The buyer-seller situation – like any human contact – is an exercise in human relations: The interplay, cause, and effect of behaviour by two or more people on each other. In the buyer-seller situation, the seller must be responsible for shaping mutual behaviour.

What’s the difference between human nature and human relations?

• Human nature is the instinctive behaviour that governs action concerned with the self and with self-interest.
• Human relations are concerned with how we think and act in terms of other’s interests.

Successful selling demands that human relations be dominant over human nature.

Selling is not something a salesperson does to a prospect. Selling is something you do with the prospect in a process of discovery and interaction – human relations at work.

The greatest barrier to success in this process is the “Egocentric Predicament”. This consists of being overly and unnecessarily concerned with self. Our ability to be perceptive and concerned about others is inversely proportionate to our self-concern.

When self gets unnecessarily in the way, the fruitful cycle of good human relations stops producing.

The key to understanding and accepting others, is to first understand and accept oneself – starting with the realisation that, rather than strive for an unattainable “I should be” image, we should settle for our real self as “I am” – accepting shortcomings along with strengths.

The following points provide a practical answer to the “I am” versus “I should be” conflict.

Recognise it – and recognise that its source is rooted in the views of others. Either (a) accept your “I am” image or (b) decide on attainable, constructive steps to achieve “I should be” in the future.

Our behaviour is a reflection of our attitudes; and our attitudes grow out of our values.

Each is an integral part of the other. Do your life values make it easy for you to put the other person’s interests first?

Sincerity is a much-used word in relation to selling. Integrity is a kindred word. Integrity implies a consistent kind of honesty: acting outwardly the way you truly feel inwardly. That’s why sound values are so important to your success with others.

Remember: “People buy our product not so much because they understand the product… but because they feel that we understand them.”

There are many effective ways of doing this: The best way to create this kind of buying climate is to “transmit on their frequency.” This opens their mind to you…makes them willing – and eager – to listen.

A sincere, specific compliment on a point of real meaning to them gets the other person talking about things of interest to them. It opens doors.

“Before I sell my prospect what my prospect buys, I must first see my prospect as they see themselves.”

In Summary:
Empathy is the magical word in human to human interaction. It means feeling as the other person feels, not just with them. It means putting yourself in their shoes and shaping your attitudes accordingly.

Beyond getting the order, the plus factor in selling is to make people look good in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. Rather than sell to them, we help them buy.

We do this best by building their self-image. This helps them grow. And as we help others grow, we grow. To do this, we must be open and honest – this is the essence of good human relations.

These concepts are applicable to every facet of our lives and in selling, they pave the way to the truest and most fruitful success.

Today’s News: You can anticipate that I will be highlighting one of the most significant sales events of the year frequently, and we start today:

My friend, colleague and fellow  Colleen Francis, “One of the Top 5 Sales Trainers in the Market Today” – Sales and Marketing Magazine, is hosting/presenting:

Engage Selling Powerhouse Sales Event
27-28 April 2009

You will find all the details here

- I suggest that early registration is advisable: This is an example of what last year’s delegates said:

“The Powerhouse Sales Event was awesome! The day was full of excellent presenters with powerful information!”
Lorraine Gignac, Adecco Employment Services 

Finally, today:

You will not want to miss this week’s top article, over at

Tomorrow: Everyone – literally everyone, is talking about Sales 2.0, and many of them haven’t quite got it. My guest tomorrow most certainly has – he may have invented it. Join Nigel Edelshain on The JF Guest Author Spot 

In bringing together this collection of articles that I have published on the art of presentation skills and public speaking, my primary objective is to share with you some of the secrets I have learned over the years.

I don’t believe that anyone is a “natural” presenter or orator. Yes, certainly some people are naturally gifted communicators with an outgoing and attractive personality; some people have an extensive vocabulary; others know their subject inside out. But all of these will not necessarily guarantee that you can deliver a professional and compelling presentation.

