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I’ve heard it said time and time again, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”.  Well, yesterday was a perfect example.  Yesterday I attended my very first motivational seminar.  It was called “Get Motivated” and was produced by Tamera Lowe.  Up until yesterday, I really had never heard of Tamera or her “Get Motivated” seminars, but after attending, it is readily apparent that these seminars are well produced, professionally run and highly organized.  The list of speakers included, but was not limited to Colin Powell, Suzy Orman, Zig Ziglar, Robert Schuller and Rudy Gullianni.  The event was an amazing series of informative topics and speeches, but what impacted me most was the effect that I was left with.  Recently, I have been wrestling with certain decisions about where to invest my spare money and my spare time.  I have a small nest egg that I have been wondering what I should do with and given the current economic climate, I couldn’t make up my mind.  It’s like God was reading my mind, because this seminar was the answer to my prayers.  Not only was it educational, but additionally, it opened my eyes to further opportunities that await someone with enough initiative to only take the first move and grab the bulls by the horns.  I signed up for two week-end classes, one about learning to use some software tools to help with investing in the stock market and the other about setting up an online web site and online store.  Both offer possibilities for potentially additional income, but even more exciting to me, is that both offer possibilities for additional education in two areas that I have a dramatic interest in. 

I am currently in the midst of reading three books by Brian Tracy and coincidentally enough, one of his suggestions in the books is to invest in yourself.  If you’ve followed my blog at all in the past, you’ll know that I have always been an advocate of continually education.  So that’s why I’m excited.  I am embarking on a couple of new fronts and as a result, I continue to control my future. 

Don’t wait till a seminar like “Get Motivated” comes to your town, seek them out.  Look them up, find out if they are coming to your town, or if not, find out if any are coming close to your town.  Then buy a ticket to as many as you can afford and then some.  If you have to take off from work to attend, then do it.  That’s what I intend to do from now on.  It’s a habit that you can not afford to begin.  If you don’t invest in your future, who will?

The end of the week is the best time to start planning for the beginning of the next week. The end of the month is the best time to start planning for the next month. And the end of the year is the best time to start planning for the next year.

So now that it’s the last month of the year, December is the perfect time to start planning how you are going to improve your sales for 2009.  Goal setting is the first step to take.  Decide here and now what you’re going to sell in the next year.  Make it a stretch goal, so that you have something to work for, but keep it realistic.  If the goal is too low, then there is nothing to be gained from setting it.  On the other hand, if the goal is too high, it could work against you and act as a big de-motivator.  A good benchmark would be to take your best productive year that you’ve had in the past 5 years or so and set a goal to increase it by 15-20%.  And by the way, goals and quotas are not the same thing.  Quotas are externally set and goals are internally set.  If you’ve got a sales quota, and just about every sales person does, obviously, you need to meet or exceed your quota or else your job could be in jeopardy.  So make sure that the sales goals that you set for yourself exceeds the sales quota that your boss sets for you. 

Once you have established how much you want to sell next year, break the goal down into smaller sub-goals.  With a little bit of math, you can now deduce your quarterly goals, your monthly goals, your weekly goals and even your average daily sales goals.  These are your benchmarks.  For instance, if you set a goal of $1 million in sales for the year, then you know that you have to sell $250,000 per quarter in order to reach that goal.  If you divide your quarterly goals by 3, then you know that you have to sell $83,333.33 each month in order to stay on track for your annual goals.  Subsequently, if you divide the monthly goal by 4 weeks, that gives you your weekly goals, ect.  Keep in mind that the benchmarks are averages.  You could have one down week, or one down month, or one down quarter, but by tracking your benchmarks, you’ll know exactly where you stand in your path to your annual goal, and you’ll know early in the process if you have to make up for loss ground.

And don’t rely on your memory.  Write down ALL of your goals.  Whether they are daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual goals, make sure that you are writing them down and reviewing them on a regular basis in order to keep you focused and on task.  In fact, you could take it to the next level by writing out your 3-year goals, your 5-year goals, your 10-year goals and your 20-year goals.  By writing out your goals, you are taking an active role in your future and not just letting the winds of circumstance take you where ever they may be blowing.

Once you have set your goals and your benchmarks, the next step is to sit down and write out a detailed plan about what you intend to do to achieve your goals.  The goals are the map, the benchmarks are the path and your plan is the detailed directions.  Most intelligent people wouldn’t dream of embarking on a trip to a new destination without a map, yet the majority of people take the most important journey of their life, their future, without any advanced planning whatsoever.  Your plan should detail what you are going to do differently and better than what you did last year in order to improve your results.  Goal setting should top that list.  If you write out your goals and the detailed plan to achieve your goals, and you diligently work your plan, you can and will accomplish anything you set your mind to.  See you on the road to success.       

