Business and Money Tips

As I learnt from James Pickens, master sales closers ask one minute, one liner closing statements that close the sale instantly.  The top 7 such questions are: "What could I do to help you buy?"  If the customer says, "Nothing" you say, "Why?"  The customer then answers, and you overcome the objection and closes the sale If the customer says he can't make a decision, you suddenly ask him if he wants more coffee . Whatever answer the customer gives, you just say, "Don't tell me you can't make a decision; you just did." "Let me tell you something I've learned.  When you don't know which road to take in life, any road that looks good to you will do.  Isn't this proposal I showed you look good?" "Mr customer, if I give you this product free of charge, you would take it, wouldn't you?  So we're only talking about money, right?" "Mr customer, anyone can say no, because that's easy.

A good salesperson is one that can sell in difficult situations, that is, selling when people don't want to buy.  There are 7 situations when people don't want to buy: You are selling something that they already have aplenty - like selling ice to the Eskimos Your customer has just bought the same thing that you're selling Overnight, the number of suppliers increased by 200% while your target market shrinks by 50%.  In other words, there is a massive over supply, much like the PC market here now Your product or service has a bad record - and no matter how attractive you make them, no one wants to buy. This is much like the Windows Surface RT now There is little demand for what you sell now as people can get it for free on the internet - much like DVDs and CDs now Your prospect has been approached by over 10 vendors from your trade in one week - how would you expect him to buy from you? People just don't want to buy because there is no mood - much like Thailand

It sounds funny, right?  How can one be happy when stressed?  What is stress?  Whenever you're not getting what you want, you have stress.  Note that it is negative stress that makes us suffer, positive stress gives us energy and impetus to do more.   The next time you are stressed, you are doing this thing called Focus on What Went Wrong .  The simple way to de-stress immediately and be instantly happy is to Focus on What Went Right .   It is not what happens to us that makes us suffer, but what we do to what happened that makes us suffer .   For example, your team members are not demonstrating the teamwork and responsibility you want.  As a result, work gets piled up and you're now stressed.  Instead of scolding your team members for being irresponsible and upset everyone, why not focus on what's right?  What are right could be: you have a team, your team is intact and not broken, your team's turnover is low, your team have not betrayed you, and most important

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