Ada kata2 dari Mr. John Assaraf, tentang membayangkan diri kita sebagai sebuah magnet..

Bener banget tuh.. Buatlah diri kita seperti magnet, yang menarik untuk orang lain..

Daya tarik, baik dari dalam (inner self) maupun dari hasil karya kita di dunia (pekerjaan, bisnis, tulisan, kesenian, kuliner dsb).

Apapun yang kita lakukan, sebaiknya menjadi magnet yang menarik orang lain masuk ke dalam kehidupan kita, baik sebagai teman, partner bisnis, pembeli, keluarga, maupun mentor.

Bagaimana caranya menjadi magnet bisnis?

Tentu kita sering membaca, mendengar, melihat kisah orang sukses di bidangnya, yang kemudian menjadi kaya raya atas sebuah bisnis tertentu, bahkan mungkin dari beberapa bisnis yang dia kelola.

Apa dasar dari semua itu? Apa sifat dasar dari magnet sebenarnya? Magnet hanya menarik kutub yang berbeda, dan selalu menolak kutub yang sama.

Penjual, selalu mencari pembeli, juga sebaliknya. Tidak ada penjual yang mencari penjual yang sama, atau pembeli mencari pembeli lain. Ini adalah sifat dasar, di luar dari retorika bisnis, yang bisa saja penjual mencari penjual lain untuk bergabung dalam sebuah wadah perkumpulan, tapi itu bukan maksud saya di sini.

Menjadi magnet bisnis, merupakan sebuah situasi yang berbeda dari situasi umum. Buatlah bisnis anda berbeda dari bisnis lain pada umumnya.

Mungkin anda menjual ebook tentang bisnis, atau program khusus, atau menjadi seorang afiliasi.

Statusnya sama, tapi hasil berbeda. Mengapa demikian?

Seorang afiliasi bisa saja mendapatkan banyak komisi dari menjual sebuah ebook, sedangkan seorang afiliasi yang lain tidak mendapatkan apa-apa dari penjualan ebook yang sama. Ini disebabkan daya tarik keduanya tidak sama.

Manusia memang diciptakan semua berbeda. Manusia punya keunikan masing-masing, tapi banyak manusia yang tidak sadar bahwa keunikan itulah sumber magnet, sumber daya tarik untuk orang lain.

Buatlah bisnis yang unik, atau jika kita menjual barang yang sama, buatlah servis yang unik, berbeda dari orang lain.

Keunikan inilah yang akan menjadi magnet bagi kita. Orang lain akan tertarik untuk mencoba sesuatu yang beda dari biasanya.

Jangan lupa, kita harus terus belajar, menyerap lebih banyak ilmu dalam hidup ini, dan menguatkan daya tarik kita, magnet kita, sehingga semakin banyak orang yang tertarik kepada kita dan kepada hasil karya kita.

Sukses untuk bisnis anda..

i'm getting good at cooking on my feet

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I have attempted, on several different occasions, to keep a dream journal. However, it always proved to be just a bit overwhelming, and after a time, terribly confusing. Too much information can be as difficult to deal with as not enough. And, even more important, it would begin to interfere in my regular journal pages, creeping into them, or sometimes, actually overwhelming the purpose and focus of those pages. I eventually hit upon a compromise that serves my purpose and allows me to explore and discover without getting wiped out in the process.

If a dream wakes me in the middle of the night, I usually pay attention, especially if it is some form of nightmare. I personally believe that dreams are messages from the subconscious mind. My rule here is, if it wakes me up, it must be important. And the resultant emotions, because they are so strong, have a tendency to emphasize the details of the message far more readily than otherwise, therefore, making them far easier to hang on to and remember in a conscious state.

I've also learned through experience, how easy it is to fall back asleep and re-enter a dream interrupted. Here I retain my choices. If its a nightmare, with heart raising emotions attached, I simply lie still and examine the most important details while my heart rate has a chance to settle down and resume a more restful rate. This does two things. It lodges the details even more firmly so that I can go back and explore them in a conscious state without the emotions attached, and it does allow me to settle down and to eventually resume a much easier sleep state within a shorter space of time.

The following morning, I will briefly write out those details in my journal. Then go on with my regular entry. By writing it down, I signal that I am aware and will deal with the message when I have more information. Invariably, the associations and connections will slowly seep into my consciousness over the next day or two. That facilitates a much easier and more concrete analysis and interpretation. It is far more relaxed than a dream journal and makes the whole process easier.

If one rushes to analyze a dream, one is in danger of being overwhelmed by objectivity and logic that desperately wants a solution and answer so it can move on to "more important" things. Remember that putting the puzzle together should be fun, entertaining, and relaxing. It should also relieve the anxiety that such an experience can and does induce. I am a terribly curious creature, but patience mixed with that curiosity is far more apt to bring about a more concrete understanding. It can also precipitate a dream in which I have chosen some awkward or snail paced form of transportation.

I recently went through this process because I woke myself up yelling for my Mother to come and rescue me from a dark and unknown terror. The thought of my 90 year old parent coming to physically rescue me actually made me smile, but also made me realize that I was dealing with a buried issue from the past that needed resolution. As the other associations and connections came swimming to the surface through the next few days, they even suggested some means of resolving the important problem that the dream message came to tell me about.

It is very important to remember that the one person necessary to dream analysis is the dreamer. He/she alone is the only person who can really know what the associations and connections are really all about. They come through the filter of that individual's perceptions and belief systems. Others can and will make suggestions, but the ultimate interpretation is in the hands of the one who created the dream from the bits and pieces of his/her experiences. Every detail, no matter how seemingly minor, is a product of the individual dreamer. So much so, that my sister could have the exact same dream and might come up with an interpretation that resides somewhere on the other side of the globe from my own. We may have grown up in the same exact environment, gone through almost the exact same growth and learning process, but her perspective is far different than my own. It is what makes us distinct individuals and therefore, distinctly different dreamers. Even the mother image in our dream would represent different ideas, symbols, and meanings.

