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The Key to Your Success

Why are some people more successful than others?

In its simplest form, the answer is this: The key to success lies in your particular manner of thinking.  When you change how you view a situation and change how you think about yourself, your relationships, what happens to you, your goals, and your world, your life will change. If you want to change your life, you must change the quality of your thinking.

Time after time, I listen to folks complain about their life, their job, their friends.  It just seems to be part of our culture today.  It seems that fewer and fewer people have  optimistic goals for their life and they are looking for someone else to help them out of the situation they are in.

The only way to get yourself in a different, more productive place is to change yourself first.  Changing rituals, changing thinking and responding differently.  One must learn how to RENEW YOUR MIND DAILY..

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How To Find Your Purpose In Life

"5 Keys"

As I develop my brands in the marketplace, I decided on three areas that I am very interested in and uniquely qualified to write, speak, blog, coach, lead, and podcast about!  I am passionate about business, passionate about finding significance in life and passionate about personal development.  I have spent a career at finding purpose in all that I do for a living and that has led me down some pretty amazing experiences.  Of course, both good and bad, productive and unproductive, expensive and cheap, and dead ends as well.  I have had too many business cards to talk about, and funny enough, I think I am going to make a collage of the all so my kids will have a good laugh someday!

I am working now on building another business around those three areas that I am passionate about and I want to help all of those who want to come along with me in this journey.  There are many platforms today available for those that have expert advise, vision, coaching skills and more.  The challenge becomes how to synthesize and formula products from what we know how to do.  Therefore, I am developing 3 Brands that will help folks do just that.

My first brand is The Corporate Growth Academy.  This is for all of you wanting to learn how to build a business around what you do, what you love or what you have been gifted to do.  My second brand is OnPurpose.  This is the spiritual, intentional,destiny area of  life that helps folks grow into what God has designed them to do and to achieve.  And finally, personal development.  This is the area where almost everyone starts first in their life. This is the area where we develop at school, university, family, social capital and through training and self help courses.  The brand I am developing here is The Berea Leadership  Academy.  Here we are dedicated to helping students and adults achieve High Performance.  It focuses on Best Practices for personal development and the steps to get you there.

Each of these brands are actually integrated product suites.  Today, I would like to start with the Ingredients of finding your purpose, your destiny in life. There are 5 main ingredients and perhaps more, but we will concentrate on the 5 to keep things simple.  Passion, is the first main ingredient that leads you to your purpose/destiny in life.  Wherever your passion lies, is a good indication of how God has equipped you for success.  Now here is a simple trick for gaining clarity about what you are passionate about.  Go look in your personal library of books that you read, music you listen too, shows you watch and what you look forward to in your life.  This is an indication of how God has “wired” you and what you might want to do for a living.

On my next post, I will give you ingredient number two in finding your purpose and destiny!

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If You Are Not Selling…You Are Dead (part 8)

Selling is the Key to your Success

How important is professional online/offline selling today?  Well here are some statistics to think about:

  1. Customer Focus-Customer acquisition is the primary goal of marketing.  Recent surveys from Industrial Marketing show that 43% of survey respondents indicate that customer acquisition is their primary goal. Customer retention has grown every year for the past several years with 15% saying it is their primary goal in 2015.  Finally, 54% say that customer acquisition is used to measure marketing success.  Therefor, professional selling is needed at all levels in the organization to achieve this.
  2. Brand Awareness-Over the next years, Industrial marketing and sales professionals are going to invest in Brand Awareness.  They realize that having a recognizable brand in the marketplace helps shorten the sales cycle. Webinars/blogs/membership sites and other content marketing can help personalize and strengthen your brand.  Developing a “smashable brand” strategy is also very important in improving brand awareness.
  3. Creating and Distributing Content-Content creation and digital ways of delivering content is the key to success in both Industrial and business to business marketing. No longer is a company brochure the main ingredient for the professional sales person.  Content Blogs, podcasts, membership sites, webinars and live streaming are becoming the top mechanisms for customer acquisition.  (Marketing Maven)

Finally, generating qualified leads is one of the top priorities for industrial marketers and professional sales.  Qualified leads together with professional selling is the key to customer/client/patient acquistion. The overall challenge is to understand and utilize all of the Online and Offline marketing and selling platforms available today.

