There is only one question you need to ask to achieve any goal, provided you have already clarified what the goal is and why you want it. That one question is: What is the next action?
You don’t need to know all the ins and outs of how to arrive at your goal. You don’t need to know even what the second step will be. All you need to know is the very next step. So, if you are stuck, just ask yourself, what is the next action I need to take?

Why the one question is so powerful

When you ask yourself this question, you focus your attention on a very small area. This automatically frees up you mind to work on a much simpler problem. What do I do next?
Now the answer may be a small next action step, or it may be a larger series of steps. You can then focus down further by asking, out of this series of steps, what is the very next action? Once you have this answer, then go ahead and complete this task, without any thought of the next action step after that.

The reason it works is that it kills procrastination. Often procrastination is caused by overwhelm, resulting from trying to focus on all of the possible steps in a goal. Focussing on just the next step, helps you narrow down your focus.

Usually during the process of completing this next action step, the subsequent action step becomes clearer. If not, once you have completed the next action step, then just ask yourself again what’s the next action?

I have written more about taking action in my post Take action – how this helps the Law of Attraction, in which I describe how taking any small action can have dramatic effects.

Then repeat the question.

Once you are specific on your outcome and motivations, then all you need is to know what the next step is.
So just like any traveller who knows his destination, just keep putting one foot in front of the other and the path will reveal itself to you.

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“A business executive’s habits are amongst the most important factors that determine whether he or she will be a success – or a failure” J. Paul Getty

What are habits?

Habits are repeated behaviours, thoughts and actions that are automatic. Habits are useful, if not essential to life: we simply wouldn’t be able to function without habits. From the moment you wake and throughout the day, our day is full of those automatic actions that move us smoothly through life.

Think of any action that we take, even the most mundane like brushing our teeth. Imagine if you had to think consciously about brushing your teeth every day – twice a day. Then getting dressed and tying your shoelaces. By the time you are ready for the office you would already be exhausted and we haven’t even mentioned all the habits of etiquette – the social glue that keeps society functioning.

We have survived as a species exactly because habits are automatic. In evolutionary terms, this leaves us free to concentrate on physical threats to our existence or opportunities to find food.
All well and good then. Habits keep us alive and help us to learn new important skills. Except, not all habits are useful.

Bad Habits

As we have already suggested, habits are automatic, meaning that you don’t need to think about them. If any habit results in negative results, it’s a bad habit.

What is a bad habit

A bad habit is any repeated thought or action that results undesirable outcomes. Bad habits can also be the language that you use. Thoughts, words and actions are all linked together. Words can influence your thoughts, which then influence your actions. So be very careful what you say, because habitual negative language, will affect your thinking. If the results in your life aren’t what you want, then examine the language that you use.
Other bad habits may be just mindless activity. Do you eat when you are not hungry, in front of the TV? This is just a mindless bad habit.

Breaking bad habits

Once you become aware of the bad habit, you have already begun the process of breaking that bad habit. You are now aware. It is no longer mindless. This is therefore the first thing you should focus on when trying to break a bad habit. Become aware of it. Eat thoughtfully. Ask yourself ‘Am I really hungry?’’Do I really like the taste of this food?’ ‘How does it make me feel?’ When you become mindful about your habits, those that don’t serve you are exposed for what they are. You will be surprised to find that you can then easily change those habits.

Small habits

To change a small habit, simply perform a new habit for 21 consecutive days. It should then be permanent.

Another way to change small habits is to use reminders and props. Say that, for instance, you are in the habit of misplacing your keys. You mindlessly place them down when you arrive home. How about if you actually designate a place for these keys to live. E.g. A small saucer or tray near the front door. This is where the keys live. Make an intention to decide a place where the keys will go. Then go and put the keys there now. Now write a little note for yourself to put the keys back every day. Put this note with the keys and take the note with you the next day. It won’t take long before you are habitually putting the keys back in their new home. Once it is a habit, you can forget the note. It will be automatic.