Although my journal plays an intrinsic role within my dream process, I the dreamer, the human being who has lived each separate moment of my life, retains the far more important role. The words I choose to define that experience play another important role. They too, come from the subjective aspect of my own mind and often, their very choice is an important aspect of the later dream interpretation. And later, as I write out that interpretation, most often in phrases with dashes instead of punctuation marks, I find the puzzle coming together in a very natural manner, with ease, comfort, and a sigh of contented satisfaction at a job well done.

Although this blog is mainly about nightmares and dreams that go bump in the night, there are many different forms and types of dreams. Each of those types should be approached with the idea of a personal message from the individual to the individual. Remember, if we respect the messenger, we are far more apt to receive the full message and even understand it better. Can we really afford to dismiss those messages and define them as the result of yet another run-in with Aunt Lucy's potato salad?

i have to go overboard before i find out what i can actually do

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You can think in your head all you want about what you think you want but you don't really know what you really want until you give yourself a deadline and make a decision. Then you see what really matters to you.

For example, for years I've always thought it important to preserve you native language, e.g., in my case Korean. I've never thought much about how important it is to learn the English language.

However, when I was in Korea in May visiting with a college friend who was living there with his family, I found myself advising him to make sure his son spoke the English language. His son was born there and was in danger of not learning English if he didn't make a quick and decisive decision to expose his son to an English language-centered environment.

Suddenly it became very important for a lot of practical and life-altering reasons that his son not lose the opportunity to speak English.

Making a decision around my career has similar elements to it. I spin around in my head about many types of careers- academia, writing, counseling, teaching, going into various sundry businesses- but when I do contemplate making a decision- it all somehow goes back to law. Because of expediency, practicality, lack of better choices, more options, safety, security, money, etc.

So there you have it. It's one thing to think in your head about options but you don't really know yourself until you make a decision. And when you start acting upon the decision, you learn even more.

It seems like we live in a world where goals and strategies rule.

We set SMART goals or  we lock into one or two strategies to meet our needs.  Then we get disappointed, criticise ourselves, or make demands we expect others to meet because we have only a limited number of options in our consciousness.

Now why would we do that? Why would we choose less options rather than more?

1. We are told to focus on a single "thing" and we hear 'focus on a single concrete outcome to achieve success." This narrows our field of vision both literally and metaphorically.

What opportunities are we not noticing that are coming our way? What if we chose an emotional state or value rather than a goal as our intention. For example, a SMART goal might be "I will lose 4kg by exercising at the gym 4 times a week and no longer drinking red wine." Conscious Living invites us to open our hearts and minds to the values we love or the emotional state we want to live in. So...I might focus each day on "feeling healthy and vibrant" and then from that consciousness make all kinds of decisions.

2. We are trained in our schooling and culture to use our left brain. Our left brain thinks in dichotomies (right/wrong, black/white, yes/no) and uses logic. What are we missing by letting our left brain take a rest and allowing our right brain to drift, day-dream, and wander through the field of infinite possibilities. Our left brain can take a rest if we meditate, walk in nature, doing non-verbal activities such as drawing, craft, listening to music, dancing, & laughing, just to name a few. You can also stimulate your right brain and integrate the left and right brain using brain gym.

Simply make any physical movement that crosses your centre mid-line. In other words, putting your right hand on your left knee and then left hand on right knee crosses your body's midline and helps your brain integrate the left and right sides. For fun try hula hooping, do yoga or tai chi, rake some leaves, or raking leaves or sweeping off to the side instead of straight in front of you.

R-mode questions (so named because they are associated with the right hemisphere of the brain) promote patterns, synthesis, visual metaphors, emotions or intuitions:

• What are the patterns?
• What is interesting, unique, beautiful or unusual about this situation?
• What is one hope you have regarding this situation? What is one fear?
• How do you feel about this at a gut level? What is your intuition saying?
• What questions are we neglecting to ask?

3. We favour our thinking mind. Our thinking mind draws on our past experiences and the meanings we have attached to them (beliefs).  How limiting is that? No wonder we keep doing more of the same with tiny variations on the theme. We just keep on tracking down the same old neural pathways. Try using your whole body-mind.

Try Focusing or other inner awareness creative practices such as visualisation, writing or drawing with your non-dominant hand.

Ask yourself powerful catalyzing questions...

• What assumptions are being made here?
• What would someone who had a very different set of beliefs ask?
• What can I learn from this situation? What else can this mean?

4. Generally, as a social species favour consensus rather than challenge. This can lead us to frame our thinking towards supporting what is rather than questioning what is. So-what questions get at the underlying assumptions about purpose and value: Why do we value this? Why is this more valuable than that? What is the essence of what we're trying to achieve? The "so what?" line of questioning pushes you to understand your context at a deeper level. For example:

What's so important about this challenge?
What's so great about getting coaching?
I will have some accountability each month.
So what?
This will encourage me to focus my attention on what I really want and not get so distracted.
So what?
I will start to actually live the life I say I want .
So what?
I will feel happier.
So what?
I will be healthier, have the relationships I want, have more energy and live more fully.

5. What we focus on we attract. Focus on strengths and what is positive.

Appreciative questions offer a way to focus on what is going right, rather than looking for problems. Appreciative (or positive-frame) questions ask:

• What are we doing right?
• What are our strengths?
• To what do we aspire?

i've learned that if you take your eye off the ball for a half second it bites you

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Anthony

The definiton of success is dependent on the individual being asked the question. To a businessman success could be a monetary or business achievement.  To someone living on the street, success could be getting some accommodation.  One can have a successful day, or one can be living a successful life. 

