Success

 

What does success mean to you?

I asked this question to some sales people in a meeting the other day and got some good answers on the subject.

The first person said; “It means to SUCK-LESS!”

We all laughed, but he was being serious.  When you think about it, he has a point.  When you are successful, you do suck less.  You are doing the right things.  You are making the right choices, decisions, and actions to achieve your goal or purpose.

Here is what else we came up with:

NO FAILURE:  When you are on a success streak—you are not afraid to fail.  Your mind-set is strong, and you persist—no matter what.  When you have the success mind-set you don’t accept failure.—it is not an option.

SMILE:  When you have success—you tend to smile more.  The feeling of success is great and it affects your emotions, body language, tonality, and your overall thoughts.  You are excited and on cloud nine.  Your thoughts are positive.  This translates to a happy state and you go around with a big grin on your face.

WINNING:  When you are successful you are winning more than you are losing.  You are on a streak of fortune.  I know that when I was selling and I was on a hot successful streak, my winning translated to other areas of my life.

NO STRESS:  Success takes all the stress away.  Really it doesn’t, but it feels that way.  More than anything, we tend to take the pressure of striving and wanting to success off our shoulders.  When you have success, fear, anxiety, stress seem to melt away.

PMA:  This goes with all the others above.  When you are successful you tend to have a positive mental attitude.  Your thought processes are different—you are more sharp and on the ball.  You are able to handle objections, and overcome obstacles.  The negative talk inside your head is buried by positive affirmations and internal high five’s.  You feel so strong mentally, that nothing can stop you or break your spirit.

SELF MOTIVATED:  When you have success you are more self-motivated.  You are eager to continue the successful streak.  You don’t need a manager or anyone telling you what you need to do, you just do it.

So, start small.  Look at the small success you have in your day to day life.  Build off that.  Motivate yourself to gain more success.  Form a positive mental attitude, smile and accept no failure.  When you win more you will feel less stressed.

So, go out there and SUCK-LESS with SUCCESS!

Coffee Quote #5 – Patience

Another interesitng coffee spill sticker quote!

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

That is true.  The thing I have leanred most about in life in the last ten years is to have patience. 

People always preach, “Good things come to those who wait.”  I believe that is somewhat true. I think you need to have patience while working towards the things you want.  Your goals, dreams, success, never comes when you want it.  It comes on its own time.

 That reminds me of another quote I heard:

“Patience is waiting.  Not passively waiting.  That is laziness.
But to keep going when the doing is hard and slow – that is patience!”

I know there have been times where I wanted to give up because because things got hard.  Really, I was running out of patience.  Then, I realized I just needed to give it a little bit more time.  I kept persisting, had a bit of patience, and then . . . it happened.  I realized my goal.

Whatever you are doing right now. 

Whatever you want in life. 

Just have a little patience, and you will get it!

–Tim Northburg
LifeWork Elements

RELAX!

It is funny how our minds work.  What goes on in the six inches between our ears can mean the difference of achieving our dreams and goals—or not.  Our negative thinking can keep all of our desperation, paranoia, panic, anxiety, nervousness, stress, anger, tension, agitation, and worry going full speed in our lives.  Or, we can relax and put it all aside and let everything come to fruition.

REMEMBER: 

You can’t SELL when you are DESPERATE!

You can’t THINK when you are PARANOID!

You can’t FOCUS when you are PANICKED!

You can’t COPE when you are ANXIOUS!

You can’t ORGANIZE when you are NERVOUS!

You can’t ADJUST when you are STRESSED!

You can’t REASON when you are ANGERED!

You can’t BREATHE when you are TENSE!

You can’t RELATE when you are AGITATED!

You can’t SUCCEED when you are WORRIED!

Just put it all aside and RELAX!

Let your negative thoughts go, and you will sell, think, focus, cope, organize, adjust, reason, breathe, relate, and succeed more!

–Tim Northburg
LifeWork Elements

Enthusiasm Sells!

What is the number one thing you can add to your selling process that is bound to make a huge difference?

ENTHUSIASM!

Enthusiasm sells.  This super strength, high powered excitement is ultra powerful, addictive, and contagious.  Enthusiasm is; energy, excitement, strength, power, confidence, motivation, positive attitude, persuasion, and power all rolled into one.

Enthusiasm, used correctly, is not “showy” or “flashy.”  It cannot be faked.  It is the ability to exude all those qualities above into your product or service.  It is the ability to show that you really genuinely care for your product or service and believe in its benefits and translate that to the customer.

How does one get or maintain enthusiasm?

Not everything is going to go your way each moment of each day, and you are going to feel un-enthusiastic at times.  There are some things you can do to keep enthusiasm in your corner, or find it when you have lost it.

POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE:  There is nothing worse than a negative attitude.  It sours the air like day like a glass of milk left out on a 100 degree day.  Negative attitudes translate to your customers.  They can sense when you are off.  Your negative thoughts translate to negative vibes and people around you will pick up on it.  So if you are bummed about your sales performance, your finances, your favorite team losing, the weather, the argument you got into with your significant other, boss, or co-worker, or whatever it will telegraph through you to your customers.  So break the negative thoughts.  Shake it off.  “Click it to Zero.” Do whatever you have to do to shake those negative thoughts.

