By Jack Perry
A warrior is a person who chooses to operate on a higher level than most others. They are heroic, valiant, and often working for a specific cause. Some of our warriors are the athletes who lead their teams to championship victories, the doctors who spend hours in surgery working to save a life, a fireman running through a blazing fire to save people, sales professionals who blow through their goals, and focused volunteers who raise money for charities. They possess qualities that other people admire , respect, and strive to imitate.
In the sales profession, warriors are adventurous. They go after every challenging account and prospect. They never give up on a sale and use their persistence, skills, ingenuity, and charisma to win clients over. And they never hesitate to strike out into the unknown, whether it be a new market segment or an unknown prospect, even when risks are involved.
Warriors set high goals for themselves and their teams. They are focused, and they lead people to new frontiers. Warriors never listen to discouraging comments, and they always immediately face their fears. Warriors are the ones who show everyone else that it can be done. They set an example with their hard work, extra effort, and positive attitude.
With all these admirable qualities, it’s no wonder warriors are the most successful sales professionals. But no one is born a warrior; warriors are developed over time.
How Can You Become a Warrior?
If you want to achieve more in your sales career by becoming a warrior, you need to look for warriors in your life to model. Most warriors learned their determination and drive from a coach, parent, teacher, or mentor. Do you know people who never quit and always accept challenges? Those people know how to drive you to become a warrior. Ask them for advice, watch the way they conduct themselves, and apply their insights to your own practices. The first step to achieving a warrior status is to learn from these leaders.
Next, you must have a passion for your cause. In sales, your cause might be to beat your numbers from last year, lead your team to success, or provide for your family. Whatever your goal, you have to decide that you are going to make it happen. Then don’t hold back. Do whatever it takes to succeed.
Finally, get mad when the competition beats you. Many times people accept defeat and just vow to try harder next time. This is not a warrior attitude. Warriors aren’t afraid to get mad at themselves when they don’t achieve what they set out to do. If your competition wins over a client or if you don’t meet your sales goals, get mad. Get mad at yourself and your lack of performance. This creative energy will make you work harder next time.
Why Are Warriors Important?
Every team needs at least one warrior. Warriors keep the tribe intact, give it direction, and steer it toward success. Warriors challenge those who don’t support the mission; warriors keep everyone motivated. Without warriors, teams would fall apart and companies would go under.
Warriors persevere in the face of obstacles. They accept changes and surprises, and they adapt their practices to deal with the unexpected. Warriors have the desire to go out and look for new prospects, new leads, and new value to offer their clients.
Although warriors can sometimes intimidate people, you want warriors in a company because they bring the energy and enthusiasm necessary to win. They keep the team focused on the goal and motivated to keep going when unforeseen obstacles arise. When you have a warrior on your team, you have a stronger chance of reaching your goals.
How Can You Develop New Warriors?
If you see people in your company with the potential to become warriors, you must develop that skill in them. You’ll know who has warrior potential because these people won’t be afraid to take on extra projects or unfamiliar clients, even if they are inexperienced. Potential warriors will be hungry for new knowledge, and they will probably ask serious and penetrating questions so they can learn everything they need. They will be the first ones at the office in the morning, and they’ll never ask to leave early. Once you’ve identified a person or a group of people that you think might make good warriors, you should tempt them with a learning opportunity. No one ever sits down and says, “I’m a warrior and I want to make you a warrior.” But you can start a conversation that engages them to discuss their goals. You might say, “Anyone looking for an opportunity to share successes and failures can meet me for coffee tomorrow morning.” Then those who show up will likely be your best warrior candidates.
However, be careful about offering unsolicited advice and guidance, because that can put some people off. And don’t try to force people into a leadership role if they aren’t willing to take it or if they don’t seem to possess the warrior mentality. You can take people a certain distance, but just as you can’t coach speed, you can’t make someone a warrior if he or she doesn’t already possess the potential.
The Warrior in Your Future
A warrior is a person with exceptional drive and valiant determination. Warriors are important because they keep their teams focused and functioning, even in the face of obstacles. If you want to be a warrior, you need to learn from a mentor, and you must have passion for your cause. .. Go out and be a warrior on the hunt for challenges.
When you see warrior potential in other people, you must try to develop that quality with guidance and support. But don’t force advice on a person who doesn’t ask for it. You want to offer potential warriors the opportunity to better themselves by learning from you, rather than turn them away with pressure and unsolicited chatter.
When you use these points for developing your own warrior mentality and for discovering warrior potential in others, you can take your career further and leave an important legacy behind for those who follow in your footsteps.
Warrior from The Respect Factor® Series
THE RESPECT FACTOR® is a trademark of Jack Perry in the United States and other countries. Used with permission. ©2009 Jack Perry. All rights reserved.
By Jack Perry
Sadly, trash talk is an inevitable part of life for far too many people. Especially in business, some people always seem to have something negative to say about their competition, their co-workers, or their clients. Regardless of how much trash people talk, it never has a positive outcome. It destroys trust and often comes back to haunt you.
Why do people talk trash? They might feel inferior, they might have had an important mentor somewhere along the way who chose to trash his competition, or they might believe that trash talking is an appropriate way to advance their career. But it isn’t appropriate, especially in business situations. You must avoid trash talk at all costs, because in the end, you’ll regret it. Whoever hears you talking trash—your customers, prospects, co-workers, employees, etc.—will feel as if they can’t trust you. They won’t respect you, and they won’t see you in a professional light. Worse, you won’t be able to respect yourself.
So what can you do to stop the trash talk you hear and to prevent from trash talking? Consider the following situations and strategies.
Situation #1: Someone Wants You to Talk Trash on Another Person
As part of the human condition, people periodically have negative thoughts and feelings about other people: their boss, their competitor. But you can, if you choose, rise above these negative thoughts. When you let a negative comment slip out of your mouth, think about the message you just sent out…is that the way you want to be perceived? Make a conscious commitment to diminish this type of behavior.