Large habits

Sometimes bad habits are just too large change in one go. Let’s use an example of over-eating. Perhaps after years of eating too much of the wrong foods, you find yourself a little over-weight. The first thing many people do is to try to change everything all at once – the crash diet. Diets don’t work for many reasons, but the main one is internal resistance to change. We are hard wired to resist change. Any change could be a threat to our existence. Your body is also physiologically designed to get you to eat. If you stop eating, many processes in your body switch on to avoid starvation. In short your body fights to get you to eat. There is only one winner in this battle.

What’s the answer then?

You can bypass your body’s in built drive to eat, by chunking down the habit to its smallest components. So in our overeating example, this large habit can be broken down into individual meals or snacks, or even parts of meals. In his book the Compound Effect, Darren Hardy talks about making the smallest of changes, to bypass our tendency to avoid change. Tiny changes go undetected by our subconscious mind. Minute changes to your eating habits will not threaten your existence.

So you can remove one sugary snack per week from our diet and this will not cause too much heartache. You could choose Monday morning as a snack free zone.

Now you might say to yourself, that such a small change and it will have no effect, so why bother? Well this is where the Compound Effect helps. Yes, removing one snack per week will have a negligible effect on your calorie intake, say 200 kcal. However, that is 10,400 kcal per year. If 3,500 kcal collates to one pound of fat, then this would equate to nearly 3 pounds lost over the year, with almost no effort.

And that is not all. Once you have this mini habit down, you could remove another snack per week. Then another and another.
If you have never tried this method, I can assure you that it gathers momentum. Slowly all manner of little habits will change. Within a year you will be transformed. I promise you.

By the way if you are looking to lose weight contact me and I will show you how I did it.

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To start to break my longer-term goals down into manageable projects, I use a method which incorporates several goal-setting strategies. I call it the  Monthly COMBINED method. This is an acronym for Contribution, Organisation, Money, Business, Interests, Nourishment, Environment and Delegation. These are the life areas, that I alluded to before.

Contribution

These are things relating to family, friends, community or charity. It is what I want to give back.

Organisation

I use this category for items relating to time management, goal setting, computers or IT.

Money

This category includes all my financial goals, such as saving and investments.

Business

I use this area to capture all my career, work or business goals.

Interests

This is anything I do simply because it interests me. I include reading subjects, travel goals or just things for fun.

Nourishment

This is an area I use for health, spiritual or exercise goals.Ie Physical and Spiritual nourishment.

Environment

Any goal related to my physical environment would go in here. Things like home improvements or repairs. I also include things to do with vehicles and clothing.

Delegate

This final area is one I’ve added to make sure that I am delegating things, that I should n’t be doing myself. I go into more detail on this later on.
If you would like a ready made template for your Monthly COMBINED Goals, email me and I will send you one out. My email address is at the end of the book. You can then print this off for your Success Manual.
The beauty of this method is that it ensures the following things:

1. I am balanced: This means I have to have a goal in each area. Also, I do not leave any blanks.
2. I am focussed: this means I have only one goal in each of these areas and no more.
3. The goals on the COMBINED list are sacrosanct. They get top priority. For this reason, I spend a lot of time at the end of each month formulating my next month’s goals. I talk about my Monthly review in the section later on Scheduling.
4. I am guaranteed to succeed: Each goal is in three levels, a minimum, a target and a stretch. The minimum is more like a single action, which I should be able to achieve easily. This keeps me motivated even on slow months. Similarly, if I easily reach my target, I can still have something more to aim for.
5. I have intrinsic motivation: I use a scoring system so that it becomes a game to achieve my goals for the month and at higher levels, so I get a higher score.

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Work-flow Mastery

Work flow mastery. These are actually three different concepts here (Work, flow and mastery) which conjure up images of success. To be successful, we need to work or receive the fruits of other’s work. Work also needs to flow.

There needs to be a steady stream of actions, which if performed consistently will eventually yield results. Then and only then will mastery result.