This small book will hopefully guide you through each stage of a professional presentation, from understanding what audiences want, preparing your presentation, the delivery stage (including structure, verbal and physical delivery plus the question and answer session) and finally how to handle and harness anxiety.

I hope you enjoy it! – Just simply click on the banner below to download it.

Today’s News: It is all happening over at Top Sales Experts, following the launch of TSE 2.0:

The shelves are getting stacked – more than 2000 articles in the Article Vault, “How To” guides, Jobs Board, Podcasts…….and so much more. For example, we have just launched the TSE Daily Interviews, which this week have already featured Wendy Weiss and Billy Cox.

Very soon, we will be launching TSE Webinars, presented by an all-star line-up of sales gurus, and do look out for the very first TSE Roundtable.

You can enjoy all of this and more for the miserly price of $25 per year – and we give you a free gift pack worth $2000. It really is a “no brainer opportunity” to join the most significant sales related site ever created.

What are you waiting for? Come and join us today

Tomorrow: On The JF Guest Author Spot, one of the most accomplished and talented sales experts in Europe – my good friend and colleague, Niall Devitt. “Guidelines For Men Who Sell To Women” - you will most definitely enjoy it.

People may learn a great deal on development courses, but when they return to the workplace they often have difficulty integrating what they have learnt into their day-to-day work. Quite often, what they may have learnt simply slips from their minds.

We believe that between 50% and 70% of an organisation’s climate, and hence its effectiveness, can be traced to management style. Effective leaders create a favourable working environment that boosts performance. This is where coaching comes into its own. Leadership is a set of skills, competences and attitudes that individuals can develop through practice and by reflecting on their own actions and the impact this can have on others.

Most leadership programmes are too general to provide opportunities for such intensive personalised work. Coaching, by contrast, enables individuals to gain insight into their own motives, interests and concerns. These link explicitly to the challenges they face in their leadership or management roles.

Coaching can also help executives acquire a greater awareness of their own leadership style. This is crucial if they are to develop the variety of styles needed to manage and lead in different situations. All too often leaders rely on a command-and-control style, which has a negative impact on all but a crisis. Coaching people on leadership styles produces positive results in most situations by creating a supportive environment in which employees feel empowered to give their best and find the solutions to problems.”

Not unnaturally, some diehards still hold with an old-fashioned view that coaching can be used only for remedial purposes, but those organisations that have embraced the concept fully, have discarded that level of thinking. Their approach concentrates on leadership and personal development as part of building a high-performance organisation – they are committed to moving away from managing by a culture of process to managing as leaders.

Typically we find that our clients are not interested in adopting the style of coaching used by many companies to focus on simple issues – particularly how to get on with fellow team members. They choose us because they believe we offer a more challenging style that digs more deeply into behaviour and personality. This leaves executives with something more permanent that they can take away from the coaching sessions and use during the rest of their careers rather than just a one-off.

It is not always easy to convince executives that they should submit to a scrutiny of their personalities and behaviour, but in reality, those executives who balk at taking “the journey of self development” could soon find themselves isolated and lesser leaders than many of their contemporaries.

Today’s News: Here is a great new site that is “Delivering Social Collaboration to the Sales 2.0 Community” It’s called Connectize, and the CEO, Tom Canning is a very switched on guy – think you will like it. 

Tomorrow: It’s going to be a very long w/e as we put the final finishing touches to the launch of TSE 2.0.

Here’s the latest news:

“We’re coming … are you ready?”

What is the TSE 2.0 Launch all about?

Well, I am not at liberty to reveal details just yet. The final pieces are clicking into place – literally—as I am writing to you.

But … I can tell you that my TSE colleagues – sales experts from around the world – have created a whopping $2,000 worth of free gifts – extraordinary ”freemiums” – with answers to your most pressing business questions and answers to questions you haven’t yet asked!

Now, if you want to take a sneak peek and watch the count down with me you can … but ssshhh! … don’t tell anybody just yet …it’s all still quite hush, hush.

Follow along here: “We’re coming … are you ready?”