 If you asked me if I was successful, I would say no.  I don’t see myself as living a successful life.  However if I look at events thoughout my life, my view changes. 

 I successfully outgrew a childhood where I often felt unaccepted.  I survived teenage years of trying to be accepted.  I overcame a relatively minor facial disfigurement ( to me it was huge, to other children it was ugly) and did some modelling.  I have learnt to live with it, and be still be beautiful.  I have survived the grief, dope smoking and alcohol drinking after the death of my first serious boyfriend.  I have fallen in love again. I have fought depression.   I have always managed to support myself.  I have successfully raised many different species of wildlife.  I gained national TV coverage for a wildlife organisation.  I’m highly valued at work.  I have raised a beautiful, free spirited, loving, capable, happy daughter. 

The more I look, the more success I find.  Yet I don’t feel successful.  Two  areas success is broadly measured by, money and security are two areas in my life that have always been sorely lacking.  That lacking has carved a wound, that aches for healing.  A wound that makes me feel vulnerable, insecure, and if I slip and loose focus of who I am, unworthy.

This wound won’t heal over night.  I can go on looking to achieve success in these areas in the future, with the added fear of age, that is now part of the wound, threatening that achievement.  Or I can let go.  I can live more mindfully in the moment.  I can  appreciate and experience the joy of  seeing the exquisite King Parrots on the front verandah, the smell of the rain, the luxury of a bath after the rain, ( tank water, baths are a luxury ) and give the wound some care and time  to heal. 

 I can also keep in mind Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote on success:

“The definition of success–To laugh much; to win respect of intelligent persons and the affections of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give one’s self; to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition.; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived–this is to have succeeded.”

So yeah, that's Model Congress and a writing contest.

The Never Greens don’t buy green products, don’t remember green advertising when they see it and are irritated by it even if they do, according to Mintel.

Never Greens also showed up in a survey by Shelton Group, an ad agency for BP Solar, the oil giant’s renewable unit. About 26% of Americans are hardcore skeptics, according to Suzanne Shelton, the CEO of the Knoxville, Tenn., firm. They tend to be upper-income, middle-aged, conservative males, she said.

There are none. That's right, there are no rules, other than the ones you impose on yourself. Journaling is a process aimed at self-awareness. A huge part of self-awareness is discovering what your own boundaries are and how they came to be what they are. If I were to create those rules for you, human nature being what it is, those rules would become the very reasons you refuse to continue. That in turn, would not only negate my purpose, but also block you from continuing. And that would mean that all of these words, energy, and meaning, would be nothing more than a moot exercise, futile from the beginning. Certainly, less than satisfying for both of us.

Rules, boundaries, do serve an important purpose. Without them there is chaos and disorder. There are always a number of creatures who prefer chaos and disorder because it can be taken advantage of in many ways. I can pretty much guarantee that such a creature wouldn't be in the least bit interested in keeping a journal other than to glorify a deep need to celebrate said chaos and disorder, and their own blatant pride in embracing such things. Even serial killers have a need to justify, and rationalize, their actions and behavior. But, writing, when done on a regular basis, will eventually take the individual to those places he/she does not wish to go, ultimately revealing those rationalizations for exactly what they are: nothing more than excuses for doing whatever one chooses, even if it means destroying others in the process.

Rules and boundaries are a means of marking one's territory. Yes, like a wild creature peeing at the outer edges of his territory to let all other creatures know of his existence and the consequences of crossing those lines he has created by leaving evidence of his scent. That marking is a means of letting one and all know that this is personal space, and that it might be a good idea to avoid it. We live in a time and place where obtaining and maintaining personal space comes at a premium.

A daily journal is always first, and foremost, the creation of personal space. A place in which to have the most important conversations of ones life, that dialogue with self. If I, or anyone, should attempt to impose rules or boundaries on that space, it is no longer personal. But in creating it, you create the most important possession you can possibly gift to yourself. As you do so, you will find your own boundaries, make your own rules, all built on what you find comfortable, acceptable, and right for you. No one may enter that space without your explicit permission.

Which brings me to the issue of blogs: most often defined as online journals. I don't agree with that definition. Blogs are not the same as a private journal. Their focus is outward, always aimed at an audience. Journals are focused inward, always aimed at an audience of one. If that is not true then we should all be pissing in public. Not a good image. And even if we don't mind revealing our backsides to the general public, there are still unconscious rules we will follow that don't apply when in private. We do have built in censors and they automatically come into play when dealing in the public domain. There, the ideas of "how do I look, will I be understood, will I even be noticed", or "am I getting through at all," will carry a far heavier burden and consequence than in private where none of those things even matter.

Yes, I have rules about my own journal keeping. They have changed and been altered many times over the years. I may even reveal some of that in later blogs, but only as a means of suggesting and explaining how I came to be the me that I am in this moment. And yes, I do venture out daily to mark my place, my territory. Just ask anyone who has inadvertently, or otherwise, crossed my boundary lines. Like the old neighbor who came to take care of the dogs while we were on vacation and decided to question me about some of the things I had written in an old journal, tucked away on the bottom shelf of a side table, off in a corner. She can testify that I do know how to howl and slam doors on permanently departing backsides.

It’s your career, not your job. It’s how you loved, not who loved you. It’s what you did and gave, not what you earned or bought. It’s how much happiness you created, not how happy you were. It’s the truth you told, not the lies other’s told about you. It’s how accepted people felt in your home, not where you lived, or how big the house was.

If you really don't like the destiny you're creating for yourself, can you change it? Yes, either by becoming enlightened, or if, when the status quo finally becomes intolerable, you discover the courage to let go of it.

I don’t believe that people can change unless they’re forced to by intolerable pain. This doesn’t necessarily mean constant agony – perhaps, for you, the disappointment of not making more of your life has become intolerable, and this pain may be enough of a catalyst to help you change. Or maybe the loneliness has become so painful that it gives you the strength to overcome your fear of connection.

