How To Develop A Perfect 10 Attitude. Posted by Encouraging Excellence

I dress to suit myself, don’t always get the clients I want & I consider myself to be a perfect ten.  Yes, with those so-called imperfections, I’m a perfect ten & I have always been a perfect ten – all my life!

I’m not being big-headed or pompous either. Let me explain this a bit more.

As we grow we take on board the labels & perceptions other people give us.  We do this unconsciously in an effort to fit it to society & be liked.  We don’t realise this as we grow & listen to well meaning advice from our parents, siblings, teachers, friends & colleagues, so we absorb their perceptions of us, then fit ourselves into that perception.

Along the way we begin to label ourselves: son/daughter, sister/brother, friend/enemy, pretty/ugly, nice/naughty, clever/stupid, the list goes on & on. As we grow we add more & more labels to the list.   Then we start to define ourselves by those labels. We also rate ourselves according to how we see those labels too.

Imagine if you will that each label you give yourself is a suitcase that you pick up each morning as you get out of bed to take with you on the journeys you will make that day & you take all of them with you.

Now on a scale of one to ten, one being the lowest, ten being the highest score, rate yourself with all the labels you have taken on board.  Do this honestly, cheating on this is only cheating yourself.  Take note of your score.  This score is the level you are playing at in life, it determines the results you get in your career, relationships & general happiness.

So if you see yourself as a busy entreprenuer with very little time for home & family life, then rate yourself as a five for family life, you can be sure your home & family life is not as good as you’d like it to be.

Most people rate themselves somewhere between five & ten, depending on their skills levels or how good they feel they do whatever it is that they do.   This I call your Baggage Rate.

We tend to shave a digit off here & there when things don’t go according to plan.  I didn’t do up a business plan starting out, I’ll knock a digit off, now I’m a nine. Nor did I get that funding, two digits off, so now I’m a seven.  I got that contract I wanted, I’ll add on a digit, I’m back up to eight again.

This goes on & on throughout our lives adding & subtracting according the the successes & failures we achieve with the labels we define ourselves with.

So now that you know what your Baggage Rate is, park all of your suitcases into an imaginery cupboard so that all that is left is you, just you.  No labels.  No baggage.  Just the person you are without the labels you gave yourself!  What number do you rate yourself as now?  Again, be honest!

For anyone who rated themselves as anything less than a ten you are doing yourself a serious dis-service because you were born a ten & have been a ten all your life!

Many people mistakenly see themselves only as the labels others gave them that they accepted.  Others say that if they are a ten they have no room to grow, the very mistake I made the first time I did this.

Take a lily flower seed – it’s a perfect ten.  You plant it, water it & two weeks later it starts to grow shoots.  The seed is still a ten, so are the shoots & yet the seed still grew.

As humans we do too.  We develop, learn & stay a ten – all our lives.  Underneath all the suitcases we carry daily is the person we truly are, the rest are simply roles we play, so instead of playing at the role you rate yourself, play at ten, since that is what the real you is.

Your suitcases? – you can choose to collect them from the cupboard or leave them behind if you wish, I’m sure you haven’t missed them while reading this.  You won’t miss them later either.

What ways can you see that you were defining yourself lower than your perfect ten that you are?

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STAFF Posted by Encouraging Excellence

As your business grows there will come a time when you won’t be able to do everything that needs to be done.  At that stage it is time to think about hiring the people you need to move on to the next stage.  The last in this series of acronyms is STAFF

S

Staff can really make a difference to how a business is perceived.   It’s a matter of making sure that the people you hire fit the image of your business and do your business proud.

It is also very important to remember that they will need to be able to grow as your business grows.

It’s all very well hiring a person who can do what you need them to do now, will they be able to grow with your business or is upskilling them going to be a problem for you, or them?

Some employees are great a doing specific tasks and can be hired for that, while others can be good all-rounders while not being brilliant at any one specific task.

Know in advance what your requirements are likely to be before hiring.

