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Connecting with Jack Canfield, Author, Coach, and a true “Champion of Success

If you were on my Chat with Champions call the other day – you heard my interview with Jack Canfield, one of the worlds leading authors. In fact, he is in the Guinness Book of World Records for having 7 books on the NY Times best-seller list on the same day! As an author, Jack has over 220 published titles worldwide and is most frequently recognized as the Co-Author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series (co-written with Mark Victor Hansen).

In the self-development world, Jack Canfield has spent over 30 years earning the reputation as Americas #1 Success Coach and has recently released the profoundly powerful and inspirational book, The Success Principles, which is being described as the Think and Grow Rich, of the 21st Century. The book covers 64 principles that Jack has applied and experienced himself, as well as researched and confirmed among a large group of other super successful people. This book discusses, How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be (which is actually the subtitle of the book).

As many of you know, I also share in the passion to help others get to where they want to be through my own books, coaching and consulting. Having known of Jack Canfields work, long before the interview, I share many of his beliefs and have the utmost respect for him. Below, I will discuss just a few of the many, many pearls of wisdom he shared during the call. To learn more about these principles in depth, read Jacks book The Success Principles.

Jack truly believes that just about any person with a healthy mind and body can achieve success using his success principles. So, youre probably thinking, Great! What is success according to Jack Canfield? and What are the Success Principles? So, lets jump in and answer those two key questions.

What is Success?

Success is the ability to create the results you want in your life. This can include things like building a thriving business, ending world hunger, sharing love through music, enjoying a healthy body, and endless other personal and professional goals. Success has a personal and different meaning for everyone.

What are the Success Principles that will help me experience success in my own life and create the results I would like to see?

In reality, youll have to read Jacks book to get the whole, in depth answer to that question. But, Jack shared with us that he had done a survey of 2000 businesses owners. He then looked at what separated the business owners that were considered successful from the ones that were not -and three key factors rose to the top.

All of the business owners of the successful companies:

1. Had unusual clarity regarding their business. In North America, only 10% of people set annual goals. But, these folks could recite off the top of their heads the answers regarding their companies values, mission, vision, purpose, goals and objectives. They were completely tuned in to what success meant to them.
2. Took 100% responsibility for their lives and took action to achieve results. Whenever something happened, good or bad, they evaluated how they had contributed to the outcome. Even if it seemed like the result was not one of their control, they still looked at how they could have done things differently to generate a more successful result. Once they determined what these things were, they implemented them for the future.
3. Developed routines for themselves that they used discipline to maintain. The routines are different from individual to individual, but the discipline of sticking to the routine was the common action. These routines were developed to help them stay focused on successfully achieving their goals.

These 3 examples are just a tiny glimpse into the 64 principles shared in The Success Principles. I highly recommend you read Jacks new book! You will find action steps that guide you to experience success in all of the various areas of your professional and personal life.

For more tips on creating business success, follow me at: Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.

Generating Sales in a New Business

generating-sales-new-businessOn a recent team call, we discussed one of the most pressing questions facing both entrepreneurs starting up a new business, as well as existing business owners that have not yet been able to create consistent and stable cash flow:

How do I create income for my business when I dont have marketing dollars to generate leads and no one knows who I am or what my business does?

If you want quick cash to generate cash flow for your business, the best way to do that is to fund it through sales. Selling your products or services with payment in advance for a discounted price creates the opportunity to have your customers fund your business during your start-up phase, or in the case of businesses struggling with cash flow issues.

If you dont have the funds to invest in marketing to generate new leads, the best option is to seek referrals. If you have not sold anything yet, it may be difficult for you to get customer referrals. However, you can approach the top 10 business associates you have developed through prior jobs and networking for a lunch.

At this lunch, give them a quick 2-minute overview of your story, explaining how you are excited about your project, what your product or service offering is, and the highlights. Then, ask these folks if they know somebody that might be interested in looking at your product or that your service might be good for. Get a list of referrals and the name of the person that referred them. Call the referrals and make appointment after appointment. If you get 5 appointments a day over the course of a week, you should be able to generate some new business. In fact, it would be very unusual to make 25-30 calls to a warm referral list without generating some kind of sales opportunity.

Additionally, try to serve first. When I say, Serve first, I mean go out into the community and start to help others in order to get exposure for you and your business. Discover what educational, trade and social communities your target prospects are likely to belong to and offer help them out. Speaking for free is a great way to do this.

