Essential Sales Success Habits

Lets accept the fact that we are all in sales.  However, if you earn your living, from selling any products or services, then your Sales mastery should be your primary responsibility.  Mastery in this area will ensure your upward mobility in earnings which will translate into quality living for you and your family.

Today I want to share with you 5 Essential Sales Success Habits:

1.  Sales Time Management

Time,  the most precious commodity of our lives is limited.  With just 86 400 seconds in a day, spending them wisely is critical.  Non productive time spent on NO return acts within your business will steal from you and your family, earning potential.  So guard your time well.  Spend it on building your salesmanship, your knowledge, networks, client relationships and face to face time with your prospects.

2.  Sales Professional Associations

The professional sales people are always hanging out with other winners.  By association, they keep their standards high, the quality of conversations are inspiring and beneficial.  Like a wise man once said:  “when you touch the honey jar, something has to stick” referring to that transference from the bottle to your fingers.

3.  Become obsessed with following up

The best of sales people, follow everything up.  Be it a phone call, a discussion, an email, an appointment.  They get that their valued clients have a thousand other things to do but call on them.  They remove that stress for their client and follow up consistently.

4.  Innovation connoisseurs

If you are not innovative in a changing market with many moving variables you may find yourself becoming obsolete.  Keep finding newer, smarter ways to engage your clients.  The principles of selling may be timeless but the conditions are always changing.  Adapt or die.

5.  Commit to succeed

Success is a daily activity.  Sales people know this too well.  Yesterday is history.  Commitment translates into working our craft until new history is written.  Those persistent about their success, thrive and go on to break records.

“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.” – Vince Lombardi said so aptly.

I’m your coach and partner in success

Vinesh Maharaj

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What Karma and Customer Services has in common

Without any religious connotations, Karma is widely accepted as a reaction to beware of.  Karma is generally perceived as bad.  It’s usually the payback for earlier misconduct.  It’s widely acknowledged and accepted as such in the western context.  The flip side of the same coin introduces the “good karma”.  Less popular in the west but more desirous by the eastern parts of the world.  This is the receiving of good luck, success, prosperity etc.

Karma, has a western counterpart; “As you sow, so shall you reap”.  Which basically come down to actions, either good or bad will harvest accordingly.  Karma is also scientific. Isaac Newtons third law:  “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”.  Also known as the “law of cause and effect”.  So karma is quite universal.

You may be wondering what does Karma and Customer Services have in common?  Well simply said…they have EVERYTHING in common.  Lets start with the acts of sowing goodwill with our customers.  If we sow high trust with our customers, the result is our customers will trust us for it.  Should we sow massive respect and appreciation, the feeling is generally reciprocated by the customer.  When we are customer centric in our services, the customer generally remains loyal to us.

Yes you get it.  Anything less that sowing acts of customer goodwill, will result in customer migration to your competitors.  Mistrust, lack of mutual respect and appreciation and a supplier based centricity will send your customer into bad karma orbit.  They will naturally gravitate towards those company’s who sow good karma with them, leaving you wondering why they left.

So the next time you are dealing with your prospects, customers, suppliers etc. ask yourself “Am I willing to reap what I sow”?  Am I willing to chance universal principles?  

Go on, have a great karma day!

I’m your coach and partner in success

Vinesh Maharaj

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MONDAY MENTAL PROTEIN: What your habits say about you

 

Your habits speak volumes.  Are you usually punctual or late?  Are you generally inspired or lethargic and careless?  Are you optimistic or pessimistic?

We are daily faced with both decision making and the consequences thereof.  Be it in traffic, in relationships, at home, at work…at life, at everything.  Constant, unending decision making.  What to eat, , what to wear, what to say, where to go, who to call, when to leave, how much to spend, how much to save, how much to give.  Sounds familiar?

Sadly because our minds are largely in auto pilot, we are unconscious that we are actually making decisions, much akin to your automobile shifting gears, automatically.  There is nothing automatic about it.  Its programmed according to a series of inputs or variables which determine the actions and outcomes.  You may not be shifting the gears in your car but the machinery certainly is.  You too have been programmed.  Programmed by your previous inputs (thoughts, words, actions and inactions).  From such programming, your patterns have become ingrained through repeated processing, making them habit.  You have found a pattern in your conscious decision making, our learned patterns becomes the standard, becoming habitual.

