Being rich

"Being rich has more to do with a picture than a bank account... it
is all about the picture you see in your mind about your life... that
determines what's in your bank account."
Doug Firebaugh

Success is a state of mind.

If you want to be successful, start thinking of yourself as being
successful. You are what you believe yourself to be.
Don't be afraid of what life has to offer you. If you believe that
life is worth living, your belief will help create the fact.
The barrier between you and success is not something that exists in
the real world. It's simply composed of doubts about your ability.
Your only limits to your realization of tomorrow will be your doubts of today.

by Max Steingart

Paraphrase Your Customer's Words

The customer is only sure that you have been listening when you
paraphrase what the prospect has said and feed it back in your own
words. This is where the rubber meets the road in effective
listening. This is where you demonstrate in no uncertain terms to the
prospect that your listening has been real and sincere. This is where
you show the prospect that you were paying complete attention to what
he or she was saying. Paraphrasing is how you prove it.

Question for Clarification
When the prospect has finished explaining his or her situation to
you, and you have paused, and then questioned for clarification, you
paraphrase the prospects primary thoughts and concerns, and feed them
back to him or her in your own words.

Use the Right Words
For example, you might say, "Let me make sure I understand exactly
what you are saying. It sounds to me like you are concerned about two
things more than anything else, and that in the past you have had a
couple of experiences that have made you very careful in approaching
a decision of this kind."

Feed it Back Accurately
You then go on to feed back to the prospect exactly what he or she
has told you, pausing and questioning for clarification as you go,
until the customer says words to the effect of, "Yes, that's it!
You've got it exactly."

Earn the Right to Sell
Only when you and the customer completed a thorough "examination" and
have mutually agreed on the "diagnosis" you are in a position to
begin talking to the customer about your product or service. In
general terms, this means that you can not pull out your brochures
and price lists and begin telling the customer how your product or
service can solve his problems or achieve his goals until about
seventy percent of the way through the sales conversation. Until
then, you have not yet earned the right. Until then, you don't even
know enough to begin an intelligent presentation without embarrassing
yourself.

Be a Good Listener
The more and better you listen, the more and better people will like
you, trust you and want to do business with you. The more they will
want to get involved with you as a person and the more popular you
will be with them. Excellent listeners are welcome everywhere, in
every walk of life, and they eventually and ultimately arrive at the
top of their fields.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, remember that your first job in the sale is to get the
customer to like you and believe that you understand his situation.
Paraphrasing is the way you accomplish this.

Second, be sure that the customer agrees with you completely when you
feed back his concerns to him. Only then can you really start selling.

Brian Tracy

Your Lifestyle

One of the major reasons why we fail to find happiness or to create
unique lifestyle is because we have not yet mastered the art of being.

While we are home our thoughts are still absorbed with solving the
challenges we face at the office. And when we are at the office we
find ourselves worrying about problems at home.

We go through the day without really listening to what others are
saying to us. We may be hearing the words, but we aren't absorbing the message.

As we go through the day we find ourselves focusing on past
experiences or future possibilities. We are so involved in yesterday
and tomorrow that we never even notice that today is slipping by.

We go through the day rather than getting something from the day. We
are everywhere at any given moment in time except living in that
moment in time.

Lifestyle is learning to be wherever you are. It is developing a
unique focus on the current moment, and drawing from it all the
substance and wealth of experience and emotions that it has to offer.
Lifestyle is taking time to watch a sunset. Lifestyle is listening to
silence. Lifestyle is capturing each moment so that it becomes a new
part of what we are and of what we are in the process of becoming.
Lifestyle is not something we do; it is something we experience. And
until we learn to be there, we will never master the art of living well.

To Your Success,
Jim Rohn

Prioritize your decisions

If you find it difficult to make decisions, or you worry that your
decisions are not good decisions, or you lack the confidence to make
decisions in a timely manner... you're not alone! Many people express
their concerns about their decision-making abilities. But if you ask
them, "What's your routine for making decisions?" they often will
tell you they don't have one.

Truthfully they do, but they don't recognize it, or they don't like
it. Their decisions are based on Something, and if they stop and
think about it they'll discover what it is. However, it's much better
to purposefully and thoughtfully develop your decision-making system,
and then follow it whenever you need to make decisions

If you ask Zig Ziglar how he makes decisions, he'll tell you that he
follows some basic rules. Here they are:

1. If I'm really tired, I don't make significant decisions (except in
emergencies).

2. If someone is pressing me to decide something "right now," unless
an immediate decision is critical, I say, "If I have to decide now,
the answer is no. After I have had a chance to catch my breath and
review the facts, there's the possibility it could be yes." Then I
put the ball back in his or her court and ask, "Do you want my
decision now, or should we wait?"