Traditionally, one of our largest clients ran its business from manuals. Staff who wanted to know how something should be done would be directed by a senior manager “to look in staff manual 108” for the answer. It was not a motivational style of management, and had become unsuitable for fast-changing modern business conditions. So eight years ago, based on our recommendations they created what they called “The ultimate service provision” by merging all the information technology (IT) and back-office functions. Management broke with old habits and traditional training, and decided to improve the leadership skills of the senior managers through coaching.

The outcome has been a resounding success, producing far better results than conventional development training. The evident superiority of coaching explains why more companies are taking the same route and making it a priority.

We believe that coaching’s rapid growth will continue. Forward thinking organisations are looking for alternative ways to lead and organise staff. The business world has experienced more upheaval in the past year than in the previous fifty: It’s no accident that this period of unprecedented change has witnessed a boom in executive coaching.

At the moment I am coaching a top executive who insists on becoming involved in every detail of the business, causing frustration amongst his junior executives. “If he’s not in a meeting, he feels he’s not working”, I was told. Time management and delegation courses had done nothing to cure his faults, which leave him no time for the sort of reflective thinking expected of a senior manager. Coaching, particularly by making him study his own diary and cutting down on the congestion in it, is already having an impact.

The signs are that the boom will continue. A recent survey that I read, which polled H. R. professionals from Europe, America, Australia and Asia found that 88% of the respondents were planning to make more use of professional coaching. A little more than half of the respondents had introduced the practice in the past 18 months.

Like our clients, 70% of those polled said that coaching has an edge over conventional development techniques and they would choose it to change the behaviour and performance of senior people.

Today’s News: Jill Konrath is recommending some excellent FREE sales resources here 

Niall Devitt posted “The Apocalypse, Four Sales Trainers and the 1st Commandment of Selling”  which you will enjoy very much and Paul McCord is asking: “What is Operational Excellence in Sales and Marketing?“

Tomorrow: On The JF Guest Author Spot, I welcome back Drew Stevens PhD – “The largest single issue with selling in a difficult economy is change. There is change in buying power, change in budgets, even change in decision criteria. However, what is not changed are goals, annual commitments, and a desire to excel.”  He will also give you the opportunity to download his latest FREE ebook – “Thriving In A Volatile Economy” – so be sure to join us.

In 1957, Roger Bannister became the first athlete to break the four-minute barrier for running a mile. Prior to Bannister’s achievement, on that evening in May at the unassuming Iffley Road track in Oxford, most athletes considered a sub-four-minute mile impossible. But that same year, sixteen other athletes also ran a mile in less than four minutes.

Did they become super-human overnight? Or, more simply, did their beliefs change? That is the way it works – if one person can do it, we can all do it, we just have to believe we can.

Our Colleagues Can Exert Positive Pressure:
Like those milers, salespeople have their own unique sets of beliefs, some of which limit their potential in sales. For instance, during a recession, the members of a sales force may all believe that strong sales are impossible. But if just one person increases their sales, what seemed an inevitable fact will suddenly appear more like a thin excuse for poor performance.

We Must Challenge Negative Beliefs:
Sales Captains who challenge negative beliefs with good questions can help create shifts in mindset. Take a look at these examples of negative beliefs and examples of questions that challenge them.

Statement:
“Our solutions are too expensive.”
Response:
“Compared with whom?”
“Compared to what?”
“How do you know?”

Statement:
“I’m hopeless at cold calling”
Response:
“According to whom?”
“What prevents you from being good at cold calling?”
“What would happen if you were good?”

Statement:
“My sales target is too high this month, I’ll never achieve it”
Response:
“What do you need to do so that you can?”

While challenging questions may not instantly create a belief change, over time, they can enable salespeople to shift their perceptions of their beliefs, recognising that there are other possibilities and options available to them.

