thing on his list was very important to him: He did not want his family to be near any type of apartment building.

My father had grown up in a rough neighborhood, near a big apartment complex with no parks and no convenient shopping. He attended a public school where little girls got shaken down for their lunch money, and he didn't want that to happen to his children.

My parents went house shopping with Margaret. She told them she had found "the perfect house" in a neighborhood they would "love." Imagine my father's surprise when Margaret drove them to his old neighborhood! He made her turn around before they even got to the home she had in mind.

When my father asked Margaret what she was thinking, she confessed that she had not actually seen the house or the neighborhood. She had trusted the owner's word that it met my parent's criteria.

Since Margaret was the only real estate agent in town, my parents continued to rely on her. These Sunday afternoon debacles went on for months.

Finally, 11 months after their search had started, they moved into a house that my parents were confident they could raise their family in. And their family had already been started. During the house-hunting nightmare, my older sister was born. My parents have always said that it was easier to have a baby than to find the perfect home.

I heard this story dozens of times growing up. So when it was time for my husband and me to buy our first home in 1996, I didn't want to leave anything to chance.

THE NEXT GENERATION BUYS A HOME

We determined the town we wanted to live in by:

* Using the Internet to research schools in the areas we were interested in, and then visiting the ones that looked promising.

* Researching the neighborhood amenities of our target areas. This meant scouring the Internet for parks, shopping, cultural opportunities, and restaurants.

* Driving around the various towns.

* Speaking to all sorts of people about what they liked in those towns.

Once we determined the town we wanted to live in, it was time to focus on a specific community. We did this by:

* Going online and plugging in the zip code of each community, along with criteria for the kind of house we wanted.

* Watching local television advertisements for new homes.

* Listening to the radio to find out about local events in the various neighborhoods.

It wasn't until we'd narrowed down our search to three neighborhoods that I even called a real estate agent. And I found her by:

* Asking friends and colleagues for referrals (word of mouth).

* Researching online to find out which agents had sold the most homes in the communities I was interested in. (I figured they knew those neighborhoods inside and out.)

* Reading the local newspaper.

After selecting Barb as our agent, we worked with her to draw up a list of homes we might want to see. From that, Barb got a good sense of our expectations. After doing some of her own research, she narrowed down our list to several options. We were able to view all of them online. With two of them, we took "virtual" tours.

Exactly 19 days after we started our research, we made an offer on our home.

THE MULTI-CHANNEL APPROACH

For my parents and my husband and me, buying a home was the biggest, most important purchase of our lives. It took my parents 11 months. My husband and I did it in less than three weeks.

The ultimate outcome was the same. We found a dream house in which we could raise our families. But the channels we took to get there were entirely different.

Because my husband and I were house hunting at the beginning of the Internet Age, we were able to take a multi-channel approach to making our life-changing purchase.

Our multi-channel approach didn't end when we selected the home we wanted to buy. We used it for almost all aspects of the home-buying process, including finding the right mortgage company, insurance plan, moving company, and furniture.

But unlike the house search, we weren't doing all the work ourselves to get the information we needed. All sorts of companies were finding us. Furniture companies were e-mailing us about furniture sales. Mortgage companies were sending us mortgage offers in the mail. Insurance agencies were calling us about insurance. And moving companies were hoping to get our attention by placing big ads in our local newspaper.

All these marketing efforts--including the strongest sales pitches were welcomed by us because we were emotionally, financially, and rationally predisposed to buy what those companies were selling. We were the perfect customers for most of them. We were motivated. We had money. We were prepared to buy. And receiving information about products and services we needed through so many channels made it easier and quicker for us to compare options and make decisions.

The businesses that did the most business with us were those that were relentless, contacting us through various marketing channels. They were smart enough to realize that if we weren't responsive to a space ad or postal sales letter, we might react to an e-mail promotion. And if an e-mail promotion didn't work, they could get through to us via the Internet when we did a search by typing in certain keywords. And if that failed, they could try to contact us by phone.

Your best customers are those who are motivated, financially capable of buying from you, and prepared to buy. If you don't locate and convert those customers through a multi-channel, direct-response advertising campaign, then you are leaving dollars, perhaps millions of dollars on the table.

