Monthly Archives: August 2016

5 ways to crush every-day of your life

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I don’t believe I am any different from most people.  I, like many other people, are looking for that one thing that can truly set us up for success in everything we do.  Come on, be honest with yourself, if you could find an easier way to have everything you have ever hoped for and wanted, you would take it. I know I would.

Throughout my search for this one thing, that can change everything. I have found something different instead.  I didn’t find one thing. What I actually found was many things. Am I crushing it like I want?  No.  But damn, this shit is hard.  If it were easy we would all be doing it and we would all be doing much better in every aspect of our life.

Instead of finding one thing that can change everything. I instead found a series of things that lead me to have what I want.  These are behaviors and actions I do on a daily basis.  Well, let me be honest here.  Let’s say 90% of the time I employ these behaviors.  One hundred percent is hard.

So what do I do:

  1. Get up before the sun is up: I can remember a time when I would wait until the last-minute before getting up and starting my day.  At the time, I can remember worrying about paying my bills and all of the other issues that came with waiting until the last-minute to do what needed to be done.  I am all for sleeping in when necessary, but like I said employ the 90/10 rule here.  Only sleep in 10% of the time.When I starting waking up before the sun came up.  I became smarter, I had more money, and I was less stressed.  Even now, if it is a day where I am working on that other 10%, I feel stressed and don’t accomplish as much as I want.
  2. Take in something positive: I became a reader at the same time as I became an early riser. Reading is the way I take in that positive injection everyday. I can hear the non-readers grumbling as you are reading this.  If you don’t want to read, watch a YouTube video or by some audio books.  Technology is an amazing thing.  You can take something positive in through a variety of different ways.  The key is, just do it.  I am not sure if it is only me, but the grind of life can be negative at times.  Responsibilities, kids, management decisions, bad traffic, life, you name it, we have to do something to counteract all of the negative that can creep into our lives.
  3. What did I learn: Several years ago I became a writer.  Hey, I can call myself that because you are reading this right now.  When I became a writer, I also became a journal carrier.  I started writing things down that I wanted to remember.  I am not a crazy person about it, but I journal about 3-4 times a week.  Hey, I am not a 100%, but any percentage of something, is better than nothing. Now most of my fellow colleagues would tell me to journal before going to bed, so it is fresh and you can remember what you learned or want to remember from that day.I on the other hand, do this differently.  If you look at #1 above, you can see I start my day really really early, so by the time the evening gets here, I don’t have much left in the gas tank.  I prefer to get up the next day and write in my journal about the previous days events.
  4. Exercise:  Again, I can hear your grumblings as you are reading this. You are saying to yourself, right now, “Another person recommending exercise”, “and doing it in the morning.”  Hey.  I get it.  I used to be the same way.  As I stated before, I used to think a morning exercise routine was crazy.  I take you back to #1 above, if you are getting up earlier, you can fit it in.  Sure you have the health benefits of the exercise itself, but what I enjoy most about the morning workout routine is that I can go through the rest of my day knowing that I don’t have to worry about working out after work.  And you can read study after study about the health benefits of starting your day with a workout or exercise routine.
  5. Remind yourself: There are some people I know that tell me they write their life goals down everyday and look at them.  I am not one of those people.  I do get up each day and remind myself what it is I need to do. Secondly, Why, I am doing it.  This constant reinforcement pushes me to do it.  Reminding yourself that your goals for the future are bigger than your current situation, is what pushes you to get things done.  I am not saying live your life in the future.  No.  What I am saying is you must have goals, wishes, and desires that you are striving for.  These desires and goals, are like magnets and will pull you towards them.  If you  are lacking motivation, it means you are lacking goals. Remind yourself everyday of what is you want, and why you want it.

As you look at the five ways to crush your day, remember what I said earlier. I am a 90/10 guy.  It is difficult to be 100%.  The key to any routine is first to create one.  Shocking I know.  But most people don’t have one.  They instead live their life by whatever comes at them.  By creating a daily routine, whether it is the one I follow or not, the purpose is the act of doing it will create success for you. One discipline leads to another discipline.

Crush it today!

To your success and your future.

 

 

What Clients Love; book summary and notes

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Whenever I read a book that is impactful to me, I like to write down my notes and highlights that I took from the book.  When I do this, it allows me to read the book again, because I have to go back to the book and basically read it again, and extract my highlights from the book.  You are lucky because I share these notes with you.

