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How to Be Happy and Reduce Stress by Freeing Your Mind

"The secret of happiness is freedom, freedom is freedom from stress"  A. Ferrari Norman Your mind can be your prison or your mind can be your sky.  Many people are unhappy and stressed because their mind is not free.  They are like prisoners of their own mind because they are always attached to something: their ego, thoughts, emotions and material wants.   As a coach and manager of training, I come across many people saying things like: "I can only be happy when I earn more money" "If I let myself to be happy, I'll be disappointed most of the time" "Happiness cannot be eaten, so we need to be practical and do the right things and then we can be happy" Such thinking reflects the mistaken belief that happiness is an end by itself and not a means to an end. We know that happiness is a state of mind that can be experienced right now , regardless of what state you are in.  There is nothing wrong to wanting to have nice things, to

How People Demotivate People Unknowlingly

Before we can talk about motivating people, let's know how to Not Demotivate People in 5 Ways: Ignoring People , giving people the cold shoulder and seeing people as transparent.  When you ignore people, you are telling them they are not important, and what you say would be overshadowed by this Over Promise . Nothing beats under promise over deliver and over promise under deliver is the most de-motivating Favouritism . Everyone wants to feel important, and making people feel unimportant must be the biggest insult of all Negativity , like being so pessimistic and make everything seem impossible Ask for Opinion and Then Discard that Opinion .  We know when you ask for opinion you make people feel important. But when you discard that opinion you are making them feel really unimportant!  So my friend, before you open your mouth and post another comment on the internet, ask yourself this question: am I de-motivating people?  If so, don't do it. For we know de-motivat

Why Singaporeans Lost Jobs to Foreigners

Yes, they say Singaporeans are not hungry and that is why they lost jobs to the foreigners.  The truth is that Singaporeans are hard-working, but not as driven as compared to our neighbours. Many do not take much initiative and always wait for things to happen. They also dare not take risk and consider job security more important than doing a good job. On top of that, they want good pay and desire to go home punctually. No wonder many employers prefer to hire foreigners! Whether you are highly educated, highly skilled or inexperienced, you know that unless your employees are driven, your company will NOT achieve much and your company will lose out to competitors in due course.  This course will inspire your team to do more, teach them the 5 Ways to Be Hungry without Going Hungry, and most importantly, get them to work hard as a team. If you do not send your staff to this course, you are helping your competitors to be better than you.  This course qualifies for PIC (Productiv

The 4 Immeasurable that Get Heads Nodding

In our Sales Power (more at here ) and other sales and marketing courses, we teach people not to sell their product, its advantages and even the benefits it will accrue to the user.  For all these things are measurable, but in life it is the immeasurable that will get heads nodding. The 4 Immeasurable are: Hidden Potential .  Everyone has some hidden potential inside them, and the goal of the salesperson is to harness this potential.  It could like in the prospect's production capability, and by investing in the machine that you are promoting, they can reach their potential faster and easier. Achieve Dreams .  If you can dream it, you can make it.  A good salesperson talks about his prospect's aspirations and dreams and let them know that they too can realize their dreams.  Note that this may have nothing to do with what you are selling, but it surely touches their hearts.  When you can touch somebody's hearts, it is limitless what you can do. Love and Concern .  A

Your Challenges and Solutions

Since doing training part time from 1996, and full time from 2001 (under ActionCOACH) and from 2007 under Asia Coaching Training , our company, together with 3 associate trainers have developed over 428 programs.  Many people asked us what are these programs and we only have 3 words: Sales, Management and Employee Skills. But recently from our How to Be a Better Manager course (click here for details) with one trainee (a Managing Director from an European MNC), I realize that we only teach 2 things: Challenges and Solutions. Our courses deal with real-life challenges facing people in business, government and the private sector RIGHT NOW, not some text-book cases.  We get our participants to share their current work challenges, and we group them into 3 categories: Self, Others and the World.   Note that the challenges are built into the courses, like in the How to Close Every Sale course , we talked about sales objections as a main challenge.   But we don't stop there at t

