Business and Money Tips

Knowing the truths makes one wise, believing in the myths makes one unwise, so said my teacher Andy Ferrari Norman.  The top 7 myths and truths of training that few people realize are: 1.  Training will make me 'Get High' Truth: Yes, you may get very pleasant feelings of peace and tranquility but you should not get high or the trainer has just embarked on 'emotion brainwashing'.  Training will increase your self-awareness of your knowledge, beliefs and experience .  For example, people often told me that they didn't realize that they were using the wrong words and phrases in their work until they came to our training. 2. Training will equip me with 'Magic Power' In promotion flyers for seminars, they often use words like 'turn you from unmotivated to highly charged' and that gives many the impression that training has some magical power.  Truth:  Trainers are not magicians , they don't possess magic power to transmit them to you. But wi

Our achievement-oriented society is always crazy about skills and certification: the more skilled you are, the higher would be your income. However, we do know that in the longer term, having more skills without being skillful will not sustain your success.  You need to be both skilled and skillful to enjoy sustainable growth.   By the way, skillful means being careful, mindful, considerate  and most importantly, having good intention with wholesome thoughts .  Wholesome thoughts include love, kindness, equanimity, empathy and joy.  For example, if I am a skillful driver, I would be very considerate and would not want to cause traffic jams unnecessary by driving too slow during peak hours.  A skilled driver may not be as skillful as me unless he has the same state of mind as me.  At the end of the day, what matters are always moments: it is not what you do but what you do in that moment that makes the difference .  Accidents are usually caused not by people with poor skills but b

In his military classic "Art of War" written 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu taught us that to defeat the competition and achieve your goals, you must have foreknowledge.  Foreknowledge is not about the following: Prediction based on the past Unsubstantiated Hearsay Analogy with past events Derived from calculations Foreknowledge is about 4 things: Detailed research and analysis from people who know the competition situation in details Knowledge of the personality and behaviour profile of people Psychology of things, why people do things in certain way Knowledge about the environment, including business climate Foreknowledge does not stop at knowing your competitors.   The most important knowledge is to know yourself.  You must know where you are strong and where you are weak so that your weakness will not be exposed and instead positioned as strengths.   Having foreknowledge will also help us to exercise Deception, which is simply not letting the enemy kn

Note: Successful Selling Strategies seminar is now on 17 July 2014 Thursday 9 am to 12.30 pm.  Details at here . Everyone from Facebook to Google and Apple are jumping into this bandwagon of Successful Selling Strategies , which are summarized as follows:(source from here ) Your salespeople are the solutions to increasing sales , not more advertising or image building.  All Apple Stores (not to be confused with Apple Resellers) staff undergo 3-months of intensive training before they can attend to walk-in customers.  How about you?  When was the last time your salespeople attend training?   2 years ago?  Take advantage of PIC claims and sign them up for sales training now! Content is king, context is emperor.   Yes, content is important, but what is more important than content is context, how do you customize and contextualize your content to the local market?   Customer satisfaction is worthless, customer loyalty is priceless .  No point satisfying your c

Mention 'work hard' and many equate it to be toil, suffer, to be on tenterhooks, sweat, labour, fret, tolerate and even slog.  Truth be told, working hard is a virtue that all successful people have.  I have yet to see a self-made man that has never work hard.  If you want to get rich, you need to work hard.  In fact, working hard is not the same as hardworking, as when you are working hard, you may not realize that you are working hard.  For work has become a joy , and working hard is second nature as you are just fulfilling your calling. If you enjoy your work and work your enjoyment, work is never hard at all and you'll never need to retire.   Understand that work hard is not hard if you work with your hearts. If you find that your work is hard, it's hard for you to work hard. Hard words make work hard (read here for full article).  Heart words make hard work not hard.  A manager's job is to make people work hard, not make people's work har