I recently read What Clients Love; A field guide to growing your business. This book was written by the bestselling author of Selling the Invisible Harry Beckwith.

Buy the book here: https://www.amazon.com/What-Clients-Love-Growing-Business/dp/0446556025/

Below, in bullet point format, are my quick notes I took from the book.  I hope you enjoy.  I also encourage you to find the book and read it as well, it is really that good.

  • Forget benchmarking. It only reveals what others do, which is rarely enough to satisfy, much less delight, todays clients.
  • What has made companies in our industry successful? Leads you to the old answers, which ends you to copy and refine rather than INNOVATE.
  • Next time you ponder strategy, ask:  If I ran a competing firm, how would I beat ours?
  • If you were starting business from scratch, what would do differently?  Now do that.
  • plan around what you can predict; what people love.
  • Listen more rests on a flawed assumption: It assumes people say what they think.  They do not.  People often say whatever will make them look good to the person asking the question.  Almost no one confesses to drinking too much fudging expense reports. Thousands of men who teared up watching The Remains of The Day insist it was a silly chick film. The second flaw: listen more is the assumption that people understands themselves well enough to reveal themselves accurately.
  • Of all life’s mysteries, we are most mysterious to ourselves.
  • Life happens at the level of events, not words, the noted psychologist Alfred Adler once said.  Trust Movement.  Nothing else.
  • We overvalue research, particularly when its conclusions are expressed in quantified form.
  • Overconfidence bias. Whenever you are certain of something, you are wrong 15 percent of the time.
  • Not moving inspires more not moving. Dynamic people require a dynamic environment.
  • The company that waits for guarantees is doomed.
  • Do something, if only because doing produces learning, and learning is perhaps a service business most valuable asset.
  • A mission statement is a PURPOSE statement.  Call it that.
  • A mission is your higher purpose. Visions by contrasts are selfish. Visions are your long-term aspirations for your business, not for those that you might serve. to be the best regarded, most profitable, or most reliable for example.
  • JFK’s vision was a man on the moon.  Peace was his mission.
  • Avoid being NICE too much.
  • Like concealed priests, anonymous interviewers get more truthful answers.
  • We want good products, on time, from people we trust.
  • The economy is new, but the people are old.
  • We still love things that we can see and feel.
  • AS NOBEL winning economist Herbert Simon said, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
  • Speak visually, we often cannot hear words, but we notice images.
  • Our expectation changes our experience. Social Scientists call this expectancy theory. People experience what they expect to experience and see what they expect to see. Our challenge in marketing especially invisibles, is to shape those expectations.
  • Intrude in people’s lives and you risk losing them forever.
  • Publish anything and everything because you never know what could happen.
  • Only in writing do you discover what you know.  Anne Beattie author.
  • Nothing teaches like writing.
  • Americans tend to mistrust academic credentials and scholarly writing and presentations.  We disdain the person who speaks with too much authority. We cherish humility, even in people we suspect may be brilliant.
  • The clearer the communication, the more expert the communicator is looked at.
  • Clarity cuts through fog and conveys your value to a prospect. Clarity assures the prospect that you will not cloud the issue or confuse the sale.  Clarity moves the prospect from confusion, which aggravates every persons ear of the invisible to confidence. Clarity breaks down mistrust. Clarity wins.
  • Prospects often tell service providers “We will get back to you.” Sometimes this means they are not in position to decide.
  • Mark Twain’s rules on adjectives.  Leave them out.  Replace excellent with proof.
  • We always weaken whatever we exaggerate.
  • Using you also compels you to think about those prospects.  You start becoming more client focused because the word directs your focus toward them.