You can also avoid talking negatively by removing yourself from gossip groups. You know who these people are; they always have some kind of dirt on someone else. It is their mindset. They hang around during coffee breaks and talk about anyone who isn’t present. When you associate with these people, they will only try to get you involved….drag you down to their level.
They’ll ask, “So what is the new guy really like?” You know what they are really asking; they want you to say something negative. Before you get sucked in to their trash talking session, change the subject. Use a non sequitur. You can say, “The weather is so nice today, don’t you agree?” Or, “You know what happened to me in the grocery store last night?” Now the conversation has a new direction.
Three kinds of minds exist in this world. Small minds just talk about people. Medium minds talk about things. But the great minds talk about ideas. When someone wants to lead you down the trash-talking road, change the subject to something completely neutral. Then you won’t say anything you might regret later.
Situation #2: You Hear Someone Talking Trash
Trash talk is a reality you have to deal with, unless you sequester yourself from other people. Part of building your reputation for positive talk means stopping trash talk when you hear it taking place. If you hear a person talking trash about a friend or team member of yours, you can easily stop it by approaching the trash talker. Say something like, “You know, she’s my friend and I would rather you didn’t talk about her like that.” This will stop the conversation and make these people think twice about talking trash in the future, and they will respect you for doing the right thing. Don’t be concerned if they turn on you in some way. Considering their favorite past-time do you really need them as a friend?
However, not all trash talk is so blatant. Some people say negative things in a sneaky way where you can’t always tell if they are talking trash. These people are so competitive, they want the limelight so badly, that they can’t contain themselves, and they let little deadly comments drop here and there. These people can’t be stopped; they are going to let their negative comments slip, and all you can do is prepare yourself for it and leave the scene. You need to be on guard for these types because their motives are difficult to prove. You can always give people the benefit of the doubt, but you should choose your words carefully when you are in their presence. Choose your friends carefully.
Situation #3: You’re Tempted to Talk Trash
When someone rubs you the wrong way and you feel as if you’ll have a heart attack if you don’t vent, negative talk is almost always inevitable. In a business setting, if you have the responsibility to provide your input on a decision, you should be timely and candid about your feelings. If you need to give input on whether to continue using a vendor or whether to keep an employee, negative comments might be appropriate. But you need to use the right language. Character assassination is not necessary. There’s a difference between citing flaws and being snide.
Speak in a business sense. Explain what the person does that is acceptable and what is unacceptable. In this situation, negative talk is necessary. But timely, candid comments about how you feel about what should be done in the case of an individual are completely appropriate.
However, if you’re at a conference table or in a similar setting and another member of your team is making you angry for some reason, then firing back negative bullets is not appropriate. Bite your tongue and remove yourself from the situation. You can go outside and scream, jump up and down, or whatever else it takes to release your negative feelings. Get it out of your system.
If you absolutely must express your feelings to another person, make sure you choose someone you can really confide in. Don’t release your negative feelings about a person in a counterproductive way that could end up hurting you. And always be careful of what you say to whom. If you talk trash on one of your team members to another team member, somewhere down the road, the person you confided in might betray your trust. This is just human nature. A situation like this could cost you a promotion or some other valuable opportunity.
You might be able to confide in your spouse, but this presents challenges as well. You have to be aware of how the negativity you bring home from work affects your relationships with your family. While you might feel compelled to share your feelings, consider whether that makes your marriage any stronger. Sometimes, you’re just better off going to the park and shouting out your negative feelings. The trees can’t talk.
Stop Your Trash Talking for Good
In business, you win by taking the high road, you win with skills, you win with ethical actions, and you win by solving your clients’ problems. You don’t win by trash talking your competition. The only thing you get from negative talk is a bad reputation and a loss of respect. So commit yourself to eliminating any trash talk, and take pride in talking positively about other people.
Use these strategies to overcome other people’s negative talk and your own temptations to slip occasionally. When you do, you will build character and a positive reputation that will take your career to the next level of success…you will like the person in the mirror.
Trash from The Respect Factor® Series
THE RESPECT FACTOR® is a trademark of Jack Perry in the United States and other countries. Used with permission. ©2009 Jack Perry. All rights reserved.
By Jack Perry
Every day people seem to run out of time. You’ve heard all of the clichés – “Time flies,” “Where did the time go?” and “There just aren’t enough hours in the day.” The fact is that we all have the same twenty-four hours in a day. The only difference is what we choose to do with our time.
Most people tend to focus on time management as a way to more effectively use their time. However, they are focusing on managing the wrong thing. The focus needs to be on managing yourself, and what you choose to do at any particular moment.
The fact is that you don’t manage time. Rather, you control and manage events and the choices you make on how to use your time. How you use your time is your own personal decision. It’s all about prioritizing. Use the following steps to make yourself aware of the choices you make every day with your time so you can make the most of it.
1. Chart Your Time
Because you need to manage what you do and not time itself, you need to create a schedule. Detail what you want to do during a day. What are the important things you must do? What things would you like to do? Don’t create your schedule as your day progresses. Rather, do it the night before or in the early morning before you start your day. If you don’t choose to create a detailed schedule of your day, other non-planned events will end up stealing your precious time.
The benefit of creating a very detailed schedule of your day and tracking what you do is that you can go back and look at it at the end of the day and see where you invested your time. While most people realize the importance of scheduling and creating to-do lists, they fail to realize that scheduling is a two-step process. Once you’ve finished your day, you must go back over your schedule to see how you did with your planned tasks. Did you spend the amount of time you allotted for the tasks? Did you spend some of the time you allotted for one activity on something completely different? You might be surprised when you examine your schedule at the end of the day to discover how much time you actually wasted during the day.
Salespeople would find this strategy especially beneficial. If they schedule and track their day, they can examine it to determine how much time they actually spend prospecting, as well as the number of contacts they actually talk to in the selling process. Of course, if you want to reap the benefits of charting your time and examining how you invested your time to be effective, you have to face the facts and be honest. Sometimes this might mean having someone else keep you accountable, such as recording your daily activities onto a time sheet invested form and sharing it with your supervisor.
