There are three principles of military strategy you can apply to your work every single day. The first idea from the military is called the Principle of Man euver. The principle of man euver says that you should be clear about the goal, but be flexible about the process of ach ieving it. According to the Menninger Institute, this quality of flexibility is the most important single quality that you will require for success in times of rap id change.

Be Open to Continuous Feedback
A key peak performance quality for you is to "accept feedback and self-correct." Peak performers are those who can take information from their environment and even if the information is contrary to all of their planning, they can accept the information, modify their plans, and continue moving forward. They are always open to new ideas and insights.

Learn What You Need to Know
The second military principle you can use is the Principle of Intelligence. This principle of intelligence means simply, "get the facts!"

The most important thing in business decision making is for you to get accurate information. Facts don't lie. It is important that you get the real facts, not the assumed facts or the apparent facts or the obvious facts, or the hoped for facts, but the real, provable facts.

Make Better Decisions
Perhaps the key job of the executive is decision making. The quality of the decisions that you make will be in direct proportion to the amount of time that you take to gather timely and accurate information. The very best thing that you can do, if you have insufficient information, is to delay making a decision at all.

Invest Your Resources Wisely
The third military principle applied to strategic planning is the Principle of Economy of Force. Economy of force means that you expend only the resources necessary to achieve the objective and not more. It also means that you commit sufficient resources to achieve the objective once you have decided upon it.

Since your own personal en ergy is all you really have to invest over the course of your lif etime, the military principle of economy says that you should be very selfish when deciding how you are going to use your self. Keep asking your self, "How important is this?" and more important, "How important is this to me?"

Action Ex ercises
Here are two ideas that you can apply immediately to be more strategic in your work and personal life.

First, remain flexible when you are working towards your goal. In times of rap id change, all of your best ideas can be contradicted by new information. Be willing to try different things. Be open to new inputs and ideas.

Second, get the facts! The more and better information you can acquire before you make a decision, the better your decision will be. The very best managers spend a good amount of time getting the real, provable facts before they take action.

Written by Brian Tracy and trained by Mark Garbelotto

Sales Recipe
Making a sale is like cooking with a recipe. You must use the correct ingredient and blend them in the proper quantity with the right timing. All successful companies have developed a proven sales process that can be duplicated over and over. By using a proven sales system, you can accurately predict the quantity of your sales, the average size of your sales, and the profitability of your sales activities.

Prospecting
It is important to speak directly or by telephone to people who can and will buy and pay in a reasonable period of time. Start with your ideal customer profile. Who is he or she exactly-in terms of age, occupation, income, education? Who is he or she exactly—in terms of problems, wants, needs, attitudes, and experiences regarding your product or service? If you could advertise for perfect customers, how would you describe him or her?

Marketing and advertising is aimed at telling your ideal prospect that your product will help them. The ideal prospect has an immediate need for what you sell. The ideal prospect knows you, likes you, and respects your products or business. The ideal prospect can buy and pay for your product if he or she likes it.

Establish Rapport
Establishing rapport and trust with the customer is a must. The prospect will not listen to you or buy from you unless he/she likes you and believes that you are honest. Be friendly, straightforward and believable. Be punctual, prepared and properly dressed. Ask questions and listen carefully to the answers. Make no attempt to sell until the prospect is relaxed and comfortable with you. Identify what the customer needs so you can better sell to them. Ask carefully planned, structured questions so that you can fully understand the customer's situation.

There is a direct relationship between asking questions and sales success. Plan your questions word-for-word in advance. Make no effort to sell or talk about your product. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Presenting Your Product or Service
Repeat back the specific needs or concerns that your prospect has expressed. Position yourself as a trusted advisor, dedicated to helping him solve his problem or achieve his goal with your product. Position yourself as a teacher-showing her how your product works to help her satisfy her needs. Match the customers expressed needs and concerns to the product or service. Focus on helping rather than selling. Conclude your presentation with an explanation of how the product is delivered or used. Invite questions.

