The Directive Close: by Brian Tracy

A popular method of closing is the Directive Close. This is sometimes called the Assumption Close, or the Post-Closing Technique. It is one of the most powerful closing techniques used by top sales professionals in every industry. It is used to change the focus of the customer's thinking away from the decision, "yes or no", to the ownership and enjoyment of the product.

Keep The Initiative
Its major virtue is that it allows you to keep the initiative, to maintain control of the selling process and to wrap it up at your own pace and speed. It is also very simple.

Ask For Lingering Objections
At the end of the sales conversation, you ask a trial closing question like, "How does this sound to you so far?" If the prospect agrees that is sounds pretty good, you say, "Well then, Mr. Prospect, the next step is..."

Describe The Plan of Action
You then go on to describe the plan of action, or what happens from this point forward. You get out your sales contract or order form and begin filling it in. You say something like, "The next step is that I get your authorization and a check and get it back to my company. We will be out in three days to begin the initial planning and we should have the entire process installed and working by the third week of next month."

Keep On Going
In this close, the customer can either say, "yes" and help you conclude the sale or he can ask any questions that he might still have. If for any reason the customer still objects, you answer the objection completely and then ask for the order again.

The Customer is Ready
A customer at the end of the sales process is very much like a pot of water boiling on the stove. It is as hot as it is going to get. If you take it off the stove, it will begin to cool. If you leave it off the stove for a few days, it will be stone cold, as though it were never heated up at all. If you do not ask for the order at the end of the sales process, whether it is one call or several calls, you run the risk of the customer cooling down, changing his mind and even forgetting why it was that he was so eager to make the purchase in the first place.

Action Exercises
Here is something you can do immediately to put this close into action.

Plan your words carefully in advance so you can ask for the order smoothly and without hesitation. Practice in front of a mirror if you want to. Be the best!

How To Succeed In Business: by Brian Tracy

Build Your Own Business
The high road to becoming a self-made millionaire in America is starting and building your own business. But this is not as easy as it sounds. Most businesses started by inexperienced people fail. Probably the primary reason why people don't start businesses is because they're afraid that they're going to lose their money and for good reason. 99 percent of businesses started by people lacking business experience fail within the first two or three years.

Why Business Fail
And why is that? It's because they don't know how. They haven't the slightest idea how to make a business successful. They may have an idea for a product or service, but they don't know all the things that they need to know to run a successful business.

Why Businesses Succeed
However, surprisingly enough, 80 percent of businesses started by experienced businesspeople succeed. Now why should this be so? The reason is because experienced businesspeople know what to do. They know how to purchase their products and their services. They know how to negotiate with their suppliers. They know how to raise money. They know how to negotiate leases. They know how to sell and to market. They know how to manage their finances. In other words, experience is the key. In order to start your own business and succeed, you have to learn how.

Competence Makes The Difference
Now according to Dunn and Bradstreet, 96 percent of businesses in America that fail, fail because of what is called "managerial incompetence". Managerial incompetence means that the people running the businesses don't know what they're doing. And here are the two critical areas of managerial incompetence that cause business failure. First is sales and marketing. 48 percent of businesses that fail in America fail because the business cannot sell enough of its products or services. Very few businesses fail when they have high levels of sales and revenues coming in.

Control Your Costs
The second reason that businesses fail, 46 percent, is because of poor cost control. They may be selling enough on the front end, but they're losing so much on the back end that they go broke anyway. Sales and marketing, financing and cost control, both require experience. And if you're serious about becoming financially independent, you have to learn how to do both of these.

Put Luck On Your Side
You must learn the skills you need to be successful. Business success is not a matter of luck. Business success is a matter of application. It's a matter of ability. It's a matter of experience and skill and intelligence, and wonderfully enough, you can learn what you need to know to be successful. And you can start by learning through on-the-job training, which is called OJT. Most successful businesspeople become successful because they get all their training by working for someone else.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to make sure that your business succeeds greatly:

First, take the time to get the knowledge and experience you need in business by working for someone else where you can learn a lot in a short period of time. Go to work in an area in which you are interested and learn everything you possibly can.

Second, read and study in business, especially entrepreneurial business, all the time. Read one or two business books per week and read every business magazine that is published on your subject. Never stop learning and growing.

Four Steps To A Super Attitude: by Brian Tracy

It is not what happens to you that counts. It is how you react to what happens to you, especially when you have unexpected problems of any kind. In this message, you learn powerful strategies you can use to keep yourself thinking and acting positively and creatively. Here are four things you can do to assure that your attitude is the very best it can be, under all circumstances.

