Posted by Brian Tracy on Jul 3, 2008
Three key considerations to assure that your business grows rapidly.
What to Look For
There are three reasons for business growth. Look at where you work right now and see if these three reasons apply there. Number one, the product or service is well-suited to the needs of the current market. That means that people want it and need it and can use it and can afford it and are willing to buy it now. Number two, careful market analysis is completed before commencing business operations. In other words, considerable thought goes into whether or not there’s a market before the product was offered.
Do Your Market Analysis
Here are some of the questions that you have to ask with regard to market analysis. Number one, with regard to this new product or service, is there a market? This is a very important question. Is there a market? Will people buy it? Now here’s the second question. Is the market large enough? Is the market large enough and concentrated enough so that you can sell enough of the product or service at a high enough price to make a living out of it?
Is the Market Concentrated Enough?
For example, there may be a market for 100,000 units of a particular product in the United States. But if it is one per community throughout the country, it’s almost impossible to reach those people with any kind of advertising or sales effort. So the very fact that the market is not concentrated enough means it would be impossible to make a success of a business selling one per community.
Who Exactly is Your Potential Customer?
Another question is, who is the customer and why will he or she buy from you? Why does he or she buy? What benefits does he or she seek? And an important question is why will he or she switch from their current supplier to buy from you? Many small companies go broke because they do not have a pressing enough reason for a person to switch from their current supplier to the new product or service.
Pump Up Your Profits!
What Are the Alternatives?
And here’s another question with regard to marketing analysis. What else is available? What other products or services are available to the same customer that you’re going after and how is your product superior in a meaningful way, to the other product or service?
Control Your Finances
The third reason for business success is tight financial controls. Good budgeting. Accurate bookkeeping and accounting. Remember, practice frugality. Be cheap, cheap, cheap.
Hold on to your cash. Cash is the lifeblood of a business. All successful businesses have very careful financial controls. They very carefully consider every expenditure. They do an analysis of it. They work from very careful budgets, week by week, month by month, quarter by quarter.
Consider Every Expenditure
Carefully consider every expenditure, in advance, before you make it. Never buy new when you can get it used. Never buy it all if you can rent it. Never rent it if you can borrow it. Make it a game to conserve your cash and keep your costs as low as possible in everything you do.
Action Exercises
Now, here are two things you can do to assure that your business continues to grow profitably month after month.
First, be perfectly honest with yourself and your product or service offerings. Be sure that there is a big enough market that you can sell to profitably, and if there isn’t, find a different product or a different market.
Second, think about your customer all the time and why your customer would or should buy from you. Inaccurate customer analysis is a major reason for business failure while accurate customer identification is a major reason for business success.
Pump Up Your Profits!
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Tags: Business Success
Posted by Brian Tracy on Jul 1, 2008
For ten years, I was consistently overweight.
My clothes were too tight and then didn’t fit at all. This year, I developed a formula that I have used to get my weight under control for the first time in a decade. I have dropped from 196 lbs to 179 lbs. I feel terrific and get compliments from strangers about how trim I look. I now fit all of the suits and clothes that had been gathering dust in my closet.
The turning point for me was at Christmas, when I realized that I would have to change my lifestyle dramatically if I was ever going to get back to my ideal weight. Here is what I learned and practiced.
First of all, I realized that we all get into certain habits and rituals of diet, exercise and lifestyle, and then it becomes very hard to change, to get out of this “comfort zone.” But to get your weight and level of fitness back to where you want it, you are going to have to make some sacrifices.
Make a Decision
The biggest weight gainer of all is dinner time. It had become a ritual for me to come home, or go out, and have dinner between 7:00pm and 8:00pm with my wife, or with friends. We would share a bottle of wine, if not a little more, and generally eat more than could ever be justified for survival.
Then I read the works of Adele Davis, the nutritionist, who was famous for saying, “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.”
To lose weight, the goal is to consume 80% of your calories before 2:00pm in the afternoon, in breakfast and lunch, and finish the day with something light and nutritious. If you just discipline yourself to eat lightly in the evening, you will start to lose weight almost immediately.
Salads at Six
A major turning point for Barbara and I was when we began to have “salads at six.”
This is an incredible weight loss technique! Instead of drinking wine and eating a large dinner, we instead have salad for dinner together as often as possible, Monday through Friday, at 6:00pm or thereabouts.
To break the natural tendency to come home at night and have a glass of wine, or some other drink, immediately drink a large glass of fruit juice, preferably cranberry or apple juice. This “sugar jolt” immediately cancels your desire for an alcoholic beverage, satisfies your appetite, and prepares you for your “salad at six.”
With your salads at dinner, add protein of some kind – chicken, fish or even slices of the steak you bring home from the restaurant. You can’t gain weight on salads. Without protein, you will be hungry in a couple of hours.