Developing Self Worth:
Organisations that recognise the importance of helping their salespeople develop a strong sense of self worth are many times more likely to produce high performers. Self worth is vital to everyone but especially to salespeople who hear “no” more often than they hear “yes, I’ll buy”. A salesperson’s self-esteem can sometimes take a hammering, but organisations that find ways to build their salespeople’s self-esteem reap an invaluable dividend. Self–worth translates into attitude, that small thing that makes such a big difference.

In Summary – The most successful salespeople take care of their attitude and they understand that:

Great Attitude = Great Results,
Average Attitude = Average Results,
Poor Attitude = Poor Results.

The second commonality with successful salespeople is that they expect to be successful and they want it badly enough that they bring about its happening i.e. fulfilled expectation.

Tomorrow: I am heading back to Paris. It has been a great week and I’ll be here for you on Monday as usual – JF

To some, networking means simply meeting or calling someone new for what might be a one-off discussion or event. In this limited sense, networking is only a trading relationship in which two parties seek to discover whether they have anything of mutual interest to talk about. They either make some sort of exchange or quickly move on. This makes networking a highly ‘transactional’ subject, much like buying and selling or negotiating with someone.

My view is very different because I believe that networking has a much wider definition. In fact it can be a major social and life skill to be used in both a business/organisational and personal setting.

This ebook is compilation of articles that I have published on the subject, and I have endeavoured to share with you my experiences, with the hope that you will enjoy improving your own networking skills.

You can download it for FREE, simply by clicking on this banner.

Today’s News: Today, I have been working with one of my favourite (favorit) clients to prepare for 2009/2010. The strategy that we designed is so much different to the one we prepared for 2008 – it is immediate; it is short-term (quarter by quarter, out of necessity); it is more flexible (also out of necessity); it allows for further financial dowturns; it is depressingly realistic. But it should guarantee that they are well equipped to take full advantage, when the first shoots of recovery begin around Q3 next year.

Tomorrow, I am delivering an intense NLP coaching session: “How People Buy: Seeing Your Client Through Your Client’s Eyes” inspired by Kerry L. Johnson – “If you can see John Smith through John Smith’s eyes, you will sell John Smith what John Smith wants” This is particularly poignant in today’s selling climate.

In the afternoon, I am going to expose that very same team to Jill Konrath, who will connect live with them for ninety minutes. This is part of my strategy of inviting a selected few, trusted friends, and world class sales experts into my accounts. My clients are in for another real treat tomorrow.

Tomorrow: My guest is my good friend from down under, Kevin Dwyer who, ever insightful, will be sharing his thoughts on compensation – this is becoming an important issue and Kevin is one of the leading experts in the world on the topic. You will not want to miss his words of wisdom.

The JF Guest Author Spot

Paul McCord 

I received an interesting e-mail from Doris, a mortgage loan officer in New Mexico, who is facing a common problem: “Paul, I work for a small mortgage company that doesn’t provide us with any marketing materials. I spend a great deal of time creating stuff and end up not spending nearly as much time as I should actually be prospecting. I believe the quality of the materials I use reflects on me and the quality of work I do, so, I want to make sure they are the best I can do. But this is very time consuming. I know you used to be in the mortgage business, so I’m wondering if you know of any places on the internet where I can get flier and direct mail templates that will help me spend less time designing and more time prospecting?”

Doris is by no means the only salesperson who believes they face this dilemma. Many, many salespeople believe that they must have a ton of well-designed, high quality collateral material in order to successfully do their jobs. Consequently, like Doris, they spend hours and hours designing leave behind and direct mail material to the determent of their prospecting activity. Sooner or later–often sooner–they find that they are out of the business because they have no prospects.

There are several ways to successfully handle this situation. First and foremost, you must recognize that the activity of designing materials is nothing but an excuse to not prospect for many. They use the activity of creating collateral materials as a substitute for the hard work of finding prospects. It is mentally and emotionally easier to engage in the non-threatening activity of collateral material design than it is to face the very real prospect of rejection while prospecting.