Focus On The Future
First, whatever challenges you face, focus on the future rather than on the past. Instead of worrying about who did what and who is to blame, focus on where you want to be and what you want to do. Get a clear mental image of your ideal successful future, and then take whatever action you can to begin moving in that direction. Get your mind, your thoughts, and your mental images on the future.

Focus On The Solution
Second, whenever you’re faced with a difficulty, focus on the solution rather than on the problem. Think and talk about the ideal solution to the obstacle or setback, rather than wasting time rehashing and reflecting on the problem. Solutions are inherently positive, whereas problems are inherently negative. The instant that you begin thinking in terms of solutions, you become a positive and constructive human being.

Look For The Good
Third, assume that something good is hidden within each difficulty or challenge. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, a major proponent of positive thinking, once said, “Whenever God wants to give us a gift, he wraps it up in a problem.” The bigger the gift you have coming, the bigger the problem you will receive. But the wonderful thing is that if you look for the gift, you will always find it.

Look For The Valuable Lesson
Fourth, assume that whatever situation you are facing at the moment is exactly the right situation you need to ultimately be successful. This situation has been sent to you to help you learn something, to help you become better, to help you expand and grow.

Do What Successful People Do
A Positive Mental Attitude is indispensable to your success. You can be as positive as you want to be if you will simply think about the future, focus on the solution and look for the good. If you do what other successful people do, if you use your mind to exert mental control over the situation, you will be positive and cheerful most of the time. And you will reap the benefits enjoyed by all successful people.

Action Exercises
First, become solution-oriented with every difficulty you face. Make a habit of looking for the answers to your questions, the solutions to your problems.

Second, seek for the valuable lesson in every adversity. Make a list of every idea or insight you can gain from every setback or difficulty.

Third, think on paper. Take some time to write out every detail of the problem, and then take the most logical next step to solve it.

Relationships Are Everything: by Brian Tracy

Your Foundation For Success
Relationship Selling is the core of all modern selling strategies. Your ability to develop and maintain long-term customer relationships is the foundation for your success as a salesperson and your success in business. Relationship selling requires a clear understanding of the dynamics of the selling process as they are experienced by your customer.

Propose A Business Marriage
For your customer, a buying decision usually means a decision to enter into a long-term relationship with you and your company. It is very much like a “business marriage.” Before the customer decides to buy, he can take you or leave you. He doesn’t need you or your company. He has a variety of options and choices open to him, including not buying anything at all. But when your customer makes a decision to buy from you and gives you money for the product or service you are selling, he becomes dependent on you. And since he has probably had bad buying experiences in the past, he is very uneasy and uncertain about getting into this kind of dependency relationship.


Fulfill Your Promises
What if you let the customer down? What if your product does not work as you promised? What if you don’t service it and support it as you promised? What if it breaks down and he can’t get it replaced? What if the product or service is completely inappropriate for his needs? These are real dilemmas that go through the mind of every customer when it comes time to make the critical buying decision.

Focus On The Relationship
Because of the complexity of most products and services today, especially high-tech products, the relationship is actually more important than the product. The customer doesn’t know the ingredients or components of your product, or how your company functions, or how he will be treated after he has given you his money, but he can make an assessment about you and about the relationship that has developed between the two of you over the course of the selling process. So in reality, the customer’s decision is based on the fact that he has come to trust you and believe in what you say.

Build A Solid Trust Bond
In many cases, the quality of your relationship with the customer is the competitive advantage that enables you to edge out others who may have similar products and services. The quality of the trust bond that exists between you and your customers can be so strong that no other competitor can get between you.

Keep Your Customers For Life
The single biggest mistake that causes salespeople to lose customers is taking those customers for granted. This is a form of “customer entropy.” It is when the salesperson relaxes his efforts and begins to ignore the customer. Almost 70 percent of customers who walked away from their existing suppliers later replied that they made the change primarily because of a lack of attention from the company.

Once you have invested the time and made the efforts necessary to build a high-quality, trust-based relationship with your customer, you must maintain that relationship for the life of your business. You must never take it for granted.

Action Exercises
First, focus on building a high quality relationship with each customer by treating your customer so well that he comes back, buys again and refers you to his friends.

Second, pay attention to your existing customers. Tell them you appreciate them. Look for ways to thank them and encourage them to come back and do business with you again.

The Three Factors Of Time: by Brian Tracy

Organize Your Life Around Your Family, You Career and Your Personal Goals
You need to stand back on a regular basis and analyze yourself, your life and your time usage. You need to become a master of your time rather than a slave to continue time pressures.