Action Exercises
List three phrases or questions you can use or ask to determine if this is a qualified prospect.

Written by Brian Tracy and trained by Mark Garbelotto

Relationship Selling Model
The building and maintaining of high-quality sales relationships proceeds in four stages. We call this the Relationship Selling Model.

Stage One
The first stage, roughly 40 percent of the sale, is the development of trust. This is best achieved by asking good questions and listening closely to answers. In fact, a recent survey of members of the Purchasing Managers Association of America (PMAA) concluded that the salespeople these professional buyers rated "the best" were the people who asked the most questions before attempting to sell.

Stage Two
The second stage of building high-quality sales relationships, 30 percent of the process, is focusing on identifying the true needs and wants of the prospect.

Instead of talking about what you are selling, you ask questions about the prospect and his or her situation. You probe the answers you get and, as Stephen Covey says, "See first to understand, then to be understood."

Once you have built a high level of trust by asking questions and seeking to understand how your product or service can help the prospect in some way, you move to stage three.

Stage Three
20 percent of the relationship between you and your customer is presenting solutions. In this stage, you show the prospect how he or she could be better off with what you are selling than he or she is today. You carefully match the prospect's expressed needs with the specific features and benefits of your product or service.

Stage Four
In phase four, the final 10 percent of the Relationship Selling Model, you ask for confirmation from the prospect to make a decision and take action on your offering. You close the sale.

The relationship selling model is based on trust. You develop trust by asking the customer about his or her needs and then by listening intently to the answers. The more you ask good questions and listen carefully to the customer, the more the customer will trust you and open up to you. When the customer trusts you enough, he or she will tell you everything you need to know to9 either make a sale or to determine that this customer is not a good prospect for what you are selling.

Action Exercise
Focus first and foremost on the prospect and the relationship–before anything else. Concentrate on building a high level of trust. Only when you have built a bridge of understanding of the prospect's real needs should you start talking about what you are selling. When the relationship is strong, the sale will take care of itself.

Written by Brian Tracy and trained by Mark Garbelotto

One of our powerful needs is for security, and any buying decision that represents uncertainty triggers the feeling of risk that threatens that security.

There are four main factors that contribute to the perception of risk in the mind and hear of the customer.

Risk Factor 1: Size of the Sale
The first factor that contributes to risk is the size of the sale. The larger the scale, the more money involved, the greater the risk.

If a person is buying a package of Lifesavers, the risk of satisfaction or dissatisfaction is insignificant. But if a person is buying a computer system for their company, the risk factor is magnified by hundreds of thousands of times.

Whenever you are selling a product that has a high price on it, you must be aware that risk enters into the buyer's calculations immediately.

Risk Factor 2: Number of People Affected
The second factor contributing to the perception of risk is the number of people who will be affected by the buying decision. Almost every complex buying decision involves several people.

There are people who must use the product or service. There are people who must pay for the product or service. There are people who are dependent of the results expected from the product or service. If a person is extremely sensitive to the opinions of others, this factor alone can cause him or her to put off a buying decision.

Risk Factor 3: Length of Life of the Product
The third factor contributing to the perception of risk is the length of life of the product. A product or service that, once installed, is meant to last for several years, generates the feeling of risk. The customer panics and thinks, "What if it doesn't work and I'm stuck with it?"

Risk Factor 4: Unfamiliarity
The fourth major risk factor is the customer's unfamiliarity with you, your company, and your product or service. A first-time buyer, one who has not bought the product or service before, or who has not bought it from you, is often nervous and requires a lot of hand-holding.

Anything new or different makes the average customer tense and uneasy. This is why a new product or service, or a new business relationship with your company, has to be presented as a natural extension of what the customer is already doing.

Overcoming Risk
In every case, you must overcome the customer's fear of risk if you are going to make the sale. Everything you do, from the first contact, through closing, the delivery and installation of the product or service, and the follow-up to the sale, must be done with the customer's perception of risk uppermost in your thinking.

