Friday 14 March 2014

Unrealistic


There are plenty of goals I’ve achieved that at some point I thought were unrealistic. Remember losing in a few moves in chess at 7... but I became one of the best in Yorkshire for my age and beat players who’d played for England. Nobody thought I would have a world wide selling novel, even my family. Pretty unrealistic for a twenty one year old to do that right? But we’re living in the internet age now and it happened. I never had any ‘formal’ sales education, but I’ve managed to sell all kind of products for some of the biggest and best companies in the UK.

Just over ten years ago I knew very few ‘high value’ people and was pretty introverted. Now I know many and am humbled that they help me towards my goals.

Truth is... at many points I could have died rather than reach these goals. There are lots of times where I’ve cried, believing I’d never make it. But I think deep inside I have always had this inner belief that I would succeed. That’s probably the most important element in achieving goals, believing that you will. After that you find ways to make it happen.

I’ve just finished another goal that is something I’ve never done before, has taken over a year and a lot of energy. Whiskers away from dying rather than achieving it, but it’s practically done now.

I feel much more focused now, because this issue took a lot of that away. Coming back from near death makes you appreciate life more. There are plenty of things I haven’t achieved yet that seem unrealistic... but I’m about to start on these goals.

Saturday 1 March 2014

Being None Needy


Good morning all!

I've touched on this before, but today I'm going to go into a bit more depth on being none needy. This is because over the past few days I have been... quite needy but have managed to 'aggressively reverse the course' to an extent. Being needy is ironically about the worst way you can go about getting what you need. In sales, if a customer sees you are desperate for a sale, you will very rarely get the sale. In contrast, if you are none needy and can offer value to a customer you are much more likely to get a sale.

Here are some real world examples of this for you to illustrate. When working for British Gas and Npower sometimes I would do a good pitch, get rapport, but not close the sale right then. We'd established that there was a decent saving, but they weren't ready to go for it. I'd say "Fine, that's ok" and start walking onto the next house. Sometimes a customer would literally chase me back out the garden path and say "Wait... OK I'll go for it!" By being willing to walk away and do something else you show that you will just go on and offer someone else value. Another example is saying "Look... we know you're being overcharged and I could save you some money. It's not going to kill me either way, it's your money." Effective and true.

It's the same in business relationships or friendships. I know a lot of great people here again, and to be honest I'm not needy at all with my friends or in business. If they're too busy to chat I'll just go and do something else and chat later.

Anyway, some new goals to focus on... eating more healthily... just generally getting more healthy food into my body. Also more exercise!