A presentation discussing the solutions to a problem that you and your prospects are passionate about will help you build significant exposure to and credibility among your target audience. It should not be a sales pitch when you speak. Instead, provide value and education about the topic. You can end your presentation by saying, By the way, my company offers a solution to deal with this problem and if you would like to learn more, please come see me. By delivering education and value, you are serving your prospects first while creating an opportunity for business exposure and ultimately sales without any marketing dollars.

Would you like to learn more about how to sell and take your business from the difficult position of being an unknown or struggling entity to the powerful position of having prospects seeking your company out for help? I invite you to learn about this and so much more at our Sales Explosion Program being held in Scottsdale, AZ.

For more tips on creating business success, follow me at: Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.

Making it Big in Network Marketing

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I was recently asked these two questions:

1. “How do I get thousands of people to join my down line in my networking business?”
2. “How do I get rid of their fear that I am just tricking people out of their money?”

After working with hundreds and hundreds of network marketers, I honestly believe that Network Marketing is one of the greatest businesses to be part of. You are provided with systems, products, compensation programs and often have a team in place. This infrastructure really gives you a leg up as an entrepreneur.

To get people in your down line, it really comes down to two basic principles about selling:

1. You have to be able to sell. You have to be able to sell yourself on the product. You have to be able to sell others on buying the product and more importantly, wanting to sell it themselves. Sales like this take the skill of being able to sell one-on-one, as well as being able to present on a stage and captivate a room of 5 or 500 people.

2. The other aspect that really comes into play with Network Marketing is that you HAVE to have the ability to teach others how to sell. If you want to grow your down line, you cannot do it on your own. For that matter, you cant really do any business on your own. But, in Network Marketing, the whole thing is about growing your team to have them sell and convince others to join the team. So, you have to be able to teach your team members to sell, and teach them to teach their team members to sell. That is truly the key to growing your down line efficiently, effectively and successfully.

95% of network marketers dont make any money because they dont want to be perceived as pushy or tricky sales person which leads to the 2nd question:

“How do I get rid of their fear that I am just tricking people out of their money?”This sounds like a question about convincing other people. But, I disagree. If you have the fear that other people are going to think that you are just trying to trick them out of their money, you need to take a look at what you are selling.

If you dont believe in your own products, then you may have that fear yourself (that you ARE just tricking people out of their money). If you truly believe you are tricking someone into doing something they dont want to, you are in the wrong business and need to find a new product to sell.

However, if you are passionate about the value that your products bring to the lives of others, as well as the opportunity to join your team, why should anyone believe that you are going to be tricking them out their money? In a case like this, a “Little Voice” in your own head that heard, “All Network Marketing companies are just trying to trick people out of their money!” is now telling you that people are going to fear you the moment you announce you are with a Network Marketing company. In instances like this, you need to quiet your own “Little Voice”.

If you let your “Little Voice” constantly concern you every time you talk to a prospect, even if the person would have been interested and truly have benefitted from what youre offering, theyll feel your own doubts and worry come through and will think something is not right. This “Little Voice” will ultimately kill a sale that would have been good for you and the other person.

Bottom line: If your products stink, get involved with new products. If your “Little Voice” is giving you bad information, tell it to “SHUT UP” and get to the task at hand of helping yourself by helping others have access to top products and exciting income and business opportunities!

Discussing Entrepreneurial Success with Michael Gerber

In my most recent Chats with Champions call, I had the honor of interviewing Michael Gerber, who has been a mentor to me through his book The E-Myth, especially when I was first starting out as an entrepreneur. Never having met Michael before, it was an exciting opportunity to talk to someone who has influenced me personally, as well as millions of others.

Michael Gerber is the #1 small business guru and has helped turn around over 75,000 businesses in over 145 countries! For those of you that have not read The E-Myth, it stands for the Entrepreneurial Myth. Michael points out that most entrepreneurs are not business people, they are technical experts. A doctor opens a medical practice, a baker opens a bakery, a beautician opens a salon, etc. Because they know how to do the work, they believe that they know how to create a business that does that work. And herein lays the E-Myth: Having the technical ability to do something and having the ability to build a business about something you know how to do are two completely different skill sets.

Yet, in this economy, more and more and more people are striking out on their own and becoming sole proprietors. What they dont realize is that they are really just becoming self-employed for a boss that usually does not know how to run a business (themselves). The proof is in the statistics: 80% of all new companies fail within their first 5 years. Of those that survive in the first 5 years, the majority of them will fail within 10 years.