The In-To-Empty concept

The first system I want to discuss is the concept of In-To-Empty. The term is probably famous due to David Allen’s Getting Things Done and really means getting your in-tray empty. In other words, sorting through your email inbox or the physical piles of stuff and deciding what to do with them. It could also mean going through your notebook and making sense of the random ideas you’ve had today.
I am not going to go into detail here on this concept, as I believe Mr Allen has done a fine job already. However, I will reiterate a couple of things.
Firstly, getting your in-tray empty, doesn’t actually mean that you are completing everything in your inbox. It simply means deciding what each email means and whether it requires further action. If it does require further action, you can then go ahead and add it to your to-do list(s).
The second thing about the in-to-empty model, is that you should ideally only do it once a day. What? Only check emails once a day? That’s heresy, surely. Well no, I believe it is one of the fundamentals of being successful. In other words, limiting the time you spend checking email, social media and voicemails. This is so that you can concentrate your mental energy on productive tasks. Then, maybe , at the end of the day, you can spend say 30 minutes quickly scanning your email list and sorting them. The other benefit of doing this is that when one of those emails turns up, you know the ones, where your heart sinks, you can just decide – yes I need to action this. So it goes in your to-do list.

Do it tomorrow

The key concept that makes the daily in to empty model work is the do it tomorrow concept. When you process all your in boxes, unless you can complete an item immediately, you mark it on your to do list to do tomorrow. It is such a relief to go through your email inbox, knowing you don’t need to reply to that ‘War and Peace’ request from your line manager.

Properly wording your tasks.

Now that you are processing your in box and filling your to-do list, the next thing to master is actually wording the tasks, so that when you come to reading it later, it not only means something, but you are also more likely to complete it.
The simple rule is that a properly worded task should have a verb, an object and a subject.

For instance – Ring Bob to chase up the report.

Ring (verb) Bob (object) Report (subject).

Now its quite alright when you make a note in your note pad such as “sort office out”. You know what this means when you write it, however, it’s not acceptable to write this on your to-do list. Coming across “sort office out” on your to-do list is a guarantee for you to procrastinate.
If you have followed David Allen’s GTD system , as you process this item, you might decide that this is actually a project. Your properly worded action for your to-do list could be “Plan out (verb) a project (object) to organise the office (subject).”
The key is to have all three elements and for the verb to be as simple as possible e.g. Ring, email, plan etc.

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Why is everyone else having fun

The other day I looked on Facebook to see if I could find some inspiration for a great blog post. As I scrolled down the newsfeed, a sudden thought flashed across my mind. Why is everyone else having fun? I saw former colleagues on a night out, having a great time. Then I saw an old school friend on a great looking adventure. Another old school friend looking like he is doing really well financially. Then there was a good friend doing really well in his career. Happy smiley faces – why they are all having fun … and not me?
“… and not me?”

Halt.
Rewind.

My psychological training and self-hypnosis kicks in and I catch myself. I mentally rewind. I replay the mental movie again. This time I mentally congratulate each of my friends. Then I Like, Like, Like.

What Happened There?

For a moment I let the immature part of my psyche take over and instead of seeing joy and abundance out there in the world, I focused on scarcity.
You see it’s not Facebook’s fault. It was mine. People only put their highlights up. They don’t put the mundane stuff up. Imagine if they did, it would be boring.

It’s the same with Celebrities, when we compare ourselves to them. We don’t see the years of practice they put in behind the scenes to hone their skills. Also, we don’t see the hours they spend in makeup. We don’t see the monotonous work they put in at the gym. When they are at their worst we definitely don’t see them. We only see the results and only the results they want us to see.
Just as your life is not all boring, they aren’t having fun all the time. In fact, I’ll let you into a secret, towards the end of this section.

How to be happy and successful.

Have faith and hope

Affirmations and visualisation can help. Sometimes you may need to change your beliefs. This can take time, but is well worth it. Hypnosis can also help.

Action towards a goal – consistency

Having some sort of goal to work towards helps in happiness. Humans are goal-seeking creatures; we need something to aim for.

Enjoy the process

As I said, it’s important to have a worthy goal to aim for. However, it’s important to enjoy the process of moving towards that goal. Fall in love with the process and you will move effortlessly towards the goal.
Get out of your head and live in the now. If you try to live in the now, you automatically focus on what is around you now this moment.

Congratulate other people.

Going back to our Facebook friends. How about sincerely congratulating them on their successes? Will this make you have more fun or be successful? Maybe, maybe not, but it will make you happier.