3. I like to determine the maximum benefit of a decision, assuming
that everything goes my way. Then I ask, "Suppose nothing goes my
way? Suppose this doesn't develop and materialize as I expect it to?
What is my maximum exposure? What would I lose?"

4. For significant business-related decisions, I run them past my
advisors. These people are successful in their businesses and
professions and have a considerable amount of knowledge, experience,
and wisdom, all of which are musts in the decision-making process. I
get their advice and follow their recommendations, with good results
in most cases. If the decision is too minor to involve my advisors
but I still want input, I get my family together to look at the pros and cons.

5. I like to pray about my decisions. I ask God to help me see the
truth of my motives and to lead me in the way I should go. If I'm
about to make an unwise decision, I simply don't have peace about
that decision, and I consequently act on that feeling of unease. I
ask myself, "How will this decision affect all the areas of my
life--personal, family, career, financial, physical, mental and
spiritual?" Obviously, not all decisions affect all areas, but if the
decision involves a financial reward but also carries considerable
family sacrifice, for example, I think carefully as to whether what I
give up is compensated for by what I gain.

One final note: Prioritize your decisions. Some are more urgent than others!

by Zig Ziglar

If you're doing a presentation

Whenever and whatever you're pitching, dozens of factors will figure
in the final decision of your prospects. All else being equal, you
have the edge if you can establish a personal connection. Connect
emotionally and intellectually, so they like and trust you more than
your competitors. How can you get your prospects to like you? Try these tips.

Focus and be sincere. If you appear nervous or unsure, you may seem
devious or incompetent. If your presentation does not respond to
their concerns and you just grind on with a prepared pitch, they will
decide you don't care about them and their problems. Look people
right in the eyes and convince them that you stand 100% behind the
ideas, products, or services that you want to sell them. Pick up on
their concerns, and address them.

"Divide and conquer." If you're doing a presentation, shake hands
with everyone as they enter the room. Connect with them so you see
them as individuals, and you become more memorable to them too.
(People are usually more shy of groups of strangers than in
one-on-one contacts.)

Use technology to enhance your presentation, not drown it. PowerPoint
can keep you on track, but it can't establish trust.

Keep it simple and memorable! When your prospects have a debriefing
afterwards, you want them to remember what you said more than
anything your competitors pitched to them. Break your talking points
into snappy sound bites that are easy to write down and remember.
Make them interesting and repeatable.

Steer clear of technical language and jargon. Rehearse your
presentation in advance with your spouse or an intelligent
12-year-old across the dinner table. If there's anything they don't
understand, it's too complicated.

Tell great stories. People are trained to resist a sales pitch, but
no one can resist a good story. Let's say you're trying to get money
to fund your software company. Tell a story about how the prospective
investor's life will change when you bring the product to market:
"Imagine that a year from now you'll come to work and use this
software to do in 5 minutes what now takes you 45 minutes. I don't
know what that would do to your life, but in all our test markets or
pilot programs, people tell us . . . " Then add more stories.

Take a lesson from Hollywood. Give your stories interesting
characters and dialogue, plus a dramatic lesson that your prospects
can relate to. Don't say, "Certain companies have used our software."
Don't even say, "IBM has used our software." Instead, say, "Joe Smith
at IBM said to me, 'If we don't increase sales turnover by 20%, we
won't make our projections'. We guaranteed them they could if they
used our software. Six months later, Joe called and said, 'You guys
saved us.'"

If you are pitching a product that hasn't been built yet, build a
story about what it will be like for someone using it.

Everything else being equal, you're way ahead of any and all your
competition when your prospects relate to you, like you, and trust you.

by Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE

Acting On Your Dream

I have not often admitted this, but I was inspired to become a public
speaker by perhaps the worst motivational speaker I've ever heard in my life.

This fellow is still working, surprisingly, so I won't give his name.
He was the opening speaker in a seminar I attended early in my
speaking career and he nearly closed the show early with his
monotone, unenthusiastic presentation. As he spoke, the room grew as
quiet as a graveyard between funerals.

I went to sleep to be awakened by what could only be called courtesy
applause for his presentation. You could make more noise clapping
with one hand. After the less-than-stirring speech, I leaned over to
the guy sitting next to me and said, "That was really boring." And he
said, "You should be so boring for the kind of money he makes." The
fellow told me this terrible speaker was getting $5,000 for each
terrible speech.

After hearing how much a really bad speaker could make, I decided it
was time for me to go after this dream. A few days later, I caught a
Greyhound bus from Miami to Orlando where I'd signed up for a seminar
for beginners held by the National Speakers Association. It seemed
like the bus ride took weeks. I know it took every last dollar I
could scrape together. And so I was road-weary but eager to hear some
inspiring, motivational, and dynamic speaking when I finally took a
seat at the event. But who should walk out to lead the first session
but that same terrible $5,000-per-speech speaker? I could not believe it!

