Posted by Brian Tracy on May 29, 2008
What is your most valuable asset?
According to Dr. Theodore Leavitt, Dean of the Harvard Business School, the most valuable asset that a company has is its reputation.
Dr. Leavitt defines reputation as “How you are known to your customers”.
In marketing and business, we refer to this as your “positioning” or “brand.” Your reputation is determined by the way that your customers and prospective customers talk about your company in the marketplace.
When we work with business owners and executives, we ask the question, “How would it be helpful or useful for people to talk about your company?”
In other words, if you could be a fly on the wall and listen to one of your customers talk to one of your prospective customers about your company, what would you want them to say?
Would you want people to talk about your company by saying that you have high quality products and services, excellent customer service, before and after the sale, that you are a high integrity company and that your people are some of the nicest people to deal with in the industry?
What would you like people to say about your company? More importantly, what could you begin doing, starting today, to make sure that people talk about you in a positive way after they have done business with you?
In positioning, you build your reputation around the words that you want to own in your customer’s mind. Top companies like BMW own the words, “The Ultimate Driving Machine.”
Wal-Mart has become the most successful retail company in history with the words, “Everyday Low Prices.”
Every company that is successful, and every product that is successful, can be summarized in one or two words in the minds of its customers and prospective customers. What are yours? What could they be? What should they be?
This brings us to the most important part of these Words of Wisdom today. It is the discovery that your personal reputation is your most valuable asset as well. Your personal reputation, the way that you are known to others and talked about by others when you are not there, is the most valuable asset you have in determining your success and happiness.
People who succeed over the long term are invariable those who have excellent reputations. The people around them respect them and talk highly of them when they are not there. Top people are known for certain qualities, especially integrity, honor, straight-forwardness, quality work and dependability.
In other words, your most valuable reputation is your character. It is your willingness and ability to make commitments and then to keep your word. It is your ability to deliver on your promises, to do what you say you will do, every time, without exception.
One of the great weaknesses in the human character is the tendency to follow the path of least resistance. This leads people to do things that are fun and easy, and which offer immediate gratification, rather than to do the things that are hard and difficult, but which lead to greater success in the future.
The key determinant of character is self-discipline. Self-discipline was defined by Albert Hubbard as, “The ability to make yourself do the things you should do, when you should do them, whether you feel like it or not.”
It takes no character or discipline to do things when you feel like it, such as getting up earlier in the morning to plan your day, engaging in vigorous physical exercise to keep healthy and alert, eating the right foods, and fewer of them, etc.
It takes tremendous discipline and willpower for you to discipline yourself to do those things that are hard and necessary, but which lead on to success and happiness.
The most important emotion determining your happiness and your relationships with other people is your level of self-esteem. The more you like yourself and respect yourself, the more you like and respect others, and the more they like and respect you in return.
There is a direct relationship between self-discipline and self-esteem. The more you discipline yourself to do the things that you know you should do, whether you feel like it or not, the more you like and respect yourself. The more you like and respect yourself, the more you like and respect others and the better is your entire life.
Your most valuable asset then is your character, based on willpower and self-discipline. It is your ability to keep your promises, no matter what it costs. It is your determination to do high quality work, and to do it on time and on budget, as you promised.
When you develop a reputation as a high-quality person, who’s word is absolutely trustworthy, and who does high-quality work, your future will be guaranteed.
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Tags: Brian's Words of Wisdom
Posted by Brian Tracy on May 28, 2008
Three Keys to Building Relationships
Top sales professionals see themselves as "Doctors of Selling." They see themselves as professionals, well educated, acting in their "patient’s" best interest, and bound by a high code of ethics.
The medical process is the same everywhere. Whenever you go to any doctor, of any kind, for any condition, he will follow the three part sequence of examination, diagnosis and prescription.
Begin With a Thorough Examination
Just as a medical professional would never think of treating you without following these three steps in order, you as a doctor of selling, would never allow a customer to force you to sell without your going through your three stages as well. This is as applicable to selling magazines door-to-door as it is to selling oil tankers to Exxon.
In the examination phase, you ask excellent questions, carefully prepared, in sequence, which are geared to give you a thorough knowledge of the patient’s condition, or the customer’s situation.
Find out exactly what customers’ need with The Art of Closing The Sale
Diagnose the Customer’s Need Accurately
The second phase is that of diagnosis. In the diagnosis phase with a customer, you would repeat back the results of your examination and double check to be sure that the symptoms that you had detected were the real symptoms being experienced by the patient. You would ask additional questions to confirm and corroborate. You and the patient would mutually agree that this diagnosis seems to be an accurate description of the condition or problem.
