Blog Title: SuccessCo

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."

"Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man."

"Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?

"How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them."

- Benjamin Franklin

A resolution is a goal, and for a goal to have a real and lasting effect, it needs to be more than a one-time wish or want.

Here are some proven principles to help you set, maintain and achieve your New Year goals.

1. Challenging
People who set challenging goals for themselves tend to accomplish more than those who set more modest goals. Shoot for the moon.  Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.  -Les Brown

2. Specific
The biggest boost in individual performance from goal setting comes when goals are not only challenging, but challenging and specific. A goal is not a destination, but all the little steps that are necessary to reach the final destination.

3. Set with daily progress in mind
Effective goals encourage steady progress, day after day, week after week. Avoid thinking in success-or-failure terms. To do so makes you vulnerable to giving up on your resolution after just one slip. Instead, think of your goals as objectives that you move toward daily; some days you make strong progress, and some days you make none.

4. Controllable
Set your goals around things you can control. For example, you can you wake up in the morning and say “I will lose weight today”, but what you should say is “I will exercise today” or “I will eat healthy food today,” and those are much better goals to set.

5. Be Positive
Success comes when we focus on striving toward positive outcomes, rather than avoiding negative outcomes. Fortunately, most people understand this intuitively, and only about 10-15 percent of the goals set by people are avoidance goals such as giving up smoking or avoiding alcohol. And that’s a good thing, because people with many avoidance goals tend to be less happy, less satisfied with life, and more anxious than others. Positive goals put us in a positive state of mind, and are mentally associated with positive memories and experiences, whereas avoidance goals are typically associated with memories of failures and accidents.

-Jim
©2009 Successco.com

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Doctors, pilots, attorneys, and many other professions are required to continue training and professional development throughout their career. In fact, the top 10 percent in any field also takes it upon themselves to go the extra mile and develop their skills beyond the industries accepted standards.

While most sales professionals are not required to undergo continual professional training, it is certainly recommended.

I’ve heard it said that 80 percent of the sales books are sold to 20 percent of the salespeople. While I can’t substantiate this data, based on my own experience with sales professionals, I’d be more inclined to say 90 percent of the sales books are sold to 10 percent of the salespeople.

Do you want to become the best of the best? Never stop learning!

A few of my high reading recommendations go to:

How To Become A Rainmaker by Jeffrey J. Fox

How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules For Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients

Selling The Invisible by Harry Beckwith

Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing

The Mentor by Jack Carew

The Mentor: 15 Ways to Success in Sales, Business, and Life

-Jim

©2008 Successco.com

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Mr. Jones was known far and wide as a hard-nosed boss who watched his employees like a hawk. He was making one of his regular tours of the factory when he spotted a young man leaning against a pile of boxes just outside the foreman's office. Since George, the foreman, wasn't around, Jones stood off to the side and watched to see just how long the young man would stand around doing nothing. The young man yawned, scratched his head, looked at his watch, and sat on the floor. He took out a nail file and began cleaning his nails. Then he stretched, yawned again, and leaned back on the pile of boxes.
      
Jones stepped from his hiding place and walked up to the young man. "You!" he boomed. "How much do you make a week?"
      
The young man looked up indifferently. "Two hundred and fifty dollars," he said.
      
Jones swooped into the cashier's office, took $250 from the cash box, and returned. "Take it," he said, "and get out! Don't let me see you around here again!"
      
The young man took the cash, put it in his pocket, and left. Jones snorted at his lack of remorse, embarrassment, or any other feeling. Then he went looking for George. When he found him, Jones was red with anger."That idler in front of your office," Jones said. "I just gave him a week's pay and fired him. What's the matter with you, letting him stand around as though he had nothing to do?"
      
"You mean the kid in the red shirt?" George asked.
      
"Yes! The kid in the red shirt!"
      
"He was waiting for the twenty dollars we owe him for lunch," George said. "He works for the coffee shop around the corner."

Everyday something unexpected is going to happen. Count on it. Don’t let last minute emergencies throw off your day – count on them to happen.

Key to paper management – keep it moving. Move it to your “in” basket, your file, your “to read” folder or to the trash. Don’t let paper sit and accumulate.

NEVER say yes without considering the time investment and have the courage to say no to requests that are unnecessary.

Check yourself and discover how you are using your time. Do you spend time doing the right things or the wrong things? How well are you doing them? You may be doing the right things wrong or the wrong things right. Focus your energy on doing the right things right.

Reward yourself (Starbucks coffee, new CD, etc.) when you complete a task you wanted to delay. It will give you incentive to knock out other unpleasant tasks.

Learn how to separate the majors from the minors. A lot of people don’t do well simply because they major in minor things.

Drop in visitors. The five deadliest words that rob your time are, “have you got a minute?” Everyone is guilty - colleagues, bosses, peers. Knowing how to deal with interruptions is one of the best skills you can learn.

Always define your objectives as clearly as possible. Do you find you are not doing what you want because your goals have not been set? One important trait of successful people is their ability to work out what they want to achieve complete with written goals, which they can review along the way. Your long-term goals should impact  your daily activities and be included on your "to do" list. Without a goal or objective people tend to  drift personally and professionally

Plan time for discussing routine matters with your colleagues, this time decreases disruptions and interruptions.

And lastly, stress and fatigue are rarely caused by the things you have done, but by the thought of what you haven’t done!

-Jim

©2008 Successco.com

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Excerpt from Ask the right question by Rupert Eales-White

What is the goal?
The goal for a successful client relationship is just the same as for all the relationships we have considered – namely, to create an environment where both parties develop new insights and perspectives on problems, which lead to effective action by both parties and the development of a long-term partnership, which brings significant added value to both parties.