How to Turn Nothing Into Something
by Jim Rohn

Have you ever wondered how to turn nothing into something?

First, in order to turn nothing into something, you’ve got to start with some ideas and imagination. Now, it might be hard to call ideas and imagination nothing; but how tangible are those ideas? That is a bit of a mystery. I don’t believe that ideas that can be turned into a hotel, ideas that can be turned into an enterprise, ideas that can be turned into a new vaccine or ideas that can be turned into some miracle product, should be called nothing. But tangibly, you have nothing. Interesting! Think of it, ideas that become so powerful in your mind and in your consciousness that they seem real to you even before they become tangible. Imagination that is so strong, you can actually see it.

When I built my first home for my family in Idaho all those years ago, before I started construction, I would take my friends and associates out to the vacant property and give them a tour of the house. Is that possible? Is it possible to take someone on a tour through an imaginary house? And the answer is, “Yes, of course.” “Here is the 3 car garage,” I used to say, and my friends would look and say, “Yes, this garage will hold 3 cars.” I could really make it “live”. I would take them on a tour throughout the house… “Here is the fireplace, and look, this side is brick and the other side is stone.” I could make it so real… “Follow me through the rest of the house. Take a look through the picture window here in the kitchen, isn’t the view great?” One day, I made the house so real that one of my friends bumped his elbow on the fireplace. I mean, it was that real.

So, the first step of turning nothing into something is to imagine the possibilities. Imagine All of the possibilities. One of the reasons for seminars, sermons, lyrics from songs and testimonials of others is to give us an idea of the possibilities; to help us imagine and to see the potential.

Now here is the second step for turning nothing into something, you must Believe that what you imagine IS possible for you. Testimonials like, “If I can do it, you can do it.” often become a support to our belief. And we start believing. First we imagine it’s possible. Second, we start to believe that what’s possible is possible for us.

We might also believe because of our own testimonial. Here is what your testimonial might say, “If I did it once, I can do it again. If it happened for me before, it could very well happen again.” So we believe not only the testimonials of others who say, “If I can do it, you can do it. If I can change, you can change. If I can start with nothing, you can start with nothing. If I can turn it all around, you can turn it all around.” Then we also have the support of our own testimonial, if we’ve accomplished something before. “If we did it once, we can do it again. If we did it last year, we can do it this year.” So those two things together are very powerful. Now, we do not have actual substance yet, although it is very close.

Again, step one is to imagine the possibilities. Step two is to imagine that what is possible is possible for you. Here is what we call step two - faith to believe. In fact, one writer said this, “Faith is substance.” An interesting word: “substance”, the powerful ability to believe in the possibilities that are possible for you. If you have faith to believe… that faith is substance, substance meaning “a piece of the real.” Now it’s not “the real”, it’s not this podium, but it is so powerful that it is very close to being real and so the writer said, “The faith is a piece of, the substance of”. He then goes on to call it evidence, substance and evidence. It is difficult to call substance and evidence “nothing”. It is nothing in the sense that it cannot be seen except with the inner eye. You can’t get a hold of it because it isn’t YET tangible. But it is possible to turn nothing, especially ideas and imaginations, into something if you believe that it is now possible f or you. That substance and evidence becomes so powerful that it can now be turned into reality.

So the first step is to imagine what is possible, the second is to have the faith to believe that what is possible is possible for you. And now the third step is to that you go to work to make it real. You go to work to make it a hotel. You go to work to make it an enterprise. You go to work and make it good health. You go to work and make it an association. You go to work and make it a good marriage. You go to work and make it a movement; you make it tangible. You make it viable. You breathe life into it and then you construct it. That is such a unique and powerful ability for all of us human beings. Put this to work and start the miracle process today!

To Your Success,
Jim Rohn

Parkinson’s Law
By: Brian Tracy

Why People Succeed or Fail
Parkinson’s Law is one of the best known and the most important laws of money and wealth accumulation. It was developed by English writer C. Northcote Parkinson many years ago and it explains why most people retire poor.

