Business and Money Tips

As we know, a great man is not one that does great things but one that does greatly in what he is supposed to be doing.  We all know what are the right things to do, but due to work pressures and meeting the demands of others, we tend to divert our focus.  If you're reading this newsletter, I hope to inspire you to do the following 6 things so that you can be happier at work: Do the best for the day , and not wait for another day to come.  This means not holding back and give it your all Continuously upgrade your skills, attitudes and knowledge . One good way is to get someone outside (like a Trainer) to challenge your thinking.  For if you change your thinking, your life will change Improve your inter-personal skills .  Know how to empathize with people and not just push your way through. Have high self-awareness and equip yourself with EQ and profiling skills Know how to be tough .  Get driven and be tough to take tough actions.   Know that different situation calls for di

Many companies like the sales trainer to teach them how to look for new prospect s and close every sale .  Sales managers love to equip their sales force with many techniques to overcome sales objections .  Some bosses demand that sales trainers must impart skills that can be applied immediately so as to reap the rewards overnight.  They want their sales team to get motivated and be inspired to take action .  Without any of the above, sales training would become another of those 'ra-ra' type, i.e. all hype and no result.  To us, all sales training would cover all of the above and many more. For the specific 9 things that sales training must cover, please refer to this article  here .  (To avoid wasting money in sales training, read  here ).   (Note: PIC now pays 60% cash for your training in 3 months).  Actually the most important element in Sales Training is not any of the above but one and only one thing - Compel the salespeople to perform .  To do that, the trainer

Those who know history know that Genghis Khan, the leader of the Mongolian empire 800 years ago, ruled the largest empire the world has ever known. His Mongolian Empire was 4 times the size of Alexander and twice the size of Roman Empire.  It comprises the entire East Asia except Japan, Central Asia, Middle East and Eastern Europe. Today the USA called itself a superpower, yet it cannot even handle one country called Iraq.  People wondered how did the Mongolians, without a superior culture and technology, and with so little population (200,000) managed to do it? What did Genghis did?  What do his achievements reveal about the nature of his leadership and management?  What traits made him so effective?  Most importantly, can we learn something from him and apply to our modern management? Of course given the unique nature of Genghis's time his circumstances and personality, it would be ridiculous for us to follow exactly what he did.  But according to historian John Man, we c

How many times have you selected the cheapest vendor only to discover later that you have just paid top dollar?   Over the years the relationship between supplier and customer has focused hard on many of the wrong things. Price alone is almost always the most important factor in selecting any supplier.   Yet we know that price can only account for out-of-pocket costs actually paid out to suppliers.  Other factors that are overlooked are more important in determining the overall cost of purchasing and its ultimate value to your organization .  The overlooked but important factors include Cost of Value-Added services (like customization and design), rework, returns, inspection, administration and inconvenience cost.  More important, these costs exclude the opportunity costs of not doing business with suppliers who can provide significant benefits , which include: Joint Strategic Planning and Product Design Coordinated marketing Joint Customer Research Cross Selling Paperwo

As a trainer with over 18 years of training experience (including part time 4 years), I find that many clients like to ask trainers to teach them things that they themselves can do.  Like in sales training, they like the trainer to teach them how to present their product's features and sell like them. Some even asked us to teach them the exact script on how to respond to a customer's enquiry.  There are some that like the trainer to be like one of them, fully absorbed into their company's culture and way of doing things.  One of them told me, "You have to do things like what we do here". Make no mistake: your external trainer is not your employee, nor is he your company's mouth piece. Most importantly, the reason for getting an external trainer is to get new perspectiv e, different ways to look at things.  If you get an external trainer to do what you yourself can do, why waste the time and money and why not just do it yourself? To me, the only value an

Note: List of courses is now at here The common problem faced by learners all over the world is not how much they learn but how much learning they retain.  For we know that if your retention is low, your application of the learning will also be low . That means lower training effectiveness.   Here are the top 5 ways that we use to massively increase the retention of learning for our clients: (for the top 7 things that training must cover , read this ) Review and reflection once every half or one hour .  The review and reflection can be in the form of Question and Answer, Case Study and Sharing of Learning IAP - Immediate Action Plan , how can you not remember when you put your learning into action immediately? Funny Video Clips .  A picture speaks a thousand words, and a moving picture speaks a million words.  This is especially so when the video clip is funny and exaggerating, and such ridiculous associations will definitely lock into people's minds Discussions and Shari

Many training courses tout themselves as having the latest ideas, strategies and thinking that will put you ahead of your peers.  Some of them are conducted by gurus who claimed to be able to 'give us 8 hours and we'll change you'.  Sounds pretty impressive!  We know that having more knowledge will not make you more successful.  Because if this is so, why are the professors not among the top earners in our society?  In fact talking to people from all walks of life reveal that we're living in an over-information age: people are now being immobilized with too much information.   It is apparent that what move people is not more information but inspiration.  Inspiration is getting people to do what they want to do because they want to do it .  When you are inspired to do things, you do it even when there is no reward and no punishment for not doing it.  That is true inspiration. Do not confuse inspiration with creativity and innovation, for inspiration is just havi

We know words and phrases are magical in that they have the power to change minds.  If you use the right words and phrases, sales would come.  If you use the wrong one, sales would go away.   If you are selling to people holding management positions, you need to use words and phrases that reflect what they want: certainty, little risk and most importantly, reliable results .  Understand that management people are not entrepreneurs, they are not risk takers and their primary responsibility to their boss (the entrepreneur) is to protect and grow the investment.   Never use words and phrases that will frighten these managers, like "Rapid growth", "Double your return", "Massive profits", "Take more risks" and "Dare to be different".  The following 22 words and phrases are most suitable: Minimize your risk Going one step at a time Protect what you've built Go straight down the middle Spread the risk Cementing your career fu

