The World Today

“The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is perpetually interrupted by someone doing it.” – Harry Emerson Fosdick

An economist friend of mine was telling me that the world is so volatile that you cannot predict what’s going to happen tomorrow. Basically, he was saying, “What’s next?!” We are hit not only by economic factors, but political turmoil as well as nature disasters. U.S. dollars depreciated; gold appreciated to an all time high; oil is crazily priced; rice suddenly got into the picture to make everything much more exciting; then the cyclone; flood; earthquake; etc. So, what’s next?!

It is clear that we are living in times of dramatic economic, business, and social changes. Increasing competition is now accepted as an economic fact of life. Competition is increasing, not just because most organization have more direct competitors, but because of radical shifts in markets and consumer preference.

Circumstances may be beyond your control, but you have full control over your responses to the circumstances. People who are concentrating too much on what’s going on around them, what might happen to their business, who is getting the raise and promotion – instead of directing their energies toward achieving results are potentially more vulnerable over the long haul.

Proactive people look for ways to succeed in spite of the circumstances. Reactive people are likely to go through life complaining about their circumstances. They focus on things they can do nothing about and ignore the things that are within their circle of influence.

The biggest thing that stops us from being our true, authentic selves and expressing our full business potential is fear. Our fear tells us not to take risks. Our fear tells us that we cannot achieve our dreams. Our fear reminds us that the situations are bad. Our fear keeps our lives limited. Through fear we create situations in our lives that act to prove to ourselves that this self-imposed limitation is appropriate.

Volatile Times – Opportunities or Threats

George Bernard Shaw once wrote:
“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

To see the changes affecting the business world as purely a problem or a threat is a defensive reaction. Instead, they should be regarded as opportunities to excel, to explore new markets, to reinvent their business, learn new skills, and to develop, rather than conform to, existing and self-limiting beliefs upheld by your competitors.

For too long, many businesses have been trapped in a kind of “follow the leader” mentality. All of a sudden, they are discovering this is not always the wisest strategy, especially as the market leader is competing for your business.

We have enormous reserves of capacity, potential and talent that we may not even come close to using. Those reserves lie within us, dormant, and are waiting for us to unlock them and bring them into every part of our lives. It is wiser to develop our own sense of business uniqueness. If you stay on top of the trends, you can remain the master of your own destiny, and you will choose to take control over your business.

Your qualifications and technical preeminence in your chosen field may be a prerequisite to your profession and into the business, but it may not be sufficient to get you to where you want to bring your level of success. They may get you to the starting line, but considering there are many others in the business world who have the same expertise as you, you need to be different and stand out from the herd. If you do not make that happen, who will?

Growth opportunities are everywhere. As markets and economies change, so, too, must business approaches. If you want to continue conducting your business, you must continue re-adapting, and improving your business process.

One thing is sure: whatever the trends of the moment, there will always be trends in the future. Businesses and those in them must recognize future trends, better still anticipate them, and deal with them – new opportunities are often to be found in taking advantage of new trends.

Learning from the Farmers

When I was speaking in Vietnam, I visited a farm. The farmer told me “Crops don’t grow overnight. They take time to mature, with lots of hard work on the part of the farmer, understanding weather conditions, adapt to the sudden change in climate, knowing what crops to plant to turn over the soil, and never ever neglect to harvest the crops.”

Crops farming are subjected to all kinds of weather changes. When the weather is extremely hot, the farmer will have to work harder to collect water and watering the crops regularly. If it is under heavy raining conditions, he would have to either rely on the irrigation system and if that fails, he will try to protect as much of his crops as possible. Joking he was telling me, there were once his whole family was the irrigation system, clearing as much water as possible and after the downpour, they mend the soil condition manually.

