Category Archives: Financial Freedom

Especially in a recessionary market, you really have to differentiate yourself from the rest, not just in terms of product or service, but credibility. With the availability of review sites like Yelp, or the myriad of report boards, people and businesses that don’t establish and maintain their credibility will not have people coming to them for anything.

Everything that you do or don’t do; everything that you say or don’t say counts. So when you say you’re going to call at 3 pm tomorrow, if you don’t do it you’ve already lost credibility. Do that with customers … is that a bell I hear tolling? That’s the death knell of a business. So follow-through and delivering on what you say are no-brainers, yes?

As counter-intuitive as it may sound, though, credibility actually doesn’t start with the customer’s opinion of you, or their feedback to others. It starts within you.

These are two of the most important questions for an entrepreneur to ask him or herself. First, ask yourself, ‘What did I do right?’ You do a quick analysis immediately after your presentation, call, or sale opportunity and you think of everything you did right. ‘I showed up on time. I dressed correctly. I looked the person in the eye. I shook hands with him or her firmly. I smiled. I was relaxed. I asked questions.’ Replay it like a highlight reel of tonight’s games. Look at all the good things you did.

The second question you ask is: ‘What would I do differently? If I had to do that over again, is there anything I would change?’

When you memorize and visualize what you did right, you program it in to your subconscious mind so the next time you’re with a customer you are pre-prepared, like an athlete. You’re ready to do all the things that you did right, and improve on the things that you would have done differently.

Never ask, ‘What did I do wrong? What mistake did I make? How did I blow it?’ When you focus on the mistakes you made, you pre-program yourself to make the same mistakes next time.

The more you program yourself with your successes, when you walk into a room the more confident you are, the more relaxed.

People love to buy from confident, relaxed people because confidence gives you high credibility. When you are confident, believe in yourself, and you’re comfortable with your product, that emotion of confidence becomes contagious. People feel that confidence you have in what you sell.

Those who have confidence in what they sell and feel real good about it—feel really good about it because they’ve called on so many people—they will have even more sales. Those who lack confidence will lose the sales they have now eventually.

A third-grader can talk and repeat product features, but it takes a credible salesperson to ask questions to try and understand where the prospect is coming from, and how you can help them. To be successful in business, you must love your customers. The only way you can love your customers is to really understand what their situation is, and then as a professional you make recommendations instead of trying to sell something. You must really want to help them.

That is what makes a credible, successful businessperson. Credibility is everything!

There’s no way around it: those who aren’t extraordinary athletes or entertainers but who still want to get rich have to get good at sales. Whatever that may be, even for artists, or whoever. You have to more specifically not only become good at sales, but great at closing sales.

Now, how do you close a sale? There’s three or four ways to do it. The best way is the invitational close. ‘Do you like this? How does this sound?’ Doing this invites feedback. ‘If it sounds pretty good, why don’t you give it a try?’ Assume that when you’ve answered a question or an objection, it’s the equivalent of them having decided to buy.

Or you can use what’s called an alternative close. ‘Would you prefer this or that?’ You offer a choice between A or B. The probability of them picking one or the other goes up dramatically if they have a choice, and whichever one they say ‘Yes’ to, you’ve made a sale.

Here’s a neat trick from one of the masters, Brian Tracy: if you get the customer to give you a single piece of information, you’ve successfully used the power of suggestion. ‘How do you spell your last name exactly?’ If they give you the spelling of their last name, they’ve bought the product. It’s very powerful.

In the end, the most important quality for a sale’s success is boldness. All qualities are habits, habits of thought and action. Because of childhood conditioning, we have  fears of failure and rejection, but these are learned because children have no fears. We learn them as we grow up, but this also means we can unlearn them. The way you excavate the fear of failure and rejection is by doing the opposite of what you would do in a failure or rejection situation.

When we back away from fear, it grows and grows. Soon it will dominates your whole life, and it will paralyze you. But when you confront the fear it will get smaller and smaller and will become manageable. So for the rest of your life make a habit of doing the things you fear.

With time you will develop the habit of courage. You reach the point where you’re not afraid of anything. The key to your success as a person and as an entrepreneur is to develop the habit of courage. The way that  you attack every single situation of which you feel a bit scared or nervous will move toward control of the fear. You pick up the phone. You make the call. You knock on the door. You ask for the order.

Whenever you feel afraid, do that which you fear. In a week, a month, a year from now, your fears will diminish. As your fears go down, your confidence and your self esteem go up, and you start to feel fabulous about yourself. You start to feel unstoppable.

What were some of the fears you’ve had to overcome in your life that held you back from success? What once seemed like a mountain but now more resembles a molehill? Give us your feedback. We want to hear from you!