In a sense we're all selling the invisible: we're selling something that people cannot really touch and feel, and people don't need what we are selling. Even if you're selling a physical product you're still selling the invisible because it's the trust and reliability that people ar buying.   In short, we're all selling ice to the Eskimos! First of all, understand what is 'Selling Ice to the Eskimos' and how does it differ from Selling in Difficult Situations?  Selling ice to the Eskimos is even more tougher than selling to different people because there is simply no need or want for your product! To Sell Ice to the Eskimos, we first need to define our Customer correctly; with proper definition, you can then Create a Need that this customer never known before. After that, you need to Make your client a Hero and with that, they will be so happy to buy what you're selling. To sell ice to the Eskimos requires us to do a business and no

Note: The next Successful Selling Strategies is on 4 July 2014 Friday 9 am to 12.30 pm. Details of course is at here The opposite of Effortless Sales is Stressful Sales.  Author of 'The Power of Now' Eckart Tolle says, " Stress is caused by being 'here' but wanting to be 'there', or being in the present but wanting to be in the future .  It is a split that tears you apart inside.  Indeed many salespeople are doing stressful sales, for when they are in front of a prospect, their mind is never with the prospect.  Instead their minds are thinking about how to close the prospect, how to make him say yes quickly, how to not mention any weakness the product has, and how to make time for the next appointment.  Stressful Salespeople often end up not achieving any sales at all, but they are very busy making proposals.  We called such salespeople Quotespeople.  There are 5 ways you can use WIN - W hat's I mportant N ow - in your sales: Always listen  to

How to Be a better manager in 4 weeks at here Are you selling very hard in this market? Is hitting targets becoming more stressful? Make no mistake: customers do not buy your products or services, in fact they do not even buy the benefits of what you sell. All customers want to gain from transacting with you and make more profits. Profit also include any savings in cost, time, labor and most importantly, save trouble.  Whether you are selling to non-profit organizations, governments or profit-making private businesses, you need to make a difference to your market . Now you too can increase your sales costlessly with our 71 methods Power-packed Contents Include: Why Most Salespeople Are Not Selling Well and What To Do About it Five Ways to Higher Sales Profits: Low-Cost Leads, Higher Sales Conversion, Higher Frequency, Higher Sale Value and Higher Margins Work-through of an example: how to increase profits by 76% Three-Ways to Low-Cost Leads: Attraction Selling, Guerilla-

We know that informal learning is the world's biggest and fastest learning.  This is because when one learns informally, one is not using his conscious mind and is thus using less conscious effort. With less conscious effort, one can learn more without feeling tired. That's why when you embark on what you love, you'll have more energy.  Same for learning.  What you learn informally you learn more.  Many people learn the following 5 bad habits at work unconsciously: Pushing Blame.  When something wrong happens, employees learn that if you don't push the blame to someone else, you'll have to shoulder the entire blame. Thus employees learn to push blame quickly, like "I thought that you know, that's why I never follow-up with you" and "You should know as you're more senior than me".   Coming up with Excuses .  Like "I never learnt that in school", "It was always done like this". We know that excuses only serve one

We often talk about wisdom, but what exactly is wisdom?  Some people think that following the experts is wise, while others talk about having your own beliefs and stick to them.  There are some that only trust centuries old wisdom passed down from the wise men.  There are also some that discard old thoughts and believe that wisdom needs to be updated to reflect our modern times.  According to my over 16 years of teaching people from all walks of life, wisdom comprises of 5 things: Seeing all phenomena in life as temporary, incomplete and not self.  If you can see things in this totally freeing way, you will have great security and happiness, for now you are not dependent on anything in this world, i.e. you're truly enlightened.  That's the ultimate wisdom! Not any wisdom that's told by someone but true wisdom that you directly see and understand for yourself.  To do this you must have an open mind Ability to listen to other points of views instead of being bigoted

Whether you're training senior management, working level or kids, all training programs must cover the following 4 + 3 elements to be effective: The Importance of the topic : why we must know and do (the topic) The Strategies and Tactics of executing the topic (steps, procedures and guidelines) What to do if we cannot achieve what we want (on the topic) The Ultimate in the topic: what is higher than the highest level (of the topic)? The Other 3 Things to cover are beyond the topic, but nevertheless must be included if we want to have a well-rounded learning: The key challenges facing the audience now (and how knowing the topic will alleviate that) The successes of the audience so far (to validate their efforts and encourage them to do more) A story that touches the audience's hearts so as to leave with them a lasting impression.  Even if they forget about the topic and its details, the story will leave a mark in their memory, thereby helping them to remembe

As I learnt from my Coach today, to do well in business requires us to think differently, the 5 keys to do well in any business, big or small: Sales and Marketing are still the 2 most important functions of any business.  It is not how good your product or service is, but how good people think your product/service is.  How people think about (when they are not your client yet) is nothing but sales and marketing. Even referrals is a form of marketing, so is the commonly used advertising.   It's about Your Reach - who knows you.  Many times it is about who is in your database: and how you contact this database and turn them into goldmine (not landmine) Never give up on your goals and dreams: work on them, rest on them, but never give them up. For when a business has no dreams or goals, it is just a money making machine Perseverance is everything : don't strike while the iron is hot, strike until the iron is hot.  Rise above perturbation (extreme pressure) and you'll