Business and Money Tips

As we know, social media marketing is about social first and marketing second. Same for Sun Tzu Art of War: it is about art first and war later.   'Art' in Sun Tzu Art of War refers to how we do things, while 'War' here refers to winning in the business battlefield. Social media marketing is about how we do and not what we do.  For example, it is not about how nice your photo is on FaceBook but how you post your photo: do you post it with a positive or negative angle? On the surface, Social Media is a 201x thing, while Art of War belongs to 2,500 years ago. Yet they both share a common origin: the Yi Jing (or Book of Changes) written 5,000 years ago: life is about evolution. Social media is always evolving, while Sun Tzu Art of War is too evolving with the times as Sun Tzu advocates flexibility as the key winning strategy. Today I shall look at the 5 Elements of Sun Tzu Art of War and they can be applied in our Social Media Marketing.  Know Yourself Know Your...

What is Social Selling?  It is definitely beyond social media selling and is beyond selling. Together with Heart Selling, Consultative Selling, Key Account Selling and Attraction Selling, Social Selling is considered more effective. It is definitely way above Hard Selling and better than Problem Solving Selling.  Social Selling has 8 key elements: You Sell without Selling , because you are never selling and only Socialising. Make friends, not make sales.  Share, not Sell. You share matters that people are most concerned with, and people will be connected with you. When people are connected with you, they will buy from you without you selling at all. Making friends take priority over making mone y . So you would rather lose the sale than lose a friend You have to put making a sale or presenting out of the back of your mind . In other words, you simply make friend and that's it. You don't make friend because you want to present your friend with something, right? G...

Everyone knows today’s economy is very different from 2015 or even January 2016. Not only are the costs rising, selling prices continue their downward spiral. These factors, coupled with labour shortage and Brexit factor, make many businessmen wonder: where is the future? As we know, every crisis produces winners. We need to ensure that we are the winner and not the loser. To do that, we must adapt fast and evolve with the rapidly changing markets. This means that we need to move to higher gear: innovate fast and ramp up productivity. As we know, innovation is about strategies and tactics and productivity is about people.  We can learn from people who have done it before: people who have won numerous battles for thousands of years using a proven formula: Sun Tzu Art of War. Background information and Why Sun Tzu is powerful : Sun Tzu (or Sūn Zǐ in pinyin) was a 500 BC Chinese general and military strategist. He led his country won numerous battles against its stron...

We know that leadership makes the difference between an organization’s success and failure, and there are many types of leadership. There are leadership from the heart, leadership by KPI (Key Performance Indicators), leadership by command, coercion and control the opposite, leadership by consultation. Among all types almost everyone say that the best leadership is leadership by example. Unfortunately most people don’t understand what leadership by example is. To many people ‘leadership by example’ means that the leader must set an example. For example, if the leader ask people to work hard, he himself must work hard not just now but forever. Some say that to lead by example, a leader must be flawless and posses all the attributes that he advocates.  The leader by example must do what he says and says what he does. Otherwise he is just a hypocrite and will lose credibility as a leader. Is this true?  It seems that this is the common understanding of leadership by...

The 16 rock-solid rules that successful salespeople follow: Great Attitude and Do More Than Asked See Yourself as ALREADY successful Don't prejudge, never assume, do not minimise yourself, your prospects or clients Goal oriented. With specific written goals for your life, career, family, social and spiritual Are Self-motivated, especially still motivated despite no success Always in control but never control people, instead give people choices Constantly practise and prepare in advance for all meetings See and talk to more people THAN ANYONE ELSE and GET MORE PEOPLE TO SAY NO TO YOU. Take action, not just talk or post Persistent and persevere Sell more than your product or service, as you understand who the customer is and what your customer really want Consistently create and sell value, rather than get stuck on selling price Understand that speed and ease are the two biggest benefits that you can deliver to a customer Act as experts, advisers, and resources to yo...

Mention the word 'hypnosis' and most people would conjure up images of conman getting people into a trance and cheating them of their money. In reality, such conman are not doing hypnosis but manipulation.  Hypnosis is an ancient communication tool where we use it to get things done without forcing people. Hypnosis is used a lot in therapy. But today I am talking about one type of hypnosis called CH or Conversational Hypnosis.  As the name implies, Conversational Hypnosis is using conversation to hypnotise people. The word 'hypnotise' means to get people to do things happily and voluntarily without them knowing it.  The power of suggestion is rooted in all hypnosis, because hypnosis is about putting someone in a trance and make them susceptible to your suggestion.  Conversational hypnosis is about making someone susceptible to your suggestion without putting them in a trance.  In other words, it is about suggesting without people realising you are maki...

(note: This article is adapted from my interview with the Straits Times in 2011) The Sun Tzu 5 Elements of Dao-Jiang-Tian-Di-Fa 道将天地法 as used in the office: Dao : This means you must know where and at what level you are pitching your strategy. Or simply put, know your purpose and why you do what you do. Like in sales, we teach people 'Your Why', why you are doing sales and what attracts you to your company. From here the salesperson can share why his company can help the prospect Jiang : Jiang is the leader or leadership. In the office, if everyone uses blame, excuses and denial and no one takes leadership and responsibility for office matters, you can be sure that the whole office will be on fire soon Tian:  Tian refers to the overall climate or what HR Practitioners called "Corporate Culture".  It is your way of doing things, and your  written and unwritten rules  in the office Di : Di is the ground, support and places where you can take refuge in. In the...

(This article was published in The Straits Times on Tuesday 2 August 2016 As we know, the corporate world is not the same as your family or social world. People who work in small and family organisations, if they don't understand what is corporate, will definitely encounter difficulties at work. With globalisation and emergence of large entities, the corporate world is gaining preeminence.  Having worked in the corporate world all my life since the tender age of 22, I know there are many mis-conceptions about life in the corporate world. From consulting and training many global corporate entities, and learning from my past painful experience, I know what it means if you do not fit in well in the corporate world. Not only will you lose your career opportunities, you will also be faced with difficulties at work. That's why I am so passionate about this topic and want to share with everyone  the 7 major differences between the corporate and non-corporate world. Know them a...