Gratitude

Finally have gratitude. I strongly recommend keeping a morning gratitude journal. I have some set questions that I write at least two answers to, every single day. This forces me to focus on what’s good in my life. This then sets the tone for the day. Here are some of the questions I ask myself every morning:

1. What was great about yesterday?
2. What am I grateful for in my life right now?
3. I Think about what am I really excited about today and in the future?
4. What do I appreciate about the people I love?

How could doing all this make you more happy and successful?
First, it changes your immediate mood. Then as you repeat it and it becomes a habit, your outlook on life will start to change. As your outlook changes, you become more positive and confident. You try things you might not have done. You make braver decisions. This is when you start to see tangible results in your life.

Then you might find that people look at you and say how lucky you are.
So getting back to that little secret I mentioned before, your friends on Facebook are jealous of you. Think about that. Have you ever put up a post with pictures of your life highlights, like the Night out with friends or the family reunion? Someone somewhere will look at that and envy you.

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Here is a true story which will prove that if you take action, towards your goal, it can lead to massive gains.

So there we were, my wife and I sitting in our back garden one Bank Holiday, dreaming about what we could do with the back end of the garden, which was an eyesore. We would love to build a little patio and flower bed. At that time we had lived in our house for 12 years and the job always seemed too large to tackle.

There was a mess of compost, discarded masonry and a concrete slab wall. We decided to brighten it up, with some trellising and climbing plants. It would hide the wall, at least. So in that moment of decision we jumped in to the car and went to our local garden centre, to buy some trellising and climbing plants.
I will tell you what happened next in a short while.

The Law of Attraction

I have read The Secret and many others books, which talk about the Law of Attraction. I also think that there is something in it, however, I don’t know how, it just seems to work. I’ve actually written a book called Is the Law of Attraction Real and Does it Work?. Basically, if you focus on the outcomes you want in life, they seem to manifest – eventually. Sometimes, though, no matter how much visualisation and visioning you do,  some goals seem so far away. Why is this?

I think I’ve found out, although this is no secret – it’s because we need to take Action.

Taking any action, no matter how small, consistently and whilst keeping your vision in mind, really does work. We should call it the Law of AttrAction.

What action should you take?

I’m here to tell you today that it doesn’t matter. Do something, anything, even if it is only a slight movement towards your goal. In another post, I told you about a great book by Al Seconda called the 15 Second Principle, in which the author tells us that even working for just 15 seconds per day on your goal will work miracles. How can this be? This is because it is so easy to do, the emotional part of the mind doesn’t perceive this as a threat and so you are less likely to procrastinate.

For example, maybe your goal is to write your own blog. If you committed to writing for 15 seconds a day, you soon be churning out regular books. I know because this is what I do. You see, once you get started, the Law of Inertia kicks in and you continue to work. You will be maintaining the habit and just like bad habits, good habits, once they are ingrained, are very hard to stop.
How else can you take action? What if the actions take longer than 15 seconds? For instance, renovating the house?

Breakdown the project into small parts. What is the next action that will move you forward? To test if it’s an action, write it and check if there is a verb in the sentence, for example:

Go to the X to get some Y
Phone X about Y.
Physically move X to the Y
Email Fred about Ted

In our renovation example, you would split this goal down to a smaller project first, such as: Decorating the spare room. A good first action would therefore be to: Go to the garden shed and take an inventory of the painting materials that you have.

Once you have done this you could plan action number 2, which could be: write a list of materials required for decorating the spare room.
Action 3 could be: put a date in the diary to go to the DIY centre to buy the remaining materials.

The Unschedule

Another method for overcoming procrastination is to use an Unschedule, as described by Neil Fiore in his book the Now Habit, which I recommend. Very simply the method involves blocking out your diary for the week. This would include all the fun things, appointments, commitments and things like exercise. What is left is the available time for projects. The idea is then to plan in your Project time and the reward you will get for doing it.

Sometimes the result of a goal is out of your control, for example becoming Prime Minister or winning gold medal at the Olympics. Focusing on the result, all the time, is a sure way for you to fail. When working towards these types of goal, successful people fall in love with the process of attaining it. They may have the ultimate goal in mind but their focus is on improving the day-to-day skills they require. The repeated actions become the focus not the final achievement.

An athlete will learn to derive happiness from the actual training. The Olympic Gold Medal maybe in the back of the mind but they will fall in love with the Dawn runs. In a similar way, an entrepreneur can fall in love with the process of prospecting for new clients, whilst the end business goals will be at the back of the mind.

