Customers are Both Demanding and Ruthless
Customers are both demanding and ruthless; they reward highly those companies that serve them best and allow those companies that serve them poorly to fail. Sam Walton once said, “We all have the same boss, the customer, and he can fire us any time he wants by deciding to buy somewhere else.” It isn't that customers don't care about your business, its just that customers care more about themselves and their own satisfaction than they do about the success or failure of your enterprise. Wherever you see a business fail, you see a business where the owners were either unable or unwilling to adjust their offerings to satisfy the customers at prices that allowed them to carry on.

Customer Always Behave Rationally
Customers always behave rationally in pursuing the path of least resistance to get want they want. From the point of view of the customer, every action makes perfect sense. All buying behavior is aimed at achieving greater personal satisfaction, toward improving one's position, toward being better off. If a salesperson or a businessperson suggests that the customers are stupid for not patronizing a particular store or buying its products, it is actually the salesperson or the businessperson who is stupid. The customer is very smart and usually knows what is in his or her best interest. The customer's decision is always rational, from the customer's point of view.

Proper Business Planning
Proper business planning always begins with the customer as the central focus of attention and discussion. People within companies have a dangerous tendency to lose touch with the thoughts, feelings, and needs of their customers. They tend to talk only among themselves, and what is worse, they listen only to each other. They lose touch with the reality of their customers. If you are in business, and if what you do affects your customer, you should mentally erect a statue of the customer and place it in the middle of the table when you discuss any plans regarding your products or services. Always ask yourself; if the customer was sitting here listening to us, what would the customer be thinking? What would the customer say?

Action Exercise
Make a list of all your customers, both inside and outside of your business. Write down the names of your boss and co-workers, your outside customers and contacts, everyone with whom you deal, including your staff

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

Different Strokes For Different Folks
What does this mean? Aren't there all kinds of different personalities that require different approaches and techniques? Well, yes and no. Practicing the golden rule in selling simply means that you sell to other people the way you would like to be sold to. You sell with the same honesty, integrity, understanding, empathy and thoughtfulness that you would like someone else to use in selling to you.

Seek First to Understand
If you would like a salesperson to take the time to thoroughly understand you and your situation before making a recommendation, you practice the same thing with your customers. If you would like a salesperson to give you honest information and to help you make an intelligent buying decision, you practice the same with your customer. If you would like a salesperson to be thoroughly knowledgeable about the strengths or weaknesses of his or her product or service, and that of his or her competitors, then you do the same with your product or service and your competitors.

Care About Your Customers
Perhaps the most important part of golden rule selling is the emotional component embraced in the word, "caring." Top sales professionals care about their customers. They care about themselves, their companies, their products and services, and they really care about helping their customers to make good buying decisions. If you think about the very best salespeople you know, you will recognize that they are caring individuals.

They Don't Care How Much You Know
If you think about your very best customers, you will recall that these are invariably people you care about, and who care about you. When you think about the people you buy from, you will recall that they seem to care about you more than the average. In every part of your business life, you will find that the significant people all have the denominator of caring as part of their character and their personalities.

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

First, resolve today to sell to your customers with the same honesty, empathy and understanding that you would like them to use in selling to you.

Second, take time to genuinely care about your customers, their individual needs and their unique situations. Make people feel important and they will make you feel important.

 By Brian Tracy

Common Misunderstandings
A major waste of time is caused by misunderstandings between people about roles, goals, and responsibilities. People do not know what they are expected to do, how to do it, and by what time.

Misunderstandings lead to inefficiencies, anger, frustration, and unhappiness. It often requires an enormous amount of time to clear up a misunderstanding and get matters back to normal.

Unclear Priorities
Misunderstandings about priorities often lead to your working at the wrong job, at the wrong time, for the wrong reason, and perhaps aiming at the wrong level of quality. Or the problem may be that you are working for the wrong person.

