You know when I started selling financial services, I was almost 19 years old. Knowing absolutely NOTHING about this industry, how the products worked and how to present them, was a bit of a challenge.
I mean after all, would you trust a 19 year old kid with your finances?
On top of that I knew nothing about sales or marketing, as the saying goes, I couldn’t even ‘close’ a door.
So how do you overcome these challenges?
You become a pro.
What I’m about to share with you is amazingly simple and fairly easy to do.
BUT, as the legendary motivational speaker Jim Rohn says, the things that are easy to do, are also easy NOT to do.
I decided that I will make myself so knowledgeable and so good, that clients will have no other option but to do business with me.
So I went to the bookstore and got myself some personal finance books and books on mutual funds. I found some great training literature on different insurances, and I dove right into it.
If you make commitment to read 1 hour a day, even if it’s only in 15 minute increments, that’s over 365 hours a year. In 2 years you would have put over 700 hours of study into the thing you want to get good at.
Ya think you might get good at it?
I’ll tell you this. The amazing thing is that almost no one will do that. And when I say no one, I mean 99.999% of the people that say they’ll do it, WON’T.
Why?
Who cares why, that’s just the way it is. Actually I do know the answer to why they won’t do it, but that’s a long winded explanation, and you can read my previous posts on that, or go to www.businessattractor.com and find out more about how your mind works.
But the bottom line, is that most people will simply not have the little discipline needed for their success.
And if you simply make a commitment to read and learn every day, in a very short period of time, you’ll rise above the rest as you’ll become the expert.
I’ve done this successfully for years. Starting at 19 and getting myself to a such level of competence, that people didn’t care how old I was, all they saw is how I can help them.
I then spent many hours studying sales, marketing, and communication. Again with just a little time everyday, you can become a wealth of knowledge.
When I switched my business to marketing and consulting the same thing happened.
I already knew that I was more than capable to learn anything I need or want to learn if I simply take 1 hour a day and devote it to learning.
So if you want to be an expert in a specific niche. Or if you want to radically improve your sales and marketing, follow this simple, easy to do daily routine and watch yourself become the go to person in that area.
As I’m watching the Olympic Games, I’m just absolutely amazed at the mental toughness that these athletes have.
Can you imagine preparing your entire life for this one moment. As in most of these athletes cases it really all comes down to a moment.
Yesterday, Lolo Jones from United States, hits a hurdle with her leg in a 100m women’s hurdle.
The thing is that she was on track to be first and get the gold. She finished first in U.S. Trials, and was clearly a contender for the medal.
As a result of this moment, a minor mistake of either not raising her leg to high, or starting the jump too soon, she finished 7th.
Or you watch these gymnasts who are seem like they’ve got springs in their feet, as they do triple somersaults and land on one leg on a beam, and all of a sudden they fall or a small balance check shaves points right off and the medal goes to someone else.
The thing is that every one of these athletes have superior ability. Incredible strength and perseverance.
They’ve done their routine thousands and thousands of times.
They’ve visualized the successful accomplishment and the outcome, and one little nano-second can be the difference that gets them the gold or nothing.
And yet they gracefully get themselves up and keep going. What’s more is that a lot of them push themselves harder to be back in 4 years and do even better.
Now you think about the world that we live in. I mean the business world where we get to perform every single day.
It doesn’t come down to any one moment does it?
The Olympians have one shot at the gold. We don’t.
Everyday you have the opportunity to go for the gold in your business. Everyday we have choices we can make that can move us forward.
If you make a mistake, don’t get the deal, lose a client, your ad fails, or whatever…. so what?
What’s the worst that can happen? Nothing? So be it. You pick yourself up and do it again, and again, and again.
There’s no trials to compete in. There are no judges that deduct points whether fairly or unfairly.
There’s just a marketplace and they vote with their wallets.
For a long time I was quiet mediocre in sales. But I’ve drilled this thought into my head. “There are people out there. Whether I do anything or not, they will buy financial products from someone. So what do I have to do to get them to buy from me?”
And I held this thought for a long time, reminding myself of that every time something didn’t go my way.
It led me to believe that:
1. It’s possible
2. That I can do it.
It also led me to get better in sales, take courses, read books, excel in communication. And I developed this almost cocky confidence that I’m good. My belief level changed and so did my results.
How can you do the same?
Does your market have room for one more? If you’ve been affected by the economy, look deep into your niche and be brutally honest with yourself. Is it you or the marketplace. Are there others who are doing great, and it’s something you can model, or do you need to go into a different niche?
Maybe that’s the answer. The brilliance of marketing is not trying to create a need and force the market to conform to your wants and needs, but rather to tap into an existing one and get better at providing that.
And even if you make a mistake, and we all do, time and time again, as long as we have more wins than losses, than we too get to take home the gold.
And we don’t have to wait 4 years for that one shot.
Many self-help books and courses talk about removing negative thoughts, eliminating them, and I completely agree with that. However, negative thoughts and emotions play a very important role in your life. Without them progress would be very difficult.
Here’s a little twist.
You see, whenever you’re feeling negative, what that means is that you’re not in alignment with what you really desire.
Since we attract what we feel, the minute you catch yourself feeling negative, you know that in that moment you’re attracting the opposite of what you want.
This is good. Because most people have no idea what’s going on in their life, but if you understand what happens during the time you’re feeling this way, you can change your point of attraction.
Negative thoughts and feelings guide you and let you know that you need to correct your course.
Of course after that you want to remove the thought/feeling and replace it with what you do want.
As you start catching yourself thinking negative, you should congratulate yourself because you’re now aware of your thinking, and when you become aware you start gaining control.
As you notice that negative thought or a limiting belief start surfacing up, you know that you’re now attracting the opposite of you what you want and it’s time to change your thoughts.
Now isn’t that a better way to handle it, then to beat yourself up over the fact that you’re not positive 24 hours a day?
Plus it’s really impossible to stay positive all the time. Whether we feel positive or negative, they’re just signals that we’re receiving about what we’re attracting at any given moment.
Today I’d like to share with you something that I see missing in so many marketing campaigns.
If you’ve been trying to break into the internet marketing world, you probably get daily emails about new product launches.
It seems as though every day there’s a new “magic” pill that comes out that will flood your bank account with money without you having to lift a finger.
And a lot of these marketers have carefully crafted their sales messages to make them so compelling that it’s hard to resist.
But there’s one thing that I see missing in most, not all, but most of these campaigns.
I guess, I was lucky that I’ve spent over 10 years in direct selling before going online, because in that world you had to have it.
It’s also one of the reasons why I was able to develop a large client base in my old business, that still calls me today to do more business with me even though I haven’t done a damn thing to promote my other business in almost 3 years.
