Business and Money Tips

What is the meaning of your dreams? Should you act on their messages? We all know that your dreams are a reflection of your conscious thoughts and ideas.  Whatever we think about, we dream about.  In our courses we teach people to have dreams. But having dreams and dreaming are two completely different things. Having dreams is to have aspirations, dreaming is just what we dream when we are asleep. In reality most of us are living in a dream . Many people are not in touch of reality, about themselves, about others and about all the things we perceive inside and around us. That is a real dream. A dream that you have when you are awake!  Most people don't know the truths of these 5 things as described here According to US Guru Dan Millman, most people live their entire lives without being awake. This is evident from the fact that over 90% of employees are just looking for the year-end bonus or annual increment to get fired up. Most managers also said that m...

Sales is a noble profession. You need to learn to do the right thing to get the right results. Learn from the experts, people who have trained 38,181 people in 13 countries.   One truth that stands out: your best customer is always someone's else top prospect!  There are few virgin customers (customers that have not bought before).  So you need to ask questions to get people to switch their vendor to you.  Read this article at here . Before you can sell anything to anybody, you need to sell yourself on these 9 points first: If you're not sold, no one else will be either If you have no prospects to sell to, you have no prospects in this trade. That's why you must prospect continuously Being trusted is more essential to being liked.  (Too bad Facebook has no 'Trust' button) The Sale is all in the questions (read this article on 'Questions are the Sale') Selling is about providing solutions, not providing people with your goods and services Every s...

A powerful command of words is the number one requirement for succeeding in the filed of sales. Whether you are cold calling a prospect, presenting to a group of decision makers, or dealing with price objections, you need to say the right thing at the right time. Specifically, you need to do these 3 things well in sales: Build Trust and Cultivate Relationships Handle Objections effectively to close faster  Get past Gatekeepers and Reach Decision Makers faster than your competitors Successful salespeople use a very effective sales process that wins business over easily. This process sells without selling as it creates the conditions for buyers to buy by themselves. The magic process is Asking Questions . Asking questions helps you to find out what are the real needs of your customer to determine how much they are willing to pay for a solution. But you cannot just ask a few questions and expect a sale. You need to ask the RIGHT Questions in the RIGHT ORDER . This new course ...

My previous article on how to make money on training drew a response from one person who commented that 'Isn't making money from training the norm?"  I replied him, "No".  From our experience in training since 1996, most people lose money on training.  In fact many companies do training because the training fee is subsidised by the government's PIC scheme .  They just want to 'take advantage of government's money'.  Few of them know how to apply the benefits of training (click here for the 7 ways to apply benefits), left alone make money on training.  One may attribute this to the high stress that companies people have (unless they know how to reduce stress ).  There are 5 reasons for this: Most companies do not consider training as an investment but just an expense .  Since they didn't expect to have any return, they are very happy to have spent money on training.  This is the same as some companies considering marketing as an expe...

In response to an earlier article  stating that training is one of the 5 costs that cannot be cut, 3 persons asked me to elaborate how we can ensure that our training is profitable.  There are 3 simple steps to make money from training: Know what you want to learn .  Like I want to learn how to negotiate successfully, so I source for such a training program .  Learn with an objective in mind . When I attend the course on negotiation, I am not interested to learn everything about negotiation, I just want to apply negotiation to my work situation n ow .  Assuming I am a buyer, I want to learn how to get a good deal from supplier without being fooled by them Apply the learning within the next 3 days .  Studies show that unless you apply what you learn within the next 3 days, you will not apply the learning at all.  In fact, people lose money on training in one of these 5 ways , application is the main reason. To ensure that your training is profi...

