Bill Blett
Marketing Communications
Marketing Communications
Advertising, Promotions, Media... Results!
Business and Marketing Success Articles
I have Been a big fan and admirer of Brian Tracy since 1990 when I won a contest while in training at GTE and received "The Psychology of Selling"
I believe he has the best perspective of and prescription for SUCCESS in many areas of life. Read these articles and let me know what YOU think...
I believe he has the best perspective of and prescription for SUCCESS in many areas of life. Read these articles and let me know what YOU think...
By Brian Tracy
Excerpt From: Sales Success
Are
you wondering what to do to attract clients and create a surge in
sales? Are you frustrated by getting minimal response to your
advertising or online promotions? Are you asking yourself,
"How can I avoid having my sales and profits dry up in this market?"
"Should I reduce spending on marketing to preserve cash?"
If you're like most business owners and marketers, you're doing everything you know how to bring in more sales, and you're still not realizing the profits you want. You've worked for years to grow your business and now a financial meltdown that you had nothing to do with is making it harder.
What can you do? You could bury your head in the sand and hope you've still got a business in a few years. You could copy your competitors' marketing, but their sales are hurting, too. Or you could ask yourself,
"Is there a way I can actually grow my business in this economy?"
Yes, there are easy and inexpensive ways to increase your profits.
Start with these 3 steps:
1. Change Your Marketing Strategy
When we get the rare cold spell here in San Diego, I change the clothing I wear. I put on a sweater or even a jacket. The same is true for your marketing strategy; when the economic climate changes, you need to respond.
In good times you can get away with fairly ineffective marketing, and the rising tide will float your boat along with everybody else's. In an economic downturn, you can't afford to be haphazard about your marketing. You'll pay the price in reduced sales. Spending money on ads or mailings that barely generate sales isn't affordable anymore.
2. Focus Your Efforts
While fusion food is popular here in San Diego, we don't have a single restaurant that is a combination of French, Italian, Mexican and Chinese cuisines. Can you imagine a pasta dish with jalapeno cream sauce and a ginger root topping? It'd taste terrible. That's not a time-tested combination of flavors; it's a mess in the kitchen.
Unfortunately, most small business marketing isn't much more than a mess in the kitchen, a collection of sales and marketing activities that don't work together. Many businesses don't grow as fast as they could because they don't have an optimized marketing strategy or a system for implementing it.
3. Use Cost Effective Marketing Strategies
Let me tell you a secret. Some of the most effective marketing and selling tools are inexpensive or even free. Most people don't use them, so when you do, you can easily beat the competition. 92% of businesses overspend on marketing. They're wasting money on marketing that isn't getting results.
You may be doing all the right marketing activities, but without an effective marketing system, you could be struggling for a long, unprofitable time.
By Brian Tracy
Excerpt From: Personal Success
Clarity
accounts for probably 80% of success and happiness. Lack of clarity is
probably more responsible for frustration and underachievement than any
other single factor. That's why we say that "Success is goals, and all
else is commentary." People with clear, written goals, accomplish far
more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever
imagine. This is true everywhere and under all circumstances.
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.
The Seven Step Process for Achieving Goals
Here, once more, is the simple, seven-step process that you can use to achieve your goals faster and easier than ever before.
First, decide exactly what you want in each area of your life. Be specific!
Second, write it down, clearly and in detail;
Third, set a specific deadline. If it is a large goal, break it down into sub-deadlines and write them down in order;
Fourth, make a list of everything you can think of that you are going to have to do to achieve your goal. As you think of new items, add them to your list;
Fifth, organize the items on your list into a plan by placing them in the proper sequence and priority;
Sixth, take action immediately on the most important thing you can do on your plan. This is very important!
Seventh, do something every day that moves you toward the attainment of one or more of your important goals. Maintain the momentum!
Join the Top 3%
Fewer than three percent of adults have written goals and plans that they work on every single day. When you sit down and write out your goals, you move yourself into the top 3% of people in our society. And you will soon start to get the same results that they do.
Review Your Goals Daily
Study and review your goals every day to be sure they are still your most important goals. You will find yourself adding goals to your list as time passes. You will also find yourself deleting goals that are no longer as important as you once thought. Whatever your goals are, plan them out thoroughly, on paper, and work on them every single day. This is the key to peak performance and maximum achievement.