Habits are unconscious and can either be detaining or massively liberating.  Bad habits are easy to form but hard to live with while success habits, are hard to form but easy to live with.  Success habits separate the survivors from the thrivers. If we want new outcomes we must develop new habits.  Breaking bad habits such as self limiting thinking and behaviours,  self sabotaging, are possible for you, if you really want.

All habits are practiced, thus the secret is to practice the habits you want to cultivate.  If you repeat them consistently, a new neural pathway and process is created replacing the negative ones holding you back.  The ones you stop using fade into the background while the practiced habit comes to the fore.

Here is the 8 Step Vinesh Maharaj Habit Changing System:

1. Acknowledgment – Admitting you are held back by your habits is the starting point to change.  Be truthful with yourself.
2. Awareness – All new habits are built on awareness.  Its this skill that will set you off into the new habits you want  to create.  Put reminders of the habit you wish to create, everywhere you go.  On your mirror, on your mobile phone, on you notebook, on the sun visor of your car, on your refrigerator.  Here is an example of how to break negative thinking:  Write the following message and post it everywhere you look “I am a positive thinker and dwell on positive outcomes exclusively”. By reading and applying heartfelt conviction, neuroplasticity is occurring, giving you a chance to break the bad habit by replacing it with the new habit.  Awareness is catching yourself performing the bad habit and simultaneously choosing the good habit over it.
3. Associations – Choose the company of people who bring out your best, not worst.  Association with like minded people make your habit forming behaviour a walk in the park.
4. Acquire a sponsor – Find a relative, friend or colleague help you.  Let them anchor you in your new habit by talking down the negative habit, while fueling your commitment to acquire the new habit.
5. Associate penalties – Associate penalties that hurt and pay up when you act outside of your new habits.
6. Add value – Choose a charity to serve as payment.  You can pay in $’s or time to make their world a better place.
7. Actions create results – Act as if you wanted to change the world and not just your habit.  I assure you if its debilitating you, its debilitating the whole world.  Become an advocate and act consistently with the person you want to become.
8. Accommodating – Remember it took a lifetime or many million repeated thoughts, words and acts to create your current patterns.  Should you not succeed at first, keep trying.  Be accommodating that you may not just get it right on day one but persist until you do.

Aristotle said it concisely; “We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”.  All success and personal mastery is borne out of habit.  Thus if we want to be more effective and want results we can be proud of, we must pursue habit mastery.

Control your habits, don’t let them control you!

I’m your coach and partner in success

Vinesh Maharaj

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STOP HEMORRHAGING – Customer Excellence

Are you not amazed with everyday customer service failures?  Or have you become immune to them accepting them as the norm?  These daily acts of inferior customer care, are loosing company’s billions of dollars annually.  They are hemorrhaging customers.

With the cost and time invested in creating new customers you certainly wont want to loose your investment.  So sharpen up in your customer care and stem the out flows.

Here are some ideas to help you:

1. Hire the right fit – You cant hire people who don’t care.
2. Train your people in customer excellence – Let your training be world class.  Anything less is wasteful.
3. Ensure that your customer care processes are expedient
4. Product specialists – Ensure that every staff member who is client facing knows the product to the point of being able to perform “open heart surgery” in her sleep because she knows her product so well.
5. Incentivize excellence – Catch your staff dazzling your customers and make a noise about about it.  Offer them time off, or a “Star Award Trophy”, or tickets to the next live concert in town etc.
6. Say “Thank You” – Send a physical personalized “thank you” note to your customers by snail mail after the call or inquiry.  It goes a long way…
7. Time is money – So drop everything else and fix it…NOW.  It does wonders for your business credibility, it reduces call backs and it becomes a pleasant, easy win as opposed to a long drawn out problem.
8. Observe trends and fix your blockages – Business processes can sometimes be disabling to customer delivery where stalling or errors occur.  Stop to fix them.
9. Reporting – Keep tracking your progress to the goal – less calls in, means less cost to you and more satisfied customers.
10. Keep improving – commit to keeping your customers, whatever it takes.

As a consumer we are quick to complain.  I challenge you to be quicker to compliment.  When you are blown away by awesome, inspired customer services, tell someone.  Start with the person, then their manager, go home and tell your friends and family, write on your blog etc.  This act as insignificant as it seems can become a cultural penetration and shift…that mediocre is nothing, exceptional is everything.