The Way the Law Works
This law says that, no matter how much money people earn, they tend to spend the entire amount and a little bit more besides. Their expenses rise in lockstep with their earnings. Many people are earning today several times what they were earning at their first jobs. But somehow, they seem to need every single penny to maintain their current lifestyles. No matter how much they make, there never seems to be enough.

The Key to Financial Success
The first corollary of Parkinson’s Law says: “Financial independence comes from violating Parkinson’s Law.”

Parkinson’s Law explains the trap that most people fall into. This is the reason for debt, money worries and financial frustration. It is only when you develop sufficient willpower to resist the powerful urge to spend everything you make that you begin to accumulate money and move ahead of the crowd.

Build Your Wealth Now
Did you know there’s over 5-million millionaires in America? It’s shocking to find out that America breeds so many successful people. Do you want to know how they do it?

Learn To Attract Money
You make your own choices and decisions about money. If you’re unhappy with the amount of money you’re making - the only question you should be asking is “How can I make more money?”

Slow Down Your Spending
The second corollary of Parkinson’s Law is: “If you allow your expenses to increase at a slower rate than your earnings, and you save or invest the difference, you will become financially independent in your working lifetime.”

This is the key. I call it the “wedge.” If you can drive a wedge between your increasing earnings and the increasing costs of your lifestyle, and then save and invest the difference, you can continue to improve your lifestyle as you make more money. By consciously violating Parkinson’s Law, you will eventually become financially independent.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to apply this law immediately:

First, imagine that your financial life is like a failing company that you have taken over. Institute an immediate financial freeze. Halt all non-essential expenses. Draw up a budget of your fixed, unavoidable costs per month and resolve to limit your expenditures temporarily to these amounts.

Carefully examine every expense. Question it as though you were analyzing someone else’s expenses. Look for ways to economize or cut back. Aim for a minimum of a 10 percent reduction in your living costs over the next three months.

Second, resolve to save and invest 50 percent of any increase you receive in your earnings from any source. Learn to live on the rest. This still leaves you the other 50 percent to do with as you desire. Do this for the rest of your career.

Celebrate Your Victories and Give Thanks
by Jack Canfield

Research has shown over and over again that the more you acknowledge your past successes, the more confident you become in taking on, and successfully accomplishing, new ones.

As you stay the course and begin to realize your goals, you need to do two very important things:

1.) Celebrate your successes, and …

2.) Express your gratitude to everyone who has helped you along the way.

Let’s look at a few of the ways you can acknowledge your positive past.

Celebrate Your Victories

In order to justify all your sacrifice and persistence that is required to create the life of your dreams, you have to enroll your family, your friends, your colleagues and co-workers, your employees, your clients and, most importantly yourself, to pay the price.

In order for them to do that, there need to be payoffs along the way. Every time you reach a milestone on the path to ultimate success, and every time you achieve a major goal, you need to celebrate by doing something fun and nurturing.

Have an Attitude of Gratitude

Take the time to thank everyone that has helped you achieve your goals. Write them a letter, call them, send them an e-mail or send them a present. It can be as simple as a hug and a thank you — to something as elaborate as letting someone use your summer vacation home for a week.

The Power of Acknowledgment

When you take the time to thank someone, they feel acknowledged for their contribution and will be more likely to want to help again.

Your Inner Child

A big part of creating more success in life is rewarding yourself when you succeed. So, it’s important to reward your inner child as well. Every time you work hard to meet a goal, the part of you that just wants to have fun has to sit still and be good. However, just like any kid, if it knows it will be rewarded later with a treat, it will hang in there with you.

How can you reward your inner child?

• Take a 20-minute walk after an hour or two of concentrated work
• Go for walks in the morning with your spouse, friend, or significant other
• Take 20 minutes to listen to music and daydream
• Take most weekends totally off
• Take several weeklong vacations throughout the year
• Get regular massages
• Engage in daily meditation, exercise and yoga
• Take music lessons
• Go to movies, concerts and plays
• Listen to comedy tapes and watch the Comedy Network
• Listen to motivational audio programs when driving

Thank Your Higher Power

Finally, it is important to thank God, or however you perceive the Higher Power, for all of the abundance that comes into your life. Start with the little stuff — another day of life, healthy children, a sunny day, people who love you, family and friends. Be thankful for the birds, your pets, the clothes you have and the food you eat.