So what happened next after the visit to the garden centre?

It didn’t take long to put up the trellising, so I decided to plant the climbers as well. As I dug a small hole for the second plant, the spade crashed against a stone about 10 cm down. So I adjusted a few cm back to see if I could dislodge it – crash, again I struck the stone. I moved back about 10 cm – crash. I thought, “Wow, this may be a flagstone”. As I removed the turf above, it was clear that it was a flagstone. Ok so I thought I would remove the turf bit by bit until I had uncovered the whole flag. But oh no – another flagstone, then another. After an hour of back breaking digging, I had indeed uncovered an intact patio, which the top soil had hid for at least 20 years. Over the next few weekends, I transformed the area into the patio and the flowerbed we had dreamed of.

So the next time you have a dream or goal, which seems just too big to start. Start anyway; you never know what you might uncover.

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Knowing when to quit

Should you ever quit? If you read self-help, business, or history books, you will almost certainly have read Winston Churchill’s quote – “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never.” Churchill spoke these words in his second address to Harrow School in 1941. It certainly is an inspiring quote and one I have printed off and framed in a little plaque on my desk. If ever I am flagging, I just look down at this quote and the bulldog features of Britain’s finest stare back at me. I somehow find the resolve I need to follow through with whatever endeavour I am struggling.

What many people do not realise is that there is a second part to this quote. A second sentence, which gives it wisdom as well as courage.
The complete quote is “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense.”

Except to convictions of honour and good sense.

What does this mean?

If you suspect your undertaking goes against your values, you would be wise to quit. What values? Well that is up to you my friend. You will know what your values are, deep in your core. The single-minded executive who misses his children growing up will need to ask himself, would it be wiser to quit, downgrade or postpone his goal.

What about the up and coming corporate star, whose company’s values do not align with hers. Should she ignore what she sees as exploitation of their customers? Or, should she quit?
What about the entrepreneur ploughing a lone furrow in a non-existent market, where all the data is screaming that there is no need for his product or service?

Sometimes good sense tells you it is time to quit.
There is such a thing as beginners luck in any endeavour. It occurs when the participant is unconsciously incompetent. This is a way of saying that they unaware of what they do not know. Has this ever happened to you? Did you ever win money the first time you gambled? Did you plop the ball square onto the green in your first golf game? Or, did one of your first cold calls result in an appointment? This is a real phenomenon and happens because the novice will take action without fear. Ignorance is bliss.

However, what does this have to do with quitting? Well, if you are considering whether to quit something, think back to when you first started the endeavour. Was there any beginner’s luck. Was there anything that could suggest that you could eventually be successful? If yes, you should be encouraged. If no, then consider whether to quit your course of action.

To quit or retreat.

Sometimes the market is not ready for your service or product. That is not to say that it will not be ready in the future. Sometimes it is prudent to park your idea until when your intuition tells you to try again.

What should you quit?

Go getting entrepreneurs hate the terms failure and quitting. However, if you have done your due diligence and market research and your beta model does not gain any interest, then quit. If you want you can always tell people you are pivoting! Or, you could tweak it; yes, you could try again with a new iteration. Just don’t keep doing the same thing if feedback is telling you it isn’t working.

Clear away the clutter

Do you have several projects or goals? My bet is that most of your good results will be coming from just one activity. Why not quit the others to concentrate on the one thing that will move you forward. There is a great book about this called The One Thing by Gary Keller, in which the author talks about just focusing on the most productive goal, project or task. You can decide what your One Thing is by asking this question: “What is the one thing I can do, such that, all other things will be easier or unnecessary?”

To sum up Churchill’s quote, you should never quit your dreams and goals, but you should be flexible in your plans. Be prepared to quit a project if it is not moving you towards your long term vision.

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Process Flow method

Do you have repeatable actions to do every day? Or what about one off projects? If so then here’s a great method I learned in Mark Forster’s How to Make Your Dreams Come True , which I have called process flow.

First, you list all the different types of tasks that you might perform on an average day. It might be Cold Call telephoning, online research, proposal writing. Then you might have that one off project that you never seem to be start. It might be one of those projects that could really move your business forward. It might not be urgent, so other things seem to take priority.