2. Learn to Say “No”
Realize that it is impossible to be all things to all people. You simply cannot please everyone. If you try to please everyone, you will drive yourself crazy because it can’t be done. You need to maintain a balance in your life. Don’t overextend yourself by taking on so many projects and tasks that you won’t be able to properly manage. To do so, you must learn to say “No.”
Realize that your time is just as precious as everyone else’s. If you don’t decide what to do during your day, other people will fill your schedule for you with their agenda. If you don’t say “No,” Parkinson’s Law can take effect: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
If you have trouble saying “No,” try this activity: Go outside to a deserted area. When you’re sure nobody is around, yell as loud as you can, “NO!” Then assess how you feel. Saying no didn’t hurt, did it? Of course not. This little exercise will give you practice and confidence. You’ll learn that saying “No” can also be empowering, because you are standing up for yourself and not letting someone else force you into doing something.
Wouldn’t you rather have someone say “No” than lie to you? You don’t want someone to say they’ll meet you or take on a project for you and not really mean it. They should just say, “No, that won’t be possible.” It can work out the best in the end for everyone.
3. Prioritize
Once you have your detailed schedule of your day and you’ve said “No” to anything extra you could not realistically manage in your schedule, you can prioritize your activities. The more detailed and specific your schedule is, the more you will have to prioritize what you need to do during the day.
Rank each item in order of importance and then follow that. Don’t put something off that you ranked as very important just because it may involve dealing with a difficult person or be very time-consuming. If you do, you will just continue to put it off, and it will never get done. In addition, consider all the time you’re wasting thinking about this dreaded task. By the time you’ve thought it through, you could have already completed it.
Time Management Myths Resolved
We all have the same amount of time to work with each day. Time is a matter of choice. When you realize that you need to manage yourself and what you do, and that time management is somewhat of a myth, then you will get more things done.
As Benjamin Franklin said, “Time is the stuff that life is made of.” Since your time is so valuable, you need to take these steps to manage what you do with your time. Also, now that you know the myths of time management, the next time someone tells you they “don’t have time,” you know that is not true. They do have the time; they simply choose to invest their time in a way that doesn’t fit you or what you want them to include into their schedule. Time is a personal decision and choice. Decide how you will invest your time and manage your days. Your success depends on it.
Time from The Respect Factor® Series
THE RESPECT FACTOR® is a trademark of Jack Perry in the United States and other countries. Used with permission. ©2009 Jack Perry. All rights reserved.
By Jack Perry
Success means living your life according to your priorities. Therefore, success can mean different things to different people. Success to one person might mean working in a job that allows them plenty of free time to spend with family. And success to another person might mean working in a job that needs constant attention and oversight. So while the first person might be satisfied with a part-time position, the second person will more likely be happier in a job with more responsibility and higher demands, such as owning a business. But in either case, success is defined by what the individual wants in life.
In your mind, you define your success. Just because you come in second out of a thousand people doesn’t mean that you lose. And just because you earn a six-figure salary doesn’t mean you are successful. When people hunt for what they perceive to be success, more often than not, they are after someone else’s definition of success, maybe their parent’s, friends’, or spouse’s. All too often, society identifies success as the one person at the top. But that’s not necessarily true.
Understanding that you can set your own standards for success is important because it allows you to achieve a higher level of satisfaction from your life. Working toward your own goals is much more rewarding than working toward someone else’s. If you’re constantly trying to achieve another person’s definition of success, you’ll never be happy and you’ll always long for something more.
So how can you achieve greater satisfaction from your life? Use the following process for defining what success means to you and setting your own standards.
1. Define Your Success
If you want to know what success means for you, look around and study the people you see as winners. Spend time with people who you think are successful. For some, this might mean spending time at work with their boss. For others, this might mean spending time with a neighbor who goes skiing every weekend.
While you’re spending time with this successful person, try to determine what makes you think he or she is successful. Is it her salary? His position within the company? Or maybe you think her success is defined by the way she spends time outside of work, such as volunteering to help a charity or enjoying her family. The time you spend with successful people will help you determine exactly what success means to you.
Teams will have unified meanings of success. A team of co-workers might see success as not letting the phone ring more than three times before someone picks up, or as processing all their orders within a set amount of time. Teams and groups of people can have a unified goal, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set personal goals for yourself and how you will contribute to that unified goal.
2. Identify Your Values
Your values will start to show through your definition of success. A person who sees success as being CEO of an international corporation might value power, while a person who sees success as working in a job that allows him to make his own schedule might value flexibility. Think about what really makes you happy. Do you value your time with your family? If you don’t have a family, do you value your time working as a team? Do you value making a contribution to a cause you feel strongly about?
To be successful, your values and motives must be clear. They must be understandable. This step obviously requires self-examination, so have the courage to take an inventory of your life. Look at where you are now, and then consider what you want to move toward. What things are important to you? If you achieve them, will that be considered success in your mind?
3. Determine Your Goals
Next, determine your goals. Is your goal to take a big family vacation next summer? Or is your goal to get a promotion? Whatever your goal might be, you must be able to visualize it and use your goal to achieve your success.
Write your goal down and take it seriously, otherwise you’ll never achieve your success. Use your goal to keep you motivated and moving forward. When you feel your motivation slip, visualize your goal and think about what it means to you.
Don’t use your goal to discourage yourself, such as, “I’m a failure unless I become president of the United States.” You are setting yourself up for heartache. But maybe you could say that you want to be president of something, such as a club or organization you’re involved in.
But keep in mind, success is a journey; it isn’t getting to one point and suddenly stopping. Once you have your own definition of success, you can use it to guide your future decisions. Success is a moving target. You will modify your definition of success as you go through life. As people achieve certain levels of success, they tend to raise the bar. They redefine success for themselves and move to new plateaus. You must choose to move yourself from one plateau to the next.
4. Create Your Action Plan
The final step toward success is to set up your action plan. Setting out a series of steps toward the ultimate goal will lead you to things that you have defined as success. If your goal is to increase your sales numbers by twenty percent this quarter, you may develop an action plan to make ten cold calls each day. This way, you have a small daily goal that that contributes to your ultimate success.