And be especially thankful for any additional blessings that come into your life. Take time each day to say a prayer of thanks when you first arise, before meals, and again at night before bed.

Having an attitude of gratitude opens up the channels for even more abundance to flow into your life.

The more grateful you are, the more you will attract things to be grateful for.

Opportunities Are Unlimited
By: Brian Tracy

There have never been so many opportunities to start and build a successful business than there are today.

One Million Every Year
Ambitious individuals like you, with dreams and hopes, are starting new businesses today at a faster rate than ever before. Over one million new enterprises are being launched each year, and the rate is accelerating. The opportunities for finding or developing a new business idea are all around you, and with proper preparation, the possibilities for your success are enormous.

No Better Time Than Today
As many as 80 percent of all the products and services in common use today at home, in business and in organizations large and small, will be obsolete in five years. They’ll be replaced by new and better products and services. The rapid development of new technology and the desire of people for new or better or cheaper products or services means that you can start your fortune easier today than at any other time in history.

Avoiding Failure, Assuring Success
However, we know that 80 to 90 percent of new businesses fail in the first three years due to a variety of factors. One of those factors is managerial incompetence. It is an inability to sell the product or an inability to control costs or both. Another major reason for failure is offering the wrong product at the wrong price to the wrong market at the wrong time, or a combination of these. In which case, even the best marketing efforts and cost controls won’t help you.

Imagine if you could become a millionaire today!
Your life would be easier and more fun. You could be taking more vacations, and spending the kind of time with your family that you really want.

If you’re like me you want financial success, and you want to know the secrets of how all these millionaires made their money.

The 21 Success Secrets of Self Made Millionaires
I’ve spent years interviewing millionaires - to find out what their secret is, and how they made their money. I tell you the 21 most powerful success secrets of self-made millionaires.

Determine the Need
The first principle with regard to selecting any new product or service is to determine that it fills a genuine, existing need, that it solves a problem of some kind for the customer, or that it makes the life or work of the customer better in some way. You must be very clear about this.

Sell a Quality Product or Service
The second principle for success with a new product or service is that it must be of good quality at a fair price. And if it is in competition with other similar products or services, it must have what is called a unique selling proposition. It must have some beneficial feature or attraction that makes it different from and superior to its competitors.

Your Area of Uniqueness
We call this its area of uniqueness. And it is central to success in business. No product or service can succeed unless it is somehow unique and superior to any other product or service like it. There is seldom any real opportunity in what is called a “me too” product - one that is just the same as all the others. At the same time, the safest business strategy is to start off with an accepted product that you can improve. In other words, instead of trying to invent a whole new business or industry, start off with something that people are already doing, people are already buying and using, and find some way to improve it.

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

First, determine exactly what is different and special about your product or service that will cause people to buy it in competition with similar products or services. Build your entire sales and marketing around this unique selling proposition.

Second, investigate before you invest. Be prepared to look at a variety of different business opportunities until you find one that really excites you before you make a decision to get started.

6 Steps to a Stronger Mind
by Mark Victor Hansen

Our minds are all we’ve got. They are the source of who we, both personally and professionally, are. They determine our success or failure. They are our strength and our weakness.

With the quality of our entire lives resting on our minds, it’s unbelievable that we choose to fill them with so much garbage. The amount of negativity from television, newspapers, tabloids and other media that bombards us on a daily basis is amazing. We would never think to fill our bodies with only junk food, right? Heck no. We know that if we ate nothing but French fries and ice cream we would experience negative consequences like skin blemishes, weight gain and rotting teeth.

But with mental junk food we don´t see the physical consequences right away. When our minds are constantly filled with negativity and bad news, our minds begin to decay. That´s why we need to develop a strong, Herculean-esque mind.