I’m your coach and partner in success

Vinesh Maharaj

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MONDAY MENTAL PROTEIN: Responsibility; The Leadership Masterskill

The best of the best, take 100% responsibility for their outcomes.  They don’t suffer the blame game.  They get it…taking responsibility, separates the boys from the men.

Leadership of any sort, starts with responsibility.  Whether in business, politics, sports or at home those persons who take full responsibility for the delivery of the vision, strategy and outcomes, fair far better than those who are constantly shifting blame away from themselves.  Responsible leadership means learning from past mistakes, making quality decisions and driving harder and smarter at their objectives.

You would have heard of or read the use of the following description sometime or other: “RESPONSE-ABILITY”, loosely defined as “the ability to respond”.  I want to go beyond this definition and show you how everyday decisions are acts of responsibility; either for, or against your goals.

Lets start with rising every morning.  Those people who committed to their health, wealth, success, knowledge and wisdom etc. are ALL early risers.  Why do you think?  They are squeezing out the “juice from life”.  Think orange juice…You can either get a few drops or a cup FULL of juice depending how much you squeeze out of it.  They start by taking responsibility for their time.  They want every second they can get from 24 hours.  What do you want from this life?  Life is made up of time.

Secondly, true leaders invest heavily in their goals…(health, wealth, success, knowledge and wisdom etc.)  From the moment they open their eyes they use their time to grow these objectives.  What do you think billionaires discuss at breakfast?  “How to make the next billion” of course!  They take full responsibility to get there.  They don’t blame the competition, the tax man, the government etc.  They take responsibility for solving these “problems” and in doing so enjoy the massive results they achieve.  What goals are you taking responsibility for?

Thirdly leaders take total responsibility, for both the takings and the losses.  Who earns the top $’s?  Certainly not the help.  You guessed it…THE BOSS.  She is the one who risks it.  The one who pays you even when she has lost along the way.  She’s a true leader who doesn’t make excuses but takes care of her responsibilities LIKE A CHAMPION.  Are you guilty of making excuses or are you wearing your champion honor on your sleeve?

Fourth, I want you to consider how you spend your money.  Everyone I know with the exception of a very small minority want to be wealthy.  The great majority who is more than well endowed in the grey and white matter (brain) arena, behave contrary to the rules of wealth.  They spend more than they save.  Until they start taking responsibility for their saving/spending never will they arrive at the wealth they dream of.  Responsibility is the master key to any achievement.  Are you taking the responsibility required to succeed?

Fifth, lets look at your associates?  Have you ever heard “You are the average of the 5 people you hang out with”?  Who are you keeping company with?  Responsible leaders associate with other visionary, success oriented people on the same trajectory.  Why is this so?  So that they can network and learn from each other both consciously  and unconsciously while playing golf, having dinner regardless of where they find themselves; kiddie parties, launches, bar mitzvah’s etc.  Its really not where.  It is who.  Are you taking responsibility for your associates? 

The list is endless.  Success in any field does not come by chance.  It comes from taking responsible actions to create the desired outcomes.  When you are clear about your responsibility to yourself, your family, your employees, your shareholders, the underprivileged etc. you can then act in line with your best intentions and highest values.  Taking responsibility alleviates you from victim and excuse making consciousness and empowers you to deliver the goods for failure never is an option once you accept complete responsibility.

Responsibility is a choice.  A daily moment to moment decision making process.  Take ownership of it.  Develop awareness at every moment to be congruent with your goals and objectives.  Winston Churchill said it so appropriately “The price of greatness is responsibility”.  Go on and do great things with this lifetime but start by taking responsibility.

I’m your coach and partner in success

Vinesh Maharaj

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SALES MASTERY: Fundamentals

If you’re not making your sales target you need to be asking why?  Where is the gaps in your sales dynamo?

There are 3 fundamentals I wish to share with you sales professionals today.  We get so busy with activity that we easily miss the fundamentals.

The first is PLANNING.  Whats a business (or a sale) without a strategy to target your market?  WHO, WHERE WHEN, HOW & WHY are like your five fingers.  Without them, you cant hold onto anything.  You certainly cant hold onto a sale or a client.  Without them you cannot SELL.  They are like ingredients to a great dinner party.