T

Trial periods are pretty much an essential part of hiring new employees now. I remember when I started working (many years ago) trial periods were not the norm and I was a rather upset the first time I was given a one-month trial period.

People can interview really well and have brilliant references to back them up, however until they are in the position for real, dealing with the issues involved in that position, you and they won’t know for sure if they really are the right person for that job.

Trial periods give both parties the opt-out clause if it isn’t a good fit.

A

Accountability is a very important aspect of any employment.  Conscientious staff are great.   They are very much aware that how they behave will have an impact on your business’s image as well as themselves and they do their best to be their best both for you and for themselves turning up on time and completing tasks on time and to a high standard.

The opposite of this is the slovenly presented member of staff who always manages to turn up late with excuses, whinges and whines about any type of deviation from their normal workload, which they do to a very shoddy standard, has an excuse as to why it was not their fault it was completed late.

F

Fringe benefits, do you offer them or not?  I know that with the economic downturn many of the fringe benefits of the Celtic Tiger were bonuses, medical insurance, company cars, a “loose” expense account, company mobile phone.

They were used quite often to sweeten a recruiting deal, in fact some people insisted on having nearly all of the above to come work for some of the businesses looking to hire them.

Now many businesses are watching where every penny goes and many of the extras have been withdrawn or been caught in the taxman’s net.

Some business owners are becoming very inventive with the fringe benefits they offer, others are simply not offering them at all.

F

Freelancers are an alternative to hiring employees. They have many advantages too as you only hire and pay them for the particular project in question.

There are no issues with holiday/sick pay, staff grumbles or disturbances. They tend to specialise in niches that they become expert at and you can tap into that as required.

The downside to hiring a freelancer is getting a dud one that does not perform to the standard promised and delays a project’s successful completion.

Like with employees checking references is essential prior to hiring along with agreeing all terms and conditions in advance.

There many success stories from business owners who feel like they’ve struck gold with certain employees they’ve hired and employees who feel they’ve got the best boss in the world.

How has having employees impacted on your business?

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Subtle Sales Talk To Sucker You In? (Or Leave You Cynically Sarcastic) Posted by Encouraging Excellence

We’ve all come across the smarmy sales person who leaves us with the strong desire to take a shower after only shaking our hand and we can usually spot them from a distance too.

However sales people are getting better training these days and while we are told it’s all about building relationships nowadays, there are still tricks of the trade being implemented and it is still very much a case of “buyer beware”.

I’ve listed a few of the sales techniques that get implemented regularly and the reason behind them.  See if you’ve fallen for any of them.

Fast Action Bonus Offer

- This is for the person who is prepared to sign upon the dotted line NOW!

There is always a sense of urgency about these types of offer, padded with bonuses to get you to sign quickly, along with a sense of scarcity (covered below).  These are promoted as offers only clever people will take up because they are life’s action-takers and successful go-getters and to be in the elite club you need to ACT NOW!!

The amazing thing is the people who tend to promote these fast action bonuses are also promoters of doing your due diligence.

I’ve signed up for some of these bonuses and got some very good bargains in doing so, however I did it on the third or fourth time it was offered, not the first.  I took the time to research the person/company before taking them up on their fabulous offer.  There are many others I’ve chosen to pass on.

The ONE TIME Only Offer

- This is the only time we are going to offer this, so when it’s gone, it’s gone!

Lets amend that slightly, when it’s gone it’s gone – this time!  We’ll repackage it, possibly rename it and offer it again either later in the year or next year.  Or we’ll re-offer it due to popular demand – sound familiar?

There is no way we are going to close down or permanently remove a viable part of our business, we want you to buy it NOW! not in round two of the offer and we are going to use scarcity  to motivate your action for fear of being excluded from it.

Available To The First XX Only Offer

- This is the typical scarcity factor which is a huge sales tactic.  Humans have a colossal fear of being excluded from the pack and this offer feeds on that fear.

Make it sound that there are only a limited number of places/pieces on these lower priced offers and you activate the greed in them. The want to make sure they get it before it runs out.