Developing your mental muscles will give you the power to accomplish anything you want in life. Sure, it takes some discipline on your part, but look at the world’s greatest bodybuilders. They don’t show up at the gym every once in a while. They create a workout schedule and they are at the gym every day, no matter what.

Hire yourself as your “mental manager”. Figure out how much you’re going to pay yourself and make up a job list. Here are six jobs to assign to yourself to create a stronger mind.

1. Read Right
How much good news do you see in the newspapers? Editors usually say, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Not much chance of positivity there. So, read something else. Read books – good books. Books that motivate you. Books that inspire you. Look up some of the great inspirational authors online or in your local bookstore. Read them every morning and/or every night, before you go to sleep.

2. Share Your Mind
Find someone, or a group of someone’s, who have the same desire to share positivity. This is called masterminding. Great successes are created when great minds come together and think about the same things.

3. Find A Mentor
My mentor was Buckminster Fuller and I learned more from that man about life than I ever hoped to. Who are the people you admire most, whether you know them or not? Figure out whom you’d like to emulate and study them. If they offer seminars, attend them. If they’ve written books, read them. Just a few I´d recommend are: Axel Henriksen, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, Dr. Wayne Dyer and Zig Ziglar.

4. Listen to Motivational/Inspirational CDs and DVDs
This is one of the most important habits you can create for yourself. Find inspirational audio messages and listen to them over and over. Earl Nightingale, one of the most brilliant thinkers of our time, had this to say on the subject: “Tape listening is the most important advance in technology since the invention of the printing press.” With CDs speakers can reach 10 times as many people as the printed word ever could.

5. Sign Up and Attend Seminars
The motivational messages you hear at seminars, and the inspirational people you meet, reinforce your self-esteem and positive thinking. You can search out seminars via the internet, newspapers or local colleges and universities.

6. Turn Off the Television
On average, the television set in an American home is on over 7 hours a day. Just like any bad habit, it needs to be broken. I’m not saying that all television is bad. Heck no. I’m simply recommending that you cut back on your television viewing. Decide how long you’re going to watch television and then turn it off when you’re time is up. Try cutting back your television viewing one hour every day at first. You can use that time to read a book, listen to a motivational tape, walk your dog or spend time with your family.

After reading these six steps maybe you’re saying, “But Mark, I can´t do it. I just don´t know if I can be this dedicated to bettering myself?” Who else are you going to be dedicated to if not yourself? Because when it comes right down to it, folks, you are all that you’ve got. Jobs and relationships come and go. Children grow up, leave the nest and get lives of their own. Then there you are, alone with yourself. Why not create a “you” you can be proud of.

‘Amaze yourself; manifest your full potential.’

Mark Victor Hansen

Selling to Today’s Customers
By: Brian Tracy

What is selling? In its simplest terms, selling is the process of helping a person to conclude that your product or service is of greater value to him than the price you are asking for.

How Markets Work
Our market society is based on the principles of freedom and mutual benefit. Each party to a transaction only enters into it when he feels that he will be better off as a result of the transaction than he would be without it.

The Three Options
In a free market, the customer always has three options with any purchase decision. First, the customer can buy your product or service. Second, the customer can buy the product or service from someone else. Third, the customer can decide to buy nothing at all.

Convincing the Customer
For the customer to buy your particular product or service, he or she must be convinced that it is not only the best choice available but he must also be persuaded that there is no better way for him to spend the equivalent amount of money. Your job as a salesperson is to convince the customer that all these conditions exist and then to elicit a commitment from him to take action on your offer.

Why is it that people buy or refuse to buy? Why is it that some people buy quickly, and some people take forever to buy, or never buy at all?

Influencing Customer Behavior
In this DVD training session you learn one of the most powerful influence strategies and techniques ever discovered in professional selling.

Customize Your Sales Presentation
The field of professional selling has changed dramatically since World War II. In a way, selling methodologies are merely responses to customer requirements. At one time, customers were relatively unsophisticated and poorly informed about their choices. Salespeople catered to this customer with carefully planned and memorized sales presentations, loads of enthusiasm and a bag full of techniques designed to crush resistance and get the order at virtually any cost.