I think personality is hard-wired by the time you’re an adult, and from an evolutionary perspective, there’s been strong selection against the ability to self-rewire. Evolution works with versatility, but not insanity. Trying to change your personality is fairly insane – it got you this far, so it’s working. You don’t try to change what’s working in evolution.

But evolution apparently left the door open for change, if it’s unavoidable. If the pain caused by thoughts and behaviours becomes too much, you will change.

I also think that if you’re searching for meaning, you’ll find it. You’ll create the situations and circumstances in your life that give you the chance to find meaning. If you’re really stubborn, like most people, you may create situations that force you to look for meaning.

If you’re so impatient to change that you unconsciously create a really huge crisis in your life, you can use this as a turning point. This is very risky, because a crisis is painful and can seriously impact your life and other people. There's the risk that things will go horribly wrong. So, rather be patient.

But I've found that things happen, if you're open to change. A crisis, assuming you survive it, can shock you out of your mind, and give you an unparalleled opportunity to change your attitude and life.

Can you become enlightened without suffering? Can you become enlightened, or as Osho puts it, intelligent, just by choosing to, and thinking about it? I don't know. Anything's possible, but I doubt it.

So keep your wits about you at all times, as they say. Stay conscious, aware, and expect things to go well. Live by your values, because that’s what you’ll be remembered for, whatever else happens. If you do that, you’re already a hero, right now.

All the pain in the world is just the wrapping around the gifts, the love and happiness, that we crave. You’ll be happy now, if you stop fearing the pain, and clutching the gifts.

Throughout these past few months, I have taken stock of my life and realized that it is not heading in the direction that I would like it to.  I have turned into a person that I just do not like.  I have let obstacles get in my way and have let others take my life over.  No more.  It will be a lot of work to change but I'm willing to do the work.  Not only for myself but for my daughter.  I want to be happy.  I want to be proud of myself and I want my daughter to grow up and be proud of me.  I want to set an example for my daughter that she can do whatever she wants to (legally, of course! ;-) ).  There is nothing she can't do when she puts her mind to it.  And I can show her the way.  That is my requirement as a mother to show her the way.  To show her that IT CAN BE DONE!

No more negativity.  Negativity just breeds negativity and negativity has no place in my life any longer.  Life is not easy but it doesn't have to be horrible either.  Life is there to grab ahold of and make the best it can possibly be!  No more obstacles.  No more negativity.  No more defeatist attitude.  It's gone.  Not allowed to live here any longer.

This means that a lot of changes have to be made.  How I approach situations, who I surround myself with and how I view the world in general.  I have a lot to change and a way to go but I can do it.  And I am looking forward to every minute of it.  I can do anything i put my mind to.  I just have to get out of my own way.  And today, I'm doing just that.  I am going to capitalize on the positives of my life and let the negatives go.  I am going to repair those friendships that I have damaged and let those negative friendships go.  I am going to take people for the positives they possess and let the negatives go.  I know that I can be happy and I just need to act upon it and make it happen.  It will not be easy.  I know this.  But step by step, I can get there.  One step at a time, one task at a time, one word at a time, one action at a time.  One plus one equals two.  And two plus two equals four.  And before you know it, you are up to 1,000,000 and wow, what a path you have created.

So now, I'm starting with one.  And tomorrow will make two and so on and so on.

So here's to #1!

i was computing and then my eyes went blurry

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I wanted success - Why?  As a child, often, the things I wanted to indulge in, we couldn't afford,  or my dad was against.  He also often found that whatever I did do, could be improved upon.  I thought success would prove that I was worthy. 

How was I going to achieve that success?  Ever since I was very young I wanted to act.  I can remember a Vocational Guidance interview toward the end of primary school, where my answer to what I wanted to be was actress or doctor!  Hmm. 

Did I achieve that success?  No.  Instead I fell in love with a musician.  For us to have and raise a family, his career became paramount.  He had to be successful. 

I slipped quite comfortably back into the role of working to gain approval, not from my father but from my partner.  Was I successful in gaining the approval of my partner?  Yes.  Did that satisfy my need for success?  No.  His striving for success became my striving for success.  Did it satisfy my need for approval?  No. 

For me success and approval were intermeshed, in eachother and relationships.

To be successful meant having approval.  To have approval, meant being worthy.  Being worthy meant being successful.  I was searching externally.  It was a long time before I saw the other side of the coin.

So now that I am reading the abstracts which is just the preview to the real meat of the review I don't remember half the terms or anything and my head gets fuzzy. Perhaps that's cause I'm doing it while I'm sick.  Poor choice on my part but hey I got time to kill.  So the discouraging thoughts rush in immediately that I am not good enough, I can't do it, etc...  But I have to remember education is not everything my experience does count for something and its not a published review I'm going to be writing its purely for them to see my writing style.  So send your encouragement my way.

Cause my brain has gone soft.

My daughter's recent visit reminded me of my own plans for the future when I was a young teenager.  At fifteen, I knew I wanted to be successful.   I wanted to be married by the time I was 22.  I wanted 2 children by the time I was 26.  I also wanted to adopt or foster 2 children, bringing them into a loving home of two parents and siblings.  I wanted to travel with my husband in my 50's.  I even knew what I wanted in a man.  Someone artistic, talented, gentle. 

Instead...I fell in love with men that were successful in the areas that I wanted to be successful in, and supported them in there careers.  Rather than marriage, my long term relationships were defacto.  I had one child at 32.  I've never fostered or adopted a child, and at 52 I'm sitting here without a husband, blogging rather than travelling.

 What happened?  I knew what I wanted and I thought I knew how to get it, but what was I really doing?