There is no reason to do that in this day and age, when there are so many ways to get access to the ideal buyers for your product or service. If you are ready - really ready to take your business to the next level, to reach more customers and add serious dollars to your bottom line you need to understand the power of multi-channel marketing.

"We hear voices in solitude, we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life; we receive counsels and comforts, we get under no other condition."

Amelia E. Barr

The Power of Solitude

By Brian Tracy

In my last ETR essay ("Accessing Your Inner Guidance"), I gave you three questions to ask yourself. The objective was to get in touch with your feelings -- to look deep inside in order to evaluate your life and determine what truly makes you happy.

The most important part of this process of getting in touch with your feelings is to begin to practice solitude. Solitude is the most powerful activity in which you can engage. Men and women who practice it correctly and on a regular basis never fail to be amazed at the difference it makes in their lives.

Most people have never practiced solitude. Most people have never sat down quietly by themselves for any length of time in their entire lives. Most people are so busy being busy, doing something -- even watching television -- that it's highly unusual for them to simply sit, deliberately, and do nothing.

But as Catherine Ponder, the author of many inspirational books, points out, "Men and women begin to become great when they begin to take time quietly by themselves, when they begin to practice solitude."

To get the full benefit of your periods of solitude, you must sit quietly for 30 to 60 minutes at a time. If you haven't done it before, it will take the first 25 minutes or so for you to stop fidgeting and moving around.

You'll practically have to hold yourself in your seat. You'll have an almost irresistible desire to get up and do something. But you must persist.

Solitude requires that you sit quietly, perfectly still, back and head erect, eyes open, without cigarettes, candy, writing materials, music, or any interruptions whatsoever for at least 30 minutes. An hour is better.

Become completely relaxed and breathe deeply. Just let your mind drift. Don't try to think about anything. The harder you "don't try," the more powerfully it works.

After 20 or 25 minutes, you'll begin to feel deeply relaxed. You'll begin to experience energy coming into your mind and body. You'll have a tremendous sense of well-being. At this point, you'll be ready to get the full benefit of these moments of contemplation.

The incredible thing about solitude is that, if it is done correctly, it works just about 100 percent of the time. While you're sitting there, a river of ideas will flow through your mind. You'll think about countless subjects in an uncontrolled stream of consciousness.

Your job is to relax and listen to your inner voice. At a certain stage during your period of solitude, the solutions to the most pressing difficulties facing you will emerge quietly and clearly, like a boat putting in gently to the side of a lake. The answer that you seek will come to you so clearly -- and it will feel so perfect -- that you'll experience a deep sense of gratitude and contentment.

You may get several answers in one period of quiet sitting. But you'll get the answer to the most important question facing you every single time.

When you arise from this period of quiet, you must do exactly what has come to you. It may involve dealing with another person. It may involve starting something or quitting something.

Whatever it is, when you follow the guidance that you received in solitude, it will turn out to be exactly the right thing to do. Everything will be okauy. And it will usually work out far better than you could have imagined. Just try it and see.

That brings us to the final point on getting in touch with your feelings: You must learn to trust yourself. You must learn to take time to listen to your emotions and your feelings as to what makes you happy or unhappy, as to what feels right or wrong. You must absolutely trust that what is right for you is the right thing to do. You must never compromise on what your inner voice tells you to do. You must never go against what you feel to be correct. You must develop the habit of listening to yourself and then acting on the guidance you receive.

When you listen to yourself and act on what you hear inside, you are setting out on the road to personal greatness.

What are you learning? How are you learning?

How are you taking advantage of your knowledge?

I have been a student of sales since November 11, 1971. I was listening (via the brand new voice technology called the "cassette tape") to a guy named Jay Douglas Edwards, who uttered the sales tip, "If the customer says, ‘Do these come in green?' you say, "Would you like them in green?" Cool.

That's the day I realized that there was a science of selling. I wanted to learn more.

I will admit that most sales skills and sales tips taught in the 1970's were somewhat manipulative. But at the time that's all that existed. Over the last 40 or so years sales models have changed.