I’ve been to events where there has been a surge of people rush to buy things that they had previously said they weren’t interested in once the limited number offer was mentioned.

Just look at the sales in the shops when something is limited, Lidl & Aldi do this really well with some of their offers and people queue up at ridiculously early hours to ensure they get them.

The 100% Money Back Guarantee Offer

- The idea behind it is to make you feel secure about buying from them when you might not have before.

This usually comes with a list of terms and conditions that would make your head spin and leave the seller with a get-out-clause that you hadn’t considered before you signed up.

The small print is deliberately small so that you won’t take the time to read it before you sign.  Watch the face of the person selling to you the next time as you say “just give me twenty minutes to read all of the small print first, you can answer all the questions I’m gonna ask, can’t you?”

That being said, there are more and more companies/individuals that offer the 100% guarantee with a bonus on top, if what they offer does not meet your expectations and they do this because they seriously believe in what they have to offer.

So where do you come on the suckered-cynical scale?  Do you get suckered in easily or do you have a healthy dose of cynicism to make you stop and consider before you buy?  How do you incorporate these offers into your sales in a way that is genuine?

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GROWTH Posted by Encouraging Excellence

This post’s acronym is GROWTH, without which your business will stagnate.

G

Growth is necessary for everything to move forward, be it business or personal.  For your business growth there is a certain element of personal growth too.  We expand our personal knowledge when running a business, we learn to overcome personal blocks and issues to be able to move forward in areas we weren’t previously comfortable with.  Often when a business is stuck when you look into the problems the issues are of a personal nature to someone, be they a clash of values or beliefs and it is only when they have been removed or the person with the issues removed that movement occurs again.

R

Removal of obstacles is necessary for the growth of a business.  The obstacles vary from business to business and also from the individuals inside the business.  Has everyone in your business got a clear understanding of what is expected of them, do they have the necessary skills, or do they need to learn them?  Do they fully endorse your businesses core values.  Sometimes it is simply a case of external personal issue with a member of staff that can block progress temporarily, being aware of the obstacles means you can act fast to remove them.  Other times it can simply be a personality clash.  Whatever the cause, take the time to find out what the obstacles are and nip them in the bud before they become big problems.

O

Organisation of plans, down to the last detail is essential for growth.  There is an old quote that states: “Fail to plan, plan to fail” and that basically sums it up.  Without a proper plan of your business development in place you are simply floundering around and while you might reach some of your targets, you will certainly miss quite a few of them.  This can be completely avoided if you devise a route map of where you want your business to be in the future.  Do it for five years into the future, four years, three years, two years, one year, then break that first year into months and weeks with definite targets. Finally break down your weeks into days and always have at least the next two weeks plan finalised in advance.  This will require constant updating.

W

Wheel of business. Do you have one?  It’s similar to a wheel of life that a lot of coaches use to show where you feel you are currently in your life, except this is used to show where your skills level is in each segment of your business.  You simply draw a line across each segment at the number you think your skill level is at. I’ve yet to meet someone who doesn’t have a wobbly wheel as there is always some segment on it that could be developed further.  It is worth filling out your own wheel and using it for your business to see where your strengths and weaknesses are.  I’ve attached a PDF of the one I use with my clients at the end of this post, feel free to download a copy of it.

T

Training is an essential part of business growth.  It is rare that we come into business with all the business skills honed and ready to use.  There is a very good probability that you decided that what you had to offer had a market ready to receive that offer.  However you might not have had all the financial knowledge or administration skills to hand, perhaps you are great at finances yet don’t know how to manage your social media campaign.  We are never quite proficient at all of the skills which is why we undertake further training to at least understand what it is we want in the person we hire to cover the skills we are not so good at.