How to Add Fire at Work

As we know, we humans cannot live without the 5 elements of water, fire, air, wood and metal.  Today I'm going to talk about fire. Fire in the workplace is about enthusiasm, the fire in the belly, the hunger in people's eyes and their drive at work. If your people are driven at work, your people will be driven out of work.  Being driven is not considered a special element or luxurious thing, it is a basic ingredient to quality work.  To drive people at work, follow these 5 steps: Find the purpose at work.  This could the mission, vision or the calling of the enterprise. Next, Ignite People's Passion at work Set up a Plan to carry out the purpose Perturb the Team, Exert Pressure at work Finally, need to Push Through Difficulties to achieve the plan  For those that want to inspire and motivate their team, come for this latest course How to be Driven on 13 Jan 2015 Tuesday 9 am to 12.30 pm.   HOW TO BE DRIVEN Make People Hungry without Getting Hungry

How to Avoid Being a Nokia or Samsung

Latest news this week: Samsung's 3rd quarter 2014 sales and profits plunged by more than 60% from the previous year, and has basically given up all the gains the company made in 2012 and 2013.   The rate of Samsung's drop is exactly the same as Nokia in 2009: its sales and profits drop by more than half when the overall market size is growing at least 30% annually. According to Samsung, its market share for smartphones now stands at less than 24%, compared to 35% in 2013.  Samsung attributed the drop in business to the onslaught of cheap smartphones from China (like Xiaomi and Lenovo) and the success of Apple's iPhone 6 on the higher end of smartphones.    So is it true that your competitors take away your business?    We know that even if you half your price, you may still not able to beat your competitor.  (read  here  for explanation) The fact is if you look at the models introduced by Samsung in 2013 and 2014: they are all  iterations, that is, incremental improve

Treating Everyone the Same

We all know that a good manager is one that does not treat his staff well, a good manager is one that treats all his staff well. There is simply no differentiation in his management and leadership style as this good manager always put people's interests above his. A good manager is not god, nor is he a godfather.  He is also not a magician, for  he cannot turn people around overnight. It takes about at least 4 weeks to turn people around. The first week is to ensure he got the right people on his team. The following week is to improve his team's teamwork.  The 3rd week is to lead them to greater heights and finally in the 4th week he communicates his grand turnaround plan to his team. Whether you are now running around or running people around, you need to be trained to be a better manager. This course How to Be a Better Manager (details at here ) will turn you around, provided you dare to invest 4 weeks in yourself.  To get a special deal for this course or

How to Climb Your Next Mountain

Everybody has their own mountain to climb.  For some, it is to reach the top of their career, for others, it is to become rich and famous.  Whether you are working for others or working for yourself, learning how to sell is one of the fastest way to climb your own mountain.  For if you cannot sell your idea, how are others going to help you succeed?   Selling skills is not just for those who sell for a living, we all sell for a living, for selling ideas is the most common form of selling. Even animals like dogs and cats do sell, otherwise how would their owners know when they want to eat?  Now you can learn how to sell like a professional with skills like "Asking Yes Questions" and "Objections as Impetus" methods.   SALES POWER (1-day) Master Selling Strategies and Increase Your Sales Income Date   :   29 Jan 2015 Thursday  9 am to 5 pm) Venue :  The Plaza 02-346 7500A Beach Rd    Fee: $398 each, $299 each for 2 & above, $199 ea

Increase Your Sales by 61% with 10% Effort

In the next 30 days, I want you to climb your own mountain (read here ).  In planning for sales for my own and my consulting clients’ businesses, I typically use the “ 5-Way Sales Leverage Chart ”. (The figures here refer to annualized figures, i.e. for one year) Target Market X Marketing Conversion = NO. OF PROSPECTS X Selling Conversion = NO. OF CUSTOMERS X No. of Transactions X Average Dollar Sale Price = SALES So from here that you can see there are only 3 things that you work in your sales planning – Your Prospects, Your Customers and Sales .  Notice that these are all the things above that follow the equal signs in the formula above.  They are all the result of something else in the formula , i.e., a result of something. Thus they cannot be changed.  The things that we want to plan to change are the things that are variable , i.e. things that can be changed.  From the above formula you see that there are only 5 variable thin