Business and Money Tips

Following yesterday's blog on 'The First Love Language at Work', here are the other 4 Love Languages per Dr Gary Chapman that we use in our management training : Words of Affirmation Quality Time Acts of Service Gifts  Touch Today we shall dwell on Quality Time Quality time is simply giving someone your undivided attention . It is a very obvious expression of love and no one in this world dislikes it. Quality time need not be quantity time, and Ken Blanchand said in the "One Minute Manager" book, all it takes is an EXTRA MINUTE of your time and that's quality time. When your staff talks to you, do you listen with your computer screen on? Focused Attention is another aspect of Quality Time. It is not we have to spend our time together moments gazing into each other's eyes. It means we are doing something together and that we are giving our full attention to each other. Incidentally, the activity that we do is not important. What's im

From Dr Gary Chapman's best selling book "The Five Love Languages", many people tried to apply this relationship love concept in the workplace.  While many have met with success, some have found the ideas too complex to transfer them to the workplace effectively.  At Asia Trainers, we have, since 2006 in management and leadership courses, applied such concepts successfully.    Chapman's 5 Love Languages are as follows: Words of Affirmation Quality Time Acts of Service Gifts  Touch Chapman's book claims that this list of five love languages is exhaustive but we should not use the love languages that they like the most but rather the love languages that their loved ones can receive.  So in the workplace, which love language you use would depend on who you are dealing with.  Today I shall only talk about the first love language: Words of Affirmation .  Come back to our blog at www.andyngtrainer.blogspot.sg for the remaining 5 love languages.  Power o

Often during our sales courses people ask me what's the number one skill of a successful salesperson.  It must be assertiveness. Assertiveness is not to be confused with aggressiveness.  When you push your customer to buy based on your own reason (like you have to hit your target), you are aggressive. But when you push your customer to buy because it is in the customer's interest to buy, you are assertive.   There are 3 steps to be assertive in your selling: Step 1: Teach Here you teach your prospect not just about your product's features and benefits but challenge his assumptions .  You also teach him how to take action base on what he desires. Your teaching must offer an unique perspective and must be a two-way communication .  That means asking questions and listening Step 2: Tailor After the prospect is taught on what is the right way to do things, you tailor what you have to what he desires.  It means that you have to adjust your propos

One of the most crucial job of a sales manager is to ensure that the business has a constant supply of new leads or new clients.  This is because we know that there is a natural attrition rate of 20% every year,  that is, 20% customers going away every year even if we do nothing wrong.   Chasing new business is often thought of by many as something to be done by marketeers and bosses.  In reality, getting new business is easy.  But it is even easier not to get any new business.  This means we get our customers to do the selling for us, or use referrals.   You see, the difference between a promotion and a business is simple - when you have to go out and find yourself another customer, what you have is a ongoing marketing promotion, not a business.  A business is where you buy a customer and then sell them many things over and over again, that is, you have an ongoing income stream. How to have an instant Referral System?  There are 5 elements: Great Product or Service .  Not just

We all work primarily to earn income. Other than that, work fulfils additional needs like give us status, identity, power, approval of others, social interaction and the simple satisfaction of keeping busy.   The problem is that while we work to accomplish our goals, we seldom find value in the process of working itself.  In our training courses like How to Be a Better Manager, How to Be a Great Boss and Effective Selling Skills, many people have come to the point where they question the value of what they have been doing.  They asked if work has deepened their sense of meaning and purpose.   Even for people who work for a cause they believe in, or they are working on their passions, ultimately the same pattern persists.  Although we may work with much more energy and commitment, we look past the actual activity of working to its results.  Although we believe in what we do, we are focused on the results, hitting KPIs and earning a living.  In other words, we do not satisfy our ow

We all have kind hearts, and when we see someone that we care about, we cannot help but help them.  Such compassion is a virtuous quality for having the intention to help people, even though we know that there may not be any rewards for us, direct or indirect. But we know that sometimes our help end up harming people. This is because we make them become over-dependent on us and lose their innate ability to solve their own problems.  Other than that, we often treat the symptoms of their problems and not the root cause, and this may worsen the problem.  So to really help others, we need to show them how to recognize and overcome the root cause of their problem , which is their self-centred ignorance .  This requires us to overcome our own self-centred ignorance.   Then, to inspire people to abandon their habitual self-destructive behaviour, we must be able to communicate with them. And to communicate with them, we must meet them at their own level .  As long as we retain awarenes

As a Trainer Coach specialising in sales, management and executive skills targeting audience from China to Singapore, people often asked us what business are we in.   We are in the Show Business. You see, as a Trainer Coach, we are there not to talk or deliver a program, but to put on a show.  What do we show?  Other than showing our body and learned mind, we also show them our heart and most importantly, our  spirit or passion .   Trainers are there to show people the proven paths, strategies, stratagems and methods to get more done with less. Experts called this Productivity and Work Effectiveness.  We are also there to show the leaders and managers that they too can transform their organizations if they lead and manage effectively. For people in sales, customer service and marketing, we show them the winning ways - how to win over the most difficult customers, crack the sales code and even sell ice to the Eskimos!   For people that just want to make their lives les

