December 2011
2 posts
Link: Seth Godin on being REMARKABLE to make a... →
You must be remarkable if you want to be noticed, if you want to make an impact in whatever it is you do. You can’t just be very good.
There is no place for being average if you will make a difference.
There is no place for being average if you will make a difference.
There is no place for being average if you will make a difference.
“I do not believe for a second that you can be a bad person—a dishonest or...”
– J. Barry Griswell, former chairman and CEO of the Principal Financial Group, and 2003 recipient of the Horatio Alger Award, in The Adversity Paradox, p 50-1
October 2011
1 post
7 tags
December 2010
1 post
Wisdom and Humility
Strong opinions reflect and instill confidence and also provide clear guidance about the direction that people should go. But, since those opinions are weakly held, they don’t stand as barriers to change when better information comes along.
This ability to feel, express, and act on strong beliefs without clinging to them irrationally [is] a state of mind that [communicates]...
November 2010
1 post
“I thought the guys just responded really well to adversity,” Tolzien said....”
– Scott Tolzien of the 10th ranked Wisconsin Badgers College Football Team, who threw for 205 yards and a touchdown to help defeat the No.13 Hawkeyes 31-30. -Saturday, October 23, 2010.
October 2010
7 posts
“On why I, Anne, run half marathons:
“Small victories have no shelf life....”
– Journalist Todd Durkin on Super Bowl MVP Drew Brees
“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unncessary so that the necessary...”
– Hans Hofmann, influential German painter
“If you can not describe what you do in ten words or less, I’m not...”
– Un-named investor
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The...”
– “Think Different,” Apple television ad, September 28, 1997
“Belief [is] unwittingly and nonverbally communicated. More importantly, these...”
– The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, p. 84
“For untold generations, we have been led to believe that happiness orbited...”
– The Happiness Advantage, p. 37-8, by Shawn Achor
Do What You Do Best and Be Yourself -The Ducks'...
A deficit is nothing to the most explosive -and perhaps best conditioned -team in the nation….With the stakes and the competition at their highest, Oregon roared back Oct. 2 [2010] from a 21-3 hole to swat Stanford 52-31. That was a 48-10 run to end the game.
“We knew we just had to find a way to overcome the deficit,” sophomore runningback LaMichael James said. “We were...
September 2010
3 posts
“Identifying weakness and designing deliberate practice lies at the cores of the...”
– K. Anders Ericsson, PH.D., pyschology professor at Florida State University
“Champions are champions not because they do extraordinary things, but because...”
– Tony Dungy, Indianapolis Colts coach when the team won Superbowl XLI
“You’re always in a position where you have to eliminate distractions and...”
– Superbowl 2010 MVP Drew Brees
August 2010
1 post
“Successful people don’t drift to the top. It takes focused action,...”
– The Power of Focus -Canfield, Hansen, Hewitt
July 2010
4 posts
“There are LOTS of things more important than one’s character. I just...”
“The more religious a man is, the more he will respect the decision of his fellow...”
– Man’s Search for Ultimate Freedom, Victor Frankl
“We have come to know Man as he really is. After all, man is that being who...”
– Victor E. Frankl
“Every decision you make you must imagine that it will be public.”
– John Pappajohn, Greek immigrant and enormously successful venture capitalist
June 2010
1 post
“If you are effective in a limited area of responsibility, you’ll soon be...”
– Brian Tracy
March 2010
2 posts
The Shared Qualities of Top Sellers
TOP SELLERS:
-Do not take “no” personally and allow it to make them feel like a failure. They have high enough levels of confidence and self-esteem so that, although they may be disappointed, they know it doesn’t have anything to do with them personally.
-Take 100% responsibility for their results—not the economy, not the competition, and not their own company.
-Have...
People with high levels of personal mastery are continually expanding their ability to create the results in life they truly seek…. It means approaching one’s life as a creative work, living life from a creative as opposed to reactive viewpoint.
When personal mastery becomes a discipline-an activity we integrate into our lives-it embodies two underlying movements. The first is...
January 2010
3 posts
Whether we realize it or not, selling is based on relationships. And the only real relationships we can count on are those that arise out of intelligent conversations between two people. Conversations are the foundation of selling.
In the end, we will sell, or fail to sell, based on the quality of our conversations with our customers. If we display genuine curiosity, and ask appropriate do-based...
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
-Mark Twain
If you are in a reinforcing feedback system, you may be blind to how small actions can grow into large consequences-for better or for worse. Seeing the system often allows you to influence how it works.
For example, managers frequently fail to appreciate the extent to which their own expectations influence subordinates’ performance. If I see a person as having high potential, I give him...