These two aspects of the selling process are so vital as to make just about every other pale in comparison. Yet it is precisely these two vitally important aspects that all too often get relegated to chance, or to "doing what comes naturally" in the selling arena. Statistics prove this approach to be one with a very high mortality rate, because what comes naturally to most people in buyer/seller relationships often isn't pretty.

The role of Buyer requires us to be cautious, suspicious, guarded, and to regularly use the skill we developed so well during our "terrible twos", that of exercising our ability to say "NO, NO, NO".

The role of Seller, on the other hand, requires us to be assertive, expectant, open, and to attempt to use an entire cache of skills most of us never had the opportunity to learn. Skills such as persuading, negotiating, communicating well, noticing and effectively translating the non-verbal cues of others, problem solving, and knowing how to ask for something and get it on a fairly consistent basis, just to name a few. These are not seat-of-the-pants kinds of skills nor (unfortunately) were we born with them. These important interactional skills must be learned and most people have never had the opportunity to do that.

A few people have had the good fortune to be taught good relating and communicating skills in their youth. Others learn them by trial and error, but that's a very slow and sometimes very expensive way to learn. This is especially true for those in the selling professions.

Research consistently shows that the world's top sales professionals excel as a direct result of having acquired and implemented strong interactional human-to-human skills, which they use as primary tools. The technical skills salespeople use are important of course, but they are really secondary to selling success. Unfortunately, most sales training consists primarily of technical skills. Too often sales training follows the lines of, "This is what we sell. . .This is what it does. . .This is why the buyer needs it. . .This is how much you will make for each unit you sell. . . These are the objections you are likely to hear. . . Here are some answers to those objections . . . Here are some ways to close a sale . . . Go get 'em!" That kind of training is usually a prescription for failure, unless the necessary interactional skills are already well developed in the individual being so trained. But, the odds of finding individuals who are well trained in interactional skills right off the street or among average salespeople are so rare that I certainly wouldn't want to bet my business on it. Especially when training those who possess the right natural attributes is so much easier and less expensive in the long run.

What constitutes “the right natural attributes” depends on the type of selling an individual will be engaged in. For example, those who are effective at selling technically based products or services have different attributes than those who are effective at selling entertainment or time share vacations. The attributes of those who are effective at keeping customers long-term are different than the attributes of those who are effective at bringing in new accounts.

In fact, in most organizations where keeping customers long term is important, and where continually adding to the customer base is also important, a team selling approach would yield far better results, provided the right people are teamed up. Typically, those who are exceptionally good at bringing in new accounts don’t like maintaining those accounts. They feel that “hand holding” slows their progress and keeps them from making new sales. For this type it is generally the challenge and novelty of the new sale they most enjoy and at which they excel.

On the other hand, those who are good at maintaining an existing customer base typically dislike having to prospect for new customers and will resist prospecting as much as they can get by with. It isn’t uncommon for salespeople, who are excellent at maintaining accounts to spend inordinate amounts of time with current customers in order to have an excuse for not prospecting much. How can they, they reason, when their current customers are occupying all their time? But, give them more customers that have been established by someone else and they will happily find the time to service them all. By using a team approach, with one “point” person and one “hand holder” making up the team, both the will be happy and highly effective, provided they are also suited to the industry, product and/or service.

In an age and economy where an organization can’t afford to waste time and resources on hiring and training new employees; when the cost of employee turnover is in the thousands of dollars, and is especially high in the selling professions, no company can afford to hire blindly. And yet, hiring decisions are often made based solely on resumes and interviews, and sometimes when a company is desperate for sales people, even on surface presentation alone. It is no wonder that the turnover rate is so high or that so many organizations are constantly nursing along a mediocre sales staff.

There are a lot of people out there who, with the right training, would make excellent sales people, but the right training is not just technique. In fact the mix that creates excellent sales people follows the old 80/20 rule. Excellent sales people are those with 20% technique and 80% great people skills, and that’s exactly how their training should be mixed.

Current statistics show (and most sales managers would concur) that less than 2% of those who attempt to enter the selling profession really excel at it and become the superstars. Another 6% do well and enjoy exceptional incomes, with an additional 12% earning average to slightly above-average incomes. That leaves 80% that do poorly or don't make the grade at all (there’s that 80/20 rule again). Those sad odds could be greatly improved if the training mix (currently 80% technical and 20% people skills) were reversed.

I have had seasoned sales people who were at the top of their sales team greatly improve their results by improving their understanding of their own human nature and that of their prospects and customers. I have also had seasoned sales people, who have had years of technical training, tell me that learning about themselves as sales people, and about their customers from the perspective of human nature was the most important and useful thing they ever did to maximize their sales results.

People skills are what the superstars have that the wanna-be’s are missing. It is People skills that those top achievers, often referred to as "natural born" salespeople, have to their credit and that ordinary-to-poor salespeople are missing. Yet these "natural born" salespeople often have no idea exactly what it is they say or do that translates into mega-bucks in selling.

I have made it a point to study these superstar salespeople over the years, and I have asked a great number of them to what they attribute their success. Their general reply is, "I don't really know for sure. All I know is I love what I do and just do what comes naturally."

Their customers describe them as genuine, charismatic, caring, concerned, knowledgeable, helpful, "good people". Watching them in action however, it soon becomes apparent that their edge is their ability to interact with their customers in an easy, effective manner that puts the customer at ease, makes him/her feel important and understood, and gives the distinct impression that this salesperson is a true expert that can be trusted and relied upon.

The truth is, there are no "natural born" sales people. No one is born with selling skills or the people skills necessary for selling success. Admittedly, these skills are more easily developed by some people than by others, and a fortunate few begin developing them in childhood so that by the time they reach adulthood the skills seem natural. But, walking and talking seem pretty natural by the time we reach adulthood too, and certainly those are skills we all had to learn.