H

Hiring the relevant people with the skills you lack will make a huge leap in your business growth.  I heard an award winning business owner state that she only ever hires people who have better skills than her as she wants to not only expand her business, she also wants to learn from those people too.  On the other hand I know of someone who won’t hire anyone better than him because he believes nobody can do his job as well as he can and he doesn’t see the benefit of paying the going price for the skills that he doesn’t have.  Needless to say his business is ticking over, however it isn’t growing and sometimes he struggles to maintain it where it is.

What areas of your business are wobbly on your business wheel and what steps are you going to take to make your wheel more balanced and grow your business?

Wheel of Business

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SALES Posted by Encouraging Excellence

This post’s acronym is SALES which to some people are the lifeblood of any business.  To me there are many parts that are essential to run a successful business and sales is certainly one of the main arteries.

S

Selling successfully is very easy to do and yet so many people hate doing it.  In our society we seem to have bought into the corporate competition view of selling – a cut-throat business,  a dog-eat-dog environment where phrases like “he’d sell his Granny if it meant getting to the top” abound.  The result is that if you are not naturally a highly motivated extrovert who loves the type of challenge of convincing someone they need what you are selling you can often feel like a failure.  To me successful sales occur when you have met and overcome all the concerns of the prospective buyer, having first listened to all their needs and wants.  That is a learnt skill, a very easy one to learn too.

A

Awareness of your clients is so very important. How often have you gone into a shop and been accosted by the eager sales assistant with another few following close behind?  Then they’ve fawned all over you in their eagerness to make that sale, and told you all the benefits of their product or service, while ignoring what you are actually saying to them?  Or gone into a shop and been completely ignored by all the sales assistants while they wait for you to approach them for fear of seeming overly pushy?  Both scenarios are very familiar, however there is a happy medium and a good sales person is aware of body language, good at picking up visual signals and responding to them.  They are also good at noticing small changes in customers behaviour while interacting with them and dealing with those changes is a positive way.  A bad salesperson simply ignores them – to their cost.

L

Listening is the baseline for all sales.  To know what a perspective customer wants means listening to what they have to say.  Often customers want to tell you their story before they even want to look at or hear what you have to offer.  As sales people we need to be able to listen to their story, be able to cut to the specifics of what they are saying all the while reinforcing that you’ve actually heard them and are acknowledging that.  A successful salesperson does this with you feeling like you’ve controlled the whole event, an unsuccessful salesperson leaves you feeling like you’ve just shook hands with the King of Sleaze and that you are being pushed in a direction you don’t want to go.

E

Effective closing is something most sales people ignore. At a training course I attended I listened to the trainer talk about his successful sales record, in fact he was the highest in his chosen industry, in his country at the time.  However he had a forty percent cancellation rate within the ten day period and his was the lowest cancellation rate too.  He developed a simple technique to counteract all of that and his cancellation rate dropped to just under ten per cent.  He has added that technique into all his sales trainings be it for high end corporate sales or low end shop purchases and it works across the board.  I’ve added it too and it makes a huge difference.

S

Service providers.  So often in sales we forget that we are simply service providers and to be successful we have to match the service with the client and not the other way around.  The way a lot of sales people have been trained is, in my opinion, simply wrong and thankfully that is now changing so that sales is part and parcel of what we do regardless of the position we hold in whatever business we work in from the doorman at an expensive hotel to the managing director of the very same expensive hotel, how we do what we do reflects how we provide the service for the client, which in turn benefits our business.


We’ve all had to sell in our businesses, how do you do it, how do you measure it’s effectiveness?  For you is it the financial return or is there more to it than that?

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SELF Posted by Encouraging Excellence

This business acronym is all about you, how you run your business.  Each of us is in business for ourselves, so this acronym is SELF.

S

Scrutiny. Put your mind, thoughts, beliefs and actions under the microscope.   Have you got a healthy mindset or could it do with a check-up?  What are you currently doing using all of the above that is working well in your business, getting the results you want?  Now flip it over, still using all the above what are you doing that is not working well nor getting the results you want?  Are you finding that your business practices could do with major surgery or do you just need a minor operation to fix things?  For major surgery it could be a case of enlisting the help of a business coach. For the minor operation, if you are completely honest with yourself, then you could probably do it yourself.