Treat Them With Respect
But the customer of the 1950s has matured into the customer of the 21st century. Customers are now more intelligent and knowledgeable than ever before. They are experienced buyers and they have interacted with hundreds of salespeople. They are extremely sophisticated and aware of the incredible variety of products and services that are available to them, as well as their relative strengths and weaknesses of those products. Many of them are smarter and better educated than most salespeople and they are far more careful about making a buying decision of any kind.

The Need For Speed
In addition, they are overwhelmed with work and under-supplied with time. Because of the rapidly increasing pace of change, down-sizing, restructuring and the competitive pressures surrounding them, customers today are harried and hassled. They are swamped with responsibilities, impatient, suspicious, critical, demanding, and spoiled. To sell to today’s customer requires a higher caliber of sales professional than has ever before been required. And it is only going to become tougher and more complicated in the months and years ahead.

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

Second, upgrade your knowledge and skills every day so you can sell more effectively. Remember, your customers only get better when you get better.

Layoffs at Dell: Another Reminder that It’s Better to Work for Yourself

by Richard Parker

If ever there was a case to convince you that job security only happens when you own the business, you need only look to Dell Computer. They recently announced results that “blew away” Wall Street expectations. They made $759 million for the quarter and thanked their employees by announcing a planned layoff of 8,000 people, roughly 10% of their workforce.

There’s no question they have been taking a beating recently and margins continue to erode in their space but that’s what makes my blood boil about big business - you have no control of your future cash flow or career when you work for someone else. Unless you own a business you’re letting someone else play your cards. I used to say that with one bad quarter you can be out of a job working for a big firm but here’s evidence that even with a solid fiscal period layoffs happen. In fact, they happens all the time.

What’s the lesson? It’s simple: do whatever you must but get into your own business! If you’re reading this blog you obviously have the desire at some level to own a business. Now, you must translate that into an all-out commitment to achieving your goal. Stay focused. Learn everything you need to know about buying a business and then do it. I promise that once you buy a good business you’ll read articles like the Dell story and while your heart will go out to the poor folks who will soon be unemployed, you will, at the same time, have to smirk. Because getting laid off will never, ever happen to you.

How To Cut Costs And Increase Your Sales

In your last Success Marketing Strategy we talked about pricing and how most business people under price their products and services. Of course, fixing this problem is a huge source of profit improvement.

A second source of profit improvement directly linked to everything else we’ve discussed in these email is doing more business with each customer as opposed to obtaining lots of new customers. A lesson I’ve learned from the mail order business is that a buyer is a buyer is a buyer. It’s infinitely easier and always more profitable to work at increasing the purchasing of your satisfied customers than it is to go out and add new ones.

Everybody should read Russell Conwell’s great book ‘Acres of Diamonds,’ at least once a month. This great story hammers home the point of finding opportunities right in your own back yard.

Then the third source of profit improvement is cost control. It’s so darned easy for costs to sneak up on you when you’re not looking. I’m constantly catching some cost factor in my own businesses that has side stepped its controls and needs to be reevaluated.

If you have the clout a good policy to insist on and to contractedly commit all your vendors to is advanced written notice of any price increases. You should also take the time to check new bills against previous bills on a regular basis. Also a set percentage of gross sales should be established for each cost category in your business. For payroll, supplies, etc. and checked each month. If total cost exceeds the set percentage you’ve got a problem.

I also like to find ways for businesses to make additional sales to existent customers with zero marketing costs. In the mail order business this is quite easy to do. It’s done with what’s done with a bounce back offer. That is a brochure making another offer packed in with the shipment of the ordered merchandise.

This way the sales literature piggy backs its way to the customer with the shipment, there’s no postage, no advertising costs. Many mail order companies have developed very sophisticated, comprehensive bounce back marketing programs including the insertion of dozens of different offers in with each outbound shipment.

If you don’t ship merchandise but you do send monthly statements or send out invoices the same idea applies. Or for the retail store sales literature can be dropped into each bag carried out of the store by the customer. In a service business the literature could be hand delivered by the service provider.

