If any part of your business involves negotiations or sales, it is vital that you learn to close the deal. Learning the principle of closing the sale is important for any entrepreneur.  This is true whether sales are your primary business function, or just one task that you do – perhaps even reluctantly.  For either group, the sales process can be made easier by learning the principle of closing the sale.

Most businesses involve sales, but in many of those businesses they are not the primary function.  Instead these entrepreneurs often focus on other tasks throughout the bulk of their day.  They might be a writer or a tradesperson.  Imagine a cabinet maker who starts her own business.  She spends most of her day making cabinets.  She is great at it.  But, in order to make any money, she needs to make some sales.  So sales, while not her primary activity, are vital for her success.

The good news for our cabinet maker, and for entrepreneurs of all types, is that the principle of closing the sale is simple.  It is not a complicated formula, or something that is left for professionals.  Anyone can do it.  Here’s the principle:

ASK FOR THE SALE

That’s it.  It’s that simple. One of the biggest mistakes made in sales, in fact one of the biggest mistakes made by people in business is not taking the initiative to close the sale. While even seasoned sales people can struggle with this issue from time to time, it is most noticeable in people who only make sales once in a while.

You can’t expect the prospect to take initiative in making the purchase, you need to ask for the sale.  People who are not experienced in sales, often view the sales process as a self-serve retail store. In self-serve retail, the customer comes in to the store, picks what he wants off the shelf, and goes to the cashier.  Unfortunately, in most entrepreneurial endeavors it doesn’t work that way. If you are waiting for people to ASK to purchase, you will be missing out on a lot of business.  Instead, you need to ask for the sale.

Thankfully, there are some simple steps that make this easier.

1. Ask open ended questions

Open ended questions are questions that do not have a yes or no answer. They are questions that you can ask to get your prospect talking and get them articulating what they are looking for.  For our cabinet maker, some examples might be: “What would your dream cabinets look like?” or “If money was no object, what would you want to do in your kitchen?”  This helps the entrepreneur to know what the prospect is really thinking.

2. Ask alternative questions (other than yes/no)

Alternative questions are questions that have two or more alternative answers.  Examples here might be: “Are you looking for delivery this month or next?” or “Do you prefer design A or design B?”  This continues to help narrow down what the customer is looking for.

3. Ask the close question, based on the previous answers

Your close question will often be a yes/no question, but by now you should know enough about your prospect to direct the question to what they have already said. For example, our cabinet maker might take the previous answers she has received and create a question like this, “So, if I am able to complete your kitchen using design A by your deadline date, do we have a deal?”  Then wait.  Wait for the answer. If there is dead air, you need to wait.  Let them think.  Wait until they answer, and then move forward.

4. When they appear ready to buy, ask!

Too often entrepreneurs will be so passionate about their product or service that they will keep going on and on and on well after the person they are speaking with has decided to purchase.  The risk then becomes that you will lose the sale.  So make sure you are aware, and when they appear ready to buy – ask!

You need to plan ahead.

Take some time and write up some questions that you can ask.  Think through your business, and write out what some questions for each step would look like.  Practice these questions so you are prepared to ask them of your clients.  Then follow the principle of the sale – and ASK FOR THE SALE!

Written by:
Danny Gamache – The Success Professor

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In the personal development and self help work there is a lot of focus on setting and achieving goals.  If you’ve read this blog for any length of time you will know that I am a firm believe in this kind of goal setting.  Unfortunately, one thing that is often missing is celebrating goals that have been achieved. We tend to move from one goal to another. If we do celebrate it is for just a short while before moving on to the next goal. It is important to look back from time to time at what you have achieved.

Reviewing your accomplishments does a lot of things for you:

• reminds you of good things in your life
• helps you focus on positive happy things
• gives you belief that you can really accomplish your goals
• forces you to be thankful about where you have come from
• sparks your imagination about future goals
• inspires you to do it again

You can do a review of your accomplishments at anytime.  Here is how:

1.    Pick a period of time to review. One year is a good starting point, but you could also go shorter (try six months), or a little longer (perhaps three years).