“WE should’t be completely satisfied with worldly success because it can never bring us true significance. Fulfilling your destiny answers the question of your significance”.

Destiny (Dr. Tony Evans)
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7 Secrets to Finding Your Destiny In Life

Something unique to Americans is often asked when you meet someone new.  One of the first questions asked when you meet someone new at a party, or on the airplane is: “What Do You Do?”  What is very interesting is that this is a question that most Europeans NEVER ask you when you first meet.  Even after meeting several times, it is a question rarely asked.  Well, unfortunately, what you do for a living is often times “attached” to your sense of identity. But after I sold my business, I found myself not being able to answer that question.  I used to tell people that “I Don’t Know” what I do for a living!

So if you are one of those people who doesn’t know what you want to do when you grow up, here are 7 secrets to finding a life of success and significance:

  1. Listen To Hear God’s Voice– The only way to find your calling in life and to live with a sense of purpose, is to be talking and listening to the guy who made you.  You need to understand what you were designed to do in life and then get on with it.  We spend nearly 1/3 of our lives at work!  A 2013 Gallup study revealed that 30% of people are “excited” about their jobs, about 50% are “disengaged” and the remaining 20% actively try to harm their organizations!  With statistics like these, just imagine working in what you were designed to do!
  2. Determine what is in your BOX- When your middle aged like me, you have the unique chance to stop and reflect back on your first 50 years!  Look for the common threads between what God has whispered in your ears for the last 50 years and what you are passionate about.  See if you can connect the dots and see a pathway to your purpose!  I call this living OnPurpose and its all about living intentionally.  When you understand what passions and skills are in your BOX, work to prioritize them down to the most important one and then develop a plan to direct y our life towards that end.
  3. Let Go of The Past-What ever has happened to you in the past, make sure to leave it in the past.  Don’t Nurse it,  Don’t Curse it. Just go about reversing it by keeping your hand on the plow moving forward.  Let go of any un-forgiveness or bitterness so that you can remove the yoke of bondage that it holds over you. It is important to let the past go not because of what someone did or said was right, but so that you can free yourself from them.
  4. Endure-Finding your purpose and destiny in life requires you learn how to endure through the valley of development.  One thing that God requires is for you to attend his bootcamp training. This is mandatory training for anyone seeking there destiny and purpose. The reason you need to attend the training is so that you learn to rely on his word and not your own.
  5. Recharge-Essential to finding your purpose and destiny requires time to recharge. Take time to go back to what you enjoy in life and make sure to experience these times with a sense of gratitude. For example, I still go to Cedar Point to ride the coasters.  I buy a season pass and often go by myself. It is like a mini vacation every summer just walking the cause way and riding the coasters. It makes me think I am a “kid” again and that brings back fond memories!
  6. Dream-After you have recharged yourself, take time to dream again.  Remember that God gives you vision and this vision is a road map to your destiny and purpose.  God gives you a vision and always equips that vision with the provisions to make it happen. But you have to accept it by faith and bring it into the present.
  7. Align-Now that you have a vision for your purpose and destiny, you must develop a game plan.  That requires that you put your vision into goals and action steps.  I develop yearly goals and action plans that I write down and review weekly.  This helps me focus on the important things throughout the year and keeps me on tract with achieving my dreams and goals.  Act on those goals and move from success to significance in your life.