If you transact business online…you should certainly offer additional products on your thank you pages. In some way, shape or form it makes good economic sense to combine the necessity of delivering the product or service with advertising for the next sale.

Since this concept of profit improvement is so important, let’s expand on it some more in your next Success Marketing Strategy that will be arriving to you in just a couple of days.

Dedicated To Multiplying Your Income,

Dan Kennedy

How To Get Your Sales Staff To Sell

In your last Success Marketing Strategy, we finished up our discussion about the seven strategies that can help you stimulate new business, increase business from existent customers and build repeat business.

As I mentioned, the seven simple marketing strategies can be creatively used many different ways.

Now, let’s turn our attention to a topic that quite possible offend some of you, but without it…the entire world comes to a screeching halt. That topic is of course…SALES!

Sales…when speaking about sales, you must first address sales people and If you employ sales people or will in the future you’ve got sales management problems. Although I can’t even begin to provide a full analysis of the solutions to sales management problems in a single email there are several fundamental and important things we can discuss that will help you have more productive relationships with your sales people, your distributors, or your franchisees.

First, you should remember that sales people are people. There are any number of problems that they can have at various times that will negatively affect their performance and productivity. Fears and insecurities, laziness, depression, personal and family problems, financial problems, health problems, automobile problems, all these things become factors affecting your business when you market through sales people.

This is probably one of the reasons for the volatility of the 80/20 principle in sales organizations. This principle In managing says that 80% of the sales come from 20% of the reps and 80% of the problems come from 20% of the reps. As long as it’s not the same 20% you’re in good shape and it rarely is.

In managing sales people you’ll actually be dealing with three distinctly different situations. One - coaching the willing sales person to peak performance. Two - trying to motivate the mediocre performer and three - frequently cutting out and replacing the poor performers.

Let’s take the poor performer first. Most managers spend way too much time on the poor performer and too little time with their high performers. And most managers postpone cutting the inadequate performer much longer than they should.

Once an individual has demonstrated his unwillingness or inability to perform effectively in your business you do no one any favors by letting him hang on. In fact, firing this person is the best thing you can do for him. He’ll probably be more relieved than anything else and will now be free to find an employment situation that is some how better matched to his personality. It’s also the best thing you can do for your own sanity as well as for the organization.

A firing now and then in an organization is a vivid reminder that unsatisfactory performance will not be tolerated. I have a poster hidden in one of my offices that says, “You should never try to teach a pig to sing. It only annoys the pig and you get covered with mud in the attempt.” The point is that there are some people burdened with such a combination of negative attitudes and experiences that turning them into winners is much more trouble than it’s worth. A lot of the manager’s time is consumed by the mediocre performers. Those doing just enough to give you hope but not enough to warrant celebration.

Then there are the high performers, producing about 80% of the positive results who are mostly ignored by management. I will be covering this group and picking up where we left off in our next Success Marketing Strategy that you will be receiving in just a couple of days.

Dedicated To Multiplying Your Income,

Dan Kennedy

Seven Qualities of Master Achievers
by Brian Tracy (excerpted from The Success Mastery Academy)

If you think the way successful people think and adopt their success habits, you too can be successful. Here are seven qualities of the top 1% of successful people.

1) They are Ambitious.
They see themselves capable of being the best. They see themselves with the capacity of being really good at what they do. This was a really big thought for me. It held me back for many years. When I saw people who were doing better than I was, I naturally assumed they were better than I was. And if they were better than I was, then I must be worse than them, so that would mean they were superior and I was inferior. That is a big problem in our society. We have feelings of inferiority, and these feelings of inferiority are often translated into feelings of undeservedness. We don’t feel we deserve to be a big success. The word “deserve” comes from two Latin words meaning “from service.” You deserve 100% of everything you make and enjoy as long as you get it from serving other people. Your rewards are in direct proportion to your service. If you serve better and serve more and serve at a higher level and serve more enthusiastically and serve a higher quality, then you’ll have a wonderful income you’ll deserve every penny of it. You must see yourself capable of being the best.