Action Exercises
Here is how you can apply this law immediately:
First, make a list of ten goals that you would like to achieve in the coming year. Write them down in the present tense, as though a year has passed and you have already accomplished them.
Second, from your list of ten goals, ask yourself, "What one goal, if I were to accomplish it, would have the greatest positive impact on my life?" Whatever it is, put a circle around this goal and move it to a separate sheet of paper.
Third, practice the seven-step method described above on this goal. Set a deadline, make a plan, and put it into action and work on it every day. Make this goal your major definite purpose for the weeks and months ahead.
Get ready for some amazing changes in your life.
By Brian Tracy
Excerpt From: Time Management Success
Anyone who does a great job consistently, over and over, kicks open the
doors of opportunity in all directions. Such a person will be hired,
paid well, promoted, advanced and given additional responsibilities
because there are so few of them.
Make a Decision Today
You can put your life and career into an upward trajectory by making the decision, today, that you are going to become one of the best time managers in your field. And in this session, you will learn how to do it.
Benjamin Franklin once wrote, "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of."
Exploit Your Most Precious Resource
Time is your most precious resource. It is all you really have. It is your life. As long as you have lots of time, you can do almost anything. But if your time is cut off for any reason, all of your possibilities are cut off as well.
Queen Elizabeth I of England was one of the richest women in the world. She owned half the country. Yet, when she was on her deathbed, she turned to her doctor and said, "I would give all I have for a few more minutes of time."
Start This Very Minute
The time for you and I to begin to appreciate how valuable and precious each minute is, is right now, not a later time when our minutes and hours are draining away.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.
First, resolve to become an expert at time management. Work on becoming more efficient every day.
Second, ask "Why am I on the payroll?" Whatever your answer to this question, work on it all day long.
By Brian Tracy
Excerpt From: Personal Success
Regular relaxation is essential for a long life and personal
effectiveness. Here are some techniques for relaxing physically that
are used by the most successful and highest paid people in America.
Take Time Off Every Week
First of all, work only five or six days per week, and rest completely on the seventh day. Every single study in this area shows that you will be far more productive in the five or six days that you work if you take one or two days off completely than you ever would be if you worked straight through for seven days.
Get Your Mind Busy Elsewhere
During this time off, do not catch up on reports, organize your desk, prepare proposals, or do anything else that requires mental effort. Simply let your mind relax completely, and get busy doing things with your family and friends. Maybe work around the house, go for a walk, engage in physical exercise, watch television, go to a movie, or play with your children. Whatever you do, discipline yourself to shut your mental gears off completely for at least one 24-hour period every seven days.
Get Away on Mini-Vacations
Second, take one three-day vacation every three months, and during that time, refrain from doing any work. Do not attempt to catch up on even a few small things. If you do, you keep your mental gears in motion, and you end up neither resting nor properly doing work of any quality.
Take Big Chunks of Down Time
Third, take at least two full weeks off each year during which you do nothing that is work-related. You can either work or relax; you cannot do both. If you attempt to do a little work while you are on vacation, you never give your mental and emotional batteries a chance to recharge. You'll come back from your vacation just as tired as you were when you left.
Give Yourself a Break Today
If you are involved in a difficult relationship, or situation at work that is emotionally draining, discipline yourself to take a complete break from it at least one day per week. Put the concern out of your mind. Refuse to think about it. Don't continually discuss it, make telephone calls about it or mull it over in your mind. You cannot perform at your best mentally if you are emotionally preoccupied with a person or situation. You have to give yourself a break.
Go For a Walk in Nature
Since a change is as good as a rest, going for a nice long walk is a wonderful way to relax emotionally and mentally. As you put your physical body into motion, your thoughts and feelings seem to relax all by themselves.
Eat Lighter Foods
Also, remember that the process of digestion consumes an enormous amount of physical energy. Therefore, if you eat lighter foods, you will feel better and more refreshed afterward. If you eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain products, your digestive system will require far less energy to process them.
Be Good to Yourself
Since your diet has such an impact on your level of physical energy, and through it your levels of mental and emotional energy, the more fastidious you are about what you put into your mouth, the better you will feel and the more productive you will be. We know now that foods high in fat, sugar, or salt are not good for your body. The lighter the foods you eat, the more energy you have.