Make the Right Prescription
Once this mutual agreement has been reached, that a treatable condition exists and that you have identified it accurately, you can move on to phase three. This is the prescription phase, where you show the patient (customer) that your product or service is the best available treatment, taking all the factors of the patient’s situation into consideration for the ailment that you have diagnosed. You show that, on balance, what you are suggesting is the best of all possible solutions.
Professionals who sell in the way that doctors treat patients find that their sales activities proceed far more smoothly and result in better sales in less time.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.
First, take the time to do a thorough examination by asking excellent questions and by listening carefully to the answers.
Second, repeat back and check your diagnosis with the customer so that you both agree on the need or problem - before you recommend a solution.
The Art of Closing the Sale
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Tags: Sales Success
Posted by Brian Tracy on May 15, 2008
Do Your Homework
The best time to do your market research is in advance. Here are some key ideas to help you make the right choice before you invest in a product, a service or a business.
Bootstrap Your Way To Success
One of the best ways to build a business is to start off on a bootstrap. This means that you start off with very little mo ney and you grow your business with the mo ney that you ear n in the business, rather than outside financing, borr owing, l oans from friends and so on.
Ask The Right Questions
The first thing to do is to research all competitors for the product or service and ask this: "Why would someone switch to buy from me?" If there’s already a similar product or service in the market, why would someone leave a product or service that they’re comfortable with for your product or service that they don’t know anything about? Is your product or service better, or is your idea cheaper or of higher quality? And can you convince enough customers of this to stay in business?
Look For The Fatal Flaw
The second way to do fast, cheap market research is to be suspicious. Be wary. Develop a cyn ical, pessimistic attitude and accept nothing on faith. Look for the fatal flaw. Whenever I’ve done consulting for a corporation, especially when they’ve asked me to research an investment, I always look for the fatal flaw. I always look for the one thing that’s wrong with this investment that could cost my client a lot of mo ney. And do you know something? In 99 out of 100 cases, I find the fatal flaw. I find something in a contract or a mor tgage agreement or something in the way the land is laid out or the way the distribution arrangements are designed.
Find Out Why It’s For Sale
I often find something that is fatal, something that if it were not caught, would lead to the failure of the business. When you’re thinking of getting into somebody else’s business or if somebody else is trying to sell you an existing business, look for the reason. There’s always a fatal flaw when someone is trying to sell you a successful mo ney -making opportunity. If you can’t find the fatal flaw, only then should you go ahead with it.
Don’t Lose Money
The third thing that you can do when considering a business that is for sale is find out why it’s being sold. Very few people will try to sell you a successful business. Usually people who are selling a business are selling it because they’re losing mo ney on it. Many people say they’re selling a business because they want to concentrate on something else. No. The reason they’re selling the business is that they’re losing mo ney on it. And you must find out why a person would sell a successful business.
Think Long Term
Finally, number four, look at the business before you go into it as though you were going to be in it for 20 years. The long-term perspective sharpens short-term decision-making. If you look at any business venture, any product or service, as though you were going to be doing this 20 years from now, you’ll find that you’ll make much better decisions.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.
First, look for the fatal flaw in any investment that someone tells you is a good idea. Look for a critical weakness that could cause the business to fail.
Second, think about being in this business, or selling this product or service, for the next 20 years. When you think long-term about business decisions, you make much better decisions in the short-term.
Outselling Your Competition *** Plus Bonus CDs
Tags: Business Success
Posted by Brian Tracy on May 14, 2008
“Esoteric Arts�?
More than 5,000 years ago, in the ancient mystery schools of Egypt, the mental and spiritual laws and principles of success were taught to students who dedicated their entire lives to learning in what was called the “Esoteric Arts.”
One of these “secrets” was the Law of Attraction, which said that your mind is a magnet and that you invariably attract into your life people and circumstances in harmony with your dominant thoughts, especially your dominant thoughts emotionalized.
Today we say, “Like attracts like” and “Birds of a feather flock together.” From ancient times, it was known that your mind sends out vibrations, like radio waves, that are picked up by the minds of other people who are tuned into the same rate of vibration.
The force that determines the sending power of your mental vibrations is the amount of emotion, positive or negative, that you put behind a thought. If there is something that you intensely desire, something that excites you and enthuses you, you will send out powerful, high-frequency vibrations that can travel large distances in split seconds and cause your phone to ring from someone you have not heard from for months or even years.
Because your mind is so powerful, especially when backed by emotionalized thoughts, you must handle it carefully, like a child handling a gun. The Law of Attraction is neutral. It works on both positive and negative thoughts. It brings into your life whatever you are thinking about on a regular basis with either fear or desire.