This step is where your discipline and hard work come into play. Without the self-discipline to achieve each small step you identify for yourself, you won’t be able to achieve success. No one is born successful. Success is something you have to want and learn.
If you fail to achieve one of your small goals, don’t get discouraged. Anyone who tells you they’ve never failed has some real problems with reality. Either they can’t remember, they aren’t being honest, they are blind to their failures, or they’ve never really tried anything. Failure is a part of success. So don’t let a setback keep you from reaching for success.
Success in Your Future
Always know that your success is yours to define. If other people don’t agree with your definition of success, ignore what they say. Take counsel with your mentors and close friends to see if you’re really using your capabilities and pushing yourself enough. But don’t let someone tell you that you aren’t successful because your definition of success differs from theirs. You don’t have to hold yourself to other people’s standards. If you let other people define your success standards, you’ll never feel satisfied with yourself.
Success is yours to define, identify, and achieve. When you use these steps to set your own standards of success, you will achieve a greater level of satisfaction from your career, life, and everything you do.
Success from The Respect Factor® Series
THE RESPECT FACTOR® is a trademark of Jack Perry in the United States and other countries. Used with permission. ©2009 Jack Perry. All rights reserved.
By Jack Perry
“Be a self-starter. Let your first hour set the theme of success and positive action that is certain to echo through your entire day. Today will never happen again. Don’t waste it with a false start or no start at all. You were not born to fail.” – Og Mandino
They’re swashbucklers, explorers, and pioneers, not couch potatoes. They launch the offense, brave the onslaught, and get things done. They don’t run an idea up the flagpole, take a few meetings, and hope someone else makes it happen.
They’re self-starters. Are you one? Or are you a self-stopper?
If you’re a self-starter, you are an original. You find that you usually get to the goal faster than your competition. You thrive on movement and change and live for the sense of discovery that comes with taking decisive action. You’re a cutting edge person who runs ahead of the pack. You’re generally a positive person and fun to be around. You listen intently to the siren song of a new idea.
But this doesn’t mean it’s all roses and rainbows: self-starters encounter ups and downs that sometimes end in insurmountable challenges and some pain every once in awhile, but more often they experience movement, results, and change. You experience excitement, change and discovery at all times if you’re a self-starter.
Self-stoppers, on the other hand, simply lack initiative. They seem always to be getting ready to get ready. They procrastinate and listen to that small, insidious voice of fear, getting lost in minutiae without focus. Self-stoppers know only the status quo and wouldn’t think to question it or look for new solutions to problems. When a competitor appears with a new feature on their product or a new process, the self-stopper STOPS, gives up, and believes the situation is simply hopeless.
But the self-starter will find new uses for the product or equipment, or add value to it. They take a situation in hand, believing nothing is beyond their control. They know that, while they can’t change the weather, they can change the way they react to it.
Self-starters choose to sail directly and fearlessly into uncharted waters, often with revolutionary results. Consider the boldness and the consequent payoff for those who started Home Depot, compared to those smaller hardware stores that were left in the dust as people flocked to the volume-buying warehouse style home improvement centers.
Challenges are Inevitable
If you’re going to become a self-starter, you must at once be able to ignore the naysayers (and you will encounter plenty of them) and develop some humility and adequate resilience, because you aren’t going to win every time you set out to do something. You have to keep getting up quickly off the floor.
From time to time, self-starters will find relationships challenging, because some people will be fearful, threatened, or jealous of you and won’t confide in you or let you earn their trust.
Self-starters need good communication skills in order to bring people on board to help with a project or the issues at hand, as well as a deep and unwavering commitment to their own ideas.
Of course, as a self-starter, you will inevitably run into self-stoppers. Their stop signs sound like this:
“That’s a good idea, but it won’t work...”
“Um, I’ve never heard of this before, so I don’t think we ought to try that…”
“No one has ever done that, so it can’t possibly be done...”
“Maybe we should do a few more surveys and studies before we try anything like that…”
Self-starters choose to blow right past those negative stop signs.
Self-Starter Models of Success
Love her or hate her, you have to admit that Martha Stewart was a self-starter; she created an industry. Likewise, the Google founders opened up a whole new world on the Internet and profited richly from it, all while giving a beloved service millions use at no charge. Charles Schwab was very much a self-starter, creating not only a new direction within the investment industry, but also a giant company. He eventually sold the company to a major firm who mismanaged it, so Schwab bought the company back and built it back up again.
Very often you’ll see self-starters as turnaround specialists. Hired to put organizations back on track, they can work without map or precedent and use tools and resources to make a business competitive again. Self-starters aren’t necessarily the best people to stick around and run an organization forever, but they can work without a manual and fearlessly without a net to get it going.
In sales, to be a self-starter, you can’t sit still and wait for prospects to come to you. You must go out there and find them. Initiate communications to deliver pertinent information to them and build personal relationships with them, and fight whatever obstacles stand in the way of your reaching who you need to reach. Ask yourself who your prospects are, how you can reach them and communicate with them, and what it will take to meet their needs. Remember, the right person doing it the right way will succeed.
It’s Never Too Late to Be a Self-Starter
You can develop self-starter skills in any industry and succeed beyond your wildest dreams, even if your career is sputtering now, even if you’ve been a shrinking violet all your life. But you have to be willing to transform yourself. You have to be fully motivated and stay motivated, undaunted by roadblocks (a.k.a. problems) and always looking for ways to solve them. When you believe there’s nothing you can’t handle, you will truly be a self-starter! Are you ready to get started?
Starter from The Respect Factor® Series
THE RESPECT FACTOR® is a trademark of Jack Perry in the United States and other countries. Used with permission. ©2009 Jack Perry. All rights reserved.
By Jack Perry
Have you ever felt as if you were being pulled in a million different directions, with so many commitments that you’d never find enough time to accomplish them all? As you become more successful in life, your number of choices starts to grow exponentially, and you run the risk of nullifying your personal values and shuffling your daily priorities to accommodate the increase in your responsibility. This can quickly wear you out. If you find yourself in this situation, you really have no one to blame but yourself and your inability to simply say “no.”