When I was still in my early 30’s, I remember a conversation that I had with my physician.  I had been experiencing some stomach issues and was visiting my doctor in order to try and determine what was causing the problem.  I had always been fit, active and healthy, and since I was relatively young at that time, I couldn’t imagine what was wrong.  Anyway, as part of his examination, the doctor asked me what I did for a living.  When I told him that I was a salesman, I’ll never forget his response.  He just laughed.  Not like a big, boisterous laugh or anything.  Just a little chuckle.  And then he said something to the effect that “no wonder I was having stomach issues and that it was probably just related to stress”.  The way he said it, I know that he wasn’t trying to be funny and he wasn’t just making some off hand comment.  He said it in a matter-of-fact way that I knew at the time he was just trying to be, well, factual.  Being so young at the time, I dissmissed his comment as being prejudicial of sales, but looking back now, I realize why he said what he said.

Sales can be a high stress, high pressure environment to work in, day in and day out.  Especially if you allow it to be.  It’s our job to find business and whether we are successful or whether we are not successful can affect a lot of people.  Sales is almost like the old ”hunter/gathers” of years past.  Sometimes the lives of entire tribes of people depended upon a few select individuals to go forth and hunt for food.  Imagine how difficult it must have been to hunt before the advent of guns.  That’s sometimes the way sales is.  It’s not like you can just get a prospect in the crosshairs of your scope and just pull the trigger.  It’s more like hunting with a spear.  First you have to find a good hunting ground (good leads).  Then you have to be able to skillfully stalk your prey (prospecting).  And finally you have to make sure that you’re in good position to go in for the kill (make the sale).  It took a lot of practice and experience to become a great hunter and not everyone was cut out for this type of work.  Imagine the pressure these hunters must have felt, knowing that they had a hungry family or large tribe waiting and counting on them to return with a bountiful feast.  Sales is lot like that.

So what can you do about it?  Well, first you need to understand that just like hunting, sales takes skill, practice and experience.  I don’t believe that anyone is born to sell.  You might be born with some natural talents that can transfer well to a selling career, but no one can become a great salesperson without hard work, dedication and time.  I’m reading Brian Tracy’s book “Eat That Frog!” right now and in chapter 4, entitled Consider The Consequences, there is a sentence that says, “Successful people have a clear future orientation”.  What the author is saying in this chapter is that in order to make good decisions in the present, you have to have a clear picture in your mind of what you want in the long term future.  This is especially relevant to selling.  If you want to be great at selling at some future point, you need to dedicate yourself to that goal right now.  You cannot sit on your butt all year, doing nothing, and then decide that you need to make some sales today.  Do something everyday that leads you to greatness and eventually you’ll get there.  Commit yourself to reading great books on selling.  By becoming a student of selling, you will remove the pressure and stress of selling because you will understand your field better than anyone.  And knowing in your heart that you are seriously doing everything that you can do to become the best in your field will go a long way to relieving you of the daily pressure of selling because you are focused on the long term and you will come to realize that if you just keep studying, you will one day soon get to where you want to be.  

Sales is all about focusing on the future.  When you know more about selling than your sales manager knows about selling, there will no longer be any pressure on you, because you will know that not only is pressure unhealthy, but it also makes for bad sales habits.  Like any performance, the less pressure you put on yourself, the better you will come across to your prospects because you’ll be more natural and more relaxed.  And one more thing.  As I said, stress is also very unhealthy and can lead to serious medical issues.  No career and no amount of success is worth getting sick over or dying for.  So chill out, study hard and relax your way to sales success.           

If you are completely satisfied with your current station in life, then keep doing whatever it is that you are doing.  But if you’re like most people, and you feel like you haven’t peaked and can still continue to improve your life in some way, then I want to ask you, what are you going to do different today than what you did yesterday?  Human beings are creatures of habit; really bad creatures of habit.  We want our lives to improve, but we refuse to recognize that in order for our lives to improve we’ve got to change the way we think and change the way we do things.   How can our lives get better if we aren’t willing to do the work that is required for US to be better? 