When the book, “The Secret” came out, along with the movie, I was happily surprised to see that the first half of the movie comes from my audio program and seminar, “The Psychology of Achievement” which was produced initially in 1981. We videotaped the live seminar which explains the Law of Attraction along with thirty-one other laws, plus how this law is applied in every area of life, and then distributed the video seminar world wide, including New Zealand, where the Author of The Secret comes from.
The weakness in The Secret is that it is “necessary but not sufficient.” Of course, it is important that you think positive thoughts and that, by so doing, you will attract positive people and circumstances into your life. But it is not enough.
In response to The Secret, I decided to write a book which is called “Flight Plan – The Real Secret of Success.” In this book, I explain that life is very much like a long distance flight. When the plane takes off, it will be off course 99% of the time. But nonetheless, the plane will eventually arrive at its destination, even thought it was off course most of the time.
In my experience, the real secret of success consists of three major factors: First, you must be absolutely clear about your destination. By this I mean that must have clear, written, specific, measurable goals, committed to paper and organized into specific, step-by-step plans of action.
Before you can set your goals, you must know exactly who you are and what you want. You must do a thorough analysis of yourself, your life, your hopes, your dreams, your ambitions, and where you want to be sometime in the future. Then, you create a “Flight Plan” to get you from wherever you are today to wherever you want to be in the months and years ahead.
The second part of Flight Plan is that you must “take off!” You must have the courage to step out in faith with no guarantee of success. You must be prepared to launch in the face of your fears, doubts and natural reluctance to break out of your comfort zone. “To achieve something that you have never achieved before, you must be prepared to do something that you have never done before.” (Les Brown).
Once you have launched toward your goal, like an airplane, you will meet with unexpected turbulence, headwinds, updrafts and downdrafts, lightning, storms and every sort of mechanical problem. You must be prepared to make continual “course corrections” as you move toward your goal.
Perhaps the most important quality for success is, and always has been, the quality of persistence. You must resolve in advance to persist in the face of any difficulty or problem that you experience. You must resolve in advance that you will never give up. You must resolve in advance that you will view every temporary setback or difficulty as merely a signal that you need to make a “course correction” as you move inevitably toward your goal.
This is a great time to be alive. The very best days of your life lie ahead of you. The highest income of your life is still to come. The greatest experiences of your life are still to be experienced.
There is very little that you can not accomplish if you will file your flight plan. Determine exactly what it is that you want to achieve, take off toward your goal with no guarantees of success, and then make continual course corrections until you finally succeed. If you resolve to do these things, nothing can stop you from creating an extraordinary life.
Tags: Brian's Words of Wisdom
Posted by Brian Tracy on May 6, 2008
Visualize Your Goals
There are seven formulas for business success. Number one, set a specific goal and visualize it as a reality. Play the picture of your goal as already realized on the screen of your mind over and over again. Number two, look for a problem you can solve with a product or service that is high quality and good value. All successful businesses are based on products or services that are high quality and good value. Number three, start small and learn your business thoroughly. Be patient. Invest time rather than a lot of money.
Bootstrap Your Way to Success
One of the best ways to build a business is to start off on a bootstrap. This means that you start off with very little money and you grow your business with the money that you earn in the business, rather than outside financing, borrowing, loans from friends and so on.
Test, Test, Test
Number four, test every major move before you invest in it. Test, test, test. Don’t plunge into a business. Move ahead carefully, one step at a time. Number five, expand on the basis of your successes, out of your profits, as you move along. In other words, only expand your business on money that you’ve earned in the business, not on borrowed capital.
Pick Your People Carefully
Number six, carefully select the people to help you expand and grow. The biggest mistakes you’ll ever make will be in picking the wrong people to work with, so be very, very careful in picking the people you’re going to work with in your business.
Use Financial Leverage
And number seven, use financial leverage. Financial leverage is business borrowing, lines of credit from the bank, which are based on the cash flow from your successful business. The whole aim of starting a business is to develop a consistent, predictable source of cash flow in excess of cost and expenses and then to hold to the money. Banks will lend you all the money that you can service as debt with your cash flow.
Start Off Part Time
One final thing that you can do, and I’ve recommended that many people do this over the years, is if you’re starting off with no money, go to work part-time for a business in a field that interests you. It’s a valuable form of on-the-job training. Work evenings or work weekends. Or work on your holidays if you like.
Learn What You Need to Learn
Remember this, though, most businesses fail because of managerial incompetence. So take the time to learn what you need to know to succeed. Be patient. The time you invest before you start will pay off over and over again in the months and years ahead.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to implement these formulas for business success:
First, be prepared. The number one reason that people succeed in starting their own businesses is that they have the knowledge and experience, in advance that they need to succeed. Do your homework.