Without discrimination, you can “yes” yourself into a “yes mess.” When this occurs, you feel overwhelmed, and you are not investing your precious time with commitment and a focus on results. Basically, you either can’t or don’t know how to say “no,” and this habit can sabotage your social life, business life, personal health, and family life.
If you want a better, more balanced life, you can use the following proven techniques to eliminate the “yes mess” in each of the following four areas.
1. Social Life
How many times have you dressed for a social event, looked in the mirror, and thought, “Gosh, I wish I’d said no”? If you feel like this all the time, then you’ve created a “yes mess” out of your social life. To get out of this, you must say no more frequently than you do today.
Start by making a few decisions. Decide who you want to spend your personal time with, and then decide the times you will devote to your particular social activities. Next, have the courage to stick to these decisions. If a person you don’t want to spend time with asks you to do something, or if the particular activity is not at the right time, say no. You don’t have to be rude about it. For example, if someone asks you to go to the opera, but you hate the opera, then tell the person your true feelings. Just say, “I have never learned to appreciate the opera, but thanks for asking.”
Have the courage to be discriminatory about how you will spend your social time, rather than just taking whatever comes your way. Your social time will be more profitable and enjoyable, which will manifest itself throughout the rest of your life.
2. Business Life
If your calendar is jammed with so many priorities that you’ll never be able to finish everything and produce quality results, if you frequently change your appointments and don’t fulfill your commitments, or if you have a million half-finished tasks on your to do list, then your inability to say “no” has likely created a “yes mess” out of your business life. To overcome this situation, you need to keep, organize, and commit to a personal calendar.
As you plan your days, allow enough time for a quality performance in each of the endeavors you choose and say no to everything else, unless a true emergency comes along. For example, if someone asks if you have a minute and you’re in the middle of something else, then say that you’re busy. Try this: “Unless it is an emergency, can you wait until I finish this project up?” Take control of your personal calendar and let people know that their interruptions might cause a disruption in your schedule and affect your quality performance.
3. Health
When you haven’t used your gym membership in weeks, when your clothes fit a little too tightly , and when you aren’t the vibrant, energetic person you aim to be, then the “yes mess” might have infecte your health. To fight this detrimental disease, establish health as your number one priority. Remember, without a healthy body you have no quality of life, and that applies to all areas of your life
To establish this priority, put your health plans on your calendar. Allow yourself time to exercise, eat properly, and meditate. Then as you are challenged to change your health plans, say no. Keep in mind, these challenges can come from internal and external forces. So if you don’t feel like going to the gym, say no to yourself. Also say no to external forces. If a co-worker announces the opportunity for a free lunch at a local restaurant, but you’ve already committed yourself to going to the gym during that time, then pass up the opportunity.
4. Family Life
If your carefully planned family outings are filled with more tension than fun and you feel the need to rush everyone through the activity, then, again, the “yes mess” may be responsible. Unfortunately, family time is often the first priority people sacrifice. Many busy professionals rationalize that by working extra hours and breaking family plans, they are actually helping their families in the long run. While exceptions always come up, this should never be the rule.
You need to plan and commit to family time, just like every other priority. So if a co-worker asks you to meet on a Saturday to get ahead on a big project, and you have plans with your family scheduled for that day, then you need to honor your prior commitment. Just say to your co-worker the following: “I’m going to the zoo (beach, park, mall, etc.) with my family that day, but this project is important to me. Can we do it another time?” This approach allows you to uphold your priority and reschedule the work meeting.
Avoiding the “Yes Mess” in the Future
When you don’t know how to say no, you’ll never know what you are missing in life. The key is to be honest about your previous engagements and don’t tell white lies. Otherwise you’ll find yourself in a web of big fat lies.
If you habitually say yes to everything, then you can’t expect to break the habit in one fell swoop. Keep in mind, saying no doesn’t hurt. It just takes confidence and practice to overcome the “yes mess.”
If you let it, the “yes mess” can overtake your social life, business life, health, and family life. When you use these tips for upholding your chosen priorities and saying no when appropriate, then you can increase your productivity, reduce your stress, and balance everything you want to do in life. Just say no.
No from The Respect Factor® series
THE RESPECT FACTOR® is a trademark of Jack Perry in the United States and other countries. Used with permission. ©2009 Jack Perry. All rights reserved.
by Jack Perry
Success isn’t measured by how many times you get knocked down; it’s measured by whether or not you choose to get up. Your life is like a book—but it’s non-fiction, rather than a fairy tale. Some chapters contain tales of great success and happiness, and some feature failure and sadness. When you experience the inevitable challenging times in life, how do you react? Do you wallow in self-pity and let the experience cripple you, or do you take the challenge head on and remain positive and bounce right back? You can choose.
Many of the unpleasant events that happen to us in life are things we bring onto ourselves. Others, like being struck by lightning or being rear-ended on a highway, are events we can’t control. But even these types of bad things do not need to keep us down for long. Though we can’t prevent the bad event from happening, we can choose and control our reaction to it.
For example, if you’re on your way to an important business meeting and you get a flat tire, how do you react? Do you get out of your car and curse yourself, the road, the highway department, and how rotten your life is, or do you assess the damage and fix the tire or call roadside assistance? No matter which reaction you choose, you still have the same challenge—a flat tire. You either choose to feel sorry for yourself, or you choose to fix the problem and get on with life. Which reaction benefits you more?
Even bad experiences can add to your life if you learn how to react to them appropriately. Over the years, the outside world has programmed us to react to experiences in a certain way. Your parents, friends, teachers, coaches, and neighbors have shaped your reaction style. Think back: after a little league game, were you taught to congratulate the other team on their win, or be sad and blame it on the muddy field, the referee, or some other factor that was out of your control? On the swim team, did you learn to respect that competition is healthy and there are first, second, and third place winners, or were you coddled and everyone on your team received a participation ribbon? Even if you didn’t learn to be resilient as a child, it’s not too late to learn as an adult.