2.    Divide your life into important roles or functional areas. (If you follow my weekly goal setting plan you should already have this done).

3.    Think through the MOST IMPORTANT thing you have accomplished in each area during the specified time period.

4.    Think through other accomplishments that you have achieved that you are proud of.

5.    Don’t forget to include little things. Sometimes little things to you would be big things to others, plus what is little to you know may have been a big thing at some point in the past.

6.    Look at old goals lists so you don’t forget anything.

Once you have done a review make sure you put it somewhere that you can return to it. You want to review your accomplishments from time to time to help you remember the goals that you have achieved.

Lastly, make it an annual tradition. I do an annual review as a part of my New Year goal setting process. You can use my reviews as an example.  Here is my review of 2008 and my review of 2009.

You don’t need to wait until a new year to do this exercise. You can do it anytime. The benefits are worth the time. Before you leave this article, schedule a time to do this exercise. Even taking thirty minutes will go a long way.

Written by:
Danny Gamache – The Success Professor

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One of the biggest problems that most people face as they work towards a goal is the ability to put in consistent effort. Staying consistent in your activities and effort is one of the keys to success.

Consistency is even more important than simple mathematics may make it seem. By this I mean that consistently putting in 5 hours each week over the course of a month towards building business, growing a blog, or achieving a goal, is more valuable than putting in 30 hours one week and nothing for the next three weeks. Yes, the 5 hour a week plan only puts in 20 hours for the month while the other plan has 30 hours, the 5 hour a week plan is still more effective. The same applies on a month-by-month basis. You need to be consistent month after month, not work for a month, and then take a month off. Being consistent will help you reach your goals much more quickly than a sprint-and-stop plan.

You can see this idea really clearly when you think of exercising. Having a big long work out once a month is not nearly as effective as having a smaller workout every day, or even every second day. Similarly, working out every day for a week and then taking the rest of the month off is not as effective as working three times each week across the entire month. Being consistent is more effective. This same principle applies to other goals you are pursuing.

Consistency like this is important for a few reasons:

1. Inertia

The hardest part of any accomplishment is getting started. If you work in spurts you are spending a lot of energy getting started. You will work hard to get started and then before you know it you are stopped again. The law of inertia says that “a body at rest tends to stay at rest.” If you then take a significant amount of time off from pursuing your goal, things will have stopped completely and you will need to use all of that energy again. If instead, you do a little bit every day, you will be able to carry over some of that energy. Think of the exercise program again. The first workout is the hardest, because you have negative inertia. Your body doesn’t react the same, and you mentally aren’t as in to it. After a while your daily workout becomes routine and you carry forward from one day to the next. If you only exercise once a week, it feels like you are starting over each time. Both mentally and physically it requires more effort to get started again.

2. Momentum

Moving past the initial steps of negative inertia allows you to build momentum. Momentum is when the activities you do start to snowball in their effects. The work you are doing starts to build up speed because everything you are doing is building on itself. The efforts of today are building smoothly on the efforts of tomorrow. Momentum is positive inertia. The positive side of inertia is that “a body in motion tends to stay in motion.” Momentum is clearly seen in many areas of life. In politics, momentum is a powerful force for a candidate in an election campaign. In sports, many games are filled with momentum swings where one team has all the energy and everything seems to go just right. In business, momentum helps companies grow more quickly than they have before. As you work consistently towards your goal you will develop momentum that makes things happen more quickly and with less effort than before.

3. Power of Mental Focus

In life people consistently move towards the things that they focus their minds on. If you work in spurts, your mind will be focused on your goal for a short period of time. After that time you forget about it, or at least it is not part of your focus. By consistently focusing on your goal, even just a little bit each day or week, will keep your mind engaged in the process. If you mind is engaged and focused on your goal, you will notice when other things come along that might help you achieve your goal. For example, if you are growing a part time home business, you may find potential clients while doing other things. If you are consistently working on your business, you will make those connections. If you are not, you might miss out on that opportunity. Being consistent keeps your goal in your mind and helps you move towards it more quickly.