Fear is what keeps us from changing.  That little voice inside all of our heads knows us better than anyone.  That familiarity allows that voice to push our hot buttons of fear in ways that are so effective that we don’t even realize what’s happening.  “You’ll never be successful”.  “You can’t do that.”  “It’s never been done before.”  “What makes you think you’re so special”.  “You’ll fail and everyone will laugh at you”.  And on and on and on…  These thoughts and many more just like them echo in our heads over and over and over throughout the course of everyday.  It’s such a constant drone that we don’t even pay much attention to these types of thoughts anymore because we’ve become so used to them.  Unfortunately, they are silently controlling and shaping our future by convincing us over time that we are stuck with who and what we are and that there’s just no reason to even try to change.  We have convinced ourselves before we even begin to try some new endeavor, that there’s no reason to try.   This is called pre-conditioned for failure, and we do it to ourselves.   Sometimes you’re best friends or your closest family members, all well meaning and with a desire to save you from the pain of failure, allow their pre-conditioning for failure to influence you.  But it’s you that allows them to do this.

Even when we finally somehow manage to sum up the courage to try something different, our pre-conditioning for failure usually has us give up and quit at the first signs of resistance.   Remember, nothing of any noteworthy accomplishment ever comes easy.  And even more important keep in mind is the fact that it’s in the struggles and striving of changing that we learn the most and it’s in learning that we succeed.  Resistance is how you make a muscle stronger and your brain is you’re most important muscle.  Stephen Hawkins is a quadriplegic, stuck in a wheelchair, unable to talk, but he is one of the smartest men that ever lived.  If you have full use of your limbs and your voice, what are you afraid of?  If the answer to this question is that you aren’t afraid of anything, then I ask you again, “What are you going to do different today”?    

Lee Iacocca wrote a book this year entitled “Where Have All The Leaders Gone”?  In the book, Iacocca takes acceptance to the present day politicians that are running our country.  And with good reason.  The book was written well before anyone ever knew about or could possible have predicted the economic tsunami that has it’s beginning in the United States and seems to be plundering the entire global economy into a recession.  The United States sees itself as a world leader, but yet we led the rest of the world into a financial disaster of unprecedented historic proportions.  What the final results will be from this economic collapse is impossible to foretell.  But I can tell you what led us to this point; pure, unadulterated greed stemming from our leaders that have pointed us in the wrong direction.

If you look up the word “leadership” in the dictionary, it means to “guide” or ”provide direction”.  That’s what leadership is supposed to do.  Great leaders motivate us and inspire us to reach our full potential through higher principals and moral, ethical behavior.  And the best way to lead is through example.  But if you take a look around at our so called “heroes” and ”role-models”, you’ll find out what our leaders really are pushing.  Who and what you worship says everything about you, and in the United States of American, money, fame and quick fortune have replaced God, ethics and morals and hard-work.  Americans have grown up and become so indoctrinated in a culture of more is better that we have lost our way.  ”Success at any cost” is our new mantra and we’re spreading that message around the world like it’s the word of God.

When I think of our national leaders, I am reminded of the Hans Anderson story “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, in which everyone was trying to pretend that they could see the Emperor’s clothes, when in reality, he was really naked.  Our leadership is naked; they are nude of ideas, nude of direction and nude of humility.  And we are all buying into the lie.  The leadership in this country has us all convinced that all we need to fulfill our potential is bigger houses, newer cars and more money.   But these things don’t lead to happiness, they only lead to gratification.  And if you think about it, most of the things that provide us with gratification actually lead you away from long-term happiness and vice-a-versa.

It’s time to reshape our national culture of “more is better”.  And I think the first place to begin is with term limits for Congress.  The less our politicians are concerned with re-election, the more likely they will be focused on leading and serving their constituency, and less likely they are to be seduced by the siren songs of money, fame and fortune that seem to be the ubiquitous beck and call of Washington politics.

It can be argued that the most successful companies are also the firms that turn out the most leaders. Harvard, for instance, develops an inordinate amount of our country’s leaders, and of course, Harvard is one of our country’s most notably successful programs of educational excellence. You might argue that Harvard is, by nature of being an educational institution, in the business of developing students into leaders. But I will argue that so is every other school that Harvard competes against and most of them don’t turn out nearly as many leaders.

Leadership is a rare trait. I’m tempted to say that leadership is rare in these days and times, but honestly, if you study history, great leaders have always been in short supply. Being the head of an organization does not automatically qualify you as a leader. And vice-a-versa, the fact that you may not head up your department or your office or your firm does not disqualify you from assuming a leadership position. Leaders can come from all walks of life. Anyone can be a leader if they so desire. All that is required is a concrete set of ethical behaviors, moral standards and emotional intelligence.

My point is not to belabor what constitutes leadership qualities, but rather to impress the importance of developing future leaders. I believe that in order for a business to be successful, it must first and foremost focus a majority of its resources on leadership development.