Which would you rather be likened to: a bouncy ball that bounces higher than the height from which it was dropped? Or a playground ball that is flat and doesn’t bounce at all? If you want to improve your resiliency, you first have to hunger for it. Realize you will experience much more success in life if you learn to be resilient instead of accepting defeat. Donald Trump, one of the richest men in America, at one time was virtually bankrupt. Instead of giving up, he had a burning determination to be successful. Trump knew the secret of resilient people: setbacks do not equal defeat. They are building blocks that can make you stronger.
You won’t become resilient overnight, but with some practice and determination, the following steps will help you graciously handle temporary setbacks and not let them stop you.
Step 1: Do an honest evaluation of your resiliency.
Take an honest look and inventory of yourself. How do you normally react to adversity? Whether it’s the flat tire or a lost promotion, ask others for input: friends, mentors, managers. Say, “In your eyes, how do I handle adversity?” You may not like the answer, but you need to hear it. It is the first step toward owning the ability to have a big bounce.
Step 2: Identify role models.
Think of the people in your life; some are very resilient and some just don’t bounce back. They are stuck on the floor. They are the “poor me’s” who just wallow around in their own self-pity. Go to people you admire who have faced adversity. Say, “I watched that event and I watched how you quickly bounced back. How did you do it? What were the steps you went through? Who did you talk to? How would you help somebody like me? What are the emotional tools you used to successfully pull yourself back up?” People who are champions in life see adversity as another opportunity to make themselves stronger.
Step 3: Take baby steps.
Look at small resiliency comebacks and build them into big ones. When you recognize you are exhibiting even slight resilience, write down the steps you took to overcome the setback. Affirm that you have the capability to automatically bounce back. Avoidance is a victim’s mentality. No matter what the circumstance, you want to be able to say, “I’m a survivor.” When adversity strikes, confront it, and determine in advance that you are going to be a big bouncer and not just someone who goes flat the minute trouble strikes. Avoid the, “I could have, should have, would have” mentality. Those are all imaginary words. Instead, say, “What am I going to do to learn from this event? How can I be resilient?”
Step 4: Realize resiliency is a learned skill.
You didn’t come out of the womb being resilient. You develop resiliency over the course of your life. You need to take an honest look at yourself and be serious enough to be willing to make a change. You might not reach Olympic gold status as a bounce-backer, but you can surely improve.
A New, Resilient You
Why bother being resilient? Others will admire you, but better yet, you’ll be a lot happier with yourself. Wouldn’t you rather see yourself bounce back from adversity instead of wallowing around in misery? For some people, it just takes too much effort when they’re down on the ground to get up and greet the new challenge on the horizon. Don’t let that be you. If you experience a setback, like losing a sale or losing a promotion, you can choose to say, “I don’t like the way this feels. I’m going to turn it around. What can I do next time to make sure this doesn’t happen again?”
Becoming resilient requires a commitment to patience and practice. At first you will take a series of baby steps, but your stride will get increasingly bigger. First, own the fact that you’re not as resilient as you should be. Look around and see who can help you on your quest for the resiliency factor. Find an accountability partner who will honestly tell you how you are doing. Realize that you will still experience setbacks along the way, but, with practice, you will bounce back higher and stronger and achieve more success in life than you thought possible. Now go and be a bounce-back champion.
Resiliency from The Respect Factor® Series
THE RESPECT FACTOR® is a trademark of Jack Perry in the United States and other countries. Used with permission. ©2009 Jack Perry. All rights reserved.
By Jack Perry
Reputation is analogous to a brand. For example, when you choose a can of Coke at the vending machine, you have certain expectations. And when you drive a Mercedes, you anticipate a specific level of performance. Everything has a reputation – people, families, companies, products, services, and the list rolls on. Reputations are the sum of your prior experiences with these things. And reputations build through word of mouth.
Unfortunately, most people tend to take one experience and paste that label on an entire group. Warren Buffet has wisely noted that it can take twenty years to build a good reputation, and you can destroy it in five minutes. For example, if you have a bad experience the first time you try a new restaurant, you probably won’t go back and you’ll likely spread the word to your family and friends. Then, at least within your circle, that restaurant will develop a bad reputation based on only one first impression.
When it comes to your reputation, you also get only one chance to make a good first impression with the people you meet. As an individual, your prior performances create your current reputation. And you don’t have just one reputation – you actually have a series of reputations, dependent on the role you’re playing. For example, you may have a reputation as a friend, worker, partner, athlete, community participant, and more. As a company, your reputation relates to how you treat your team members, deliver and support your products and services, and, most important, invest in your community.
It might not seem fair that a reputation can be developed and based solely on one experience or one person’s perceptions. But reputation is not a matter of fairness – it’s a matter of reality. However, you can build a better reputation, or maintain the good reputation you currently have, by considering the following tips.
1. Your Reputation is a Moving Target
You have a choice to help or hinder other people’s perceptions of you through your everyday actions. Every thing you do either builds up or tears down your reputation. Visualize a miner’s gold scale for a moment. Every time the miner adds a piece of gold to the one side of the scale, his value increases. Likewise, every positive reputation “deposit” you make on the one side, the more the scale tips in your favor. If you want to build or maintain a reputation of honesty, every time you forego the temptation to stretch the truth will add to your goal. To maintain a good reputation, you want to keep that scale in your favor at all times, no matter what you’re doing or with whom you’re interacting.
2. Your Reputation is Visible
Virtually everything has some kind of reputation. You probably hear “noise” from your friends, family, and associates every day about reputations. “That food market has the best produce selection in town.” Or, “He can’t be trusted.” All these beliefs contribute to reputation.
Your reputation is like your brand. And although you probably can’t see it, everyone else can. Your reputation advertises either for or against you, so you need to make it look good. In other words, don’t do anything you wouldn’t want in the headlines of tomorrow’s news paper , the TV news or blogs.