Yesterday's article on Planting Seeds of Happiness  in 7 easy ways drew one comment asking me to elaborate how to do that in the office. As we know, the office is one place where we spend more time than anywhere in this world.  Smart bosses often equate happiness at work as the ingredient to high productivity, the other 2 ingredients being management system and management sty le.  The 7 ways that you too can plant the seeds of happiness in the office everyday: Know Your Value in the Office for the Day - yes, some days people feel that they are just messengers but the moment you realize your value in the office, you'll start to feel you are doing something good. Such good feelings give you instant happiness Validate and Appreciate your colleagues for what they do for you .  Before going back, ask your boss this question, "Can I ask you a question before you leave?"  The boss will of course say, "Sure".  "Is there one or 2 things that I can do tom

This article appeared in The Straits Times on 28 August 2015 Friday Page C32. For article on "Plant Seeds of Happiness in the Office", click here If you plant seeds of happiness, flowers of happiness will bloom.    Everyone wants to be happy, yet often we have very little idea of what brings about genuine happiness.  It's obvious that material comforts will only bring us momentary happiness, as the moment you have something good, you start to want more and better and diminish your own happiness.  In fact clinging on to material comforts only leads to suffering.  No one wants to suffer, but do we know how to give up those actions that cause suffering? True happiness is an inside thing, it is your inner feeling of bliss and joy.  There is no clinging, no craving, only pure enjoyment.   What is planting a seed?  It's the simple act of setting something into motion that will help you create the life you want.  It's taking a moment of work today so that you

Every salesperson (including those not selling but selling ideas like those in management) wants to know the fastest and easiest way to make the sale. One day I asked an audience of insurance salespeople, "How many of you would like it if I gave you a list of people who wanted to buy insurance now? Everyone raised their hands. Truth: There is no such list. The one-word meaning of sales is "WORK". The 2-word meaning of sales is "WORK HARD". The 3-word meaning of sales is "WORK EVEN HARDER". How Do I Make a Cold Call? There answer is, "Don't". Don't make a cold call. Make a warm call.   Warm up the cold call and you'll get your results improved by 27%. Guaranteed.  We teach in our courses the 7 ways to warm up any calls. Instead of calling people and look for "Mr Andy", tell the other side that "I've been asked to give Andy a call". If they asked you "What's it regarding?" You don't answ

Everyone wants to be a great employee or High Contributing Employee (Course on 26 May 2016 Thur. 2 pm).  Unfortunately, such essential skills are not taught in schools. At Asia Trainers , we teach the following 7 things that all employees should ask before they ask for pay raise: Early in the Morning , ask "What are the one or two things that I can do today to make your work easier?" At end of the Day , ask "Thank you for the teachings today" End of the Month , ask "How's the month's profit?  What one or two things I can do in the next month to make it better?" If your boss is consistently working late , ask "What can I do to help you go home earlier?" When faced with attacks from customers or competitors, ask "What track records we can rely on to turnaround the situation?" At end of the Quarter , ask "What can I do to increase sales, lower costs, improve cash flow, minimize risks, increase productivity and most

As we know, nothing happens by itself and everything has a cause and an effect.  This causality is also explained as Dependent Origination, which means that something is always depending on something else, and without the origin of something, something will not happen .   The reason is nothing is absolute or permanent.  Everything is relative and impermanent.  Nothing exists on its own, but arises from something else.  Things continue to exist and transform owing to the coming together and dissolution of factors .  This natural law can be simply stated as:  When A arises, B comes to be.   When A does not arise, B does does not come to be. Similarly, when A ceases to arise, B ceases to come to be. In short,  without A, there is no  B.  With A, there is B.  For example, this blog arises because I attended a talk by Justin Fong in April 2013 and was advised by him to start writing regularly.    As you can see, there is constant dynamism in things .  Understand that there are mul

What would you say when your client asks, "How much do you charge for your service?" This is a money question. Indeed such money question forces you to confront your sense of self-worth . In other words, what's your self-worth? It takes courage to place a fair but generous value on your expertise and the time taken to get that expertise. Definitely not the time it takes to do the work , but the time it takes to be to do the work well .  Just like we don't pay our Dentist by time, we pay him by his ability to do his work well, regardless of the actual time taken. Often in the dentist case, the shorter the time, the better it is and the higher is his fee. Here's what you should answer to this question - "More than what you think!" In our coaching and training business, we always work toward the goal of giving our clients more than their money's wort h. Because we know that when we dedicate ourselves to raising the top (quality) rather than lowering