Yes, it’s true that the first order of business for any and all enterprises is survival, and for most businesses, that means economic sustainability. Profitability is the life-blood of most organizations and must be high on the list of priorities. But I want to point out that most small businesses operate on the assumption that profitability is the chicken and everything else that comes after it is the egg. How do we know that leadership isn’t the chicken and profitability isn’t the egg? Maybe the products and services that our businesses render are not really the main products and services that we think we render. Maybe our main product is really leadership and leadership development. And perhaps by focusing on developing leaders within our businesses we can increase our firms productivity, market share and profits. After all, wouldn’t most of your prospective customers rather engage with a person whom displays extraordinary leadership abilities?

This coming November, the United States is faced with a clear choice, between more of the same old politics or change.  McCain has tried to steal Obama’s catch-phrase of “change”, but come on, let’s get serious.  What does a 72-year old know about change?  John McCain has been a US Senator for over 25-years and during that time, our country has stuck it’s heals in the sand and fought change tooth and nail.

I was a child when John Kennedy was first elected president, but I can still recall the excitement that hung in the air like smoke on the water.  The United States fully rebounded from the Second World War and our stature as a world leader was confirmed.  By electing a young and charismatic president, we sent a strong signal to the world that our country was ready to move into the future brimming with confidence and we were electing a young, new leader to get us there.  In his short tenure as president, John Kennedy inspired a nation of young people to look beyond their own self interests and to reach for their full potential by striving to serve the world’s greater good.  John Kennedy was a rare and visionary leader and because of that, he posed a threat to the old guard.  True leaders are far and few between.  Leaders cannot be created or promoted.  Leadership cannot be taught or learned.  Real leadership come from the soul.  Leadership is derived out of an ingrained sense of purpose and servitude.  There is no substitute for leadership.

Our form of government is the world’s greatest not because our leaders created it, but because it has created leaders.  Democracy is the best form of government because it fosters an atmosphere of leadership development by creating the environment and the conditions that allows for men and women to strive to reach for their full potential.

As Peter Drucker wrote in ”The Practice of Management”, “Leadership is the lifting of a man’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a man’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a man’s personality beyond its normal limitations. ”  “Nothing better prepares the ground for such leadership than a spirit…that confirms in the day-to-day practices…strict principles of conduct and responsibility, high standards of performance, and respect for the individual and his work.”

This entire campaign has put on display an old man striving desperately to cling to his good old boy power with old ideas and worn out tactics of bullying and disrespect for anyone that may disagree with him against a brash, intelligent, young leader with new insights and fresh creativity borne of his multi-racial cultural upbringing and his advanced education.

Obama understands better than anyone that our country needs a change in direction.  As every business 101 student can tell you, change is inevitable and change is almost always for the best.  Change makes us stronger by keeping us on our toes and preventing us from resting on our laurels.  And more importantly, whether you like it or not, and whether you are ready for it or not, change is coming.  You might as well accept it and prepare your best to meet the challenge.  Nothing stands still.  The world continues to revolve and not acknowledging it won’t stop it. 

The United States stands on the precipice of a changing future.  We can either lead the world with new ideas or we will be surpassed by others with new ideas.  Barack Obama has the vision to lead our country into a new tomorrow.  A vote for Barack Obama is a vote for hope.  Vote for Barack Obama.     

As a salesman, I have never had any interest in learning or reading about the practice of management.  True, I’ve been a sales manager for three different companies, but I never quite had the same passion for managing as I’ve had for selling.  For the most part, I have always believed that I could manage a sales team or group by the seat of my pants.  Surely, I thought, as a successful salesperson, all I had to do was imbue my sales team with the same tools that I possess.  But I was wrong.  The tools that make a person successful in sales are NOT the same tools required to succeed in sales management.  Unfortunately, the standard career path in sales is that you take your most successful salesperson and promote them to sales manager.  This might work out OK, for the most part, but in order to rise above mediocrity in any field, but especially in the field of management, something more is required.  Management is a specialized field that deserves our best coaches, motivators and teachers.  Managers can make or brake a company.  Managers are entrusted with young and malleable minds and owe it to their employers to give their very best effort.  So how do you do that?