Activity replaces accomplishment. If you’re busy, it’s easy to convince yourself that you’re working hard. The “getting ready” becomes the objective. You go home “feeling” that you’ve put in a good day’s work. Yet, you’ve accomplished nothing that will put sales in your pipeline.

If you must make a decision between seeing people and creating leave behind material, the choice should be simple–see people. Collateral material doesn’t sell. You do. Collateral material doesn’t identify prospects. You do. Collateral material doesn’t put sales in your pipeline. You do. Collateral material doesn’t generate your commission check. You do. And you do these things by identify and seeing prospects.

This is not to say that good collateral materials shouldn’t exist or be used. It is simply to say that if you truly face a choice, choose accomplishment over activity. The activity being the busy work of creating leave behind material and the accomplishment being prospecting and putting real sales in your pipeline.

But you can have both–high quality collateral material and a great deal of prospecting time. Simply spend your prospecting hours prospecting and evenings and weekends when you aren’t prospecting creating the materials, you want. For many, this is an impossible solution. Not because they don’t have the time in the evening and on weekends, but because they will refuse to give up their “free time” to do these activities.

Sales isn’t a 40 hour per week occupation. To be a top producer, you’ve got to be willing to invest more time than just your typical 8-hour day. You’ve got to push the non-income activities into non-income producing hours–and that means those hours when you can’t be engaged in prospecting or selling.

You only have three activities that make you money–finding prospects (prospecting), turning prospects into clients (selling), meeting client needs (managing your client’s purchase). Anything that doesn’t fall into one of those categories should be done outside your prospecting and selling hours.

If you’re unwilling to spend the time outside of your selling hours, then your only real alternative is to hire a graphic designer. The problem is that if you’re spending your time designing collateral materials, you probably can’t afford to pay a graphic designer, because you probably aren’t making a great deal of money. Top producers don’t spend their time designing collateral material–they spend their time selling and managing their clients. So, if you’re in Doris’ situation, you aren’t, almost by definition, a strong producer.

Most leave behind material is really nothing but a crutch for the salesperson. If you must have the materials, spend some evenings and weekends designing a couple of decent pieces and then get to work. “Don’t,” as the great UCLA basketball Coach John Wooten used to say, “confuse activity with accomplishment.” Activity can be measured in how quickly it takes you to fail in sales; accomplishment can be measured by your pipeline and paycheck.

Paul McCord, president of McCord and Associates, a Houston,Texas based sales training, coaching and consulting company, is an internationally recognized authority on prospecting, referral selling, and personal marketing. His best-selling book on referral generation,Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income: Sales Success through Client Referrals (John Wiley and Sons, 2007), is quickly becoming recognized as the authoritative work on referral selling. His next book, SuperStar Selling: 12 Keys to Becoming a Sales SuperStar will be released in February, 2008. He may be reached at pmccord@mccordandassociates.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or through his sales training website at www.powerreferralselling.com

Paul will also be a senior member of The Global Sales Council, which is now at a very advanced stage of formation – more soon. – Ed 

Today’s News: Don’t know if you have noticed but there is definitely a lot of PSCD (Post Seasonal Celebrations Depression) around right now – but not in my backyard; we are firing on all cylinders and we have hit the ground running this year. I have so much news to share with you shortly, just be patient “You are such a tease Mr Farrington”

Tomorrow: We launch “JF Reviews” – the long awaited JF book reviews and also your chance to download one of my ebooks from the JF Winning Series, sponsored by SalesNexus, for FREE

All managers expected to carry out performance appraisal should have some training. Ideally this should not just be on the skills of performance appraisal – the ‘how’ to do it, but also on the reasons for performance appraisal the ‘why’ we do it. Managers should understand how it fits into the wider strategic process of performance management and how the information and data generated contributes to understanding of the capacity of the human capital of the organisation to contribution to business strategy and value.

A basic requirement is that appraisers have the skills to carry out an effective appraisal as described above. This means they ask the right questions, listen actively and provide feedback.