Probably the best example of change I can offer you comes from a column I wrote several years ago about the "Benjamin Franklin close."

You can get that column in its entirety by going to http://www.gitomer.com/articles/ColumnSearchResults.html and entering the keyword: Franklin.

Basically what the column says is rather than use an old, time-worn manipulative sales close on the customer, try using it on yourself before you go into the sale as a means of preparation.

I have read all or portions of hundreds of sales books over the past 40 years, but most of what I have learned has come from the spark of an idea gleaned from a book, and then it was somewhat altered once I got out into the field and had to actually apply the strategy. Kind of like you.

All sales books offer some form of valuable information. All sales experts offer some form of valuable information. As a student, your job is to determine how that information fits into your skill set, your environment, your marketplace, and your customer interactions.

Learning sales skills is a matter of understanding, adoption, application, and a bit of tweaking.

In my experience I have found that unless the tip or strategy is comfortable to me, I won't use it. It has to fit with my personality and be in the framework of my comfortable conversation and ethics.

HOW TO READ: As a reader myself, I am challenging you to look at the ideas you read with an open mind, and strike from your mind the phrase, "I know that." Most salespeople already know everything. The problem is they don't do it.

I would rather have you ask yourself, "How good am I at that on a scale of 1 to 10?"

Then ask yourself:

• How does this information apply to me?
• Do I agree with this?
• Am I comfortable with this?
• Does it fit my personality?
• Is this "me?"

If the answer to all of those questions is yes, then ask yourself the following three questions:

• Is this in the best interest of the customer?
• Will this lead me to a long-term relationship with the customer?

And finally the true self-test question:

• Will this make my mother proud?

Jeffrey, what about CDs and the Internet? YouTube, podcasts, and other forms

accessing sales skills information?

They're all GREAT! They're just not as great as reading a book. Of course there are multi-media forms of sales information you can access. But none are as flexible as reading. Reading gives you a chance to move at your own pace, underline, scribble notes in the margins, re-read what you may not understand, even dog-ear the important pages and where you left off.

Reading time is usually quiet time. It gives you a chance for reflection. Whenever you choose, you can stop and think about the meaning and the AHA!, or you can adapt and apply what you read.

The messages offered in books are from a combination of men and women, experts in their field, who have actually used these methods and strategies to build their own success. And your job is to adopt them, adapt them, and turn them into money.

Got book? Maybe you should try to read a book a month.

How to Overcome the "I Need to Think About It / Need to Wait Until Next Week/Month / I'll Get Back to You" Objection

by Mike Brooks

One of the oldest and most used smokescreens in the book is the, "I need to think about it" objection. So many sales reps struggle with this one because they think the prospect isn't saying no, and so they don't know how to respond to it.

Unfortunately, what many of you have found out is that your prospect actually is saying no - they're just saying it in a way that makes it difficult for you to handle it. Well that will end for you today. By using the scripts below, you'll see if your prospect really does need to think about it, or if he/she is blowing you off. Believe me you want to know now so you can save yourself weeks of chasing and begging a deal that will never close.

The following five scripts were taken from my Brand New Book of Phone Scripts due out next month (look for Jeffrey's announcement of it soon), and I encourage you to begin using them whenever you get this objection/put off.

Also, if you would like to learn proven techniques and scripts on "How to Handle the Price Objection," then sign up for my free Webinar this Thursday, August 12th. Space is limited so see the bottom of this article for the link to sign up today!

How to overcome the "I need to think about it…"

Response #1: "_________, whenever I tell someone I need to think about it, I usually mean one of three things: 1 - I'm not going to be a deal for whatever reason and I just want to get them off the phone, 2 - I kind of like the idea but I'm going to have to find the money or talk to my partner, or something else is holding me back, and 3 - I really like the idea, and I just have to move something around before I say yes. Be honest with me ________, which one of those things is it for you right now?"

Response #2: "__________, I may have given you too much information on the warranty (or pick another part of your product or service here), is that what you need to think about?" (Now use your mute button and let them tell you what they are going to really think about.)