Action Exercises
Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:
First, plan your weeks in advance and build in at least one day when you will relax from work completely. Discipline yourself to keep this date.
Second, reserve, book and pay for your three day vacations several months in advance. Once you've paid the money, you are much more likely to go rather than put it off.
Third, decide that you will not work at all during your vacations. When you work, work. And when you rest, rest 100% of the time. This is very important.
By Brian Tracy
Excerpt From: Management Success
Get Better Results than Ever Before There are several principles of military strategy that you can apply to your business, every single day. These can help you to think better and get better results than ever before.
Do the Unexpected
One really helpful military principle that can be applied to business is the Principle of Surprise. The principle of surprise says, "do the unexpected!" In sales and marketing, this means to be continually seeking ways to out-flank or upset your competition.
Do the Opposite of Before
Sometimes doing exactly the opposite of what you have been doing up till now can turn out to be the perfect solution. The natural tendency for a person, when they find themselves in a hole, is to dig deeper. In many cases, the solution is to go and dig somewhere else. Remember, the first law of holes is, "When you find yourself in one, stop digging."
Follow-up and Follow-Through
A second military principle that applies to business is the Principle of Exploitation. The principle of exploitation emphasizes the importance of follow-up and follow-through. In business, this means that, when you get an opportunity, you exploit it to the fullest extent possible. If you have a great promotional idea or product or service, you sell all you can. You take advantage of your idea or breakthrough and use every opportunity to capitalize on it.
Work Harmoniously With Others
The third principle of military strategy that applies to personal and corporate thinking is the Principle of Cooperation. In business, this is often called the principle of synergy. In military terms, this is often called the principle of "concerted action." In business terms, your ability to work effectively and harmoniously with other individuals and groups is more responsible for your success than any other quality.
Win the Cooperation of Key People
A key part of strategic thinking is for you to identify the individuals, groups and organizations whose cooperation you will require to achieve your goals. Make a list of them and then organize the list in order of importance. Then ask yourself, "How am I going to win their cooperation?"
Answer Everyone's Favorite Question
Everybody wants to know, "what's in it for me?" The effective executive is always looking for ways to help or assist others knowing that this is the only sure way to create within them a desire to help you to achieve your goals.
By doing the unexpected, by following up and following through, and by constantly looking for ways to get other people to cooperate with you, you will accomplish more in a shorter time than you might ever have imagined.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to apply these ideas in your business and in your work:
First, look at your job, especially the areas where you are experiencing frustration, and question whether or not there is a completely different way of approaching your problem or situation. Do the unexpected. Perhaps you should be doing exactly the opposite of what you are doing today. All success in business comes from surprising the competition in some way.
Second, identify the people, groups and organizations whose assistance you will need to achieve your goal. Continually look for ways to earn their support and cooperation by thinking in terms of what is in it for them.
By Brian Tracy
Excerpt From: Entrepreneurial Success
There
are books, articles and multi-day courses on listening. There are
audio/video-learning programs that include hours of instruction and a
variety of exercises. They are all valuable and helpful, but what they
teach can be distilled down into a key skill. Your mastery of these
skills, through discipline and practice, is all you need to become an
excellent listener, with all that that entails.
Listen Attentively When Others Speak
The best listening skill is to listen attentively. Lean forward; face the prospect directly rather than at an angle. Focus your attention on the prospects face, on his or her mouth and eyes.
Hang On Every Word
Listen without interruption. Listen as though you were hanging on every word the prospect was saying. Listen as if the prospects were about to give you the winning lottery number and you would only hear it once. Listen as if this were a million dollar prospect who was just on the verge of giving you a major order. Listen as if there were no one else in the world to whom you would rather listen at this moment than this prospect, and to what this prospect is saying.
The Most Important Skill of All
The ability to pay close, uninterrupted attention to a person when he is speaking is the primary listening skill. It is the hardest facility to develop and is simultaneously the most important of all. It requires continuous practice and discipline. And it's not easy. It is hard to keep your thoughts from wandering, but the payoff is tremendous.
Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.
First, imagine that your customer is the most fascinating person in the world. Hang on every word as if he was about to place a million dollar order.
Lastly, lean forward when your customer speaks. Nod, smile, agree and be both active and involved. Listening builds sales relationships.