Many people confided to me that business is getting tougher, cost of doing business and living continue to go up while business is stagnant or even declining.  Guess what is the answer I told them?  Good!  Let's make a toast for change. Insanity is defined as doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result.  You need to make changes, and the following 7 changes that all employees must make if they too want to be successful: From Reactive to Creative , that is, no more waiting for things to happen and instead make things happen.  You can just start small, the important thing is to get going and the rest will follow From Routine to Surprise . You cannot go through the routine and expect customers to buy from you.  You need to make a surprise, like iPhone 6, which is actually bendable and won't break when you put it inside your pocket From Old Knowledge to New Knowledge . Everyone must acquire new knowledge everyday, and if y...

MINDFULNESS FOR STRESS Everyone is concerned about stress, for only with proper stress management, we can achieve higher levels of output. Unknown to many people, the centuries old way of mindfulness is still the one of the most effective way to stress reduction. Mindfulness is about 3 things:  Awareness, Attention and Remembering . If you are mindful, you will achieve higher levels of clarity, and with it come peace of mind and happiness. A mindful person is not mindless or careless, he is very skillful with wholesome thoughts and behaviour. With mindfulness, you will become a better person and achieve inner calamity and bliss. Whether you are working at a high level or working level, you need to get the best out of your work and life. This short but highly effective workshop gives you the necessary tools and strategies to achieve mindfulness for stress reduction. Note: PIC 60% funding is available for this course. Call 6225-1784 for details.  Find out how to make mo...

Basic Financial Intelligence : Know the difference between price and value. Save cost, not save value.  In business, there are 5 costs that you absolutely cannot save, for they are not costs but value:  Training : for if your people are not trained, they will do things the wrong way and this will cost you more than the training cost.  By far the biggest training cost is not the training fee you pay to external trainers like us, but on-the-job training .  Like your staff make a mistake and your company has to compensate the customer for this, this must be a large training cost!  But if your staff is trained to do the right thing, you would have avoided this large cost Marketing and Sales : even the world's largest consumer product company Apple has to incur hundreds of millions dollars on sales and marketing, what makes you think your company can save this cost?  Your sales would definitely drop if you cut you this marketing and sales cost.  The la...

Most people have high IQ, but low FQ - Financial Intelligence.  Just look at the many people who prefer freebies to discounts (like buy 5 get 1 free is more popular than 25% discount) and you'll know what I am talking about. By the way, I think I am qualified to talk about this subject because I am a Chartered Accountant by training, and have a  Second-class Honours Degree in Accountancy  from National University of Singapore in 1988, in addition to a MBA from Scotland in 2000.  There are 3 simple ways that you too can be financially intelligent today: Know that Cash Flow is better than Profits, and Profits are better than Wages .  Cash Flow is money coming in and out whereas Profits are just what you make in a period.   Profits can be boosted by one-off event s (like a big business deal) but Cash Flow is difficult to be manipulated because it is over a period of time (like 4 years).  Of course profits are always better than wages because you nee...

A real salesperson is one that not only closes sales, but also get new customers and get customers to come back for more. They say a salesperson must have 3 Gs; Guts, Go-Getter and Go-All-The-Way . Here's the 5 Steps: Get them to re-connect with ex clients that are now clients of competitors. If you can get them back to become your customer, you are a real pro  Go to old prospects and close the m without dropping your price Get them to quote at higher price and still manage to get the prospect's attention or a meeting By all means, make them set their own targets and if they can set targets that are higher than yours, you have a very ambitious salesperson. Quickly increase his pay and give him more work to do  Most importantly, get him to sell the impossible , that is, those sales that people say it is impossible, like poor market, product no good, prospects already bought and no stock. To find out how Selling the Impossible is done, come for this newest course ...

A leader is one that not just communicates messages but also inspire and lead people with his messages. He is definitely not a 'forward email' person, or one that just repeats what the boss says.  You know your manager is a leader when he can finally do the most important thing: make people better than themselves .  He can hire, inspire, admire and retain people.    A good leader must have 3 M: Motivate, Morale-booster and Make Problems Go Away. Here are 5 Steps that you can make your manager become real managers: Get them to re-connect with staff that don't want to be connected.  You know, those 'bo-chap' or 'can't be bothered' type.   Plan, organize and execute a project that involves different departments with conflicting interests Get them to offer lower salary and yet get people to join or stay in the company .  By all means, make them set their own targets and if...