So what have all these to do with my business and the volatile economic conditions? You may ask. Trust me – lots. Just a few quick questions –

• At these volatile times, what are you doing about your business?
• Are you taking the opportunity to revamp your business or doing a ‘sit-and-wait-for-better-days’ attitude?
• Do you know your soil (customers) conditions and are you taking opportunity to turn the soil to plant other crops (that is, introducing specific products and services to specific customer-market during these times of turmoil)?
• Are you working smarter and do you have a strategy for your business success?

Simply by reflecting on those questions may already give you an insight of what you are doing or not doing at this current moment. Indeed, I have learnt much from the farm trip.

Sowing Seeds

When the going gets tough, the tough get … going? No!

When the going gets tough, the tough get creative!

Though the economic conditions may be tough, but there are many things we can do and we need to do.

First and foremost, do not analyze to paralyze. That is one common problem, when the economic conditions are not in our favor, we tend to over-analyze working to the point of being paralyzed by all the negative news and information that we choose not to do anything. Remember, certain circumstances may be beyond our control, but we can have full control over our responses to the circumstances. Stop worrying! It is better to start somewhere than not getting anywhere and still at the starting line. And if you have the time to worry, might as well use those times to think of appropriate solutions or actions. Worrying cannot and will not produce results; Actions do!

1. Continuing sowing seeds, that is, in the short-term, you want to close as many individual pieces of business as you can. In the long term, you want to maintain healthy relations with the customers, so that they will be willing to make further purchases from you in the future.
2. Touch-base with your customers through creative methods such as dropping an email to provide them with the latest opportunity-information, economic reviews, etc. Invite them to your Company’s events and seminars; etc. Trust me eCard does not show any sincerity, and birthday card means nothing to your customer when you don’t even ever say ‘Hello’ after the first business deal.
3. Analyze your current position with regard to your account and to your specific sales objective.
4. Fully understanding your current position means knowing who all your key players are and in what ways they can assist you in fulfilling your business objectives.
5. What’s the point of storing all contact information of your customers and prospects on your database when you have no intention of touching-base with them? Recently, I met an insurance agent who is so proud to show me his latest customer-relations storage system containing all the information of his clients as well as prospects. I was very impressed indeed, but when I asked him what he is doing with all these valuable information, he stared at me blankly and replied nothing. He only got the customer portion but misses out the most important usage of the system which is relations. Ever wonder why we term it as customer-relations?
6. The good reasons for continual sowing of seeds is that your customers know that you are truly interested in their welfare; they can remember you better and help to recall when they are in need of your products and services; keeping you positively occupied, instead of sitting around worrying; and the best part of all is that you never know which seed is going to produce a huge harvest!

Maintaining Soil Conditions

“Know your strengths! That is the important thing. You have got to know what you are good at.” This was the advice I given to a salesperson in the directory business in a recent sales seminar when she asked me how to stand out from the herd.

We are all continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems. No matter what the circumstances there will always be a market for your products and services. The main question for you to ask yourself is, “What value am I bringing into the relationship?”

Many people in business have little appreciation of the value of the work they do beyond the actual task that they carry out. They tend to focus on the features of their product or service rather than on the benefits or the value to customers.

1. ‘A strength’ is an area of differentiation; it enables the customer or prospect to identify a difference between the solution you are offering and all alternative options. You have ‘a strength’ only if that matters to your customers. If the customer or prospect does not see why your ‘difference’ makes a difference to him or her, then your snazzy feature or benefit may be worthless.
2. Giving confidence. Some of your customers or prospects may be crippled by fear of the current economic situation – you can hold a ‘Scenario’ Seminar to boost confidence; or “How are we doing’ conference.
3. Taking time to assess your Professional Equity. Assess in the areas of:
   • Your reputation
   • Your credentials
   • Your relationships or connections
   • Your depth and breadth of product knowledge
   • Your level of skills in sales strategies or business strategies
4. Going back to the question “What value are you bringing into the relationship?” All these years in the business, are you bringing in trust and integrity; genuine concerns and care; provider or taker; collaborative or competitive; etc. Reflect on the values you have always brought into a relationship and find ways to improve in bringing more values into every relationship.
5. During business transactions, when you stop focusing so much on your own wants and needs and start focusing more on meeting the wants and needs of others then, paradoxically, more of your own wants and needs begin to get met.

