Business and Money Tips

You'll be surprised if you have a heart-to-heart talk with the people that you sent for  training .  "Tell me what have you learnt."  They will say, "Nothing much, I learnt those strategies that we may have taken for granted and not used much".  Is this their real answer? What do people really learnt from training?  You'll be shocked to discover the truths: there are 5 main things that people learnt but dare not tell you: They learnt about themselves: their weaknesses, strengths and most importantly, their potential.   Like people learnt that they can do magic: cut a piece of wood with paper.  Many people are frightened with this new discovery: they are afraid that now that they know they can do much more, will they be worked to death to implement the strategies learnt? They learnt about the best practises  that may not be practised in their organization, like having half-yearly dialogue style performance appraisal.  Some are afraid of telling this to

‘THE 22 IMMUTABLE LAWS OF MARKETING’ book  written by Al Ries and Jack Trout is a wonderful book. I realise that we too can apply the laws to management.  In fact the world's 2 most preferred employers Google and Facebook use many of these 8 laws:  1.       Law of Leadership  – Be a Good Leader first then be a Good Manager. (Be a better manager in 4 weeks at here ) 2.       Law of Mind  –  it’s better to be the first in the mind than to be the first in the marketplace .   Once a mind is made up, it rarely changes.   So make a strong name in your people's minds that you are an Effective Manager (details at here ).  3.       Law of Perception  – management is  not a battle of ideas  but a  battle of perceptions .  All ideas is relative.   Management is a  manipulation of perceptions .  Make sure your people perceive you to be capable, that's why you cannot show your weakness in front of your team members.  4.      Law of Ladder  – move your team up the Ladd

Most people equate aggressive selling to aggressive salespeople doing pushy or aggressive selling.  Nothing is further from the truth. By the way, Aggressive Selling is part of Motivational Selling .  As we know, selling is professionally helping other people to buy .  Aggressive selling is just professional selling done in an aggressive way .  Sun Tzu in the Art of War advocated wars to be fought quickly and with determination .  (The next Sun Tzu Art of War for Sales seminar is on 30 Jan 2015 Friday 9 am to 1 pm, details at here ).  Author Andy Ferrari Norman defined Aggressive Selling to be ' Determined and Energetic Selling that Produces Quick and High Results '.  There are 9 ways to do aggressive selling: A ggressive Sales and Marketing , like the government's aggressive and non-stop bombastic commercials on TV and Radio in August to promote the Pioneer Generation scheme.  If you have deep pockets, you can expect good results because no one can ignore such

In Buddhism, there is this bodhisattva called Avalokiteshvara, or commonly called 'Guan Shi Yin" in China and South East Asia (or "Guan Yin" in short).  This bodhisattva is an enlightened being living in heaven that has delayed his own buddhahood so as to save mankind from their sufferings.  He (or she as in Guan Yin) has  the ability to listen and understand the suffering of others.   Buddhists believe that if we evoke his name, he will listen and help us.  Note that his one life cycle is of a few thousand years.  In everyday life, you as a human being are also like Avalokiteshvara if you can practise  deep listening and active listening .  Just by being able to  listen with calm and understanding and without any judgement,  we are already easing the suffering of another person.  If you were to engage in 30 minutes of such listening, you can relieve a great deal of pain in another person.  That's what coaches and trainers like us do: we listen to the voices o

This is because Apple's salespeople are its customers.  Not only are Apple's salespeople free-of-charge, they are the best salespeople because nobody can resist word-of-mouth referrals. Apple knows how to people climb up the 7-Step Ladder of Loyalty, from Suspects to Prospects, and finally to Raving Fans. They know that the Ultimate in Customer Service is about turning Complaints into Compliments and turning Customers into Raving Fans that Sell for You. So if you have been thinking of how to increase sales at the lowest cost, now is the time. This seminar, taken from our high level consulting, will leave you miles ahead of your competition. Note: This course qualifies for PIC 60% Grant, i.e. your net investment is only 40%. Hurry! Last seats left!  Register now by calling Ida at 6225-1784 or email to andythecoach@gmail.com CUSTOMERS AS RAVING FANS Date: 12 March 2015 Thursday 2 to 5.30 pm Fee: $149 each (special fee, others $198) Venue: The Plaza 02-348, 7500A Beac