Successful sales people are those who position their products or services as the lowest-risk product or service available to satisfy the particular need or achieve the particular goal of the customer.

Low-Risk vs. Low-Price
Your job is to be the low-risk provider, not necessarily the low-price vendor. Your job is to demonstrate clearly that your product or service represents the safest and most secure purchase decision rather than merely being the least expensive or highest quality.

Our customers today are the most experienced in customer history. They know that there is usually a close correlation between higher price on the one hand and greater security and after-sales satisfaction on the other. Your task is to make this differential clear in your sales presentation, especially when positioning you product or service against lower-priced competition.

Action Exercise
Identify the risks that a customer might find with your product or service. Once you have clearly defined those risks, it will be easier to find solutions for them to ease nervous customers.

Written by Brain Tracy and Trained by Mark Garbelotto

Stop Wasting Time
According to Robert Half International, half of all working time, in all fields, is wasted. Most of this wasted time is taken up with coffee breaks, phone calls, and personal business, or other useless activities that make no contribution to your work.

Resolve to Overcome Procrastination
The best way to overcome procrastination is to plan each day in advance, set priorities on your activities, and then make your first sales call as early as you possibly can. Get up and get going. When you launch quickly into a workday, doing something important as early as possible, you will work at a higher level of effectiveness all day long.

The Incomplete Sales Call
Another major time waster is the incomplete sales call, requiring a callback. This occurs when you have not thoroughly prepared your presentation or taken all the materials you need for your sales call. When you are with the customer, you find you're missing the correct order forms, or other materials needed to close the sale. You then have to make arrangements to go back and see the prospect a second time, something that often does not happen.

Inaccuracies and Deficiencies
You waste a lot of time in selling when you find yourself with a prospect, but without all the information needed to make an intelligent presentation. You may have the wrong facts, the wrong figures, or the wrong specifications. You have misunderstood what the prospect said she wanted and made a proposal that does not solve the prospect's problem or satisfy her need.

Lack of Product Knowledge
This weakness can cost you hours of hard work. It boils down to ignorance of the product or service you are selling. This is invariably caused by laziness on the part of the salesperson. Fortunately it can be very easily overcome with time and study.

Poor Preparation
Thorough preparation separates the sheep from the goats among sales professionals. The top salesperson takes the time to diligently study every detail of her product or service. She reviews and then reviews again. She takes notes. She decides in advance that no one will ever ask her a question that she cannot answer intelligently and completely.

Unconfirmed Appointments
Here's a common scenario. A salesperson sets off across town to see a prospect for an appointment. It was arranged in advance, so everything should go as planned, right? But when the salesperson arrives, the prospect has been called out of town, is in a meeting, or cannot see him for some reason. As a result, he has wasted the entire trip, including the time it now takes him to get back to the office. Sometimes a salesperson can lose half a day because he did not reconfirm an appointment.

Action Exercise
Plan every day in advance; make a list of everything you have to do, and then set priorities on your list; always start with your number one, most important task.

Written by Brian Tracy and Trained by Mark Garbelotto

Being A Good Talker is Not Enough
Many salespeople have been brought up with the idea that, in order to be good at your profession, you must be a glad-hander and a good talker. You have even heard people say, "You have the 'gift of the gab'; you should be in sales!"

Focus On the Other Person
Nothing could be further from the truth. As many as seventy five percent of all top salespeople are defined as introverts on psychological tests. They are very easy going and other-centered. They would much rather listen than talk. They are very interested in the thoughts and feelings of other people and they are quite comfortable sitting and listening to their prospects. They would much rather listen than talk in a sales situation. Poor salespeople dominate the talking, but top salespeople dominate the listening.