3. Your Reputation is Never Equal to Your Actual Performance
Regardless of what reputations you have, chances are they are not completely accurate. You’re either better or worse than your reputation. In some cases, this can be a good thing. But remember, you’re responsible for your reputations every day. Even if you have an excellent reputation, that doesn’t mean you can slack off and expect it to carry you through life. You have to work to maintain it. Oddly, often the better the reputation, the harder you have to work to maintain that high level, for envious competitors will be waiting to cast disparaging remarks, hoping to bring you down.
If you’re not satisfied with your reputation, don’t let that presiding opinion get you down. Instead, work to improve your reputation. You alone can help or hurt your reputation, so define for yourself what you want that favorable reputation to be and start changing it today.
4. You Can Change Your Reputation
If your reputation is weak, you probably aren’t aware of it. Therefore, you need to experience a moment of truth. Few people are objective enough to know other people’s perceptions of you, so you’ll likely need someone to tell you the way you come across to others. For example, say you’re meeting with a client and you’re not getting the results you want. Ask that person to be honest with you and identify the challenges he or she perceives. You may learn that your reputation has sent the wrong message.
Maybe you’re poorly dressed, so people are apprehensive about the quality of your service. Or maybe they’ve heard you’re always late and that concerns them. At that point, you need to retreat and ask yourself, “Is that how I really want to be perceived?” Chances are you don’t.
To change your reputation, look at all the elements that contribute to it and vow to move to the other side of the scale. Say to yourself, “I’m going to be perceived as the best-dressed person in my field.” Or, “I am going to be perceived as punctual and prepared.” Finally, ask yourself how you’ll accomplish this new reputation. You could hire a wardrobe consultant or set your clocks ahead fifteen minutes. If you don’t have a clue onhow to improve your reputation, then you need to ask.
5. A Good Reputation has Many Benefits
Thousands of years ago, King Solomon said a good name is better than riches. Even today, he is right. A good reputation can open doors, create opportunities, introduce you to relationships, bring you new business, and expose you to new friends. On the other hand, a bad reputation can slam doors in your face, limit your exposure, and shut you down.
Correcting a bad reputation takes a long time. But when you build and maintain a solid reputation, you will gain attention and respect from your peers. If you make a mistake or your efforts go awry, then your good reputation will give you a pass. So guard your good reputation with everything you have.
The Future of Your Reputation
Your reputation is built on other people’s beliefs about you. That can work in your favor, or it can severely limit your possibilities. When you keep these tips in mind, you’ll be able to build and maintain the reputation you choose to have.
Reputation from The Respect Factor® Series
THE RESPECT FACTOR® is a trademark of Jack Perry in the United States and other countries. Used with permission. ©2009 Jack Perry. All rights reserved.
By Jack Perry
Think of all the valuable life elements you receive from your personal relationships. Whether with your spouse, your best friend, or your family, good relationships provide you with happiness, security, forgiveness, and support. They make life more satisfying and successful. This is the reason people take time and effort to build strong relationships.
Why would someone take that time and effort to establish relationships in business? The historical model of sales and marketing dictates that a sales person establishes a need, gives a solution, gets an agreement, delivers a promise, and leaves. In the past, that style of service might have been okay. Today’s marketplace demands more.
Today, your prospects have choices and unlimited access to immediate information. Therefore, whether you provide a product or a service, you are a commodity. You might think you are unique, but your prospects can get everything you have to offer somewhere else. By building strong relationships with your clients and prospects, you can separate yourself from the crowd.
Think about it like this: Whom do people buy from? They don’t buy from machines. People buy from people. When people have relationships with other people, they accommodate them and give them an advantage over the competition. In your personal or professional dealings, you buy from people you like, trust, and respect.
Business relationships aren’t that different from personal ones. People listen, have empathy, and do things for each other. They keep their word.
Use the following five steps to build and maintain business relationships.
1. Choose Your Prospects Wisely
If you choose to be authentic in the sales field, you listen and seek solutions that your prospects and clients will accept. You start with a goal to establish a working relationship, getting to know your clients, keeping in close contact, and working with them to satisfy their needs. This is your commitment.
It’s possible that you might choose not to do business with some potentially profitable prospects for one reason or another. They might have different views than you, they might run their business in a manner you don’t agree with, or the person might just rub you the wrong way. But keep in mind, every sales person gets the clients and prospects they deserve.
So, as you approach a new prospect, start by asking yourself if you want to have a business relationship with that person. If the answer is no, then continue searching for someone else. The smaller your market, the less selective you can be. But in most cases, you can pick and choose.
2. Gather Information
Information gives you the power and opportunity to solve problems and relate to your prospect. Questions are the gateway to information. When you meet with your prospects, start by asking questions. While most good sales people start every meeting with questions, when your goal is to build a relationship, you have to take your questions a step further. You need to include a few noninvasive personal questions as well as your routine business ones
The goal of your questions should be to relate to your prospect. Maybe you’re a golfer and your prospect is also. Or maybe your prospect loves dogs, and you’ve had dogs all your life. These possible interests allow you to relate and build a connection that goes beyond business. Never do this on a false basis, but if you can find common ground, then you are starting to build a relationship.
3. Show a True Interest in Your Prospect
You want your prospects to know that you really care about them and their needs. You can accomplish this by using good listening skills. Listen with your eyes and body. Take notes. Demonstrate that you are listening; you are there for the person and validating his or her needs
If the situation arises, you want to defend your friend/associate. Just as you would defend a friend, if you hear someone speaking poorly about your client, you stop them. Simply saying, “You know, she and I do business together and I’d appreciate you not saying that about her,” will generally end the negative conversation.
4. Deliver Your Promises
You wouldn’t stand your best friend up when you have plans. You can’t leave your prospects hanging, either. If you want to develop solid business relationships, you must deliver on the promises you make. If you say you’re going to deliver your product on Tuesday by five, then you must do everything in your power to accomplish just that. Show your clients how reliable you are and back up your promises; otherwise the business relationship is doomed to fail.