You see, 99.9% of businesses are organized in this way: get the product or service and work out how best to sell them. At Asia Trainers, we coach our clients on a different platform: Sell what you have in a very  different context , like Ya Kun Kaya Toast. Many bosses train their people on a 'as needed basis', if they find that they are lacking in negotiation skills, they will send fhem to a  Sales Negotiaton Success  course.  Smart bosses train their people on a 'get ready' basis.  They over-train their people, and yet they know that they are making good money from training, because of PIC 60% cash back from the government. To find out how to make 27% ROI on your training, read this  article . Many sales courses today focus a lot on motivational aspects, they teach people how to get high and do the impossible.  At Asia Trainers, we get our participants to  not go high but go low: go to the lowest common factor and see how you can add value to your

Note: PIC (Productivity and Innovation Credit) from IRAS gives companies 60% cash (maximum $60,000 yearly) when they invest in training and equipment. To get the most from the government under PIC claims and yet don't cheat them and break the law, all companies can do the following 7 things: (to get your free iPhone 6 + worth $1,488 without paying, read this ) Get a designated person in your company to be the PIC Leader, who will oversee all PIC claims.  This is because there is no such thing as auto pilot, more at here Learn from trainers how to maximise the PIC claims.  An example of a good course is here Go for cash payout instead of tax deduction , as this will give you more cash flow, allowing to invest more in PIC activities and claim even more in return Invest in PIC claimable equipment , like an automated door instead of a fancy door Invest in training , especially those t raining that increases your profits directly , in particular sales training .   Invest i

Many people in business like to work on things even when they are well known to be not working. Today let me share with you the 5 most common practices that don't work. Avoid them and you won't be having any chance of disappointments: Auto-Pilot .  The myth people have is that pilots, once they put the plane on auto-pilot, have basically nothing to do during their flight hours. Nothing is further than the truth: even with the plane on auto-pilot, pilots have to go through their flight navigation plans, make notes on where they have passed and plan for landing and watch out for tubulences.  In short, they have to be on the alert and work all the time even when the plane is on auto-pilot.  Same for business.  Even if your business is as big as Apple, Facebook or Alibaba, you the CEO still have to clock in many hours of work everyday for there is simply no auto-pilot in life Threat of Termination works.  This threat only works with those that find it difficult to look for j

Are you a good boss?  Given a chance, would your employees want to work for you?  Most importantly, are you able to make people better than themselves, or make people better for just yourself?   Make no mistake: the best bosses could also be bad bosses at times.  The key to being a good boss is  how to Be the best, and learn from the Worst .  Taken from our all-time best-seller new course  How to Be a Great Boss  and books from Robert I Sutton, there are 5 things that you have to do: Don't Crush the Bird .  Managing people is like holding a bird in your hand.  If you hold it too tightly, you'll kill it. But if you let loose, you'll lose it.  Indeed managers that are too aggressive will damage relationships and managers that are too passive and not assertive enough will get people climb over their heads.  Like salt in a dish, too much will overwhelm the dish; too little is similarly distracting; but just the right amount of salt will leave an unforgettable experienc

What is the meaning of your dreams? Should you act on their messages? We all know that your dreams are a reflection of your conscious thoughts and ideas.  Whatever we think about, we dream about.  In our courses we teach people to have dreams. But having dreams and dreaming are two completely different things. Having dreams is to have aspirations, dreaming is just what we dream when we are asleep. In reality most of us are living in a dream . Many people are not in touch of reality, about themselves, about others and about all the things we perceive inside and around us. That is a real dream. A dream that you have when you are awake!  Most people don't know the truths of these 5 things as described here According to US Guru Dan Millman, most people live their entire lives without being awake. This is evident from the fact that over 90% of employees are just looking for the year-end bonus or annual increment to get fired up. Most managers also said that motivating