I'm sure many of you have this experience: you wanted to teach your child or staff something, or you wanted to send them for training for you think they lack certain skills.  Chances are that your child or staff will reject your teaching.  They will tell you things like, "I already know what you are going to teach me", or "Let's not waste time on things that we already knew". Many bosses would accept such reason and conclude that the staff or child does not need the teaching.  Is that true? The only reason your staff or child can reject your teaching is that they know more than you.  The only way to demonstrate this knowledge is from their doing and action.  So the next time when they reject your teaching, you can tell them, "I'm happy that you already know what I'm going to teach you.  Can you demonstrate what you know in your work?   If it is demonstrated that you know more than me, I would like you to be my teacher, is that okay for you...

Define the task, output clearly. Use this SMART criteria (specific, measurable, achievable, results wanted and timing) Delegate to a person with demonstrated competence (this is not training, you are delegating an important task, don't leave to chance) Explain the task clearly, preferably in writing (this will reduce misunderstanding & mistakes) Invite questions and feedback (Ask: "Can you show me how you're going to do it?") Give a schedule, deadline (Always leave some buffer in case of mistakes by giving a tighter deadline) Inspect what you expect (surprise audit is the best) Remember, Delegation is not abdication, this means responsibility still lies with you and YOU are still answerable. FOR A LARGE JOB, SET UP A DELEGATION AGREEMENT WHICH STATES:- · Intended outcome · Required resources · Completion deadline · Benchmarks (how can you measure progress) · Accountability · Consequences (for not completing) Delegation Exercise for You now: List 3 low ...

How many times have you selected the cheapest vendor only to discover later that you have just paid top dollar?   Over the years the relationship between supplier and customer has focused hard on many of the wrong things. Price alone is almost always the most important factor in selecting any supplier.   Yet we know that price can only account for out-of-pocket costs actually paid out to suppliers.  Other factors that are overlooked are more important in determining the  overall cost of purchasing and its ultimate value to your organization .  The overlooked but important factors include  Cost of Value-Added services  (like customization and design), rework, returns, inspection, administration and inconvenience cost.  More important, these costs exclude the  opportunity costs of not doing business with suppliers who can provide significant benefits , which include: Joint Strategic Planning and Product Design Coordinated marketing Joi...

A good salesperson is one that sells on higher price, on higher frequency and with more repeat business.   Even if your selling price is higher than your competitors, you can still beat your competitors if you know   how to add value to the customer .  The top 7 ways to sell on higher price include: Have Things that Few People Have - be it special service, b etter Technical Support,  Longer Credit Terms or Higher Credit Limit or  Unique packaging or limited edition versions  Totally Enthusiastic Salesperson Serving the Customer - fast prompt response, entertainment, listening, patience, problem solving, courteous service and go extra mile service Top Management Serving the Customer - imagine if the Prime Minister of Singapore serves you, price is no longer a concern, right? Novelty factor , like iPhone 6 Plus (click here to see how you too can copy from Apple even if you are not from Samsung) Strong Product Differentiation or Customization of...

The 8 good habits of highly successful salespeople are: 1) Right Understanding 2) Right Thought 3) Right Speech 4) Right Action 5) Right Livelihood 6) Right Effort 7) Right Mindfulness 8) Right Concentration Good Habit # 1 – RIGHT UNDERSTANDING Many salespeople work hard but cannot make it in sales because they have a wrong starting. A good start in sales is to get RIGHT UNDERSTANDING. RIGHT UNDERSTANDING means correct understanding, the best understanding, understanding that is true, understanding that is not half-true or half-false, but is the very best and most complete understanding you can get. Unless you first get RIGHT UNDERSTANDING you cannot make right use of the other 7 good habits. For example, salespeople who understand that it is to their own benefit to learn selling techniques would want to work hard to learn more and sell better. When you sell well, everyone will be happy, including your employer and cust...