(The rest of these will help with PMA)

LAUGH:  Get laughing.  Nothing breaks the negativity more than laughter.  Tell a joke.  Read a joke.  Think about a funny time in your life.  Watch a funny video clip.  Laugh at yourself.  There are many ways to get the laughter going.  Laughing changes your posture, gets you in a better frame of mind, and sends endorphins rushing through your body.  So, get laughing!

READ BOOKS:  Many times it is difficult to get motivated.  It is hard to break out of a funk.  I have found that if I read something it is a momentary escape from my life.  It is a break from all the thoughts going on in my head.  It doesn’t matter what I read, it allows me a moment to be someone else.  Many people read motivational books.  Stories of personal journey, or how to books help.  You can learn a lot from others successes. You can learn a lot from other trials, tribulations and how they overcame them.  There are many ways you can gain enthusiasm from reading.  There are millions of books out there, so find what works for you.

START EACH DAY FRESH:  My old boss used to say, “Before you go to work, take your brain out and put it in the fridge, come to work, do what you need to do, and when you get home you put your brain back in.”  What he meant by that was, leave your problems, issues, insecurities, etc. at home.  Be fresh each day and leave your problems behind so you can be at your best.

READ MOTIVATIONAL QUOTES:  If you need inspiration, there are tons of sites out there with positive motivational quotes.  Find a new quote each day that inspires you.  Read it several times a day to keep you in the flow of things and in the right frame of mind.

HAVE EXCITEMENT:  Find something to be excited about in your day.  If you are down all the time you enthusiasm won’t find you.  Find one thing in your day to be excited about and hold onto that thought all day.  Don’t let the negative forces in the world get to you.

So, if you are not enthused—get enthused!

–Tim Northburg
LifeWork Elements

Sales Effort

What is it that sets top sales people from all the rest?

They are willing to do the things necessary to being successful.  They are willing to put in the extra effort in all areas in order to become an elite sales person and sell more.  Do you see them standing around the water cooler gossiping?  No, they are constantly moving forward.  Does that mean they don’t take a break?  No, they are resting for their next stage.

• TRAINING:  They put in extra effort training, because they know that knowledge is power.  They learn listening skills, reading body language, presentation skills, closing skills, etc.
• PRACTICE:  They put in extra effort perfecting their craft, practicing interviewing, perfecting their pitch role-playing sales scenarios, and overcoming objections.
• SET GOALS:  Top elite sales people set goals and monitor their progress on a daily, monthly, yearly basis.  They know where they are at, and how close they are to achieving their sales goals.
• PROSPECTING:   They are always on the lookout for suspects.  They don’t just shut off when they are “off the job.”  They constantly have their antennas up for someone who might benefit from their products or services, or know someone who is.
• CLOSING:  Elite sales people are always closing.  Multiple times, and in many ways.  They don’t cave in to fear, or give up because they don’t think there is anything there.  They close again and again after building more value and overcoming objections.
• OBJECTIONS:  They are prepared to handle objections.  They test the customer’s objections to validate if they are really conditions or excuses not to buy.  Then they go back to closing!

These are only a few things that set elite sales people from the rest of the pack.  What are you doing on a daily basis to become an elite sales person?  Are you constantly moving forward or, do you stop once you made a few sales?  Do you give in to mediocrity?

The level of effort you put in . . . is the results you get out!

 

 —Tim Northburg
LifeWork Elements

Sales is Like a Bag of Potatoes

A mentor of mine used to say;

“A month’s worth of sales is like a bag of potatoes.  You have some large potatoes, medium potatoes, and small potatoes.  At the end of the month you boil them up, and mash them together, and what do you have?”

“A big pot of mashed potatoes!”

–Doug Axtell

That saying has been around for many years.  But it is prevalent today, just as it was fifteen years ago when I first heard it.

DON’T JUST GO FOR THE BIG POTATO:

I understood what he meant.  You have to take all the deals you can get.  Despite the size of the gross—they all add up.  It is about taking as many deals as you can get (big, medium, or small) because in the end, the more customers you make, the more customers you will be able to retain, and nurture for repeat business.

Many times the people you make the most money on don’t refer you any customers.  Often times they don’t come back because they find out you knocked them out the first time so they go somewhere else.

KEEP IN MIND:

(Substitute potato with customer or deal.)

If all you do is spend your efforts on one big potato you may end up with an empty pot.

The one with the most potatoes wins . . . not the biggest potato.

Small potatoes lead to big potatoes.

Big potatoes have brown spots too.

When it boils down, a pot full of small potatoes yields more mashed potatoes.

A potato is just a potato.

Go get your bag of potatoes and take all the sizes you can get!

 

–Tim Northburg
LifeWork Elements

Coffee Sticker Quote #4 – Goals

I like reading the tiny coffee sticker quotes I have collected.  This one is goo around this time of year.  Many people are all jazzed about the new year and are setting goals and resolutions.  It is a time to plan out what we want to do and accomplish this next year and work towards it.

Here is the coffee sticker quote:

“Goals allow you to control the direction of change in your favor.”
–Brian Tracy

Here is the relevance I see in this quote:

The essence of that quote is the word goals.  If you are not setting goals, you will not be able to control the direction of change in your life. Goals that are not written down are just wishes, dreams, hopes.  Those are all good.  However, written goals give you that needed spark to commit to doing something and thus, “control the direction of change in your favor.”

It all starts with that one phrase, “I will . . .”

Now, go set some great goals for 2012.

–Tim Northburg
LifeWork Elements

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