E

Effective engagement. Where are you concentrating your efforts in your business?  Are you concentrating on the right areas or are you still doing what used to work the old way? The percentage of the effort you put into anything you do will determine the percentage of the results you get.  If you are putting 90% effort into growing your business, however you have blocks and/or issues on what you are doing, therefore not being properly productive with your time you will get a 90% non-effective result.  All too often we forget that.  I put a quote up on my Facebook page the recently:

“It’s not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy.  The bee is praised.  The mosquito is swatted.” - Mary O’Connor

So are you a bee or a mosquito, both make similar noises, both get results.  What results are you getting?

L

Learn. Einstein’s definition of stupidity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.  Human beings are adaptable, yet as a species they seem to hate change and prefer to stick with what they know.  To succeed in business you have to have an ability to adapt to an ever changing market.  Children today are learning much, much more by the time they are starting school than you or I did simply because they are exposed to much more than you and I were.  To compete with that type of environment you have keep up or find a business that can survive without the constant need to upskill.  You need to develop all of the necessary skills to stay at the top of your game and often that means you upskilling as well as your employees.  It also means becoming aware of your blocks and issues and learning how to overcome them instead of ignoring them.

F

Follow through. When something goes wrong in your business are you one of those people who analyses what went wrong in a effort to avoid it happening again?  Do you have a similar procedure for what goes right and teach that to all your employees so that they can follow through with a successful strategy?  Often when asked by others, a person with an effective, competent strategy isn’t aware of what it is they are doing so well, they are working from a level of unconscious competence and will probably tell you they don’t know what it is they do, that they just do it.  It is important to follow up on both what doesn’t work in order to make it work and to follow through with what works and apply it to other parts of your business too.

What parts of your SELF could do with  investigating and changing?

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Let It Out Before It Becomes A Blow-Out Posted by Encouraging Excellence

I watched a friend of mine have a blow-out today and was really glad to see  it.  She’s been through a lot recently, quite a lot actually and has been “keeping a lid on it all” really well, so much so that those of us who don’t know her very well, would think that everything is plodding along just tickety-boo, until today.

All it took was a minor, yet insistent incident, something that normally wouldn’t annoy her, yet today drove her past her tipping point and she threw a complete wobbly, shouting, throwing things, stamping her foot, walking off in a rage only to return, rant again and storm off again, all in the space of around thirty seconds.

This out of character behaviour upset her children and my child who all witnessed the wobbly and scattered in various directions.  Needless to say they had not a small part in the cause of said outburst, having pushed her already stretched patience to the limits and then past it without pause in an effort to have their own way, as young children are want to do.

Of course in the immediate aftermath of such an outburst there is the realisation that other people’s feelings have been hurt and when those other people are your own children there comes a rush of guilt and the effort of making things right again.  This all took time and when things had calmed down again, my friend returned to the room I was in, apologised for her outburst to which I calmly replied “I’m glad I’m not the only one who does that.” At first she thought I was joking to make her feel better, until I explained I’d had a similar incident earlier in the week myself, triggered by a minor incident piled onto a stressful series of events.

She however reckoned that such incidents were not under any circumstances excusable in front of children and was giving herself a hard time about having lost control in front of them.  My opinion is different.  I don’t see how children can learn how to deal with such incidents if they are constantly protected from them.  With that in mind an occasional outburst and I do mean occasional, followed by an apology with an explanation of what happened teaches children that we are humans with a tipping point.

If they don’t experience that, how will they learn to deal with it as they grow up, because they will experience it at some point on the journey towards adulthood.  I’d rather they learnt at home how to deal with it effectively than be exposed to it elsewhere and not have the coping skills to deal with it.

There is a lot to be said for protecting our children and I can fully understand the desire to do so, however there is  also the danger in not equipping them with the necessary skills to be able to deal with sudden stress outbursts or learning how to avoid them happening in the first place.