The single most important cause of positive feelings and high levels of motivation in work is defined as "knowing exactly what is expected." On the other hand, the number-one complaint, or demotivator, of employees is to "not know what is expected."

In order to perform at your best, you need absolute clarity about your job and what you are expected to do.

Poor Delegation
Poor delegation to others, or from others, leads to mistakes and frustration on the part of both the boss and the employee. It is a major time waster. Poor delegation causes even the most sincere talented people to do poor work or the wrong jobs. Therefore, they end up feeling frustrated and unhappy.

Unclear Lines of Authority
Unclear lines of authority and responsibility lead to time wastage. People do not know who is supposed to do what job, when is it be done, and to what standard of quality. People are left to wonder, who is supposed to report to whom? Who's in charge? Who's the boss?

Incomplete Information
Another major time waster in business is poor or incomplete information, which leads to erroneous assumptions and conclusions. It is amazing how often people jump to conclusions or make false assumptions on the basis of wrong information.

The very best managers take the time to ask questions, and they listen carefully to the answers before they make a decision. If there is a key piece of information that suggests a problem or difficulty, they double-check on this piece of information to make sure that it is accurate.

Aimless or Too Frequent Meetings
Too many meetings, or aimless meetings that proceed without an agenda, direction, or closure, are an enormous waste of time at work. These are meetings that start and stop without any particular resolution. No problems are solved, no decisions are made, and no responsibilities are assigned. No deadlines are agreed upon for action.

Lack of Clarity Concerning One's Job
People need to know everything that is happening in the company that affects their particular jobs. The very best companies are open and honest with all employees concerning those matters affecting the health of the company.

Employees need to know what is going on and how their jobs fit into the big picture. When employees are unclear or unsure, an enormous amount of time is lost as the result of conversations, discussions, and gossip, which lead to ineffective work behaviors and poor productivity.

Action Exercise
Be crystal-clear in explaining to others exactly what is to be done, and to what standard of performance, and by what date.

By Brian Tracy

The Three Keys to High Achievement
You could even say that the three keys to high achievement are, "Clarity, Clarity, Clarity," with regard to your goals. Your success in life will be largely determined by how clear you are about what it is you really, really want.

Write and Rewrite Your Goals
The more you write and rewrite your goals and the more you think about them, the clearer you will become about them. The clearer you are about what you want, the more likely you are to do more and more of the things that are consistent with achieving them. Meanwhile, you will do fewer and fewer of the things that don’t help to get the things you really want.

Activate Your Reticular Cortex
Each person has within his or her brain a special organ called the "reticular cortex." This small, finger-like part of the brain functions in a way similar to a telephone switchboard in a large office building. Just as all phone calls are received by the central switchboard and then rerouted to the appropriate recipient, all incoming information to your senses is routed through your reticular cortex to the relevant part of your brain or your awareness.

A Red Sports Car
Imagine that you decided that you wanted a red sports car. You write this down as a goal. You begin to think about and visualize a red sports car. This process sends the message to your reticular cortex that a red sports car is now important to you. A picture of a red sports car immediately goes up onto your mental radar screen. From that moment onward, you will start to notice red sports cars wherever you go. You will see them parked in driveways and in showrooms. Everywhere you go, your world will seem to be full of red sports cars.

Goal Setting
Every morning, take three to five minutes to write out your top goals in the present tense. Get a spiral notebook for this purpose. By writing out your ten goals at the beginning of each day, you will program them deep into your subconscious mind.

This daily goal writing will activate your mental powers. It will stimulate your mind and make you more alert. Throughout the day, you will see opportunities and possibilities to move more rapidly toward your goals.

Planning and Organizing
Take a few minutes, preferably the night before, to plan out every activity of the coming day. Always work from a list. Always think on paper. This is one of the most powerful and important disciplines of all for high performance.

Priority Setting
The essence of all time management, personal management, and life management is contained in your ability to set the proper priorities on the use of your time. This is essential for high performance.