Your Most Precious Resource
Time is your most precious resource. It is the most valuable thing you have. It is perishable, it is irreplaceable, and it cannot be saved. It can only be reallocated from activities of lower value to activities of higher value. All work requires time. And time is absolutely essential for the important relationships in your life. The very act of taking a moment to think about your time before you spend it will begin to improve your personal time management immediately.

The Starting Point
Personal time management begins with you. It begins with your thinking through what is really important to you in life. And it only makes sense if you organize it around specific things that you want to accomplish. You need to set goals in three major areas of your life. First, you need family and personal goals. These are the real reasons why you get up in the morning, why you work hard and upgrade your skills, why you worry about money and sometimes feel frustrated by the demands on your time.

Decide Upon Your Goals
What are your personal and family goals, both tangible and intangible? A tangible family goal could be a bigger house, a better car, a larger television set, a vacation, or anything else that costs money. An intangible goal would be to build a higher quality relationship with your spouse and children, to spend more time with your family going for walks or reading books. Achieving these family and personal goals are the real essence of time management, and its major purpose.

How To Achieve Your Goals
The second area of goals is your business and career goals. These are the “how” goals, the means by which you achieve your personal, “why” goals. How can you achieve the level of income that will enable you to fulfill your family goals? How can you develop the skills and abilities to stay ahead of the curve in your career? Business and career goals are absolutely essential, especially when balanced with family and personal goals.

Personal Development Goals
The third type of goals is your personal development goals. Remember, you can’t achieve much more on the outside than what you have achieved and become on the inside. Your outer life will be a reflection of your inner life. If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and your career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development. You must build yourself if you want to build your life. Perhaps the greatest secret of success is that you can become anything you really want to become to achieve any goal that you really want to achieve. But in order to do it, you must go to work on yourself and never stop.

Action Exercises
First, develop the habit of stopping on a regular basis and thinking about what is really important to you. The more often you stop and think, the better decisions you will make.

Second, decide clearly upon your personal and family goals. Write them down. Discuss them with others. Be clear about why you are doing what you do.
Third, take some time to think about your career goals and the steps you will have to take to achieve them. Do something every day that moves you forward in all three areas.

Mempunyai sebab untuk berjaya

Kadang-kadang disebabkan sesuatu perkara, kita berjaya mencapai suatu perkara yang lain. Dan biasanya kerana ada sebab musabab tertentu, seseorang itu mencapai kejayaan.

Kita biasa terdengar orang bertanya kepada seseorang yang telah berjaya, "Apakah rahsia kejayaan anda?' Selalunya jawapan yang kita dapati adalah jawapan yang manis-manis belaka. Persoalannya, adakah jawapan itu yang sebenarnya ia menjurus kepada kejayaan mereka.

Saya mempunyai ramai kenalan yang telah berjaya. Salah seorangnya, bermula dari hidup yang terdesak, hutang keliling pinggang, permintaan kehidupan yang tinggi dan anak-anak yang ramai. Tetapi kesemua kesukaran ini ditukarkan kepada kesenangan. Kesusahan yang dihadapinya dijadikan cabaran untuknya. Dia bekerja keras. Membuat pelbagai pekerjaan untuk menyara hidup keluarganya, membayar hutang-hutang dan yang penting dia menabung sebahagian kecil pendapatannya. Dia juga cuba membuat perniagaan kecil-kecilan. Baginya perniagaan yang mudah sekali ialah MLM. Dia mencuba berbagai-bagai syarikat MLM, namun satu pun tak menjadi. Akhirnya dia memilih sebuah syarikat MLM yang kecil tetapi berlatar belakang yang stabil. Dan kini telah hampir 8 tahun bersama syarikat itu. Pendapatannya tidaklah banyak katanya. Tetapi dengan pendapatan itulah dia menyara keluarganya, membeli kereta baru, membayar ansuran rumah, melangsaikan hutang-hutangnya bahkan dia dapat menyimpan sebahagian besarnya gaji pekerjaan tetap untuk hari-hari tuanya.

Bagi saya, dia memang seorang yang berjaya. Berjaya mengubah nasib hidupnya yang melarat menjadi seorang yang 'senang', bahkah jauh lebih senang dari orang kebanyakan.

Berbalik kepada pokok tulisan saya ini, adalah penting kita mempunyai sebab untuk berjaya, tetapi tidak perlulah membiarkan hidup kita menjadi susah melarat baru hendak berusaha untuk berjaya.