"Search Inside Yourself" is the most rewarding training program Google has ever created for its employees.  Now you too can share in this discovery for this Search Inside Yourself method is now available to all in the form of cheap e-books (only S$5 at Google Playstore).  Search Inside Yourself works in 3 easy steps: Attention Training Self-Knowledge and Self-Mastery Creating Useful Mental Habits Attention Training Attention training is the basis of all abilities.  You train your attention so that you can relax and yet be alert at the same time: relaxed so that your mind is calm and clear and alert so that you are alert to that attention .   Self-Knowledge and Self-Mastery Using your trained attention you can observe your thought stream and your emotions with high clarity and from a third-party objectivity.  With this you will not be attached to your own feelings, you will develop a sense of equanimity and with that you will develop self-mastery and self-

Part 1: You and Your Winning Sales System (for course details click here ) Blogger: Today we have on our site a Sales Trainer who has been conducting in-house training for over 343 companies including AIA, SingTel, NTU and Tanzanian Government, let's welcome Andy Ng! Andy: Thanks Blogger, today I'm going to talk about Winning Sales System. What is a Winning Sales System?  Most salespeople have one common problem: they are too dependent on their seniors and sales managers to guide them on how to sell.  But what happens if you are the only salesperson around?  You need a sales system to guide you. Blogger: Can you tell us what are the essential elements of a sales system? Andy: Sure. There are 4 elements of a winning sales system: How to Get Prospects Without Spending a Huge Sum of Money How to Convert Prospects into Clients without having to drop your price How to Get Repeat Business from clients without having to resort to price discounts How to Get Higher S

Talk about Productivity and many equate it to be 'better, faster and cheaper'.  Some think of getting new and advanced machines to replace manpower, others say productivity is about getting the government's Productivity and Innovation Credit (PIC) money to improve productivity.  (To read more on the latest curbs and abuse of PIC, click here ). Many trainers advocate training your staff while at Asia Trainers we opined that training bosses and managers are more important than training staff.  To the businessman, productivity is about E ver More with Ever Less.  This means getting more output with ever lesser input.  This must be the most apt definition and I shall use this in this article.  To have more output is easy, just lower your selling price and your sales would increase and you will have a quantum leap in productivity.  But without profit margins there is no productivity.  Thus the element of profit or residual value is important.   But how we distribute thi

Your mind has no form or shape, it is not anywhere but it is everywhere.  Your mind is not your brain, nor is it your thinking brain or your feeling brain.  Your mind is actually your perception or your consciousness. Your consciousness has no form or shape but it can perceive a sense object (e.g. a car) and take in sense objects in various forms and shapes.  The mind travels afar, it can go back time (even to your past lives if you can remember) or the future (we call it dreams).  Your mind wanders alone and has no physical form. But your consciousness appears and vanishes very quickly.  Early in the morning, you wake up and read something negative in the newspaper.  This affects your mind.  In time to come your physical attributes (e.g .your temper, character etc) would also be affected.  Imagine if you were to be born and brought up in a war torn country where killing and all kinds of sin are common.  Your mind would be trained this way and in time to come your physical appe

A wise manager learns from his mistakes.  He know that management has more leverage than others, and a wise manager will produce much more results than 100 hardworking staff.   As covered in our courses How to Be a Better Manager (details at here ) and other courses , the following are the 5 most common mistakes made by managers: 1. Too Close and Cannot See Things from a Distance.   As a manager, you need to be close on the ground, but you have to see things from a distance to get the right perspective.  This skill is called equanimity , which is an equalness of mind not affected by experience and feelings. Like if you need to discipline your staff, you need to be tough and not soft-hearted.  Also, getting too close to the staff may encourage some of them to climb over your head 2.  No Clear Targets for Your People.   People do not work towards grand visions, goals and mission but clear targets that they can relate to everyday.  The best way to do this is to have a KPI (Key

Latest from Gallup: Only about 30% of US employees are engaged in their jobs.  Such employees have managers who encourage their development and focus on their strengths. The remaining 70% of employees are either not engaged at work (50% of all employees) or actively disengaged (20%). Worldwide, only 13% of employees are engaged. Who engages employees? People with the talent to manage teams. Gallup scientists have found that managers account for 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units.  The problem is, every day, thousands of employees are named “manager” or “supervisor” who have little to no capacity to perform that task. Gallup has uncovered that companies fail to choose the candidate with the right person talent for the job of manager 82% of the time. Those companies are wasting time and resources attempting to train bad managers to be who they’re not. There’s a reason for this: Authentic management talent is very rare. It takes Moneyball—rigorous

It is not easy being a manager because you're always being squeezed in between. First you have to take care of your subordinates and yet take care of the company's bottom-line. As a Manager, you are assumed to have the know-how and you're expected to know everything. Unlike your subordinates, it is not easy to measure a manager's performance because much of what he does is of long term in nature and cannot see short term results. Like training and development of staff. Often it is during special situations that you will know whether your manager can perform or not. Like in solving difficult problems, getting new business and responding to crisis. But you know it's worth it to be a manager because at the end of the day, it is the manager that get things done and provide answers to the bosses. So the question is how can we be a more effective manager?  Effectiveness means not just doing things right but doing the right things.  There are 10 things that a