Practice "White Magic" With Everyone
Listening has even been called "white magic." It is too rarely engaged in by business people. When a salesperson develops a reputation for being an excellent listener, prospects and customers feel comfortable and secure in his or her presence. They buy more readily, and more often.

Practice the 70/30 Rule
You've heard it said that God gave man two ears and one mouth, and he is supposed to use them in that proportion.

Top salespeople practice the "70/30 rule." They talk and ask questions 30 percent or less of the time while they listen intently to their customers 70 percent or more of the time. They use their ears and mouth in the right ratio.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, resolve today that, from now on, you are going to dominate the listening in every sales conversation. Become comfortable with silence.

Second, practice the 70/30 rule in every sales conversation. Listen 70% of the time and only talk and ask questions 30% of the time.

Written by Brian Tracy and trained by Mark Garbelotto

Sales Recipe
Making a sale is like cooking with a recipe. You must use the correct ingredient and blend them in the proper quantity with the right timing. All successful companies have developed a proven sales process that can be duplicated over and over. By using a proven sales system, you can accurately predict the quantity of your sales, the average size of your sales, and the profitability of your sales activities.

Prospecting
It is important to speak directly or by telephone to people who can and will buy and pay in a reasonable period of time. Start with your ideal customer profile. Who is he or she exactly-in terms of age, occupation, income, education? Who is he or she exactly—in terms of problems, wants, needs, attitudes, and experiences regarding your product or service? If you could advertise for perfect customers, how would you describe him or her?

Marketing and advertising is aimed at telling your ideal prospect that your product will help them. The ideal prospect has an immediate need for what you sell. The ideal prospect knows you, likes you, and respects your products or business. The ideal prospect can buy and pay for your product if he or she likes it.

Establish Rapport
Establishing rapport and trust with the customer is a must. The prospect will not listen to you or buy from you unless he/she likes you and believes that you are honest. Be friendly, straightforward and believable. Be punctual, prepared and properly dressed. Ask questions and listen carefully to the answers. Make no attempt to sell until the prospect is relaxed and comfortable with you. Identify what the customer needs so you can better sell to them. Ask carefully planned, structured questions so that you can fully understand the customer's situation.

There is a direct relationship between asking questions and sales success. Plan your questions word-for-word in advance. Make no effort to sell or talk about your product. Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Presenting Your Product or Service
Repeat back the specific needs or concerns that your prospect has expressed. Position yourself as a trusted advisor, dedicated to helping him solve his problem or achieve his goal with your product. Position yourself as a teacher-showing her how your product works to help her satisfy her needs. Match the customers expressed needs and concerns to the product or service. Focus on helping rather than selling. Conclude your presentation with an explanation of how the product is delivered or used. Invite questions.

Action Exercises
List three phrases or questions you can use or ask to determine if this is a qualified prospect.

Written by Brian Tracy and trained by Mark Garbelotto

Probe for Lingering Objections
You ask these questions to be doubly sure that the prospect has no final objections lurking in the back of his mind that would block the closing of the sales process. You then invite the customer to make a buying decision by saying, "If you like what I've shown you, why don't you give it a try?"

Invite the Customer to Buy
Inviting the customer to buy is very powerful. This is a gentle way of nudging the customer into taking action. "Why don't you give it a try?" If you are selling services, you can ask, "Why don't you give us a try?" If you want to be more bold and direct, you can simply ask, "Why don't you take it?"

Change Your Wording
One of my seminar graduates doubled his sales by changing his words in the endgame of selling. After his sales presentation he would ask the prospect if he had any additional questions or concerns. If the prospect said "no," he would then ask, "Well, if you like it, why don't you take it?"

He was amazed to find that many prospects could not think of a good reason not to go ahead with his offering immediately. Both his closing ratio and his income soared.

Action Exercises
Here is something you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

The next time you complete your sales presentation, simply issue an invitation to the customer to make a decision. "Why don't you give it a try?"

You may be surprised at your success.

Written by Brian Tracy and trained by Mark Garbelotto