Posted by Brian Tracy on Dec 23, 2006
Before you begin work, always ask yourself, “Is this task in the top 20% of my activities or in the bottom 80%?�?
The 80/20 Rule is one of the most helpful of all concepts of time and life management. It is also called the Pareto Principle after its founder, the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who first wrote about it in 1895. Pareto noticed that people in his society seemed to divide naturally into what he called the "vital few,” the top 20% in terms of money and influence, and the “trivial many,” the bottom 80%.
The Great Discovery
He later discovered that virtually all economic activity was subject to this Pareto Principle as well.
For example, this rule says that 20% of your activities will account for 80% of your results. 20% of your customers will account for 80% of your sales. 20% of your products or services will account for 80% of your profits. 20% of your tasks will account for 80% of the value of what you do, and so on.
This means that if you have a list of ten items to do, two of those items will turn out to be worth as much or more than the other eight items put together.
The Greatest Payoff
Here is an interesting discovery. Each of these tasks may take the same amount of time to accomplish. But one or two of those tasks will contribute five or ten times the value as any of the others.
Often, one item on a list of ten things that you have to do can be worth more than all the other nine items put together. This task is invariably the one that you should do first.
The Most Valuable Tasks
The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often the hardest and most complex. But the payoff and rewards for completing these tasks efficiently can be tremendous. For this reason, you must adamantly refuse to work on tasks in the bottom 80% while you still have tasks in the top 20% left to be done.
Before you begin work, always ask yourself, “Is this task in the top 20% of my activities or in the bottom 80%?”
Getting Started
The hardest part of any important task is getting started on it in the first place. Once you actually begin work on a valuable task, you seem to be naturally motivated to continue. There is a part of your mind that loves to be busy working on significant tasks that can really make a difference. Your job is to feed this part of your mind continually.
Managing Your Life
Time management is really life management, personal management. It is really taking control over the sequence of events. Time management is control over what you do next. And you are always free to choose the task that you will do next. Your ability to choose between the important and the unimportant is the key determinant of your success in life and work.
Effective, productive people discipline themselves to start on the most important task that is before them. They force themselves to eat that frog, whatever it is. As a result, they accomplish vastly more than the average person and are much happier as a result. This should be your way of working as well.
Action Exercises
Make a list of all the key goals, activities, projects and responsibilities in your life today. Which of them are, or could be, in the top 10% or 20% of tasks that represent, or could represent, 80% or 90% of your results?
Resolve today that you are going to spend more and more of your time working in those few areas that can really make a difference in your life and career, and less and less time on lower value activities.
Tags: Leadership Success
Posted by Brian Tracy on Dec 22, 2006
The starting point of all riches is the development of a prosperity consciousness. You must become a financial success in your thinking long before you achieve it in your reality.
Both poverty and riches are the result of a state of mind, and the most important single step you ever take on the road to wealth and financial independence is the decision to change your thinking, to impress into your mind an unshakable belief that you can and will achieve your financial goals. This must happen before anything else happens.
Think And Grow Rich
When I was growing up, I was fascinated by stories of successful men and women and how they made and lost their fortunes, and then made them over again. I read about the importance of a prosperity consciousness in the book, Think And Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, several times. But I never fully understood what it meant until about five years ago. Then it hit me and I’ve never been quite the same since. Every aspect of my life has improved dramatically, especially in the area of accumulating wealth, since I finally understood what is meant by a prosperity consciousness.
Two Great Discoveries
Here are two of the most exciting principles ever discovered in the long search by mankind for the secrets of health, happiness and great personal wealth.
All Causation is Mental
The first principle is this. All causation is mental. That means that everything that you are or ever will be will be a result of how you use your mind. You are merely a mind with a body to carry it around with. The entire man made world that you see is simply an expression of thought. Your entire life is an expression of your own thinking. And since the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your life, if you improve the quality of your thinking, you must, you will, inevitably improve the quality of your life.
The Law of Expectations
The second principle is what we call the law of expectations. This law says that whatever you expect with confidence, positive or negative, becomes your reality. If you confidently expect to succeed, if you confidently expect to learn something from every experience, if you confidently expect to become wealthy as a result of applying your talents and abilities to your opportunities and you maintain that attitude of confident expectations long enough, it will become your reality. It will give you a positive optimistic cheerful attitude that will cause people to want to help you, and will cause things to happen the way you want them to happen.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to practice these principles in your day to day life:
First, start thinking today in a positive, optimistic, confident way about personal and financial success. Continually imagine what differences it would make in your life if you were financially independent. This is the starting point of developing a prosperity consciousness.
Second, develop your own attitude of positive expectations. Look for the good in every situation. Look for the valuable lesson in every setback or difficulty. Be positive and cheerful about everything that happens and you will be amazed at the difference it makes in your life.
Tags: Financial Success
Posted by Brian Tracy on Dec 20, 2006
Don’t get caught not listening to your potential customer. This is critical to your sales success.
Paraphrase Your Customer’s Words
The customer is only sure that you have been listening when you paraphrase what they have said and feed it back in your own words. This is where the rubber meets the road in effective listening. This is where you demonstrate in no uncertain terms to the prospect that your listening has been real and sincere. This is where you show the prospect that you were paying complete attention to what he or she was saying. Paraphrasing is how you prove it.
Question For Clarification
When the prospect has finished explaining his or her situation to you, and you have paused, and then questioned for clarification, you paraphrase the prospects primary thoughts and concerns, and feed them back to him or her in your own words.
Use the Right Words
For example, you might say, "Let me make sure I understand exactly what you are saying. It sounds to me like you are concerned about two things more than anything else, and that in the past you have had a couple of experiences that have made you very careful in approaching a decision of this kind."
Feed It Back Accurately
You then go on to feed back to the prospect exactly what he or she has told you, pausing and questioning for clarification as you go, until the customer says words to the effect of, "Yes, that’s it! You’ve got it exactly."
Earn the Right to Sell
Only when you and the customer completed a thorough "examination" and have mutually agreed on the "diagnosis" you are in a position to begin talking to the customer about your product or service. In general terms, this means that you can not pull out your brochures and price lists and begin telling the customer how your product or service can solve his problems or achieve his goals until about seventy percent of the way through the sales conversation. Until then, you have not yet earned the right. Until then, you don’t even know enough to begin an intelligent presentation without embarrassing yourself.
Be A Good Listener
The more and better you listen, the more and better people will like you, trust you and want to do business with you. The more they will want to get involved with you as a person and the more popular you will be with them. Excellent listeners are welcome everywhere, in every walk of life, and they eventually and ultimately arrive at the top of their fields.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.
First, remember that your first job in the sale is to get the customer to like you and believe that you understand his situation. Paraphrasing is the way you accomplish this.
Second, be sure that the customer agrees with you completely when you feed back his concerns to him. Only then can you really start selling.
Tags: Sales Success
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