Sales is a noble profession. You need to learn to do the right thing to get the right results. Learn from the experts, people who have trained 38,181 people in 13 countries.   One truth that stands out: your best customer is always someone's else top prospect!  There are few virgin customers (customers that have not bought before).  So you need to ask questions to get people to switch their vendor to you.  Read this article at here . Before you can sell anything to anybody, you need to sell yourself on these 9 points first: If you're not sold, no one else will be either If you have no prospects to sell to, you have no prospects in this trade. That's why you must prospect continuously Being trusted is more essential to being liked.  (Too bad Facebook has no 'Trust' button) The Sale is all in the questions (read this article on 'Questions are the Sale') Selling is about providing solutions, not providing people with your goods and services Every s

A powerful command of words is the number one requirement for succeeding in the filed of sales. Whether you are cold calling a prospect, presenting to a group of decision makers, or dealing with price objections, you need to say the right thing at the right time. Specifically, you need to do these 3 things well in sales: Build Trust and Cultivate Relationships Handle Objections effectively to close faster  Get past Gatekeepers and Reach Decision Makers faster than your competitors Successful salespeople use a very effective sales process that wins business over easily. This process sells without selling as it creates the conditions for buyers to buy by themselves. The magic process is Asking Questions . Asking questions helps you to find out what are the real needs of your customer to determine how much they are willing to pay for a solution. But you cannot just ask a few questions and expect a sale. You need to ask the RIGHT Questions in the RIGHT ORDER . This new course EFFE

My previous article on how to make money on training drew a response from one person who commented that 'Isn't making money from training the norm?"  I replied him, "No".  From our experience in training since 1996, most people lose money on training.  In fact many companies do training because the training fee is subsidised by the government's PIC scheme .  They just want to 'take advantage of government's money'.  Few of them know how to apply the benefits of training (click here for the 7 ways to apply benefits), left alone make money on training.  One may attribute this to the high stress that companies people have (unless they know how to reduce stress ).  There are 5 reasons for this: Most companies do not consider training as an investment but just an expense .  Since they didn't expect to have any return, they are very happy to have spent money on training.  This is the same as some companies considering marketing as an expen

In response to an earlier article  stating that training is one of the 5 costs that cannot be cut, 3 persons asked me to elaborate how we can ensure that our training is profitable.  There are 3 simple steps to make money from training: Know what you want to learn .  Like I want to learn how to negotiate successfully, so I source for such a training program .  Learn with an objective in mind . When I attend the course on negotiation, I am not interested to learn everything about negotiation, I just want to apply negotiation to my work situation n ow .  Assuming I am a buyer, I want to learn how to get a good deal from supplier without being fooled by them Apply the learning within the next 3 days .  Studies show that unless you apply what you learn within the next 3 days, you will not apply the learning at all.  In fact, people lose money on training in one of these 5 ways , application is the main reason. To ensure that your training is profitable, you have to compare 2 thing

Many people confided to me that business is getting tougher, cost of doing business and living continue to go up while business is stagnant or even declining.  Guess what is the answer I told them?  Good!  Let's make a toast for change. Insanity is defined as doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result.  You need to make changes, and the following 7 changes that all employees must make if they too want to be successful: From Reactive to Creative , that is, no more waiting for things to happen and instead make things happen.  You can just start small, the important thing is to get going and the rest will follow From Routine to Surprise . You cannot go through the routine and expect customers to buy from you.  You need to make a surprise, like iPhone 6, which is actually bendable and won't break when you put it inside your pocket From Old Knowledge to New Knowledge . Everyone must acquire new knowledge everyday, and if you want to get at lea