One of the things that Barbara and I have done is to have “salad at six” and then go out to a movie, thereby breaking the habit of having wine with dinner. Often, we go for a one hour walk around the neighborhood. Once you have broken this “dinner with wine” ritual a few times, it becomes easier and easier.
When you do this, you will feel lighter and brighter, have more energy, sleep well, and actually notice the difference in your weight within a few days, or less.
Eliminate the Three White Poisons
First, eliminate white sugar of all kinds, including soft drinks, desserts, candies, chocolate, and anything whatsoever that has sugar in it, for any reason. The elimination of sugar by itself will cause immediate weight loss.
Second, eliminate salt. Refuse to put it on any foods. Most foods, especially snack foods, canned foods, and processed foods, have so much salt that you need nothing additional in your diet. When you consume salt, your body retains water to hold the salt in suspension, causing you to bloat.
Third, eliminate white flour products of all kinds. Stop eating bread, pasta, rice, rolls, and even potatoes. The consumption of flour-based products is a major reason for overweight.
Your Exercise Regimen
Aerobic exercise has been the key to weight loss for me. I have always been physically active, but over the years, I had gradually cut back, putting on a pound a year over time.
Now, I get up at 6:00 AM, four or five days each week, and immediately exercise vigorously for 60-75 minutes. My favorites are the Lifecycle (reclining style), swimming, cross country ski machine, treadmill, or the elliptical machine. My goal is 200 to 300 minutes per week.
When you get up and exercise for sixty minutes first thing, your body burns calories all day long. The exercise energizes you and makes you brighter and more alert all day. When you start the day with exercise, it is easier to develop and maintain the habit of regular exercise.
After exercising, I usually have a cup of coffee and do some reading. The first food I eat is an apple, cut into four pieces and chewed slowly. When you wait thirty minutes after the apple for your protein breakfast, the apple quickly digests and then acts like a “roto-rooter” in your system 24 hours later.
Eat a Good Breakfast
For breakfast, I eat two scrambled eggs, covered with Mexican salsa heated in the microwave. This is sufficient to satisfy your appetite and give you sufficient fuel to run your system for 4-5 hours.
If you eat a handful of nuts on top of the eggs, you will not be hungry for 5-6 hours.
At lunch, eat only salads and protein. Eliminate breads, pastries, desserts and soft drinks of all kinds. I often buy a sandwich or a chicken burger and throw away the bread, just eating the protein. High quality protein takes 4-5 hours to digest slowly, giving you a continuous flow of energy without drowsiness.
When you go out for dinner, remember that your “apostate” turns off twenty minutes after you take the first bite. Because it is the evening, you don’t need very much to eat. Instead of a main course, preceded with salad and followed with dessert, have two appetizers. If you eat a salad appetizer and a protein appetizer, your appetite will be completely satisfied, you will feel lighter, sleep better, and lose weight.
One of the things I had to learn to do was to break the habit of eating large meals. Everything over and above what your body requires for healthy living is simply stored as fat.
Appetite Killers
Another thing that has helped me is Zone Bars. These are ideally balanced nutritional bars that you can buy by the box at your local store. A Zone Bar has a perfect balance of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. It is small, but it kills your appetite for 2-3 hours. It is the perfect “snack” to eat later in the day if you start to become hungry.
One of the keys to weight loss is to not allow yourself to be hungry. Once you get hungry, you lose all sense of portion in terms of what you eat. You can kill your hunger with Zone bars, or even by slowly chewing a handful of nuts.
Be Fully Rested
Sleep is very important. You need 7-8 hours of sleep each night for proper functioning. Too many people go to bed too late and get up too early. If they had eaten late, they don’t sleep well and don’t rest well.
A key to weight loss is for you to be fully rested as the result of going to bed at 10:00pm and getting eight hours of sleep each night. When you have had sufficient rest, you will not be as hungry, and you will be satisfied with smaller portions.
Lose 10 Pounds Quickly
There is a simple way to start strongly on your weight loss regimen. This method is based on the fact that your body accumulates as much as 5-10 pounds of undigested food in the 22 feet of your small intestine, plus your large intestine. Simply by flushing all of this excess food out of your system, you can drop five pounds quickly and off to a strong start.
The Cleansing Diet: Mix a level tablespoon of Sea Salt with a quart of warm water and drink it first thing in the morning. In almost exactly 60 minutes, your entire system will evacuate.
If you are really serious about starting strongly and losing weight safely, you can go on to what is called the “Lemonade Diet” for a week. Beyonce Knowles, the singer, recently lost twenty pounds in twenty days for her role in Dream Girls simply by using this diet.
The way it works is simple. To a ten ounce glass of warm water, you add two level tablespoons of pure maple syrup, two level tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice, and a dash of cayenne pepper.
This miraculous combination provides you with all the vitamins and minerals you need, plus the sugar energy you require for efficient working, thinking and functioning (but not strenuous exercise).The cayenne pepper stimulates your digestive system to operate more efficiently.