Second, start small. Some people think that they can be successful faster by putting all their savings at risk at the very beginning. The opposite is true. Start small and grow out of your cash flow from successful operations.
21 Great Ways to Start and Build Your Own Successful Business
Tags: Business Success
Posted by Brian Tracy on May 2, 2008
Imagine that it’s possible for you to earn 10 times your current annual wage.
If you’re earning $25,000, imagine for a moment that it’s possible for you to earn $250,000, a 1,000 percent increase.
Believe in Yourself
The first reaction of most people to that exercise is to smile briefly and then to begin thinking about why it isn’t possible. One man said to me, "If you knew how many years it’s taken for me to get to what I’m earning today you wouldn’t be suggesting that I could earn 10 times as much."
There Are No Excuses
Mark Twain once wrote that there are a thousand excuses for every failure but never a good reason. The tragedy of the average American is that whereas his or her main preoccupation seems to be money, or the lack thereof, the average person has the inherent potential to earn far more than he or she is earning currently.
Can Someone Be 10x Better?
Is the manager earning $250,000 per year ten times as smart as the manager earning $25,000? Ten times as experienced? Does he or she work 10 times harder? Of course not. None of these are physically or mentally possible, but there are people in every business earning many times more than others with the same average age, experience and intelligence.
I.Q. Doesn’t Really Matter
In fact, a few years ago in New York, a thousand men and women were selected at random and tested for I.Q. Between the one having the highest I.Q. in this sample and the one with the lowest, there was a difference of only two and a half times. But between the person earning the most, who by the way, was not the one with the highest I.Q. and the one earning the least, who was not the one with the lowest I.Q., there was a difference of 100 times in income.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to start increasing your income.
First, identify the highest earning, most successful people in your field and find out what it is that they are doing differently from others who aren’t doing as well. Copy them every day.
Second, set a goal to double your income over the next two or three years and then figure out what you’ll have to do to achieve it. Get started!
Million Dollar Habits
Tags: Financial Success
Posted by Brian Tracy on May 1, 2008
Do Your Homework
How do you do fast, cheap market research? How do you find out whether or not the product will sell before you get into it? Before embarking on any new business venture, considerable time must be spent in research. Your payoff will be in excess of ten to one in time and money saved or earned. For every dollar, for every hour that you put into research, you’re going to save ten or twenty or thirty dollars or hours later on. So here’s what you do.
Check Every Detail
Number one is find out every detail of the product or business. Study it carefully. There is a story about Walter Chrysler, who formed Chrysler Corporation. What he did is he went out and bought several of the most popular selling vehicles in America. He then took them home to his garage and took them apart down to the very last nut and bolt. He then put them back together again. By the time he had done that with several automobiles, he had some very, very good ideas on how to create a car that was superior to any other car in America. He went out, formed Chrysler Motors and the rest is history.
Discover how to live your business dreams, create massive wealth, and make your competition green with envy.
I’ve got some exciting news for you. You can launch your business and personal life into the world of super success - you can make your life a huge success - simply by following the "laws" of business.
You see there are "universal laws" that lie behind the success of business people everywhere. If you follow the laws, success comes easily. But if you break the laws, you will struggle just to survive.
Research Your Product Carefully
Number two, before you embark on a new business venture, read trade magazines, articles and stories on the business, industry or occupation. Here is a piece of advice that is worth its weight in gold. At every major library, there is what is called the periodicals index. The periodicals index lists every article that has been written on every subject in every publication in America. The librarian can guide you to the periodicals index. There’s one for every year, and as publications expand, sometimes there’s one for every three months. This index is now available on the Internet as well.
Take Advantage of the Information Available
You can go back and you can retrieve, usually from microfiche or from the library files, all the articles that have been written on a particular product or service in the last week, last month, last year, last five years, and you can make your self an expert on a particular subject area by using the periodicals index. I know many consultants, when their clients ask them about a particular subject, go down to the library, or onto the Internet, and they go through the periodicals index. They become well-informed on what is going on in that area, and then they sell that advice, sometimes for hundreds of dollars an hour, to their client. So check the periodicals index. Check the Internet. Become intimately familiar with the business before you begin.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do before you start any business:
First, find out every detail of the product or business before you invest any serious money in it. All of this information is available if you will just seek it out.
Second, do your research in depth. Sometimes, superficial research indicates that it is a good business but in-depth research can show you that it is not a good business at all. Be careful.
The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success
Tags: Business Success
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