Success in selling, as with any other profession, is a matter of learning a set of skills and applying them consistently, sort of like typing. In typing, you either hunt and peck all your life, or you learn the basic skills. If you learn the basic skills, you either use them only when necessary, and plug along at 30 words per minute, or you practice and continue to apply those skills until you work your way up to 120 words per minute or more. At the point of proficiency, a typist becomes a valuable commodity. A proficient sales person is invaluable. In fact, highly proficient salespeople can pretty much write their own tickets, because they are the lifeblood of an organization.

So, whether you are a salesperson whose goal is to become indispensable and recession proof, or an organization ready to build a first class sales team, the key is in adding a healthy mix of person-to-person interactional skills to your training agenda. These are skills that salespeople quickly and easily incorporate into their selling styles, if they are presented correctly during the training process. Once incorporated, the results are dramatic! Sales improve almost immediately and, as the skills become second nature, the salesperson and profits just keep getting better!

These two aspects of the selling process are so vital as to make just about every other pale in comparison. Yet it is precisely these two vitally important aspects that all too often get relegated to chance, or to "doing what comes naturally" in the selling arena. Statistics prove this approach to be one with a very high mortality rate, because what comes naturally to most people in buyer/seller relationships often isn't pretty.

The role of Buyer requires us to be cautious, suspicious, guarded, and to regularly use the skill we developed so well during our "terrible twos", that of exercising our ability to say "NO, NO, NO".

The role of Seller, on the other hand, requires us to be assertive, expectant, open, and to attempt to use an entire cache of skills most of us never had the opportunity to learn. Skills such as persuading, negotiating, communicating well, noticing and effectively translating the non-verbal cues of others, problem solving, and knowing how to ask for something and get it on a fairly consistent basis, just to name a few. These are not seat-of-the-pants kinds of skills nor (unfortunately) were we born with them. These important interactional skills must be learned and most people have never had the opportunity to do that.

A few people have had the good fortune to be taught good relating and communicating skills in their youth. Others learn them by trial and error, but that's a very slow and sometimes very expensive way to learn. This is especially true for those in the selling professions.

Research consistently shows that the world's top sales professionals excel as a direct result of having acquired and implemented strong interactional human-to-human skills, which they use as primary tools. The technical skills salespeople use are important of course, but they are really secondary to selling success. Unfortunately, most sales training consists primarily of technical skills. Too often sales training follows the lines of, "This is what we sell. . .This is what it does. . .This is why the buyer needs it. . .This is how much you will make for each unit you sell. . . These are the objections you are likely to hear. . . Here are some answers to those objections . . . Here are some ways to close a sale . . . Go get 'em!" That kind of training is usually a prescription for failure, unless the necessary interactional skills are already well developed in the individual being so trained. But, the odds of finding individuals who are well trained in interactional skills right off the street or among average salespeople are so rare that I certainly wouldn't want to bet my business on it. Especially when training those who possess the right natural attributes is so much easier and less expensive in the long run.

What constitutes “the right natural attributes” depends on the type of selling an individual will be engaged in. For example, those who are effective at selling technically based products or services have different attributes than those who are effective at selling entertainment or time share vacations. The attributes of those who are effective at keeping customers long-term are different than the attributes of those who are effective at bringing in new accounts.

In fact, in most organizations where keeping customers long term is important, and where continually adding to the customer base is also important, a team selling approach would yield far better results, provided the right people are teamed up. Typically, those who are exceptionally good at bringing in new accounts don’t like maintaining those accounts. They feel that “hand holding” slows their progress and keeps them from making new sales. For this type it is generally the challenge and novelty of the new sale they most enjoy and at which they excel.

On the other hand, those who are good at maintaining an existing customer base typically dislike having to prospect for new customers and will resist prospecting as much as they can get by with. It isn’t uncommon for salespeople, who are excellent at maintaining accounts to spend inordinate amounts of time with current customers in order to have an excuse for not prospecting much. How can they, they reason, when their current customers are occupying all their time? But, give them more customers that have been established by someone else and they will happily find the time to service them all. By using a team approach, with one “point” person and one “hand holder” making up the team, both the will be happy and highly effective, provided they are also suited to the industry, product and/or service.

In an age and economy where an organization can’t afford to waste time and resources on hiring and training new employees; when the cost of employee turnover is in the thousands of dollars, and is especially high in the selling professions, no company can afford to hire blindly. And yet, hiring decisions are often made based solely on resumes and interviews, and sometimes when a company is desperate for sales people, even on surface presentation alone. It is no wonder that the turnover rate is so high or that so many organizations are constantly nursing along a mediocre sales staff.

There are a lot of people out there who, with the right training, would make excellent sales people, but the right training is not just technique. In fact the mix that creates excellent sales people follows the old 80/20 rule. Excellent sales people are those with 20% technique and 80% great people skills, and that’s exactly how their training should be mixed.

Current statistics show (and most sales managers would concur) that less than 2% of those who attempt to enter the selling profession really excel at it and become the superstars. Another 6% do well and enjoy exceptional incomes, with an additional 12% earning average to slightly above-average incomes. That leaves 80% that do poorly or don't make the grade at all (there’s that 80/20 rule again). Those sad odds could be greatly improved if the training mix (currently 80% technical and 20% people skills) were reversed.

I have had seasoned sales people who were at the top of their sales team greatly improve their results by improving their understanding of their own human nature and that of their prospects and customers. I have also had seasoned sales people, who have had years of technical training, tell me that learning about themselves as sales people, and about their customers from the perspective of human nature was the most important and useful thing they ever did to maximize their sales results.

People skills are what the superstars have that the wanna-be’s are missing. It is People skills that those top achievers, often referred to as "natural born" salespeople, have to their credit and that ordinary-to-poor salespeople are missing. Yet these "natural born" salespeople often have no idea exactly what it is they say or do that translates into mega-bucks in selling.