Weathering Really Bad Conditions

1. Involving Partners. When the weather conditions are really bad, work with collaboration, and on the basis of a win-win outcome. Be willing to pay the price of collaboration, and share our winnings.
2. When you really want to grow to higher levels in your business, you may need to give up on some die-hard negative people in order for you to go up. This does not mean they are ‘bad’ people. But they are just a bad influence as you try to do great things.
3. 3) Positive Distractions – this is really awesome. We are told that we must always maintain focus and minimize distractions. I am introducing you a new approach especially when business conditions are not in your favor – practice positive distractions! Recently, I was also hit by ‘slowness’ in business. My usual speaking engagements are 3 to 4 working days in a week, but there was a period I do not have any speaking engagements for an entire three weeks. That’s very unusual. Of course, I got worried, then panic, followed by depressed. After one week of being ‘lost’, suddenly, an inner voice asked me, “I thought you wanted all the time you need to write your book? Now you have the time, what are you doing?” What was totally amazing is that I wrote a book within a week, spoke to my book typesetter, editor, and designer, and also working with another vendor on designing some products to launch together with the book. That’s positive distractions.
   • What are the things that you kept saying you wanted to do but always do not find the time of doing it?
   • What are the changes you always wanted to implement into your business?
   • Did you promise your spouse that you would bring him or her for a holiday but never seems to get on with it?
   • Did you make a promise to yourself that you wanted to pursue a new knowledge or skill but claiming that you don’t have the time?
   • In face of the current situation in your business, what new strategies do you want to introduce?
   • What are some of the ways you want to stay in-touch with your customers?
   • What new marketing ideas are your planning to launch?

   Positive distractions help to rejuvenate your business by keeping your energy and enthusiasm and to keep up with the momentum of change. Action and feelings go together. By regulating your feelings, we can directly regulate our action.

Re-focus and Continual Adaptation

At any point of time in life, we need to re-focus on our purpose and decide what we want. The environment is ever-changing; henceforth, our life must change to cater to the changing requirements.
The decision to refocus will bring you into a whole new world of adventures, opportunities, recognition, and potentially greater success.

Crops farming are always focusing on the soil, weather, and most importantly, the crops, not merely on the farmer. Selling has been focused on how sellers sell rather than on how buyers buy, with the intent to move product as the sole reason for buyer-seller affiliation. If a prospect does not discover what he needs to buy, when he needs to buy it, how he needs to buy it, and how to integrate a solution into his team or group or family, it does not matter what your product is or how well you sell it.

Your job is to help a prospect with a problem discover how to get from here to there in your products’ area of expertise. You must learn to flip the focus and put relationship before task, being before doing. You cannot sell a product or conduct a business unless there is a level of comfort and trust between you and your prospect. Without people in our business equation, we do not have any tasks to do anyway.

In Crisis, Trust is the Main Element for Business Success

“I look for three things in hiring people. The first is personal integrity, the second is intelligence, and the third is a high energy level. But, if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.” – Warren Buffett

To most people, integrity means honesty. Though some do not consciously realize it, honesty includes not only telling the truth, but also leaving the right impression.

People who are congruent act in harmony with their deepest values and beliefs. They walk their talk. When they feel they ought to do something, they do it immediately, without procrastinating. They are not driven by extrinsic forces, including the opinions of others or the expediency of the moment.

When you consistently demonstrate inner congruence to your belief system and to principles, you inspire trust in both professional and personal relationships. People feel you are strong, solid, and dependable, and that you are committed to live in ways that are certain to bring positive results and validate their confidence in you.

Champions emerged during volatile time! Continual adaptation and readjustments in your business strategies, and searching the windows of opportunities in every circumstance, and you will be rewarded with an abundance harvest.