Asking the right questions:

The two main issues are to ensure that appraisers ask open and probing questions.

Open questions are general rather than specific; they enable people to decide how they should be answered and encourage them to talk freely. Examples include:

• How do you feel things have been going?

• How do you see the job developing?

• How do you feel about that?

• Tell me, why do you think that happened?

Probing questions dig deeper for more specific information on what happened or shy. They can should support for the individual’s answer and encourage them to provide more information about their feelings and attitudes and they can also be used to reflect back to the individual and check information. Examples would be:

• That’s very interesting. Tell me more about ….?

• To what extent do you think that …?

• Have I got the right impression? Do you mean that ….?

Listening:

Good listeners:

• Concentrate on the speakers and are aware of behaviour, body language and nuances that supplement what is being said.

• Respond quickly when necessary but don’t interrupt.

• Ask relevant questions to clarify meaning.

• Comment on points to demonstrate understanding but keep them short and do not inhibit the flow of the speaker.

Giving feedback

Feedback should be based on facts not subjective opinion and should always be backed up with evidence and examples. The aim of feedback should be to promote the understanding of the individual so that they are aware of the impact of their actions and behaviour. It may require corrective action where the feedback indicates that something has gone wrong. However, wherever possible feedback should be used positively to reinforce the good and identify opportunities for further positive action. Giving feedback is a skill and those with no training should be discouraged from giving feedback.

Feedback will work best when the following conditions are met:

• Feedback is built in with individuals being given access to readily available information on their performance and progress.

• Feedback is related to actual events, observed behaviours or actions.

• Feedback describes events without judging them.

• Feedback is accompanies by questions soliciting the individual’s opinion why certain things happened.

• People are encouraged to come to their own conclusions about what happened and why.

• There is understanding about what things went wrong and an emphasis on putting them right rather than censuring past behaviour.

Today’s News: I have received a number of messages in the last two weeks, asking if I am going to run “The JF Annual Awards” this year, and the answer is most definitely yes! We are currently working on some designs, and I will be announcing the nominees on the 16th. If you missed last year’s event, you can check out, what it is all about here 

Tomorrow: My favourite posts of the week – “JF Uncut” is back, so if you need some light relief after all that Christmas shopping, be sure to join me.

In his book “Fundamentals of Selling”, Charles Futrell identifies careful use of selling time as perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of the successful salesperson. Frequently there are two main pitfalls that even experienced salespeople can fall into in terms of activities. First, they simply aren’t doing enough. What’s enough? Enough telephone calls to make appointments, enough face-to-face calls, enough calls that involve or influence the decision-makers. In general, the more focused sales activity salespeople generate, the greater the number of sales opportunities they can create.

Poor Quality Activity:

Second, but equally important, salespeople often aren’t clear about how to identify the prospects most likely to have a genuine need for their product or service. Without an objective way to prioritise which prospects to contact first and/or an efficient strategy for contacting them, salespeople are doomed to waste a large percentage of their time.

Another huge dilemma for many salespeople is how to divide their time between servicing existing clients and generating new business from new prospects. Existing clients frequently make requests for service that could be dealt with by support staff. But salespeople who lack a disciplined, future-orientated plan for generating new contacts and sales often find themselves spending more time attending to “urgent” tasks for existing accounts instead. A common approach among salespeople can be summarised in the saying “If you throw enough mud against the wall, some of it is bound to stick”. This approach is exhausting, demoralising, extremely unproductive, and very expensive in the long term.

Speed Of Relaying Customer Information:

The Sales Director provides another interesting dimension to activity management. Apart from product or service knowledge, salespeople require knowledge about prospects, clients, and market trends. Therefore, if the information those salespeople require isn’t relayed in an efficient manner, their “face-to-face” selling activities are dramatically reduced.

Today’s News: Mixed reaction to my new banner: My son Joe, who regular visitors will remember is studying Astro-Physics at Cambridge University said: “The top of your head doesn’t seem to exist. You just go from eyes to eyebrows to white. Very ghostly. I like black on white though. Very minimalist and crisp”

So, this is what an education at one of the world’s leading seats of learning gives you – the ability to identify the obvious!