4. Keeping your life in balance

You need to allow all the areas of your life, family, work, business, spiritual etc. have some level of balance. That means you need to spend an appropriate amount of each aspect of your life. If you pursue your goals with quick spurts where you put in a huge amount of time in for one week, then during that week everything else in your life will be out of balance. Of course the opposite is also true. If you take three weeks off from pursing your goal, you will be out of balance in that area. Take exercise as an example. If you go overboard one week, then you will have taken time away from other things you should be doing; you will be out of balance. If you then stop working out for the next three weeks, you are equally out of balance, this time short on the physical activity side of life.

Consistency in life is vital. In almost every situation in my life where I haven’t achieved my goal, or where I am unsatisfied with my progress towards a goal it is because I have been inconsistent in my efforts. Being consistent allows you to use inertia instead of working against it, it allows you to build momentum, use the power of mental focus, and keep your life in balance. The next post will discuss HOW to improve your consistency.

Written by:
Danny Gamache – The Success Professor
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I’ve been a dad for one month! Noah is growing and it is fascinating to watch him learn new things.  It’s also been fascinating to watch me learn new things about life, success, and achievement.

1. Work in Bursts

Life has gotten very busy.  Ok, that might be an understatement.  With a schedule that is significantly fuller, that is no longer under my control, and that is fairly unpredictable, the importance of being able to productively work in bursts has increased.

Often breaks between helping with Noah are only 30 or 45 minutes, or even less.  Thankfully this is enough time to work in bursts.  You can get a lot done in a short period of time if you focus in for that time.

Perhaps you are not being interrupted by a baby you need to help with but you likely have many short periods of time throughout the day that you can turn into a burst period. When do you have a burst that you can focus in on?

2. Know Your Priorities

Having a baby has made it more clear how important it is to know your priorities.  You can’t do everything in life, so you have to make decisions about what you do and what you don’t do.  When something gets added to your life, you need to give up some thing else. Too often people keep adding and adding things to their lives until they are juggling more than they can handle.

Clearly caring for Noah has become my new top priority.  That means projects like my affiliate home business, this blog, and other activities need to be selectively neglected for periods of time.  My focus has to be on being a good father and a good husband, because those are my priorities. What are your priorities?

3. Don’t Feel Guilty

One of the biggest challenges for me has been the guilty feeling that comes with this kind of selective neglect of some of these activities.  When life gets busy, it is easy to focus on what you aren’t doing, even if they are lower level priorities.  I’ve had to learn to release these guilty feelings and just do what I can do.  You don’t need to feel guilty about neglecting things that are not priorities. Is there something you feel guilty about not doing, that really isn’t that important anyway?

4. Be Flexible

I’m not known as a flexible individual.   I have a plan and like to stick to it.  One of the biggest changes is that I have learned to be flexible.  Having a plan, but being flexible has many advantages.  It allows you to be consistently making decisions based on your priorities. This way you are doing the things that are most important in the moment, instead of something predetermined in advance.  You will need to learn to make decisions that truly reflect your long-term priorities, but if you are able to do so you will have a much more mission driven life.  Are you flexible and able to make moment by moment decisions based on your priorities?

5. Enjoy the small things

Life is filled with small things. The beautiful day that you get to spend with friends, the family vacation, the rainy day with nothing to do but sit inside and read a book.  Whatever the little things are in your life you need to enjoy them. With a newborn the list of little things grows immensely.  It’s watching my son wake up from a sleep and stretch his little body making himself as long as possible; it’s the many “firsts” that we get to witness; and it’s the ability to lie on the coach and write this article with him sleeping on my chest.  What are the small things in your life?