Kita boleh mencari sebab musabab yang lain untuk berjaya. Dan pastikan ia menjadi pendorong yang begitu kuat untuk menjadi kita berjaya.

Cerita seorang tua yang bijaksana

Sebenarnya saya sudah lupa dari siapa saya mendapat cerita ini. Tetapi jalan ceritanya masih jelas diingatan saya. Ceritanya agak menarik. Suatu masa dahulu, terdapat seorang tua yang tinggal di dalam hutan di kaki sebuah gunung. Orang tua ini dikatakan seorang yang bijaksana.

Tidak jauh dari hutan itu, terdapat sebuah kampung. Di dalamnya terdapat beberapa orang budak-budak nakal. Pada suatu hari, mereka telah bersepakat untuk mempermainkan orang tua ini. Mereka pun membuat perjalanan untuk menemui orang tua tersebut. Di dalam perjalanan, mereka telah menangkap seekor burung dan membawanya bersama-sama mereka.

Tidak beberapa lama kemudian sampailah mereka di rumah orang tua itu. Mereka dapat melihat orang tua itu sedang berehat di kerusi kuda-kudanya di beranda rumahnya. Salah seorang budak itu telah mengambil burung yang dibawa bersama itu dan menyembunyikan di belakang badannya. Lalu dia pun bertanya kepada orang tua itu.

"Wahai orang tua yang bijaksana, apakah yang aku sedang sembunyikan di belakang ku?"

Orang tua itu tidak serta merta menjawab soalan itu, sebaliknya menggoyang-goyang kerusi kuda-kudanya untuk beberapa ketika. Kemudiannya dia pun berkata.

"Orang muda, kamu sedang memegang seekor burung di dalam tangan kamu".

Maka terkejutlah budak-budak itu. Mereka sama sekali tidak menyangka bahawa orang tua itu tahu, yang mereka sedang menyembunyikan seekor burung. Pun begitu, budak yang sedang memegang burung itu, tidak berpuashati dengan jawapan orang tersebut. Dia mematahkan sayap burung itu, dan bertanya lagi.

"Wahai orang tua yang bijaksana, jawapan kamu memang benar. Tetapi beritahu kami, apakah nasib burung ini?".

Sekali lagi, orang tua itu menggoyang-goyangkan kerusi kuda-kudanya buat seketika. Kemudian dia pun berkata, " Wahai anak muda, burung itu berada di dalam tangan kamu, maka nasib burung itu adalah terletak kepada kamu. Kamulah yang menentukan nasibnya'

Maka tamatlah cerita yang pendek ini.
Moralnya, ialah kita yang menentukan nasib dan masa depan kita. Ia adalah di dalam tangan kita. Tiada siapa yang akan menentukan biuat kita.

Kita yang tentukan ke manakah kita hendak pergi dan kitalah yang menentukan apakah masa depan kita. Cuba renung sejenak. Di manakah kita 5 tahun akan datang?

Keeping Yourself Positive: By Brian Tracy

The most important thing you do for your success is to take control of the suggestive elements in your environment. Be sure that what you are seeing and listening to is consistent with the goals you want to achieve.Listen Your Way To SuccessListen to educational audio programs in your car. The average person drives twelve to 25,000 miles per year which works out to between 500 and 1000 hours per year that the average person spends in his or her car. You can become an expert in your field by simply listening to educational audio programs as you drive from place to place. Take Courses In Your FieldAttend seminars given by experts in your field. Take additional courses, learn everything you possibly can. Learn from the experts. Ask them questions, write them letters, read their books, read their articles and listen to people with proven track records in the area that you want to be successful in.

Get Around The Right PeopleAssociate only with positive, success-oriented people. Get around winners. As we say, fly with the eagles. You can't fly with the eagles if you keep scratching with the turkeys. Get away from the go-nowhere types and above all, get away from negative people. Get away from negative coworkers. If you've got a negative boss, seriously consider changing jobs. Associating on a regular basis with negative people is enough in itself to condemn you to a life of underachievement, frustration and failure. Associate only with positive people. Get around winners. Visualize Your GoalsThe last thing before you sleep and the first thing in the morning, think about and visualize your goals as realities. See your goal as though it already existed. Your subconscious mind is only activated by affirmations and pictures that are received in the present tense. See your goal vividly just before you go to sleep. See yourself performing at your best. See the situations that you're facing, working out exactly the way you want them to. Feed Yourself Mental PicturesSee yourself living the kind of life that you want to live. See yourself with the kind of relationships, the kind of health, the kind of car, the kind of home you really want. Visualize just before you fall asleep at night. The first thing you do when yo