We are also leaving ourselves as adults open to unnecessary amounts of stress and possible illness by bottling up our frustrations in times of duress because we don’t want to express it in front of our families.

It is a very thin line we walk as parents.  We are often be torn between suppressing our own emotional needs in times of duress, displaying a veneer of coping in a bid to protect our children from that same duress, so much so that what we attempt to avoid comes back to bite us hard.

I’ve learnt to offload potential stress by dealing with issues as they arise and I have a good network of friends, some of whom are also coaches.  When necessary I’ll either ring or meet up with one of them and discuss my issues.  Friends are there in good times and in bad, it is when things are going bad that we realise how good are good friends are.

For those who don’t want to burden their friends with their issues, hiring a good coach makes all the difference between building up stress levels and learning to ease your stress.

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CLIENT Posted by Encouraging Excellence

This acronym is the lifeblood of any business.

C

Clients, customers call them what you will, without them no business is successful.  We want to keep the current ones we have and we also want to attract new ones to help us grow our businesses.  For some businesses this is a fairly easy process as they provide “essential” services, for others it is a complicated process as the services they provide are not essential.  Either way we all need them and if we market ourselves properly we can have them calling us rather than us chasing them down.

L

Loyalty to your customer and from your customer.  Some of the major supermarkets honed this skill of developing customer loyalty by issuing cards that accrue points over time to be given back in discount vouchers or special offers.  This is perceived as a win/win situation, they remain loyal to you for remaining loyal to them.  Ireland, until a few years ago, was known as a brand loyal country and because of this it was difficult for new brands to break into the market.  The demise of the Celtic tiger put paid to that.

I

Interest.  Develop and maintain a healthy interest in your clients.  The best ever car salesman in the world had a Rolodex with all his clients details on it, including family member, their dates of birth, special upcoming events, as well as when they bought their cars from him.  He sent out birthday cards to all customers and their family members, same at Christmas, weddings, funerals, births, etc as well as reminders of when their cars were due servicing.  At the time he was spending an average of $200 per month and reaping the rewards of over $5,000 per month in extra commissions and bonuses.  Ask any of his clients if he was interested in them and they stoutly replied that his interest and concern for their well being was genuine, because for him it was.

E

Engagement with your clients is another great way to keep them coming back.  Many companies use social media as a means to stimulate their clients engagement today.  However, there are just as many offline methods for doing this as there are online.  Remember the film Charlie And The Chocolate Factory?  It doesn’t have to be as elaborate as that, nor will that work for all types of business.  Surveys are a really good way to engage your current and potential clients, competitions are another.  There are lots of different ways, experiment and see what works for your business.

N

New clients.  To maintain itself a business needs to retain the current clients at their current spending rates.  To grow that business needs to attract new clients and develop them into current clients.  To keep on growing it is simply a process of repeating the process.  I constantly hear the phrase “people buy people” they don’t buy the product or service you provide and for some businesses that  means employing others to be front of house for them because they don’t have the required skills or don’t like being at the coal face themselves.

T

Trust is huge.  Your clients have got to know that they can trust you not to rip them off in the first place and that you will provide any necessary aftercare that might be required if they do business with you.  So many businesses today only provide one form of aftercare due to cutbacks and rationalisations, however this costs many of them to lose their current clients.  Just because technology has advanced in leaps and bounds does not mean that clients have, nor should they because you want them to.  The best way to build trust with a client is to understand their needs and provide them for them – their way.

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Create A New First. Posted by Encouraging Excellence

Life is full of  firsts and many of them are remembered by our parents rather than us.  The first smile, the first step, the first tooth, the first day at school, the list is pretty much endless and many of them bring happy memories for our parents.  Then there are the first that we can remember, the first day at secondary school, the first crush, the first kiss, the first dance, the first date, again the list can also go on and on.