  • Specific words such as crystal bowl and strawberries paint clearer pictures–a key task in selling things people cannot see.
  • If you cannot describe what make you different or excellent in 25 word or less. Fix your company.
  • A theory is not complete until you can explain it to the first person you meet on the street.
  • Edit your message until everyone understands it.
  • Admit a weakness. People who reveal something negative about their service win more business. Psychologists insist this can be easily explained. We assume that people who reveal a weakness are inclined to tell the truth, even when the truth can hurt them. Which means we can trust.
  • How the best sales people sell in order: Themselves, Their Company, Their service or product. Price.
  • Stories help humans understand ideas. the oldest hardwired neural pathway in the human brain is for stories.
  • Your audience includes four people: The TOP dog and three associates.
  • Remember to always present your people well, before your product. Only use slides to present a point you cannot express well.
  • A legendary football coach said three things can happen when you pass a football. And two are bad.  The same principles applies for presentations.
  • Thirty Slides don’t show that you know more.  It shows that you don’t have command over the material you are trying to explain.
  • Three points, three words each.
  • FAMILIARITY breeds attraction.  The  more you hear something, the more you like it.
  • Remember what your brand is:  Gerber tried to do adult food.  People couldn’t buy it.  Because Gerber Adult food sounds awful.
  • It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.
  • It is not what you communicate, it is what gets communicated.
  • You respond more strongly to seeing an American Flag than you do reading the following two words “American Flag”  The Nazi flag invokes more anger than the word Nazi.
  • A first principle of business and marketing: Everyone believes that their industry is unique. You must approach every client with this in mind. 
  • People prefer specialists over generalists.
  • To seem special sound it.
  • Your company name should name you, not describe you.  Example: Wells Fargo Bank.  Now it is just Well Fargo.  CNN removed television from its title.  It is just CNN.
  • Uncommon names stand out more than anything else.  SPANX
  • Whoosh appeals to your senses.  It sounds better than wind.
  • If you’re dressed for golf, be sure you are golfing.
  • Casual policies attract causal employees.
  • Thomas Edison wore ties even when he was cutting his grass.
  • If your professional clothes feel uncomfortable, change clothes.
  • Efficient means cheap, and compared to most forms of marketing, mass communicating looks cheap.
  • Cheap efforts produce cheap results or worse.
  • When you buy a product, you purchase something tangible. When you buy a service, however, you buy the people who perform it.
  • You buy products based on your feelings about the product, you choose your services based on your feelings toward the providers.
  • To connect with your clients, make connections for them.
  • Two Basic principles: A service always involves more than a the exchange of something tangible for money. You must build more into a service warmth, connection, friendship, rest, status, or community. People will pay extra for a feeling of a community.  Ask Starbucks.
  • Sociability: is necessary for human survival. Adults who isolate themselves from the world are more likely to die at comparatively young ages. We have a central dependence on others.
  • Whenever you try to satisfy a client, this feeling dominate the transaction, that persons need to feel important.
  • Efficient customer service tools tell them. My time matters more than you.
  • Relationships are the most powerful form of media today.
  • If a prospect is most interested in cost you will never be happy and always be vulnerable.
  • Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you.
  • One does what one is, one becomes what one does.  Robert Musil.
  • We do what we say,  and then we become what we do.
  • Your words will become your behavior. Your behavior will become your habit. And your new habit will reward you. At the end of the year, everything will be different: you, those you touch and your business.
  • Passion, inflamed by belief and purpose, wins.