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If You Are Not Selling…You Are Dead (part 8)

Selling is the key to your Success

Today I want to talk about the four Marketing Pillars

There are four pillars on which all marketing is built.  In order of importance, QUALITY is first.  Without quality, nothing sells.  At every price there is a quality line.  For example, in automobiles, there is a quality at $10k, there is quality at $20k, there is a quality at $50k.  Everyone looks for the highest quality at their price level. Pillar two is STYLE and or DESIGN.  Without the right style or design, quality or price have little or no impact on the purchase.  STYLE and DESIGN are important elements in the sales equation.  Pillar three is SELLING AND ADVERTISING.  Without us, the professional sales people, nothing good happens! Products remain locked in warehouses and dreams go unfulfilled.  Pillar four is PRICE. As a professional salesperson who has been out in the trenches just like you, I have used price as the excuse for not having made the sale.  BUT, what is true is that price, although it is important, is number four on the list. To  most clients, quality is number one. Quality is what everyone is looking for; quality service, quality in design, quality of the company, quality in every area.  Plus, they are looking for the highest quality at the lowest price.  But in the end, price still remains the lowest of all.

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If You Are Not Selling…You Are Dead (Part 7)

Selling is the key to your Success

LET US REVIEW:

Selling is an ART FORM and a SCIENCE.

The six steps to making a sale are: Make Contact; Create Interest; Create a Preference; Ask for the sale; Close the sale; Keep the sale closed

There are four ways to get into a clients head: Recognition;Romance;Money; Self-Preservation

Success Keys: Application, Attitude, Goals, Enthusiasm

People buy for: Profit, Pleasure, Pride, Protection

People want: to gain, to save, to do and to be.

Three most important words: Money, Save, You

And in the next post, I will talk about the Four Marketing Pillars!

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If You Are Not Selling…You Are Dead (part 6)

Selling is the key to your success

Lets review!  So far we have covered the four keys to success: Application, Attitude, Enthusiasm and Goals.  We have also covered the four POWER words in any sales presentation: Money, Save, You, and New.  The four buying reasons: Pride, Pleasure, Profit and Protection.

Now lets go deeper into the four buying reasons.  We spoke about why people buy but now let us boil those down to their basic form.  The four basic appeals are: People want to Gain, People want to Save, People want to Do, People want to Be.  So crafting your offer/product or service needs to be relevant to the potential client in those four key areas.

So, when you first meet a client, you need to think about what are their “hot buttons”.  Basically are they going to buy for Pride, Pleasure, Profit or Protection.  And after you have got your clients attention with his/her hot button, then you can take the sale to the next level buy knowing what appeals to the potential client.  Do they want to gain, save, do or be.

The professional sales person learns how to use these techniques and crafts a “success system” that he/she applies over and over again.

In the next post, I will talk about the four marketing pillars that are essential to anyone who is selling and helping their customers/clients or patients succeed.

Remember, that selling is a highly professional skill and selling is helping people succeed in life.

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If You are Not Selling….You Are Dead (Part 5)

There are four keys to success in selling both Online and Offline, Industrial or consumer selling and here they are: Application, Attitude, Enthusiasm and Goals.  Let us first start with Application in sales.  The key to Application is to understand the client/ customer needs and to be “relevant” with what you have to offer.  In this fast pasted high tech world, it is critical that you understand what the application of what you are selling and then to make sure your offering is “relevant”.  It is basically, aligning all of the competencies that you represent behind what is “relevant” to the potential client.

Attitude is a mind set and it must be positive.  The professional salesperson must always keep in mind that his/her attitude determines their altitude.  In today’s busy and hectic world, everyone is looking to have better results and outcomes.  No one wants to be around someone who just drags them down. So the professional sales person must always be conscious of their attitude and their energy level.

Enthusiasm is also one of the keys to success in the online and offline sales world.  Because video is so widely used today, enthusiasm in videos, voice, and professional one on one selling is imperative.  Enthusiasm is often seen in professional selling when they know their “why”.  When a professional sales person is selling because it is part of their “purpose” to help people in life, it is clearly evident.

Finally, setting goals and keeping goals visible is necessary.  It has been proven, that sales people and people in general who commit their goals to paper and keep them visible have a much higher chance of succeeding.

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