There are however many firsts that don’t have the happy memories associated with it that others have.  The first time we were dumped, the first cigarette we smoked because we wanted to impress that boy/girl or our friends and be accepted by them, the first time we woke up after a night on the town with an unmerciful hangover and the slow return of the memories of how stupidly we behaved, the first interview that went badly.  These are the firsts that we either decided to be the best we could be or simply give in and didn’t take responsibility for improving our lives.

There are many more firsts still to come in our lives and we can choose whether they will be good or bad firsts for us.  It all comes down to how we look at things and our internal attitude.  With a positive attitude everything that happens for the first time will have a learning attached to it that we can learn from it.

If you are a glass half empty type of person you can turn this new coming year into a new first… a first continual positive mental attitude to live by.  If you are in a bad place make this new year the year that you get some life coaching to turn things around.  If you are in a bad relationship make the new year the year that you see a relationship coach sort it out.   If you’re a smoker make the new year the first time you get effective quit smoking coaching and stay quit.  If you have confidence issues make the new year the year you learn to be confident.  If you are depressed or feeling stressed see a life coach that specialises in dealing with these issues so that the new happy and unstressed you feels like a new person.   A qualified coach can help you make the changes you want in a safe environment so that you can turn 2011 into the year you experience the firsts you’ve dreamed of.

There are many new firsts waiting for you to reach out and grab them in 2011.  Which firsts will be special for you in the New Year?

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CHATTY Posted by Encouraging Excellence

As a chatterbox who could and regularly does talk the hind legs off a donkey, this acronym really struck a chord with me.  How chatty are you in business?

C

Cool. Just how cool are you?  You can take this up any way you want.  You can be trendy, hip and with it in business, always one of the first to be following the latest new happenings in the business world, quick to learn and apply them and part of that group that stays ahead as a result.  Or you can be the cool, calm collected business person who doesn’t get their feathers ruffled too easily.  No matter what dramas get thrown your direction you stay calm and focused and work through any problems without getting overly upset and can find solutions to most of them and know where to go for the problems you can’t solve.

H

Helpful. How helpful are you?  Are you a distant boss that your employees don’t tend to bother you with issues, going instead to someone else who deals with them on your behalf?  Are you the same with your customers?  When people describe you does the word helpful crop up in the adjectives they use for you?  If not, how can you change that?  This does not mean you need to be constantly hovering to be of service to your employees, boss or customers either.

A

Authentic. Authenticity is such a hard thing to fake, yet many people to spend a lot of time and effort into trying to appear real and true so that they can close the deal.  What springs to mind for me is the image of the typical sleazy car sales man, or the overly gracious waiter.  The opposite of that for me was a woman in a large chain store who when she found out that the product I wanted wasn’t available in that store checked the computer to see the nearest available store and put it on hold for me for forty-eight hours.  When I commented on the extra service she had provided she was genuinely surprised as for her this was normal.

T

True. Are you true to yourself?  Are you in a business that you find a struggle and feel trapped because you don’t like it?  If you are not being true to yourself you will find it more difficult to be true to clients that you need rather than particularly like to have.  When you are in a business that you truly love doing it, that passion comes across and it is much easier to be true to your clients and yourself.

T

Topical. How do you deal with topical issues that arise within your business?  Do you keep up to date with the current trends and make sure your employees do too and then inform your customers of these new issues.  Or do you obstinately resist new trends, do the ostrich – bury your head in the sand and pretend or hope it isn’t happening and it will disappear soon. In business we need to keep on top of topical issues rather than ignoring them, not only to keep up to date, to maintain the go-to or expert position that we build up and to be able to answer the queries of our clients

Y

You are unique. There is no one the same as you in the rest of the world.  Use that uniqueness to make your mark in business.  When people come to you for business it is not only because you provide an answer to their problem it is because of you, the way they perceive you, your ability to get them to like what you have to offer and want to have it.  Develop your interpersonal skills so that you can build effective rapport with anyone.

So how chatty are you?  What are your thoughts on this, I’d love to know?

Filed under: NLP Business Coaching — Tags: , , , , , —



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