Prepare meticulously! Start with market segmentation.  Which part of the market are you catering to?  Be crystal clear about who your client is.  Know everything you need to about your clients.  Where do they hang out?  In malls, online or at music concerts etc.  When and how can you engage them?  Whats your strategy for engagement?

Secondly, ensure that you have a sound SALES PROCESS:  This involves your process of prospecting, approaching, needs analysis, presenting, closing etc.  Mastery in each will yield bountiful fruit in your business.  A business without a sales process is like a car without an engine.  Tweak your sales process and watch your numbers grow.

Lastly, PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE:  Is it not amazing that every other professional, especially sports men and women, doctors, lawyers, actors etc practices their delivery everyday?  Sometimes on the field, in the class room even to themselves while in the shower or while driving?  They drill, practice and rehearse their lines to deliver stellar non negotiable value and come up on top, time and time again.  Why wont you?  Too many sales people walk into a clients office and the first thing that falls out of their jaw may make or break a sale. They then leave dejected and cant understand why they struggle to convert prospects to sales.

Go from survive, to thrive, from good to great and ultimately to unstoppable.  “You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.” — Zig Ziglar.  Commit to your sales achievement by investing the time to become a sales dynamo.

I’m your coach and partner in success

Vinesh Maharaj

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MONDAY MENTAL PROTEIN: The Art of Commitment

If success at anything were easy street, the world would be flooded with successful people.  Regrettably it is not.  One of the core ingredients to succeeding at anything is COMMITMENT; massive, massive…commitment.

Commitment is defined as a “the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, activity, etc.” It is also considered to be a promise, a contract, obligation or duty to fulfill.

In your endeavors at your craft and in every facet of life; commitment is the carbon fibre of your success. Stay with it and succeed. Its about taking the road less travelled to deliver exceptional value whatever you do.  There is an unspoken honor towards people who keep and people who exceed their commitments.

Commitment to anyone else but yourself, first is misleading.  Your first commitment is to yourself.   Commit to expect nothing less than your best.  Commit yourself to world class standards and ideals and when your clients, friends and family whisper your name…let your commitment echo synonymously with your name.

The greatest hero’s and heroines of our times have shown huge commitment.  From Mother Theresa to Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Nelson Mandela to name a few.  In the “Long Walk to Freedom”; the late great, Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, he time and time again lives up to his commitment to his cause.  When Henry Ford was met with failure after failure in the pursuit of the elusive V8 engine did he resolve to give up his commitment? Thomas Edison was derided as a mad man he stayed committed to his cause and gifted the world electrical light.  When Mother Theresa stood up to be counted against the odds, she stood tall.  How do you stand in the light of your cause?

Here are 5 Key skills to master your commitment:

1. Decide to be world class and stand tall at everything you do.
2. Raise the bar: Go above and beyond the call of duty to succeed.
3. Perform with heart…every time, all the time
4. Be relentless at taking massive consistent action.
5. Dont quit…you WILL succeed

In closing I want you to take the following with you today.  Let this be your meditation as you go about your business:

“Unless a man believes in himself and makes a total commitment to his career and puts everything he has into it – his mind, his body, his heart – what’s life worth to him?” – Vince Lombardy.  Go on, show great conviction through your unending inspired commitment to your success.

I’m your coach and partner in success

Vinesh Maharaj

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KEEP GOING, KEEP GROWING – Customer Service Ethos

Great company’s have it figured out. They get that customer centricity is everything.  The greatest gadgets, automobiles and other consumer goods are really nothing unless backed by a solid customer service ethos.  Those who master this, get phenomenal results because the union of product/service and customer, is where magic begins.

This magic unfolds when its backed up with inspired, world class customer service ethos.  The ripple effect of one happy customer is that he tells his friends and family, just  how impressed, blown away and refreshing the whole experience was…from start to end with company A.  Contrast this with the unhappy customer who tells EVERYONE he knows just how tragic company B’s customer service is and warned you NEVER to buy from them or suffer the same excruciating painful, heartless service.

Of course we all want to be company A but they are like hens teeth, few and far between.  What we can learn from company A is their customer care attitude.  Just like company B they get their fair share of disgruntled clients, however they know how to turn them around from a positive to a negative.  They get that clients are not just “sales” or “numbers” but they’re people who have needs both tangible and intangible.  They leave the customer feeling; “WE, try our darndest”.