5. Maintain Contact with Frequent Personal Touches
Once you’ve done the work and built the relationships, you can’t let your clients forget about you. So even if you don’t meet with them once a month, you need to stay in contact with a series of touches. You can send holiday cards, articles of interest, tips to help them in their business, invitations to special events, and thank-you cards. Frequency depends on the type of business you’re in, but at least nine to twelve touches per year should work best. The goal is to stay close to them so that when they think of products or services in your industry, you will always come first.
Stronger Business Relationships in Your Future
The real sales professionals understand that they must seek separation from the competitors in the marketplace if they want to succeed. By establishing business relationships with your clients, you can establish yourself as different and above the crowd. While it requires extra effort to accomplish this level of service, someone who isn’t committed to providing this constant touch, service, and support is at a serious disadvantage. When you use these tips for building and maintaining your business relationships, you can destroy your competition and take your sales career to the next level of success. Relationships are the rock solid foundation long-term success.
Relationships from The Respect Factor® Series
THE RESPECT FACTOR® is a trademark of Jack Perry in the United States and other countries. Used with permission. ©2009 Jack Perry. All rights reserved
by Jack Perry
You didn’t make the ball team. You didn’t get accepted to your favorite college. You didn’t qualify for the home loan. These things do happen. Rejection is a fact of life. Successful people, however, know they need to embrace rejection instead of shy away from it.
The wealthiest and most successful people in society realize that rejection is a temporary setback, and they keep pushing forward. Other people allow rejection to overpower them and stop them in their tracks. They allow that negative feeling to take up permanent residence in their brain. But rejection doesn’t deserve to have that much power over you. Rejection exists only in your mind. It gets awarded power only when you allow it to enter your psyche, control you, and devastate your life.
Henry Ford is a perfect example. By the turn of the 20th century, he had experienced two failing companies and lost the money of two different investment groups. But he didn’t give up. He located a third group of investors who gave him $28,000 to start a motor company. The “Model A” was born and Ford went on to make millions of dollars. Ford Motor Company became one of the most successful car manufacturers the world has ever known. Think how different Ford’s life would have been if he chosen to give up after failing with his first company.
Though rejection can feel devastating, someone saying “no” to you won’t kill you. The fear of rejection, however, is even more dangerous than rejection itself. That fear can prevent you from taking the necessary risks that could lead you to true success. It’s the number one reason people do not get more of what they want in life. They think they can escape the pain of failing if they don’t even try. While that might be true, they also lose the opportunity to learn valuable lessons from their failures—lessons that can often propel them toward success.
When you decide to take risks, you accept a rejection as a possibility. What you don’t have to accept is becoming discouraged and considering yourself a failure because of a rejection. You just need to change the way you think about it. To do this:
First, stop taking rejection personally. It has nothing to do with you.
Second, understand the reasoning behind every “no.” In this way, you’re redefining rejection.
And last, instead of allowing rejection to grind your efforts to a halt, turn it around and use rejection as a catalyst to gain momentum toward your goals.
You need to recognize and detour past these three rejection “potholes” to achieve that waiting success. It’s right around the corner for you! Refuse to let rejection take you down. Instead, recognize it as an opportunity to gain something—a new client, a sale, or a friend. When you follow these three steps every time you experience rejection, you will be well on your way to achieving true success.
Step One: Don’t Take Rejection Personally
Stop taking “no” as a personal attack. Many people hear “no” and immediately take it to heart. They embrace it. They believe the person who said “no” has waged an all-out war on their character.
Did you know that 50% of salespeople allow rejection to stop them completely after the first “no”? Of the 50% who don’t give up, half of them cease all sales efforts after the second “no.” The fear of being rejected prevents them from ever approaching that prospect again. If you’re doing the math, you now know that 75% have given up after the second contact. They have handed over the opportunity for a sale to their competitor instead of considering how to approach this prospect again and again and turn the “no” into a “yes.”
Anytime you go into a situation where rejection is a possibility, remember that if someone says “no” they are not rejecting you as a person. They are simply rejecting your idea or product. When you believe you are a worthwhile person with worthwhile ideas, you will not feel personally rejected. People can reject your idea, product, or service for any number of reasons, but they cannot reject you permanently unless you choose to let them.
Step Two: Redefine Rejection
The best way to change your thinking about rejection is to redefine it. Remember, rejection exists only in your mind. Rejection doesn’t mean “no.” In business, rejection is man-made; it is only temporary. It simply means “maybe.” Therefore, view rejection as a stimulus to continue toward your goal.
When a prospect says “no,” he is not locking a door; he’s simply not opening it. The prospect is really saying, “Tell me more. Show me. Give me more reasons to say ‘yes’.” If you throw up your hands and walk away, you’ve told your prospect she is right; your product or service isn’t worthy of her business.
The first “no” usually means that the prospect and salesperson need more information. For example:
The prospect didn’t have enough information to say “yes.”
The sales professional didn’t ask the right questions and doesn’t know what the prospect needs.
The sales professional didn’t give the specific information needed to connect the value of the idea or product to the prospect.
The real objections were never discovered and addressed positively.
When someone says “no,” you simply haven’t supplied him or her with enough information to say “yes.”
Step Three: Allow Every “No” to Encourage You
Once you have changed your definition of rejection, every “no” can propel you toward a “yes” with increasing speed. Rejection will fire an ever-increasing desire to provide your prospects with all the information they need to be sold on your idea or product. Every rejection will provide the necessary momentum for you to learn and perfect your selling technique. Regroup and ask yourself what your prospect’s biggest reason for rejecting your product or idea is and plan to address those concerns the next time you speak.
Change Your Perspective
Your beliefs about rejection determine your degree of success. Don’t let the fear of rejection kill your initiative. Rejection is not a personal attack. Instead of giving up, re-frame rejection in your mind as an opportunity to regroup and try again and again. When you do, the prize, a “yes,” is just around the corner.
Rejection from The Respect Factor® Series
THE RESPECT FACTOR® is a trademark of Jack Perry in the United States and other countries. Used with permission. ©2009 Jack Perry. All rights reserved.
© Jack Perry, 2005
All rights reserved