Hopefully some of these will help you also.  What other lessons have you learned from life changes such as having a child?

Written by:
Danny Gamache
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Last week, I wrote about momentum, and how it can be a leader’s best friend.  The focus in that article was creating momentum.  In that article you learned about creating forward progress, having a vision, applying the principle of massive action, and about following up one success immediately with another.  You can read the full article here.

In this article, you will learn how to maintain momentum.  While creating momentum takes the largest amount of effort, its benefits will be short lived if you don’t take some deliberate steps to maintain it.  All your hard work will be in vain and your momentum will disappear – much more quickly than it came about.

The good news is that maintaining momentum is much easier than creating it in the first place.

STEPS TO MAINTAIN MOMENTUM

1. Keep the vision and goals out front.

You need to have a burning vision, a reason why you are going to work your business, a reason why you are going to make the next approach and a reason why you will place that next ad for your web site or product.  Take this vision and keep it out front.  Keep it where you will see it every day, where it will always beyond your mind.  Write it down, visualize it and gather photos that remind you of your vision.

2. Remind team members about the vision.

Don’t just keep the vision in front of yourself, keep the vision out front of your whole team, so that everyone knows where they are going, and every knows WHY they are going in that direction.  Continually recasting the vision for your team will be an important part of your maintaining momentum.

3. Develop consistency in your efforts.

You need to be continuously moving.  Don’t get some momentum going and then think you can stop and your business will grow on its own.  You’ve clearly been doing something right to create momentum – so don’t stop doing those things.  Set your self a pace that you can keep consistently.  Determine what activities you need to do to reach your goals and commit to daily action on those activities.

If you are calling potential customers, determine a number of approach calls that you can make each day and determine a number of follow up calls you can make each day.  Then follow through on that commitment.  How often will you post to your blog?  How often will you work out?  Whatever area you have momentum in, determine the activities you need to do on a daily basis; Then don’t stop.  You won’t need to work as hard as you did when you were creating the momentum, but you will have to work much more consistently.

4. Beware of the sprint/stop syndrome.

One problem people often face when they create momentum is that they fall into the sprint/stop syndrome. This is when people go break neck speed towards their goals for short time and then stop.  This is acting like the hare from the “Tortoise and the Hare fable”.  In that fable the Tortoise wins the race by continually moving forward, beating out the Hare who does a sprint/stop style of race.

There are many motivations for this sort of attitude.  People may stop because they want to reward themselves, so they take a week off or go on a vacation; they may stop because they get stressed out and need a break; they may collapse from exhaustion; or they may get so many sales they have to spend a week catching up on paperwork that got behind.  All of these are equally dangerous.  In each case you have broken the consistency of action and put your momentum in jeopardy.  Sure it may seem like you are still acting, that paperwork needed to be done after all, right?  Even in this case you are moving away from action that moves your business forward and are focusing on action that only maintains the current position.

5. Creating balance in your life.

Working hard and consistent at your business, but don’t burn yourself out.  Creating balance will allow you to maintain your energy. Allow time for personal development; allow time for spiritual growth, and make sure you stay physically active.   Develop a pace to life, one that is aggressive and forward moving, but one that you can maintain for long periods of time without needing to collapse or take a significant rest.  It is good to rest, but take short rests,  take a little time here and there, at most a day here and a day there, but you shouldn’t need to be taking days off to recover from you pace – if you do, you’ve been working too hard.

Momentum can be your best friend as you work towards personal or business goals.  There are deliberate steps you can take towards building momentum and maintaining it.   Now get started!

Written by:
The Success Professor – Danny Gamache

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First, watch this 30 second video.

In order to succeed you must fail. Failure is an essential step towards success.  The more successful the individual the more failures they will have faced along the way.  These might be small failures such as being rejected by a prospect, or they may be larger failures such as a business failing.  These failures can propel you towards success.