An ethos or culture, can make or break a business.  Its a measure of how you treat your customers.  Its the barometer of how you handle problems.  Its how you communicate to your most prized clients.  Its how you resolve customer conflicts. Let your customer service be groundbreaking.  Anything less will make you Brand B.

Here are 10 habits to master in creating a winning customer service ethos:

1. Treat every client respectfully at all times, even when they lose the plot…
2. Show customers you care
3. Commit to resolve the matter promptly
4. Under promise & Over deliver
5. Take every action to get sterling results for your customer
6. Communicate the expected outcomes and timelines to your customer
7. Feedback to your clients
8. Be consistently amazing 
9. Do a post mortem of the query
10. Take action to stop bleeding out the same query repeatedly

REMEMBER that if you and your company is not taking care of your customers, your competition sure will.  When you treat your customer so well, they are bound to you for they know, the market can’t come close to your ethos of customer care.  “If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful…” Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon.com

My challenge to you is to put the care back into customer care.  Show up on your next call with your customers.  Be there in mind, body and spirit.  Show conviction.  Create opportunities to have them keep coming back.  Dazzle on and re-write the laws of customer service by leading by example.

Keep going, keep growing…

I’m your coach & partner in success

Vinesh Maharaj

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MONDAY MENTAL PROTEIN: The Bill Gates Genius

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft is considered one of the smartest people in the world today.  Love him or hate him he is also one of the most successful people of our times.

Some of his successes include being a multi billionaire having started a small unheard of concept, that revolutionized the technology industry.  He subsequently quit his CEO role and continues to pursue the philanthropic role of uplifting the 3rd world through a series of initiatives, plowing millions of dollars back.

So whats this Bill Gates genius I refer to?

If you could access a billion customers, selling to them at a profit of $1 each, you too could become a billionaire.  Bill Gates got this.

Wikipedia defines genius:  “A genius is a person who displays exceptional intellectual ability, creativity or originality…“.  To many of us have had our intellectual ability, creativity and originality stolen by a culture that encourages dogmatic thinking.  We have been brainwashed to follow the herd.  Rather, we were born, not to fit in but to stand out.  To carve your own path, not to follow the worn path of no joy.

At school kids are thought to think “in the box”, draw “in the lines” and to answer the math equation in the “logical” order it is taught.  At home we are all urged to get a good degree, get a good job and we will be happy.  Ask yourself who is really happy with mediocre when you could have genius?

Those who think out of the box are often condemned as mad men.  Thomas Edison was once such a man…until he succeeded.  The Wright brothers were laughed at…until they succeeded.  Many were beheaded for their genius during medieval times.

Geniuses push boundaries, challenge thinking and belief.  Luckily you won’t be beheaded for your genius today.  We are all born with genius inside but we lock it away, saving it for a rainy day.  Its raining today.  The world awaits your contribution in medicine, literature, arts, music, cuisine, science, technology, hospitality, business etc.  Follow the steps below to unleash the genius within.

8 STEPS to activate your genius:

1. Challenge yourself to find “another way”.  There are always new opportunities to those who commit.
2. Tune out – Stop the television/media so it won’t regulate your thinking.
3. Tune in – Go inside to unlock your potential.  Silence, meditation, nature etc to be great keys.
4. Think outside of the box.  This should be easy, the box has already been defined.
5. Listen to great classical music.  Heard of the “Mozart Effect”? Neuroscience/music studies have concluded that “Mozart Makes You Smarter”.
6. Ask and it is given – Ask the right questions and you will receive the right answers
7. Be original – There are too many “Elvis’s” out there.  Become YOU
8. Unleash your creativity – Its from creativity that new discoveries are made.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said it so well;  “When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.” 

I challenge you to commit to your genius, making an invaluable contribution to the world.  What are you waiting for?

I’m your coach and partner in success

Vinesh Maharaj

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DO GREAT WORK, WHATEVER YOU DO…

Today I want to share with you an inspirational quote by Martin Luther King.  Let it inspire your craft.  Let it fuel your personal and professional mastery.

“If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music … Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”

Your coach and partner in success…

Vinesh Maharaj

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