Please share if you found this summary to be beneficial to you.

To your success and your future.

3 Steps to rid yourself from rejection in sales

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3 Steps to Ensure You Won’t Have to Deal with Rejection Again

Many individuals are of the opinion that dealing with rejection is part and parcel of the sales game. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t need to be that way for you. As a struggling coach, I had to deal with rejection in sales at least 5 to 10 times more than I celebrated a victory and one day I just got fed up of being rejected when making sales and decided that something had to change. Immediately I found that, that ‘something’ was the way I looked at the sale. Through hundreds of mistakes, I finally found a ‘rejection free’ technique to sell in three simple steps.

1st Step to Avoid Having to Deal with Rejection

Before you start the sales conversation always gauge the commitment level of the client. If the prospect is just looking for information, you have to understand at that moment that a sale may not be possible and hence accept the fact that this an exercise in building your sales funnel for the future (which is as important as making a sale today). Therefore, begin the process by requiring the customer to rate their level of commitment to find a solution for their issue today, on a scale of one to ten (one being no commitment and 10 being committed), if the customer is at a 9 or a ten, there is a definite possibility of making a sale, as long as the following two steps are completed.

2nd Step to Avoid Having to Deal with Rejection

The #1 reason you are often rejected in sales is that they try to ‘tell’ prospects what they must do to find a solution to their challenge. This is the ‘old fashion’ method of doing things. The ‘new school’ method is to request them to tell you what they think they must do to get the results that they want, or avoid the pain that they are experiencing. Customers always know what they should do to get the results – and it’s better when they tell what they think the solution should be, rather than you telling them. 99% of the time, the answer they propose will match your solution to a great extent, so all you have to do is, commend them for identifying the solution and agree with them wholeheartedly (when you introduce your solution later on – they will not be able to say NO to it, because they suggested it themselves).

3rd Step to Avoid Having to Deal with Rejection

Now that they have told you what they believe is the right solution, it is your turn to move on to the next question, and that is to ask them – what it would mean to them to have such a solution? How much income will such a solution bring to them over the next six to twelve months? How much resource, cost and time savings will they be able to gain with such a solution? Now that they have put a monetary value to it ask them what they are losing by not having such a solution right now (this will help increase their awareness of the loss to them if they don’t take immediate action).

Now that the prospect described the solution and the cost of not having it right now, you tell him that you can provide him the exact solution that he described (cover all the main points he covered, when he described his ideal solution to you), Next tell him the results he can expect in terms of revenue, cost savings, etc. If you carried out the above steps appropriately – I can assure you that by the time you get to this point, the customers will be ready to snatch your offer right off of your hands.

Implement the three steps introduced above in your sales presentation, immediately and avoid having to deal with rejection in sales ever again.

To your success and your future.

Handbook of Self-Determination Research; summary/notes

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In my constant study of human behavior and what motivates us as humans and individuals, I ran across a book titled “Handbook of Self-Determination Research”.  This book takes all of the research and studies that have been conducted by the most recognized and highly influential scientists, researchers, psychologists to ever study human behaviors. The data is condensed in to a 500 page book that hits the highlights of what we know and can proven by data to show why humans behave and what motivates us.

The book was put together and edited by two of the most recognized in the study of human behavior and the Self-Determination research. Edward L. Deci and Richard. Ryan.

You can purchase the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Self-Determination-Research-Edward-Deci/dp/1580461565/

In my typical summary and notes fashion.  I have provided here my notes from the book and what I am taking away from the book, and in this case, the study of Self Determination. This book was very academic and honestly over my head at times, but it was well laid out and an excellent read for anyone studying humans and why we do what they do.

Notes and paragraphs from the text: 

In the classical, Aristotelian, view of human development, people are assumed to possess an active tendency toward psychological growth and integration. Endowed with an innate striving to exercise and elaborate their interest, individuals tend to naturally seek challenges, to discover new perspectives, and to actively internalize and transform cultural practices. By stretching their capacities and expressing their talents and propensity, people actualize their human potentials.

Self determination Theory begins by embracing the assumption that all individuals have natural, innate, and constructive tendencies to develop an ever more elaborated and unified sense of self.

There are three basics needs of everyone: They are competence, relatedness, and autonomy.

Competence: refers to feeling effective in ongoing interactions with the social environment and experiencing opportunities to exercise and express ones capacities. The need for competence leads people to seek challenges that are optimal for their capacities through activity. Competence is not, then, an attained skill or capability, but rather is a felt sense of confidence and effectance in action.

Relatedness: refers to feeling connected to others, to caring for and being cared for by those others, to having a sense of belongingness both with other individuals and with ones community. Relatedness reflects the homonomous aspect of the integrative tendency of life, the tendency to connect with and be integral to and accepted by others. The need to feel oneself as being in relation to others is thus not concerned with the attainment of a certain outcome, but instead concerns the psychological sense of being with others in secure communion or unity.

Autonomy: refers to being the perceived origin or source of ones own behavior. Autonomy concerns acting from interest and integrated values. When autonomous, individuals experience their behavior as an expression of the self, such that, even when actions are influenced by outside sources, the actors concur with those influences, feeling both initiative and value with regard to them.

Autonomy is often confused with, or melded together with, the quite different concept of independence (which means not relying on external sources of influences), but the Self Determination Theory view considers there to be no necessary antagonism between autonomy and dependence. Indeed, one can quite autonomously enact values and behaviors that others have requested or forwarded, provided that one congruently endorses them. In short, independence versus dependence is a dimension that is seen Self Determination Theory.

Self Determination Theory conceives of humans as active, growth-oriented organisms, that innately seek and engage challenges in their environments, attempting to actualize their potentialities, capacities, and sensibilities.