Michael Jordan is a great example about success through failure.  There are many lessons that can be learned through his experiences.  Use these tips as an opportunity for self examination.  How do you respond to failure?

1. Take the Shots

In the commercial above, Michael Jordan talks about how many shots he missed.  He missed shots because he was willing to take them.  Are you willing to take the shots that will help you succeed in your goals?

2. Don’t Let Failure Stop You from Trying Again

A missed shot didn’t stop Michael Jordan.  If he had stopped shooting because of one miss, or not been willing to take the next game winning shot simply because he missed the last one, he would not have become the championship player he was. Is a past failure stopping you from moving towards your goals?

3. Don’t Let Failure Get You Down

Michael Jordan didn’t let a missed shot create discouragement.  You cannot dwell on your failures – you must move on.  It is hard to overestimate the importance of a positive attitude on life especially when you fail.  If you are able to keep a positive attitude when you fail, you’ll be able to be ready to try again more quickly.  Have you let failure get you down?

4. Learn Every Time You Fail

There is no doubt that Michael Jordan learned from his failures.  By learning from your failures you will gain more success.  Every lesson you take from failure can be used to help you succeed the next time.  Failure simply shows you what doesn’t work, allowing you to go do what does work the next time.    What can you learn from your most recent failure?

5. Know your Game Winning Shots

Your game winning shots are the activities which push you over the edge as you work towards your goals.  They are the things you can do that allow you to win.  Your game winning shot might be making sales calls to your top prospect list, or submitting another book proposal to a publisher.  You need to know these most important activities and look for opportunities to take shots. What are the game winning shots for your business?

6. Your Response to Failure Impacts Your Team

Not only was Michael Jordan a basketball superstar he was part of great teams. With Michael Jordon the Chicago Bulls won six NBA championships.  Similarly, you need a team to succeed.  Your team will follow you lead.  If you respond negatively to failure, your team will follow.  If you dismiss failure, learn from it, and quickly move on with a positive attitude your team will do likewise.  How is your response to failure impacting your team?

Written by:
The Success Professor – Danny Gamache
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Recently I wrote an article entitled 6 Ways to Grow Daily, and the subsequent follow up, how to create a reading plan and where I shared my Top 10 Book Choices.  Today’s article follows in that series by providing another way for your professional development – TED!

Are you familiar with TED?  TED is an annual conference held for top leaders in the fields of Technology, Education, and Design.  The conference is very exclusive, with a detailed application process, and an expectation that you will only be accepted if you are top leader in your particular field.  At the conference this exclusive group of people is exposed to 50 top notch lectures from other leaders, authors, and educators.  There are no breakout sessions, instead everyone gets every lecture all together. The goal is to literally change the world with this group of leaders as a starting point.

Naturally, because the event is so exclusive, the likelihood of any one person being able to attend the event for personal development reasons is slim-to-none.  Fortunately, TED talks are also made available online. The videos have become a top source of online personal growth and learning about a wide variety of subjects.  With numerous videos from several years of recent TED conferences means that you have hours and hours of videos right at your disposal.

So how do you narrow them down?  Obviously you will need to search their database for areas of personal interest, but to help you out here is my top 5 TED talks list:

1. Malcom Gladwell – author of The Tipping Point & Blink

Talk: What We Can Learn From Spaghetti Sauce

2. Tony Robbins – author of Unlimited Power & Awaken The Giant Within

Talk: Why We Do What We Do

3. Seth Godin – author of Purple Cow & The Dip

Talk: Sliced Bread

4. Billy Graham – evangelist (See: Autobiography: Just As I am)

Talk: Technology, Faith, and Suffering

5. Richard St. John – author of 8 to be Great

Talk: Secrets of Success in 8 Words & 3 Minutes

This list will give you a great start.  Do you have a favorite TED talk?  Which is your favorite out of these five?  What other talks would you recommend?  Share the details below and we continue to help others grow.

To your success,
The Success Professor – Danny Gamache
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