I had heard about Peter Drucker for years.  According to the few references that I would occasionally come across, Peter Drucker is considered by many successful CEO’s, management experts and business consultants as one of the best, if not THE best authority in the field of management that has ever lived.  Well, I finally decided to give him a try and as luck would have it, the first Peter Drucker book that I read was too heavy for my tastes and I got bogged down.  That book still sits on my shelf to this day, laying there, half read and half unread.  Luckily for me, that wasn’t my last attempt at reading Peter Drucker.  Even though I couldn’t get completely through that first book, I did find enough interesting points to merit further consideration.  And boy am I glad I did.  Had I let my lack of interest in that first book close me off to Peter Drucker books forever, I would have been worse off for the loss.  But I did give him another try.  I have only read two more books of his and a small article that he published, but now I am of the opinion that he is a genius.  Seriously.  The second book that I came across is called “The Effective Executive”.  It ties the role of management in quite nicely with the role of sales.  Just that one book gave me so much respect for Peter Drucker that I became a disciple right away.  But it was the next book that really sold me.  It is called “Managing for Results”.  This is a very powerful book and should be required reading for employees at all levels.  There are some parts of the book that he gets into some accounting concepts that I had to skip right over.  But for the most part, his writing style is simple and direct, at least in these last two books.

Peter Drucker lived to be over ninety years old and only recently died.  He taught at Harvard and wrote over twenty or thirty books and volumes of articles and papers.  He has influenced some of the greatest business leaders of the past three or four generations, including Jack Welch, Sam Walton, Tom Peters and many others.  He started writing in the late forties and early fifties and many of his books have been reprinted and distributed many times over.  The lessons that he imparts are timeless and his management practices can be found in many of the most successful corporations the world around.  I’m sorry that it took me so long to be introduced to Peter Drucker, but I guarantee that it’s better late than never.

As an avid golfer, I’ve noticed that I always enjoy my rounds more when my playing partner(s) and/or opponent(s) are at least as good as I am or better.  Playing with someone below my level of skill is not really as much fun as it is when I play with or against someone of equal or great ability.  It seems that my level of play always rises or falls to the level of the competition.  If the person(s) that I am playing with is playing well, then odds are that I’ll also play well.  But if the level of play is poor, I’ll somehow manage to also play equally as poor.  I’m sure that there are many factors for this, all of which are psychological, but one thing is certain; I have much more fun and enjoyment whenever I play against tougher competition because it makes me play better than when I play against weaker competition.

You can understand this phenomenon even more when you are a spectator.  Just ask yourself, would you rather watch a sporting event with 1) two weak teams 2) one weak team against a strong team or 3) two strong teams?  As an avid sports fan, I can tell you the best contests are those that pit two high caliber teams against each other.  That’s why championship games like the Superbowl always garner such high television viewership and ratings, because it’s in our nature to want to see the best vying against the best.

But yet, when it comes down to our own lives, we foster no such ambition.  In fact, we prefer that our lives be easy and with as few obstacles and challenges as possible.  We don’t want to face any adversity, as if life is supposed to be nothing but easy.  But life isn’t supposed to be easy, because life is a game and games are more fun when they challenge us.  The bigger the challenge, the more interesting the outcome.  So don’t let adversity, challenges and obstacles get you down.  Be a winner and don’t quit.  Find a way to muster the internal fortitude to rise to the challenge.  Focus your energies on coming out on top, someway, somehow.  In life, you only get to play one game, and the shot clock is ticking.

No matter what your line of work, one thing to always keep in mind is that you get paid consistent with you ability to solve problems. The more problems that you solve and the bigger that the problems that you solve are, the more that you will get paid.

Think about that the next time that your boss or your customer brings you a problem to solve. If you’re like most people, your inclination is probably to put up some resistance when confronted by a problem of some sort. Even if no one is accusing you directly of necessarily having caused the problem, our human nature is to become defensive and protective about our serenity. Our lives were going just fine before this situation reared it’s ugly head. But challenges are where the opportunities are. If it wasn’t for problems, most people wouldn’t have a job, because after all, that’s really what you’re paid for, to solve problems. And if you show a propensity for tackling problems that nobody else can tackle or wants to tackle, somebody’s going to notice you eventually.

Doctors solve health problems. Lawyers solve legal problems. Mechanics solve auto problems. Business people solve business problems. Average salespeople solve average business problems and get average pay. Good salespeople solve big business problems and make above average pay and great salespeople solve the biggest business problems and get paid handsomely and promoted often.

If your customers and prospects didn’t have any problems, they wouldn’t need your help. That’s what you’re there for. If they didn’t need you, they could just buy directly from the internet without any human interaction whatsoever and you wouldn’t have a job.

So the next time your boss or your client calls you with a problem situation, don’t let it bring you down. Just keep in mind that you’re working on building your skills as a big problem solver. And as you get better at solving business problems, the more money you will earn. The key word being “earn”.