Next, you take all the actions and list them out on a table like below. Mark a number 5 in the box next to each task. This is because you will perform each task for just 5 minutes.

Start at the Top

So start with the task at the top of the list; Set your timer for 5 minutes and when the alarm goes, stop that task even if it’s not complete. You then move on to the next task. You would then repeat this until you have worked on all the task types for 5 minutes. If you complete the task, you mark another number 5 in the box to the right. This is because you will then repeat this the next day.
Any task you did not complete, you mark a number 10 in the next empty box. When you start the next cycle, you will be performing the tasks for 10-minute durations. If you complete the task, mark a 10 for the following day. If you didn’t finish it, it gets a 15.

Keep repeating this process until you get to 40-minute durations. This would be the maximum time you would spend on one task.
The benefit of this method is that we are firstly working on all the different tasks that are important, even though they might not be urgent.

We are also increasing our desire and motivation to do the work. The idea is that we are utilising a couple of psychological traits to our advantage here. First, by initially reducing the tasks to just 5 minutes in duration, we overcome our natural state of procrastination. Secondly, by stopping working before we have finished, we are using our natural need for completion. This makes us want to work on the task even more. As you rotate through you list of tasks, you start to go in to that state of flow that all high achievers desire.

Bottom Up method/ Top Down method

Another technique I borrowed from Mark Forster, I call the bottom up/ top down method. This is especially useful if you have a long to-do list full of unrelated types of tasks, some of which fill you with dread. This is another elegant method of overcoming that killer of success – procrastination.

Top down method:

With the top down method, the first thing you need to do is to list out your tasks. Next, you put an asterisk next to the item at the top of the list. Then you look at item number two and ask yourself if you would prefer to do this. If you would prefer to do this task, put an asterisk next to it. If not leave it blank. Then you repeat this process, working down your list, as you go down the list, the actions highlighted are more and more appealing to you. In theory, the lowest highlighted task on the list is the easiest or the nicest to do.

Next, start work on the top item. When you complete the task and cross it out. Then you move down the list to the next highlighted item. You repeat this until all the highlighted items are complete. The theory is that the tasks are getting easier and easier.

Once you have gone down your list once, you repeat the whole exercise with the tasks you ignored the first time. The highest task left on the list, then gets the asterisk. You then move down the list asking the same question – would I prefer to do this task.

By using this method, your work becomes progressively easy. This is a really effective way of gamifying your work. What I mean be this is that your work becomes a kind of play. This uses another key psychological human trait – we love to play.

Bottom up method:

With the bottom up method, when you come to starting your tasks, instead of starting with the hardest, you start at the bottom – the easiest. I know that a lot of the time management literature tells you to start with the hardest task first. In practice, though, sometimes you just need to make a start and the easiest task might just be the best place. Also by starting with the easiest task, you are making a start and creating momentum. And isn’t that the trick to all productivity? Making a start and creating momentum.

Backlogs

One final piece of technique I have adapted from Mark Foster is what to do if you find yourself in the situation of backlog. It could be that you have returned from your two week holiday to find over 1000 emails in your inbox. Or how about all those magazines that you have told yourself you will get round to reading. Or it could be just the mountain of work that has landed across your desk. How do you tackle this and also keep up to date with new stuff that comes in?

You declare a backlog.

Its a bit like declaring yourself financially bankrupt. Except you are going to pay this debt back. What you do is you take your entire to-do list and put it to one side. If it’s an email backlog, then move all your unread outstanding emails into a separate folder and name it backlog file. If it’s a reading list, physically move the items to one neat pile. One word of advice, though. That is to declare a backlog on only one type of item, ie email, to-do list or reading material.

Next, you add a project to your project list called Backlog Project. This works really well with the process flow grid (above). You are then going to carry on processing new work as it comes in and work on your ongoing projects. When you come to work on the Backlog project, just work at it like any other project, without guilt.

The beauty of treating your backlog like this, is that you are still tackling it, but you will also be tackling new stuff as it comes More importantly though, you are still working on your goals and projects.
Finally, when you do eventually clear the backlog, you could do some self-analysis asking yourself how you came to get so behind. What process can you put in place, to prevent it happening again?