I have made it a point to study these superstar salespeople over the years, and I have asked a great number of them to what they attribute their success. Their general reply is, "I don't really know for sure. All I know is I love what I do and just do what comes naturally."

Their customers describe them as genuine, charismatic, caring, concerned, knowledgeable, helpful, "good people". Watching them in action however, it soon becomes apparent that their edge is their ability to interact with their customers in an easy, effective manner that puts the customer at ease, makes him/her feel important and understood, and gives the distinct impression that this salesperson is a true expert that can be trusted and relied upon.

The truth is, there are no "natural born" sales people. No one is born with selling skills or the people skills necessary for selling success. Admittedly, these skills are more easily developed by some people than by others, and a fortunate few begin developing them in childhood so that by the time they reach adulthood the skills seem natural. But, walking and talking seem pretty natural by the time we reach adulthood too, and certainly those are skills we all had to learn.

Success in selling, as with any other profession, is a matter of learning a set of skills and applying them consistently, sort of like typing. In typing, you either hunt and peck all your life, or you learn the basic skills. If you learn the basic skills, you either use them only when necessary, and plug along at 30 words per minute, or you practice and continue to apply those skills until you work your way up to 120 words per minute or more. At the point of proficiency, a typist becomes a valuable commodity. A proficient sales person is invaluable. In fact, highly proficient salespeople can pretty much write their own tickets, because they are the lifeblood of an organization.

So, whether you are a salesperson whose goal is to become indispensable and recession proof, or an organization ready to build a first class sales team, the key is in adding a healthy mix of person-to-person interactional skills to your training agenda. These are skills that salespeople quickly and easily incorporate into their selling styles, if they are presented correctly during the training process. Once incorporated, the results are dramatic! Sales improve almost immediately and, as the skills become second nature, the salesperson and profits just keep getting better!

These two aspects of the selling process are so vital as to make just about every other pale in comparison. Yet it is precisely these two vitally important aspects that all too often get relegated to chance, or to "doing what comes naturally" in the selling arena. Statistics prove this approach to be one with a very high mortality rate, because what comes naturally to most people in buyer/seller relationships often isn't pretty.

The role of Buyer requires us to be cautious, suspicious, guarded, and to regularly use the skill we developed so well during our "terrible twos", that of exercising our ability to say "NO, NO, NO".

The role of Seller, on the other hand, requires us to be assertive, expectant, open, and to attempt to use an entire cache of skills most of us never had the opportunity to learn. Skills such as persuading, negotiating, communicating well, noticing and effectively translating the non-verbal cues of others, problem solving, and knowing how to ask for something and get it on a fairly consistent basis, just to name a few. These are not seat-of-the-pants kinds of skills nor (unfortunately) were we born with them. These important interactional skills must be learned and most people have never had the opportunity to do that.  

A few people have had the good fortune to be taught good relating and communicating skills in their youth. Others learn them by trial and error, but that's a very slow and sometimes very expensive way to learn. This is especially true for those in the selling professions.

Research consistently shows that the world's top sales professionals excel as a direct result of having acquired and implemented strong interactional human-to-human skills, which they use as primary tools. The technical skills salespeople use are important of course, but they are really secondary to selling success.  Unfortunately, most sales training consists primarily of technical skills. Too often sales training follows the lines of, "This is what we sell. . .This is what it does. . .This is why the buyer needs it. . .This is how much you will make for each unit you sell. . . These are the objections you are likely to hear. . . Here are some answers to those objections . . . Here are some ways to close a sale . . . Go get 'em!"  That kind of training is usually a prescription for failure, unless the necessary interactional skills are already well developed in the individual being so trained. But, the odds of finding individuals who are well trained in interactional skills right off the street or among average salespeople are so rare that I certainly wouldn't want to bet my business on it.  Especially when training those who possess the right natural attributes is so much easier and less expensive in the long run.

What constitutes “the right natural attributes” depends on the type of selling an individual will be engaged in. For example, those who are effective at selling technically based products or services have different attributes than those who are effective at selling entertainment or time share vacations. The attributes of those who are effective at keeping customers long-term are different than the attributes of those who are effective at bringing in new accounts. 

In fact, in most organizations where keeping customers long term is important, and where continually adding to the customer base is also important, a team selling approach would yield far better results, provided the right people are teamed up.  Typically, those who are exceptionally good at bringing in new accounts don’t like maintaining those accounts. They feel that “hand holding” slows their progress and keeps them from making new sales. For this type it is generally the challenge and novelty of the new sale they most enjoy and at which they excel. 

On the other hand, those who are good at maintaining an existing customer base typically dislike having to prospect for new customers and will resist prospecting as much as they can get by with. It isn’t uncommon for salespeople, who are excellent at maintaining accounts to spend inordinate amounts of time with current customers in order to have an excuse for not prospecting much. How can they, they reason, when their current customers are occupying all their time? But, give them more customers that have been established by someone else and they will happily find the time to service them all. By using a team approach, with one  “point” person and one “hand holder” making up the team, both the will be happy and highly effective, provided they are also suited to the industry, product and/or service.

In an age and economy where an organization can’t afford to waste time and resources on hiring and training new employees; when the cost of employee turnover is in the thousands of dollars, and is especially high in the selling professions, no company can afford to hire blindly. And yet, hiring decisions are often made based solely on resumes and interviews, and sometimes when a company is desperate for sales people, even on surface presentation alone. It is no wonder that the turnover rate is so high or that so many organizations are constantly nursing along a mediocre sales staff. 

There are a lot of people out there who, with the right training, would make excellent sales people, but the right training is not just technique. In fact the mix that creates excellent sales people follows the old 80/20 rule. Excellent sales people are those with 20% technique and 80% great people skills, and that’s exactly how their training should be mixed.