Since yesterday's blog about Sales Training in Singapore, one person commented that trainees are more important than trainers, and good trainees can make trainers better and they will benefit the most from any training .  Today we talk about how to become a good professional trainee: First, realize that training is a key determinant of your career success.  A good trainee will put to use immediately what he learnt and help his employer earn more money instantly. Second, understand that as a trainee, your job at the training is not to learn as much, but to discover as much as possible about yourself .  We seldom look at ourselves, and most people live their entire lives without knowing themselves.  So go for training with an open mind, take what the trainer said seriously and examine your own strengths and weaknesses honestly in the training. Third, immediately after the training, jot down 3 key points that you want to teach to your colleagues, boss and team members .  The b

Sales Training in Singapore falls under 2 categories: Academic-style long training lasting into weeks and months and Corporate-style training lasting from half-days to 3 days.  Marketing Institute of Singapore (MIS) conducts the most academic-style training, while for Corporate-style short sales training, there are 3 main styles: Motivational style , which models training after NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and Motivational Principles.  You get very charged up after the training;  Guru style , which are usually done by 'ang moh' gurus like Joel Bauer and T Harv Eker, usually from USA.  They typically conduct free 2 to 3 days training (or more correctly previews) to on-sell a week of training costing 5 to 9 thousand dollars; Down-to-Earth Style , which are done by over 20 training providers, ranging from one-man shows to established providers like Asia Trainers, Asia Coaching Training and ActionCOACH.  They mix hard (specific sales strategies) with soft motivational

To survive in today’s markets, you need to follow a new set of rules. Just like you have at some time or other fire your boss, isn’t it time that you fire your customers too? You’ll probably say, “Are you mad? How can I fire my customers, the people that bring me money?" Read on to find out why firing customers can give you 80% more business and 100% more happiness… There are 4 types of customers in this world; I call them A B C D: A – stands for Awesome , the best customers that anyone can find, people that give you high margins, advance payments, regular business and large deals. Everyone’s dream customer. B – stands for Basic – the basic customers that you have to keep you busy with normal profits and cash inflow. Everyone’s daily customers. C – stands for Can’t Deal With – the type of customers that ask for things to be done or delivered yesterday and when you ask for payment, it is always ‘tomorrow or next week’. You make almost zero profit and cashflow on them.

People are more capable than what you think.  Whether you are dealing with your staff, customers, suppliers, contractors or children, you should adopt an open mind and do not limit people's capabilities.  Currently you may see low performance, but understand that such performance is determined by causes and conditions set before.   Once the causes and conditions change, performance will change .  For example, Japan's economy has, since 1992, on a decline phase and till today 2014, it has not recovered to its glory days of 1980s.  This is because of the causes and conditions that Japan has, chief among them is its closed door immigration policy that limits foreign talents.  If Japan were to change its immigration policy and attract talents like Singapore or USA, its economy will surely improve.   If people are indeed more capable than what you think, what causes them to under-perform?  There are 7 key causes and conditions: No Mood.  Yes, people don't feel the push

In our previous blog , we talk about how to use our eyes to close every sale.  Over 84 techniques were shared in our courses   How to Close Every Sale and Sales Power , today we will dwell on one tactic: Using Emptiness . When your prospect gives you an objection and he did so in a negative manner, like being sarcastic or critical, most salespeople will act in one way - react. If you understand the concept of 'no self', you will know that everyone is empty by itself.  Your prospect does not have any self-nature - no nature of his own.  There is no nature coming from his own side, what we see in him are just our perceptions of him.   He is empty, and we must be careful not to take away his emptiness and fill him with our own views of him, which will be negative because he gave us an objection .  'No self' means that whatever you see in him is just coming from you, not him.  He is empty, but that doesn't mean that he does not exist, or for us to pretend that he i