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The Qualities of an Excellent Salesperson

Being a salesperson should be easy. That is, if you have all the qualities of an excellent salesperson in you. However you do your job, either face-to-face, over the telephone, or through the Internet, it is important that you possess all these qualities. Once you do, sales and commissions will just keep on pouring in and you will need an extra hand fulfilling orders.

Neatness and Appearance

For a salesperson, image is everything. It is true that before you get to sell anything, you always have to sell yourself first. This means you should be highly likeable before you get somebody to like your products. Giving your possible customers a bad impression of you won’t help at all. It would help your competitors though, because it takes you out of the picture.
You won’t always know your customers personally. In fact, you will be meeting a lot of them, if not all of them, only once in your life. Therefore, you will be approaching them and talking to them as a total stranger. In this case, they might be scrutinizing you in an attempt to judge what kind of a person you are. They might do that mostly based on your looks alone.

It is therefore important that you look neat and presentable all the time. Your aura and your physical image tell a lot about who you are and the company you represent. People do not like to deal with somebody they do not feel comfortable with. Unruly hair and dirty teeth could make you lose a sale. Don’t take the risk. Invest in your appearance. This doesn’t mean you have to buy and wear expensive suits all the time. Good grooming will make you stand out even if your clothes are old. Just make sure they are well kept and you should be fine.

Professionalism

Professionalism is how you do things right. For starters, you should not be irritating. Certain habits or conducts annoy some people. If you have a nasty habit like fidgeting with your fingers, cutting somebody’s sentence off, playing with your pen, or talking too fast, you have to do your best to eliminate it. As a rule of thumb, any habit that you think may annoy somebody else has to go – and remove it in any way possible. If you have to undergo therapies to get rid of it, do it. Much of your career depends on it. Keep in mind that the selling career entails a person-to-person contact. Because of that, you have to do everything to create a good impression and comfortable air between you and your customer.

Good Listening Skills

We talked about this before, but more than anything, a customer would like to be heard and understood, sometimes at all costs. To be a good salesperson, you have to develop your ability to listen, even to the words left unsaid. Let your customer talk. After all, they come to you because they want something. Hear them out and show them that you perfectly understood what they are trying to convey. You may just uncover a behavior or attitude that can propel you to make a sale. If you fail to do so the first time, don’t hesitate to ask them again. This will show that you are concerned about what they are saying and you don’t want to miss a detail. Don’t do it many times in a conversation; or else, the customer will assume that you are not paying attention.

Sensitivity

Always put yourself in your customer’s shoes. This is the only way you can feel what it is that concerns them and what they are trying to make you comprehend. Doing so will also ensure that you are on the right ground when it comes to dealing with people. Some salespeople become overeager to collect the commissions they would get out of every sale that they forget to treat their customer with utmost care and attention. Actually, this is the gravest mistake you can make as a salesperson. The moment you regard your customers as one-time deal is the moment you can say goodbye to your career. With that attitude, even your most loyal clients will break out and leave you hanging by a thin line eventually.

Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm is infectious. If you’re excited about your product and the benefit it can give, your customers would soon follow suit. They would see your product in a different way, enough to complete a sale. Good salespeople are jovial and passionate about their craft. You should develop these qualities right at the start of your career.

Knowledge

This doesn’t mean that you necessarily need to have above average comprehension skills to start with. It means being smart with the good ability to grasp data. When a good salesperson sells his product, he knows all its prime qualities by heart. He makes it a point that he has the answer to the most asked- about question concerning the product he is selling at the back of his mind. He does not grope around looking for answers when somebody pops them up. Instead, he comes prepared with a smart answer all the time.

Integrity

Integrity means honesty and doing the right things even when somebody is not looking at you. Many customers want to stay clear of a deceitful salesperson. That is the reason why they size salespeople up before they attempt to buy or even before asking anything about the product. Customers want to know exactly how the product works, without any tall lies and truth bending. They only want to deal with a straight, honest salesperson.

Courtesy

Courtesy is something everybody appreciates. Customers definitely want to be treated like kings. They may bombard you with questions before they decide to buy, or they can try all your products before selecting the one right for them. Customers have varying tastes and styles. As a salesperson, part of your job is to conform to all their eccentricities. You might need to practice patience and be good-natured. Always remember that the most likeable salesperson always gets the job done.