Two Types of Motivation:

Intrinsically motivated behaviors are those whose motivation is based in the inherent satisfactions of the behaviors, rather than in contingencies or reinforcements that are operationally separable from those activities. Intrinsic motivation represents a prototype of self-determined activity, in that, when intrinsically motivated, people engage in activities freely, being sustained by the experience of interest an enjoyment.

Intrinsic Motivation implies engaging in an activity for the pleasure and satisfaction inherent in the activity.

  • To know: implies engaging in activities because of the pleasure and satisfaction derived from the learning, exploring, and understanding new things.
  • To accomplish: refers to engaging in activities because of the pleasure and satisfaction derived from trying to surpass oneself, creating or accomplishing something.
  • Experience stimulation: operates when one is engaged in an activity because of the stimulating sensations associated with it.

EX: Students doing their homework because they enjoy it and find that learning new things is interesting and satisfying.

Extrinsic motivation is focused toward and dependent on contingent outcomes that are separable from the action. A broad array of behaviors having in common the fact that activities are engaged in not for reasons inherent in them bit for instrumental reasons. They are undertaken to attain an end state that is separate from the actual behavior.

Three examples of extrinsic motivation/values: financial success, image, social recognition.

Intrinsic values/motivation: self-acceptance, affiliation, and community feeling.

The concept of intrinsic motivation refers to behaviors performed out of interest and enjoyment and extrinsic motivation is pertains to behaviors carried out to attain contingent outcomes.

A meta-analysis of 128 experiments confirmed that expected tangible rewards which require engaging in the target activity do indeed undermine intrinsic motivation for that activity, whereas verbal rewards tend to enhance intrinsic motivation.

Self Determination Theory from the authors is very simply: that humans have three basic types of needs or motives, for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.  That is humans are happiest and healthiest when environments, and their own inner processes, permit them to feel effective, choiceful, and connected in their ongoing experience.

Self-Handicapping, which is the tendency to erect impediments to ones own success in order to provide an excuse for failure..  Hence, self handicapping can be considered a defensive preparation to maintain self-esteem in case of later failure.

NEEDS and Motives: Needs differ from lives in that they are part of the individual inherent psychological makeup and therefore represent a psychological requirement, which means they must be attended to and satisfied for the individual to function in optimal fashion and experience well-being. In essence, a need may be seen as a motive that has innate roots. The need for competence is conceptualized herein as innate, multidimensional need, and is presumed to have a powerful widespread influence on personality functioning and wellbeing.

Motives rather than needs: examples include the need for closure, the need for dominance, self-presentation motive, and self verification motive. Such motive dispositions clearly have an important influence on everyday functioning, but we suspect that their influence is qualitatively different from that of a basic need such as the need for competence.

Goals may be distinguished from needs and motives in that the latter are dispositions that energize behavior and orient the individual in a general way., whereas the former are cognitive representations that serve as directional function for behavior by focusing the individual on more specific possibilities.

Goals are related to needs and motives in the self-regulatory process, in that individuals sometimes adopt goals that help save their dispositional desires by channeling them in a more concrete direction. Needs or motives can and often lead directly to behavior, but these general dispositional desires sometimes need to be strategically channelled in a specific direction to be satisfied in an effective and efficient manner. This the need for competence can influence behavior in two ways: it can impel competence based behavior directly, or it can lead to a competence based behavior indirectly prompting the adoption of competence goals that proximally regulate behavior.

Conclusion:

People are most motivated when they have a sense of autonomy. Where they are controlling their environment and how they do something.  We don’t have a problem with parameters, but we want to feel like we have the autonomy to do a job or to pursue something that we want to pursue.  Our self determination and motivation is higher when we have a certain level of competence as well. We want to understand whatever it is that we must do.  When we don’t understand something our motivation and determination is much lower.  And lastly, relatedness.  We want to have community and be in alignment with others that we are around.  We want to love and to be loved.  Love meaning connected with others who are in alike thinking as we are as well.

Leaders must create the right environment that includes the three factors of autonomy, competence, and relatedness for their team to perform at peak performance. Leaders must create an environment where team members have intrinsic motivation to do the work that they do.  You can hire people that are intrinsically motivated, but you have to create the right environment to sustain that motivation.

To your success and your future.