Current statistics show (and most sales managers would concur) that less than 2% of those who attempt to enter the selling profession really excel at it and become the superstars. Another 6% do well and enjoy exceptional incomes, with an additional 12% earning average to slightly above-average incomes. That leaves 80% that do poorly or don't make the grade at all (there’s that 80/20 rule again). Those sad odds could be greatly improved if the training mix (currently 80% technical and 20% people skills) were reversed. 

I have had seasoned sales people who were at the top of their sales team greatly improve their results by improving their understanding of their own human nature and that of their prospects and customers.  I have also had seasoned sales people, who have had years of technical training, tell me that learning about themselves as sales people, and about their customers from the perspective of human nature was the most important and useful thing they ever did to maximize their sales results.

People skills are what the superstars have that the wanna-be’s are missing. It is People skills that those top achievers, often referred to as "natural born" salespeople, have to their credit and that ordinary-to-poor salespeople are missing. Yet these "natural born" salespeople often have no idea exactly what it is they say or do that translates into mega-bucks in selling. 

I have made it a point to study these superstar salespeople over the years, and I have asked a great number of them to what they attribute their success. Their general reply is, "I don't really know for sure. All I know is I love what I do and just do what comes naturally." 

Their customers describe them as genuine, charismatic, caring, concerned, knowledgeable, helpful, "good people".  Watching them in action however, it soon becomes apparent that their edge is their ability to interact with their customers in an easy, effective manner that puts the customer at ease, makes him/her feel important and understood, and gives the distinct impression that this salesperson is a true expert that can be trusted and relied upon.

The truth is, there are no "natural born" sales people. No one is born with selling skills or the people skills necessary for selling success. Admittedly, these skills are more easily developed by some people than by others, and a fortunate few begin developing them in childhood so that by the time they reach adulthood the skills seem natural. But, walking and talking seem pretty natural by the time we reach adulthood too, and certainly those are skills we all had to learn.

Success in selling, as with any other profession, is a matter of learning a set of skills and applying them consistently, sort of like typing. In typing, you either hunt and peck all your life, or you learn the basic skills.  If you learn the basic skills, you either use them only when necessary, and plug along at 30 words per minute, or you practice and continue to apply those skills until you work your way up to 120 words per minute or more.  At the point of proficiency, a typist becomes a valuable commodity.  A proficient sales person is invaluable. In fact, highly proficient salespeople can pretty much write their own tickets, because they are the lifeblood of an organization.

So, whether you are a salesperson whose goal is to become indispensable and recession proof, or an organization ready to build a first class sales team, the key is in adding a healthy mix of person-to-person interactional skills to your training agenda.  These are skills that salespeople quickly and easily incorporate into their selling styles, if they are presented correctly during the training process. Once incorporated, the results are dramatic!  Sales improve almost immediately and, as the skills become second nature, the salesperson and profits just keep getting better!    

it was just this morning that i woke up from last night

.

This did not happen recently but I learnt of some disturbing betrayal from past I was completely unaware of until earlier this month and that kind of rocked my world so to speak. Things I hold dear to me personally about values and being thoughtful and kind to others this person took as an opportunity to use me for their own selfish motives. They were anything but a real friend but up till recently I still saw them as a past friendship that had meaning to me. I have to say when I learnt of their betrayal this made me feel a range of emotions as this sunk in over time. Not the fun desireable emotions in life but emotions of anger, hurt, sadness. I do not feel it will be something I will just shrug off and deny they are appropriate responses to feel as I consider I'm smart enough to figure out the difference between positive denial or responding positively and learning from undesired experiences in life.

If someone crossed my boundaries I have to wonder how did I open myself up for this and is there anything I could have done to stop it happening. My way of being in some way attracted being taken advantage of even if I did not ask for this consciously. I realise I gave them a bit more trust than they probably deserved in my life up till that point so my personal boundary had not been made clear even to myself. It is something I'm still pondering on and examining for myself so I gain from this unhappy experience and disturbing news to my world about trusting others and friendship.

I'm seeing this period as something I want to use as a learning experience and fuel to create more value and better experiences in future for myself and real friends I grow with in life. It certainly got me thinking deeply about how I communicate with others in all manners of ways and teach others how to treat me and my value and values being respected.

Last month I wrote some thoughts about prosperity and It has become even more crystal clear to me that creating prosperity in all areas of life is founded on being aware of our own value and our set of values. This is something I'm honing in on further and re-defining for myself with more vigour than ever before. Finding I was giving my own value away unwittingly has shaken me up even more about being aware of this personally. As a result of defining an idea of my own value in many areas of my life I can then be far more clear about defined boundaries to myself that become clear to others getting to know needs to be respected and not crossed if they want to be part of my world.

Maybe my post can be food for thought for others to re-visit how we teach others how to treat us and by letting it known when our personal boundaries to our values are being tested in family situations, workplace, business and friendships.

I keep asking myself despite my strong self awareness why some people though they haven't met me don't like me. And since I'm self aware, I should know how to understand them. Self awareness leads to understanding other people why they act or behave the way they do. I am trying to completely understand though there's a force that drives me to be odd to them since they don't like me.

I remember these words of one person " Ignore the people who are not happy about you for there are people out there who are happy when you win, grieve with you and always there no matter what happens". Sometimes  people who are nice to us are the one being ignored.

I came up with this conclusion regarding that thing:

• I am not portraying someone who is not me
• I am not projecting as the person I want to be
• There are just mean people who will push you down no matter how good you are
• Constant reflection and self awareness  is the key not to be affected by all the emotional stresses
• You cant please all people

And lastly, for those people who think I am apathetic..

I dont have a flat affect, apathetic or whatever..

I JUST KNOW HOW TO UNDERSTAND