2) They are Courageous.
They work to confront the fears that holds most people back. The two biggest enemies to yours and my success is fear and doubt. Eliminating fear and doubt is the key. The key to eliminating fear: If you want to develop courage, then simply act courageously when it’s called for. When you do something repeatedly, you develop a habit. Make a habit throughout your life of doing the things you fear. If you do the thing you fear, the death of fear is certain. To overcome fear of rejection in prospecting, you must realize that rejection in selling is not personal. Top salespeople do not fear prospecting. Face your fear. Do the things you fear. The ability to confront your fear is the mark of the superior person. If you have high ambition and you decide to be in the top 10%, and you can confront your fears and do the things that are holding you back, those two things alone will make you a great success.

3) They are Committed.
The top people in every field, especially the top salespeople, are completely committed. They believe in themselves; they believe in their companies; they believe in their products and services; they believe in their customers; they have an intense belief. We know that there is a one-to-one relationship between the depth of your belief and what happens in your reality. And if you absolutely believe in the rightness and the goodness of what you’re doing, you become like a catalyst. You create what is called a transfer, like an electrical transfer of enthusiasm. People like to buy from people who truly believe in what they are doing. People who are not committed to what they do lead very empty lives. The second part is that caring is the critical element in modern selling. Caring is a critical element in life, as well. All men and women who enjoy great lives care about what they do! They have passion about what they do. They love what they do.

4) They are Professional.
Top salespeople see themselves as consultants rather than as salespeople. When you think of the word “consultant,” what words come to mind? When do you call a consultant? A consultant is a problem-solver. What word does not appear when you think of a consultant–the word “salesperson”. We don’t think of consultants as salespeople. The most successful consultants in America are the very best salespeople of their services. When a person is positioned as a consultant in the mind and heart of the customer, he is not seen as a salesperson. Do people like to be sold? Do people like to be helped to improve their lives and work? So they look upon a salesperson as someone who sells them. Selling is something you do “to” someone, and people don’t like to be done “to”. So when you think of being a consultant, here is the key. How do you position yourself as a consultant with your customers? Of course, you act like a consultant, but even before you get the chance to act like a consultant , you build a rapport. And the most simple answer of all, and this is the most profound principle: People accept you at your own evaluation of yourself. Consultants come in and have a cup of coffee. Salespeople wait in the waiting room and have a glass of water. If you say you’re a consultant, your customer will accept you as a consultant. >From now on, position yourself as a consultant. Think of yourself as a consultant. Remember, 80% of what you accomplish on the outside is determined by who you are on the inside. How you see yourself determines how the customer responds to you. The customer’s perception of you determines how much they buy and how much they recommend you to other customers.

5) They are Prepared.
They review every detail in advance. To be in the top 10% requires additional efforts. It requires doing things that the average person is not willing to do. It requires making sacrifices the average person is not willing to make. It requires reviewing every detail of every call or situation before every business meeting. But the difference it makes is extraordinary. Before you go into a meeting, do your homework. Successful people are more concerned about pleasing results than they are about pleasing methods. When you sit down with a client, there is nothing more complimentary to a client than the feeling that you have prepared for the meeting.

6) They are Continuous Learners.
They recognize that if they’re not continually getting better, they’re getting worse. They read, they listen to CDs and they take additional training. The professional never stops learning. So read, listen to CDs, take continuous training.

7) They are Responsible.
They see themselves as President of their own personal services corporation. The top people in our society have an attitude of self-employed. 100% of us are self-employed. We are presidents of our own personal services corporation. You work for yourself. The biggest mistake we can ever make is to think we work for anyone else. We work for ourselves. The person who signs our paycheck may change; our jobs may change, but we are always the same. We are the one constant–we are always self-employed. The fact of the matter is — this is not optional, it is mandatory — you are the president of your own company, you’re the president of your own career, your own life, your own finances, your own body, your own family, your own health. You are totally responsible. We are responsible. No one will ever do it for us. It’s the most liberating and exhilarating thought of all, to think that you’re the president of your own life.