Persuasiveness

All salespeople are required to be persuasive. They should be able to effectively convince their customers about the beauty of the product they are selling within appropriate levels. They should not drop at every block the customer throws at them. Instead, they should look at it as a challenge that they have to overcome. Most highly successful salespeople are even looking forward to all these challenges. They feel triumphant with every sale if they are able to prevail over the customer’s negativities. This is something that adds excitement and stimulation to their job.

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Features and Benefits

No study of the Sales Process would be complete without a study of Features and Benefits and more importantly how to link the two together.

“Selling is: matching the benefits of your product or offer, with the needs of your customer by bringing them together in a reasoned and clearly communicated case.”
Firstly, though it is important to define just exactly what features and benefits are, as it is surprising just how many people mix them up.

Features

What is a feature? Salespeople love to talk about the features of their product or offer, especially when they are enthusiastic about it.
A feature is a single characteristic of a product or offer. It explains what is different about a product or offer, compared with different products or services or the same from other suppliers.
Any characteristic could be a feature, including Packaging, Pricing, and Service etc. Features explain why or how a benefit can occur; they are a means to the end – the end is the benefit.
Sadly, features, on their own, are meaningless. Many a slick sales presentation bores the customer to death as they think to themselves “So what”.

Benefits

A benefit on the other hand is “The promise of a future positive result, forecast or event, upon taking certain action”. It is therefore the favourable result of taking that action.
A benefit must always be customer related, whereas features are supplier related.

Benefits can also be unique to the individual person. In business to business selling, a service or product can also confer different benefits to different departments.

This will depend on the hierarchy of customer needs. Benefits can also be emotional as well as logical even in business to business. Never underestimate the feel good factor.

Features support benefits and they are linked to them. There is an art to matching the correct benefit. Benefits differ by customer type.
Firstly, preparation and customer knowledge is required to determine customer needs and therefore relevant benefits. This benefit should then always satisfy a customer’s needs, otherwise it is irrelevant.
This is because customers buy benefits not features. Think back to your last major purchase. Why did you choose that particular product or supplier? Did the seller communicate a benefit, which met one of your needs?

Linking Features to Benefits

The key to linking benefits to features is to answer the questions: “So what!” “What does it do for the customer?” or “Which means that!”
“What does it do for me?” “What does it mean to my business?” If you can still keep saying, “So what!” you haven’t got to a benefit.
As I stated before, it’s worth repeating, customers never buy features, they buy what those features will do for them in terms of benefits.
Benefits also need to be relevant; Your Sales proposals or presentation should always therefore contain a link between the benefits of the proposal / offers and your customer’s needs.

So a benefit must therefore satisfy a customer need. Your skills in questioning and listening will determine how well you can establish your prospect’s needs.
Questioning and listening are therefore the key selling skills you should perfect more than any others, if you wish to become adept at the art of selling.
Matching your offer benefits to your customer’s needs is the most vital element of any proposal. When drafting your proposal or presentation, you should therefore be able to answer these questions:

– “How can I turn the features of my product or offer, into the benefits most relevant to my customer’s needs?”

This is a true Customer orientated approach
When presenting your proposals, practice using the following Link Words, as these naturally link the feature to a benefit:

• Therefore you have
• Which will give you
• So you get
• As a result of which
• That leads to
• Which means that
• Which allows you to
• And in addition

Communicate clearly and concisely and do not speed through, to ensure understanding. Always consider your audience, by checking understanding of the key benefits meeting customers’ needs.
Feature + link words + benefit = matches need
The customer benefit must always satisfy the customer need. If it doesn’t, then the sale could be lost!

The action threshold

When you are in the sales process and trying to help people to buy ie selling, there comes a point, hopefully, when their resistance to buying is less than their desire to buy. This will be unconscious and is a result of all the positives minus negatives. It will also include any limiting beliefs they might have.
Therefore your job, as a sales professional is to lower their resistance whilst at the same time increasing their desire. It would therefore be tempting to give them all of your benefits straight up front. But don’t. Keep your powder dry, save your good stuff until the end.

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