All that time on a stinking bus, stopping in every one-horse town
between Miami and Orlando, to hear this guy again? I nearly got up
and walked out. By the time he'd gotten halfway through his speech,
nearly half the audience had fled. But I stayed on until the bitter
end and the speaker's parting shot, as it turned out, was worth the
price of admission. He obviously had noted the exodus of the audience
and the drooping eyelids of those who remained because, as he built
up to his anticlimax, he stopped suddenly, looked out at the
remaining numbers of aspiring public speakers and said, "You know,
the only reason that I am standing up here and you are sitting down
there is that I represent the thoughts that you have rejected for yourself."

I don't know about the other dozen or so people in the audience, but
Mr. Monotone hit me right between the eyes with that shot. It was
true. He had acted upon something that I had only dreamt of doing.
I'd spent years dreaming of becoming a public speaker. But dreaming
was all I had done. This guy may not have had any talent for it. He
may have been the most undynamic public speaker in history. But he
was up there while I was still dreaming. And so that is how I became
motivated to start a new career by perhaps the worst motivational
speaker I have ever heard.

by Les Brown

CHANGE YOUR LIFE

Think about the following question:
What stops you from having the things in life you want...or want more of?
Did you answer money?... time?... my boss, mother, father,
partner?... fate?... bad luck? What is interesting about these
answers is that the cause is external to you and outside of your
direct control.

In order to understand how you can influence your external world, you
need to understand how your thinking affects your internal world. NLP
(Neuro Linguistic Programming) is the most useful approach we know
for doing this.

THE CONSCIOUS MIND

Why should we bother to "think positively?" Based on much published
information, many people have benefited from positive thinking. And
those of us who have consciously tried it have found it to be
worthwhile. But how does it work--and how much of the success of
positive thinking is a result of the Conscious mind?

You may already know your conscious awareness has a restricted
capacity for retaining information. Research has shown we can hold 7
plus or minus 2 chunks of information in awareness at any one time.
Techniques for helping people with their memory often vary the size
of the chunks, or find ways to link small chunks into one larger
chunk to allow more memory capacity. This is why telephone numbers
are broken into three and four digit sections.

THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

So what else is happening behind the 7 plus or minus 2 chunks of
information in our conscious thinking? What organises our heartbeat,
our digestion, our response to outside temperature? What allows us to
drive our car without having to think about it? What receives
literally billions of pieces of external information, and processes
them with no effort?

Psychologists refer to this part of the mind as the Unconscious, or
more accurately, the Other-Than-Conscious, because it is far from
unconscious. It is awake and active even when we are asleep. Doctors
were surprised to discover that, under hypnosis, patients who had
been anaesthetised were able to recall every word said in the
operating theatre. One part of their mind was obviously fully aware
of what was going on!

The brain looks after thousands of functions in the body every
moment, and can handle astronomic amounts of information. What is
most impressive is it can do all of these things at the same time
without any need for conscious control. And fortunately, it never forgets how.

The Unconscious responds to every external stimuli, and every
thought. Each response sets off a chemical reaction which is sent to
the rest of the body. Therefore WHAT we think takes on a vital
significance. The Unconscious is like a good assistant, and basically
it will do what you tell it. But what exactly are you telling it to do?

You may say, "I deserve the very best," but if in your Unconscious
the message is being countered with,"You?...You'll never amount to
anything," what is going to be the result?

Unless you stop and think about it, you will be unaware of the
Unconscious thought. All that you will probably be aware of is a
slight sense of unease or something not being quite right An internal
conflict may result and this will lead to incongruent behaviour. This
explains why saying an affirmation, or positive statement about
yourself, sometimes does not work.

NLP has techniques and strategies to help you become fully congruent.
Congruence is when you align your mind and behaviour behind positive
thoughts so there is total commitment to achieving an outcome. This
is important because as Anthony Robbins says, "It is in your moments
of decision that your destiny is shaped." A good way to experience
congruence is to utilise past positive experiences and incorporate
these into present behaviour. The result is new and empowered ways of
thinking.

We each have ten billion neurons (brain cells). And there are more
potential simultaneous connections between neurons than there are
atoms in the known universe. Yes, you may need to read that again!
This means we have an almost infinite capacity for creativity and
problem solving. As Einstein pointed out, the ONLY way we limit
ourselves is by not fully utilising this amazing gift. NLP is
designed to help us access more neurological pathways and thereby
create more choice in our life.

by PENNY TOMPKINS AND JAMES LAWLEY
NLP Consultants to Business and Individuals