You can drink as many glasses of this mix as you like during the day, each time you feel hungry for any reason.
On the first day, you will drink 6 or 7 glasses. On the second day of this diet, you will drink 4 or 5 glasses. On the third and fourth day of this diet you will be drinking about three glasses spread over the day.
Each evening, before you go to bed, you mix and drink a large cup of herbal laxative tea. This will cause your system to continue cleaning out as you sleep. You will lose one pound or more for every day that you follow this lemonade diet.
When you use the lemonade diet to give yourself a “fast start”, you will drop five to ten pounds in 24-48 hours. You will see and feel the difference. You will then be motivated to continue.
Take Food Supplements
In addition to your regular diet, you must take excellent vitamin and mineral supplements. The very best are Nutrilite from Amway/Quixtar. When you are taking sufficient nutrients, your appetite will decrease. You will feel completely satisfied with less food, but better quality food. You will lose weight.
The key to long-term weight loss is for you to follow the suggestions above and commit to losing one pound per week indefinitely.
Your goal is to establish a new “set point,” the weight to which your body naturally returns, like a gyroscope, over time. The only way that you can permanently reduce your weight by reducing this set point is by losing weight slowly and surely over an extended period of time, one pound per week.
Be Patient and Persistent
One last point: Be gentle and patient with yourself. It has taken many years to develop your rituals of eating and drinking. Like a drunk, you will “fall off the wagon” occasionally. You will eat and drink more than you intended.
But everyday is a new day. If you over-ate or over-drank last night, resolve to start again today by getting lots of sleep, exercising 60-75 minutes, eating an apple to start off the day, and then sticking to proteins and salads as much as you can.
The key to health and long life has always been the same, contained in five words, “Eat less and exercise more.”
If you do all the things that I am suggesting above, you will be astonished at the results.
Good luck!
Fit and Trim for Life
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Tags: Brian's Words of Wisdom
Posted by Brian Tracy on Jul 1, 2008
Saving the Lost Sale
There is a powerful technique you can learn called the "I Want To Think It Over Close." This is the only way I know to save this kind of lost sale. You know by now that when the customer says, "I want to think it over," he is really saying "good bye." You know from your own experience that customers do not think it over. They do not sit there carefully studying your brochures and price lists with a calculator and a pen.
People Are Often Ready to Buy
On the other hand, as many as 50 percent of the people you speak to are probably ready to buy at this point. They just need a little push. They need some help. A buying decision is traumatic for them. They are tense and uneasy, and afraid of making a mistake. They may be right on the verge of saying "yes" and they need the professional guidance of an excellent salesperson. But if you accept the "I want to think it over" at face value and depart, you will probably never get a chance to see them or to sell to them again.
Be Agreeable and Prepared
This is how you use it. When the prospect says, "I want to think it over," you appear to accept it gracefully. You smile agreeably, and begin packing your briefcase and putting your materials away. As you do, you make conversation with these words: "Mr. Prospect, that’s a good idea. This is an important decision and you shouldn’t rush into it." These words will cause the prospect to mentally relax. He sees that you are on your way. His resistance will drop as soon as you stop presenting and trying to sell.
Win the sale with Superstar Selling!
Ask Curiously
You then ask, in a curious tone of voice: "Mr. Prospect obviously you have a good reason for wanting to think it over. May I ask what it is; is it the money?"
Remain perfectly silent, watching his face. Smile gently. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly. This is a critical moment.
Wait Patiently
Again, you have nothing to lose. If you leave, you have lost this person as a prospect forever. The worst thing that he can say is that he has no particular reason but that he still wants to think it over. However, in many cases, he will reply by saying one of two things. He will say, "Yes, I’m concerned about the cost." Or, he will say, "No, it’s not the money."
Probe the Answer
If he says that "Yes, it’s the money," you immediately go into a series of questions designed to deal with concerns about cost or price. You ask things like, "How do you mean, exactly? Why do you say that? Why do you feel that way? How far apart are we? Is price your only concern, or is there something else?"
If he says that, "No, it’s not the money," you reply by asking "May I ask what it is?"
Remain Silent
Again, you remain perfectly silent while you wait for his answer. In many cases, he will think about it for a few seconds, even a minute or longer, and then he will give you his final concern or objection. He will finally tell you what is really on his mind. He will tell you the real reason why he is hesitating about going ahead.
If you can now satisfy him on this final condition, you can go on to conclude the sale. You can say, "Mr. Prospect, what if we could do this…?" Or, "I think there is a perfect answer to that question."
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.
First, memorize the words of this closing technique and practice it as you would for a play or movie. Role-play this technique with someone else if you can.
Second, use this technique as soon as possible, the very next time you hear those words, "Let me think it over." You can save sales that might be lost forever.
Superstar Selling!
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Tags: Sales Success
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