December 2009
4 posts
Sellers have an emotional hurdle too. The emotional hurdle for the seller is having the intestinal fortitude towithstand the wringing of the buyer…. Part of a seller’s power comes from having the fortitude to walk away from a buyer who is not meeting him halfway.
Michael Bosworth
I have found it of enormous value when I can permit myself to understand the other person. The way in which I have worded this statement may seem strange to you. Is it necessary to permit oneself to understand another? I think it is.
Our first reaction to most of the statements (which we hear from other people) is an evaluation or judgment, rather than an understanding of it. When someone...
A fundamental rule of management is that you can’t change people’s character; you can’t even control their actions most of the time.
-Nigel Nicholson, “How to Motivate Your Problem People,” Harvard Business Review, January 2003
We have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just to go for diplomas and degrees, this work and that work.
We have been created in order to love and be loved. -Mother Teresa
November 2009
8 posts
How are you going to win the Superbowl if you don’t plan to win it?
—Marc Wills, loyal Steelers fan, potential business partner, and manager of Brasserie Margaux, a French American restaurant in downtown Seattle, on priorities, time-management, and working toward goals, in a sales call today.
Should I Trust You?
All things being equal, people want to do business with their friends. All things being not quite equal, people still want to do business with their friends.
Business people, especially salespeople, seek to gain trust right away when in fact trust is far away in a new relationship.
Here’s the secret: First comes likeability. Then comes believability. Then comes confidence. And finally,...
If you can understand the psychological steps a buyer goes through to buy, you can predit the buyer’s behavior.
When you can predict your buyer’s behavior, you will be a lot less likely to overreact to behaviors which less knowledgeable sellers might react negatively.
-Michael Bosworth
It all comes back to a major difference between the best salespeople-the intuitive eagles-and the journeymen.
Eagles are able to keep their products and all their amazing features in their pockets. They do not use their product to sell.
They use the product to prove.
Journeymen like to make presentations. Eagles have conversations.
-Michael Bosworth
I tell my clients they don’t need the best product to win; they need a reasonable product.
The best sales person, not the best product, will win in most competitive situations. Process will beat product.
-Michael Bosworth
Success: a Marathon, Not a Sprint
The single most important quality of success is self-discipline. Self-discipline means that you have the ability, within yourself, based on your strength of character and willpower, to do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not. Character is the ability to follow through on a resolution after the enthusiasm with which the resolution was made has passed. It is not...
“If…you get just one thing-an increased tendency to think always in terms...”
– Dale Carnegie
October 2009
19 posts
It's the best who always want to do better.
Selling, no less than teaching or medicine or law, is a professional calling, and those who prosper in it are those with a handle on their own professional methods. They’re the people who have developed a conscious, planned system of selling steps that are visible, logical and repeatable… not magic or charisma or luck…. Tomorrow’s sales leaders will succeed because they...
Inventor Charles F. Kettering said, “There is a great deal of difference between knowing and understanding. You can know a lot about something and not really understand it.” That can also be said about people. You can know a lot about a person and still not understand him. More information isn’t always the answer. To really understand people, you must know what they want, and...
“False humility downplays ones genuine strengths to receive praise. Arrogance...”
– John Maxwell
“The biggest challenge in anyone’s life in making yourself a success is...”
– George Foreman
“The first thing I’d say to an businessperson: Get moving. Because one of...”
– Twyla Tharp, choreographer:
The Joffrey Ballet, the NYC Ballet, the Paris Opera Ballet, London’s Royal Ballet, American Ballet Theatre
“Audacity and self-confidence are not the same as rashness; a healthy...”
– Henry M. Boettinger, Harvard Business Review, 1975
Just do it
What I’m trying to tell people is that they shouldn’t be held back by the great stuff other people have done. Brahms is the classic example here. He was a consummate musician, and because he was so respectful of the great composers and of Beethoven in particular, he could not get out his first symphony until he was in his mid-forties. What a waste of time that was, what a waste. And...
Should I trust you?
Is it possible to lose a major sales opportunity because in the first 30 to 60 seconds your buyer concluded that you are a person with whom he would not do business—Is that possible? It’s extremely possible. So the first decision the buyer makes is his decision to listen to you.
The first 30 to 60 seconds with your prospect are very critical. Insincerity is the number one negative...
Open-mindedness
If a person of your intelligence and competence and commitment disagrees with me, then there must be something to your disagreement that I don’t understand, and I need to understand it. You have a perspective, a frame of reference I need to look at.
—Stephen Covey, on winning high levels of trust and cooperation with others.