Tomorrow: My guest is Paul McCord and you can expect more commentary, if I do not get woken up at 5.30 am by the hotel’s fire alarm system and am left to freeze outside for an hour and a half!

Success should be something you don’t just ‘Kinda Sorta’ want to achieve but something you must achieve.

Generally top achievers expect to be successful and as a consequence they usually are. They are driven by a ‘have to’ attitude not a ‘want to’ attitude.

If you have no concrete goals and you have been succeeding in spite of yourself, just think how much more success you could enjoy if you set your sights on a definite path and had a specific time-frame in which you expect to reach your destination.

Setting Goals Keeps You Focussed:

What you should know is that goals give you three distinct advantages, which help you succeed:

• Goals keep you on track

• Goals let you know when and what to celebrate

• Goals give you a focussed plan to work with

If nothing else, goals let others know what they have to aim for to keep up with your standards.

Effective Goal Setting:

Take the time to think about what would make you happy, contented and satisfied and about what would motivate you to become a Top 5% Player.

It’s important to remember that goals are maps; they will guide you towards your success – the more detailed your goal setting the easier it will be for you to reach your destination.

When you are in the first stage of goal setting you also need to remember two important factors – i.e.

• The goal must be better than your best yet – but it must be achievable.

• Goals should be based on productivity not production.

Keeping these two rules of goal setting firmly in your mind will help you to form and stay committed to what is really important to you.

Time Yourself – By Months, Years & Decades:

• Always begin with long-term goals and work backwards. Your long-term goals are probably the most difficult to set anyway, so if you set those first, you accomplish the tough stuff right up-front.

• Long-term goals should be five-year projections and three areas you may want to consider when you set them are personal accomplishments, status symbols and net worth.

• Medium-term goals are usually three year projections and the same criteria can be used – but again think productivity not production and consider the activity that will be necessary to achieve success.

• Short-term goals will demand most of your attention and these are usually a twelve-month projection although you can set ‘immediate goals’ which have a 90-day projection.

You must believe you can achieve all of your goals – otherwise you will not
achieve them.

Setting a Well Balanced Diet of Goals:

It is essential to set personal as well as career goals to keep your life well balanced. If all your goals are connected to your commercial life, you will have trouble taking time out for family and friends because you will always be pushing towards the next career goal.

Remember:

Work smarter not harder. Setting personal goals gives you a life after business.

Put Your Goals in Writing:

Once you have formulated your goals it is time to make your final commitment to them by putting them down in writing. This is undoubtedly the single most important step in goal setting because until they are inscribed somewhere they are merely wishes and dreams.

After you have written them down, your mind will start seeking out whatever it will take to make them a reality.

Remember:

The moment you start moving forward towards a goal is the moment you start to succeed.

In Summary:

Even though you do not need to set goals in order to reach some level of success, most professionals who fail to set goals reach a plateau and lack either the motivation or the direction to go beyond it. They are unable to move upwards to a higher achievement status.

Today’s News:

Special message from the “Queen Of Cold Calling” that I need to pass on to you:

Hello Jonathan,
 
Earlier this week, I sent you an email that we will be hosting our first ever Black Friday Sa.le!  This is just a reminder for you of the following coupon codes needed to take advantage of these special offers:
 
40% off of all products (excluding events and teleclasses) all day Friday, November 28, 2008. (use coupon code BF2008) to view the product store, click here.
 
50% off of one of three available Cold Calling College Live tuitions (starting February 2009) – a savings of nearly $500.00!  (use coupon code BFCCCL) For more information on Cold Calling College Live, Click Here.

Sounds like some pretty good deals to me

Tomorrow: It’s JF Uncut, and I am going to be thinking about what it takes for people to think they have “made it,” just how far the British go to “Keep up with the Jones’” – and how such insane vanity is now leading to such agony.