Business and Money Tips

You know, people only take salespeople seriously when they think that the salesperson can really make a difference to their lives. Many salespeople are trained on how to ask questions to get the sale, but few are trained on how to ask 'Tough' questions that get you the sale immediately. In our sales training (eg  Selling Ice to the Eskimos  or  Winning Sales Strategies ), we often teach the following 3-stage questions: 1st stage: make a factual statement that can’t be refuted E.g. “Most sales staffs rarely meet the sales targets set for them by their company”; E.g. “Most businesses tend to do well in the initial years and falter as the years go by” 2nd stage: make a personal observation that reflects your experience and creates instant credibility E.g. “Experience from other companies has shown us that the reason for stagnant sales is not the competition but the lack of drive in the sales team.  Often the salespeople have little on-going training and most don't hav...

You must have come across this very often: a troubled person (can be your staff or a friend) find that his problem is too big and come to you for advise. When we find that his problem is actually quite trivial, we tell him that other people have bigger problems too and they can solve them without much fuss.  "Think positive, and always look for solutions, and the solutions will be there" is what we often tell him.  Well, thinking positive is good, for it is a starting point.  But merely thinking without the right solution will not get you to anywhere.  You have to provide the solution. To me, this is How I solve problems in the following 4 steps: There is a Problem .  This problem is troubling you now, but you are not the problem .  In other words, we separate the person from the problem .  Like you have incurred parking fines, but you are not the problem, it is the act of parking illegally that is the problem.   Root Cause of Problem . ...

Everyone wants a Fast way to solve problems in this world, like the Little India Riot on 8 December 2013. But first we must distinguish between a problem and an issue.   A problem is one that will cause serious problems, e.g. intoxication will cause accidents.  An issue is one that may cause problem, but that problem is not serious, the most irritation or unhappiness.  Like not enough pay is an issue, but will not cause accidents (if accidents happen due to low pay, it is likely to be sabotage, which is more serious than a problem). F: Face the Problem .  Do not run away from it, never Blame, give Excuses or Deny that the problem exist. A: Attributing Factor for the problem.  This is the main cause of problems and not issues.  Like the Singapore's Little India Riot problem that happened along Race Course Road on Sunday 8th December 2013 is attributed to intoxication, not unhappiness. It happened that the victim was behaving improperly (he took off ...

I had a good conversation with my friend that day who complained to me how many problems he has: family, business, work, finance and health.  I told him that actually he has no problems because all his problems are created by himself.  At first he wanted to throttle me, but later when I explained to him calmly, his mind started to open up. At the end of our conversation he was so elated and thanked me profusely.  I promised him that I would stand by him no matter what happened.  He asked me to share what I taught him, that's why I created this post on my blog. People make problems out of no problems in 5 ways: Craving, Possession, Clinging, Closing of Options and Never Negotiate. Craving is the Beginning of Problems    People craved for things, which is not the same as desire or wanting.  It's okay to want or desire things, but when you crave for things you become so hard up that you become irrational .  You just want to have things beca...

By the way, we are all in sales, regardless of whether we do selling as a career or not. For sales is not just about selling products and services but more of selling ideas.  For example, if you need your colleague to help you out in your work, you need to sell him the idea that helping you is good for him.  If you can convince him, you have made the sale. The most and often overlooked secret in sales is to be in front of a qualified prospect when he is ready to buy, not when you need to make a sale. You see when you are desperate to make the sale, you will be selfish and only look at your own interest. You will ignore or downplay the prospect's interest.  And your prospect will notice this, and he will not buy from you because he sees that you are just a sale pusher, not a problem solver. A salesperson can only succeed if he is seen as a problem solver.  For all prospects have 3 problems, money, happiness and time.  Everyone in this world wants more mon...

In our management and sales courses, we use this famous 4-Step RAST Model to teach our trainees in problem solving. I shall use the case of Getting Your Team to Achieve Their Goals as an example: Step 1: Recognize the Problem Recognize that there is a problem, and don't be egoistic or pretend that there is no problem.  The problem here is that our team is not achieving the goals, and we must not accept this as norma l but recognize this as a problem. Step 2: Actual Reasons for the Problem We need to find out the Actual reasons for the problem, and not be blinded by some non reasons like opinions and 'everyone is doing this' type of excuse.  We must be thoroughly objective in finding out the actual reasons, and not be swayed by some subjective hearsay.  In this case study, we find out that the actual reason for the team not achieving their goals is a lack of competency and confidence. Step 3: Solutions for the Problem With the actual reasons out, we can pi...