I highly recommend listening to the entire call. Michael is working in a variety of exciting new projects that are for entrepreneurs just starting out, as well as entrepreneurs that want to learn how to turn their own businesses around and then teach others how to do the same thing using his proprietary systems. If you visit www.michaelegerber.com, you will find information on his two latest ventures: The Dreaming Room and Origination, as well as his new book The Most Successful Small Business In the World, focused on helping an entrepreneur understand exactly what has to be done at the beginning of building a new business to be truly successful.

Although Michael focused on a wide variety of important points, the two that I want to highlight here are:

  1. Sales is an absolute critical aspect of entrepreneurial success, but there are many other aspects, as well. A concept we also teach that we touched on is: You must have the other aspects of business in place, creating systems and a culture that will support the business being successful, growing and becoming scalable in your absence.
  2. And, most importantly: One of the absolutely mandatory factors that any entrepreneur that wants to succeed must have is a vision and mission that answers the question of, What am I going to add to this market, to this world, and to others lives through my business that otherwise would not have happened, if I did not start my business? It is this bigger vision that pulls people through the roughest patches to ultimately succeed.

Both Michael and I believe that as human beings, we are all gifted with our own special talents and creativity which we are meant to focus on using to help make a positive impact in this world. Entrepreneurs get the opportunity to design and live into this role when they create a truly successful business!

For more tips on creating business success, follow me at: FacebookTwitter or YouTube.

Thinking of Starting a Business?

StrategyiStock_000005614684XSmallRaymond Chong, one of my associates in Asia, recently asked me, What advice do you have for people that are considering going into business for themselves?

What a great question! I will hone in on two points for this blog post:

1) Many people start a business thinking that if they do whatever the business is going to do (prepare food, cut hair, fix tires, sell books, etc.) exceedingly well, they product or service will be so good – that it will sell itself. Nowhere in the world is this the universal truth that most entrepreneurs hope for and gamble on. I believe that this faulty logic accounts for a significant portion of the 90% of small business that fail in their first 5-10 years. So, basically, if you are going to open a business, you have to not only be able to provide your products or services, you have to be able to SELL them.

2) The fact that selling is one of many required entrepreneurial skills leads me to the point that selling, at least the method of selling I teach and advocate, is an international process. It crosses all borders and is basically the same, when done right, everywhere. The process I am suggesting requires the sales person to go into the world of the client. The sales person should be humble, honoring the prospect and showing him respect. By asking lots of questions and listening, the sales person can learn what the problem is that the prospect would like help resolving. If, and only if, the sales person has a good solution for the client, the sales person would then proceed to present how the product or service they are offering can help the prospect resolve their problem. Ultimately, selling is the skill of helping people solve problems with the products or services being sold.

Selling is not forcing a product or service on someone that is not interested in and/or has no need for the product or service being offered.

If you would like to comment on this blog post or ask additional questions, I invite you to visit the Blair Singer Facebook fan page and post your question or comments there.

Using Social Media to Help Me, Help You!

As a speaker, I meet and train hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people every month. Yet, once I say farewell, I cant be sure if participants implement what they learned in their lives going forward.

I believe in teaching experientially so that people LIVE a lesson instead of just hearing or seeing it. This way, I know they have truly learned it. But learning something new and applying it to everyday living are two different things. While many people have written to me telling me that their lives and fortunes have been changed because of what they learned at my Sales and Leadership Events, I often wonder what happens to the people I dont hear from.

I am happy to say that with the development of Social Media Marketing, I now have a place where I can keep in contact with my participants and they can come together to interact with me and each other. What a powerful way to continue learning! This can be done in an unorganized fashion, just by chatting with me and each other on Facebook, or by doing organized events.

To test the waters, I recently started a 2-Day Sales and Leadership Results follow up program that involves five select participants. They have agreed to share how they are taking what they learned at the 2-Day event and applying it in their lives. They will get feedback from me – and I am sure other Facebook fan page visitors and 2-Day event participants. This will be a great opportunity for me to see how my participants apply what they learned into their everyday lives. Ill be learning from them where the successes come easy, as well as where the unanticipated challenges lie. It will also will help me continue to build upon my own training programs, and perhaps create new ones! Using Facebook, I can also support them in achieving the changes that they wanted to implement based on their experiences in my training events. To see this take place, and share your own questions and comments, please visit the Blair Singer Facebook fan page.

Additionally, I will be doing a Live Facebook Chat on August 3rd at 2:00pm PDT. Here I answer questions from Facebook fans. I hope that you will participate by joining my fan page at the designated time. I encourage you to type in your question and I will respond to you in real timeI have learned to type very fast during these events! As always, I look forward to supporting you and reading your “real life” experiences.