Response #3: "You know _________, if this isn't for you, I'd rather have know right now - believe me, you won't hurt my feelings. Tell me, where are you leaning right now?" (It is always better to get this objection out of them early.)

Response #4: "__________, let's face it - you've already been thinking about this for a long time. You know you have to make a change or nothing else will change with (your operating system, your results, etc.). Thinking about it more won't fix things for you - only making a decision will. You like this, and you've already told me it would work for you. So let's do this - go ahead and put me/this solution to work for you now and if you change your mind later you will still get the benefit that you've acknowledged you need. Here's what we need to do to get you started..."

Response #5: "__________, what I'm hearing from you is essentially a no - and that's alright. As a sales rep, I hear that all the time and it doesn't bother me. It just means I haven't yet explained the value proposition right. Tell me, what would it take to convince you that this would be a good idea to move forward with - and please be honest with me."

To Serve is To Rule – in ANY Economy
by Laurie Brown

When the economy declines, many companies suffer and some even go out of business. It's not just that people are buying less, it's that their buying habits are changing. I don't know about you, but when money gets tight, I get choosier about where I spend my money. I want not ONLY a great product - I want exceptional customer service too.

It is critically important to up your game when the market is tight. Businesses that have learned to thrive in tough economic times are worth looking at and learning from.

Why is Beau Jacks (a suburban Detroit restaurant) doing so well? What keeps their customers coming back three or four nights a week — even in the midst of Detroit's depressed times? Why are customers willing to stand in line or wait at the bar for long periods of time? The reason is magic – and that magic is the owner, Gary Cochran, and his take on running his business the right way.

Don't do traditional advertising. Cochran doesn't buy traditional advertising. He puts his money into supporting his loyal customers' causes. When his customers ask him to buy ads in yearbooks, pay for sponsorships, or support charitable golf outings, he does it. He says, "I do my advertising with the people who eat with me." How are your potential customers finding out about you?

Keep your staff pumped up. Cochran created a weekly newsletter for his employees. It includes a motivational quote — intended to keep his people thinking positively — at the bottom of every issue. He tells them, "We don't have to take part in this recession if the food and service is great." What are you doing to inspire your staff on a weekly basis?

Have high standards. Cochran makes sure that his parking lot is repaved and painted every year whether it needs it or not. He has an iron and ironing board available outside of the staff's dressing room to help everyone look impeccable. He believes that good is not good enough, and says to his customer's, "I don't want you to pay for good, you pay for great." Paying attention to details can make all the difference.

Treat your customers like members of a private club. Cochran encourages his staff to learn customers' names and preferences. "I always tell my staff that if they worked in a country club, they would remember their customers' names and that they like five olives in their martinis." He also provides his staff with business cards that they give out when they hand their customer the bill. He encourages the staff to tell the customers, "Ask for me next time you come in." How many customers are asking for you?

Treat special needs customers differently. Even though Cochran's customers may be willing to wait up to 45 minutes to be seated, he understands that it can be a hardship. When a customer is using a walker, he tries to seat that customer sooner. If customers have small children with them, the wait staff may place an order for chicken strips (on the house) so that there is food for the kids the minute the family sits down. "One size fits all" is a completely out-dated concept. Don't be afraid to cater to the special needs of your customers. They will love you for it.

Don't ask your employees to do anything you wouldn't do. Cochran hasn't had a day off in the last 18 months. He can often be found with a coffee pot in his hand, bussing tables, or picking up a dropped napkin. He treats his staff so well that he has kept many of his employees for decades. His newest employee has been with him for six years.

Are you a servant leader? Do you model the kind of behavior that you want your employees to emulate? Don't be afraid to do what has to be done. It will inspire your employees and your customers.

Empower your employees. Cochran's servers know that if they are overwhelmed with customers and are unable to provide great service, they can buy the customer a dessert with apologies. If there is a problem with food, they know that they can go to the chef or a manager and get the issue resolved. Are your employees empowered to solve the problems that occur in your workplace?

Even in the hardest times, focusing on exceptional customer service can make your business virtually recession-proof. Pick one tip and try it for two weeks. Then add another. Be patient and stay focused. Truly great customer service is a differentiating factor that can't be beat.