Change4Growth

Why It Is So Hard To Let Go

2010-10-28T06:18:00.001-07:00

Why It Is So Hard To Let Go

The cheerful girl with bouncy golden curls was almost five. Waiting with her mother at the checkout stand, she saw them: a circle of glistening white pearls in a pink foil box.

"Oh please, Mommy. Can I have them? Please, Mommy, please?" Quickly the mother checked the back of the little foil box and then looked back into the pleading blue eyes of her little girl's upturned face. "A rupees ninety-five. If you really want them, I'll think of some extra chores for you and in no time you can save enough money to buy them for yourself. Your birthday's only a week away and you might get another crisp rupee bill from Grandma."

As soon as Rubi got home, she emptied her penny bank and counted out 17 pennies. After dinner, she did more than her share of chores and she went to the neighbor and asked Mrs. Harry if she could pick dandelions for ten rupees.

On her birthday, Grandma did give her another new rupee bill and at last she had enough money to buy the necklace.

Rubi loved her pearls. They made her feel dressed up and grown up. She wore them everywhere - Sunday school, kindergarten, even to bed. The only time she took them off was when she went swimming or had a bubble bath. Mother said if they got wet, they might turn her neck green.

Rubi had a very loving daddy and every night when she was ready for bed, he would stop whatever he was doing and come upstairs to read her a story. One night when he finished the story, he asked Rubi, "Do you love me?" "Oh yes, Daddy. You know that I love you." "Then give me your pearls." "Oh, Daddy, not my pearls. But you can have Princess - the white horse from my collection. The one with the pink tail. Remember, Daddy? The one you gave me. She's my favorite." "That's okay, Honey. Daddy loves you. Good night." And he brushed her cheek with a kiss.

About a week later, after the story time, Rubi's daddy asked again, "Do you love me?" "Daddy, you know I love you." "Then give me your pearls." "Oh Daddy, not my pearls. But you can have my baby doll. The brand new one I got for my birthday. She is so beautiful and you can have the yellow blanket that matches her sleeper." "That's okay. Sleep well. God bless you, little one. Daddy loves you" And as always, he brushed her cheek with a gentle kiss.

A few nights later when her daddy came in, Rubi was sitting on her bed with her legs crossed American-style. As he came close, he noticed her chin was trembling and one silent tear rolled down her cheek. "What is it, Rubi? What's the matter?" Rubi didn't say anything but lifted her little hand up to her daddy. And when she opened it, there was her little pearl necklace. With a little quiver, she finally said, "Here, Daddy. It's for you."

With tears gathering in his own eyes, Rubi's kind daddy reached out with one hand to take the dime-store necklace, and with the other hand he reached into his pocket and pulled out a blue velvet case with a strand of genuine pearls and gave them to Rubi. He had them all the time. He was just waiting for her to give up the dime-store stuff so he could give her genuine treasure.

So it is with our Heavenly Father. He is waiting for us to give up the cheap things in our lives so that he can give us beautiful treasure. Isn't God good?

Are you holding onto things which God wants you to let go of. Are you holding on to harmful or unnecessary partners, relationships, habits and activities which you have come so attached to that it seems impossible to let go? Sometimes it is so hard to see what is in the other hand but do believe this one thing.............

God will never take away something without giving you something better in

Author - Rajeev Kumar

SCAR

2010-10-28T06:07:00.000-07:00

After an anger outburst, the scar remains with the victim. Especially if it is a woman, woman generally remember what you have said for a long time. Be careful when dealing with your anger.

There was a little boy with a bad temper. His father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, to hammer a nail in the back fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence.

Then it gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally the day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all.

He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence.

He said, "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out.

It won't matter how many times you say 'I'm sorry', the wound is still there."

Lets Win Together!
http://changeforgrowth.blogspot.com/

From Rajeev Kumar.

Solid Teamwork For Success

2010-10-28T05:59:00.001-07:00

The greatest day in your own life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That's the way we truly grow up --

Can you imagine what is daily motivation really all about? The following report includes some fascinating information about daily motivation--info you can use, not just the old stuff they used to tell you.

It's really a good idea to probe a little deeper into the subject of daily motivation. What you learn may extremely give you the confidence you need to venture into new areas.

One day, The God created the air, sun, plant, water, ground, and herbivore. Unfortunately, all of them were too proud of themselves. Each of them declared that it was the best of all until all of them were in hostility. In order to determine who the best was, they then asked their God to get the answer.

The God answered their question wisely, There is no need to self-state to be the best. All of you are great. You all are created to help each other, not to knock each other down. You are created to cooperate so you can live harmoniously and each of you needs help from others, you cannot live alone. The air was produce by the plant, so without the help of plant, there will be no air. If there is no air on the earth, the herbivore will die quickly in just minutes. The plant needs the water and herbivore dirt as fertilizer to grow up and also need the sun to run the process of photosynthesis to produce air. The herbivore must need the plant to eat and water to drink for living and surviving. The plants and herbivore need the ground as the place to stand and grow. The ground cannot be fertile without the help of water and fertilizer from herbivore dirt. So each of you are so useful to others. From now on, live peacefully and help each other. Then The God disappeared. Listening to the wise answer, they were aware the benefits of helping each other and live harmoniously.

Message for readers:

The story above is telling you about the power of building solid teamwork. You must have known that the power of a solid teamwork is much stronger and powerful than that of an individual and the most important is that working in a team can achieve the best expected results for the entire member of a team.

Do you ever see a flock of birds flying in the sky that form the V-shape formation? Do you think that it is accidental? No, its not accidental. They form that shape because of the benefits they can get. By flying in the formation, they can fly 70% further than the distance of one bird flying alone. In this formation, the leader of the birds is in the front. When the leader is tired, another bird will take the place in the front to be a leader. And if it is tired, it will be replaced by another bird. The bird that flies in the front is tired more quickly than those who fly behind.

Another example is to take an experiment. Take a sheet of paper and then tear it off. It is easy thing to do, isnt it? Then take 30 sheets of paper and tear them off. It will become more difficult. Then take 100 sheets of paper and then do the same. I think you cannot do that. What about you are hit on your head by a sheet of paper? It will not be absolutely painful. But if you are hit strongly on the head by 500 sheets of paper, you must be painful and dizzy.

So the conclusion we can make is that the effort of teamwork can defeat the single effort. Successful people realize that the teamwork can increase their power tremendously. Each of members in a team has the same goals and visions like you do. They can support and help you achieving your goals and together everyone achieves great results. They not only can motivate you, but also fill your weakness.

Tips: find people that have the same visions and can cooperate or collaborate with you to achieve bigger success.

Now you can understand why there's a growing interest in daily motivation. When people really begin to start looking for more valuable information about daily motivation, you'll be in a position to meet their needs.

If you enjoy my content, find more excellent motivational articles at

Read more at http://changeforgrowth.blogspot.com/

Lets Win Together!

From Rajeev Kumar.

How to over Come Sales Call Reluctance

2010-10-21T01:20:00.001-07:00

How to over Come Sales Call Reluctance?

What's the number one killer of sales years and sales careers? Hint: it's not price or the economy. It's not even competition or unwilling customers and prospects. It is, believe it or not, simply the unwillingness of the sales professional to go and sell.

Sales call reluctance® researchers George Dudley and Shannon Goodson report that "as many as 80% of all salespeople who fail within their first year do so because of insufficient prospecting activity."

Oversimplified? Consider these:

1. Sales is a numbers game – If you contact enough prospects or suspects, you're bound to get results and learn from your mistakes. Of course, the more you can pre-qualify your target list of potential contacts, the greater your chances of success.

2. A better mousetrap, by itself, doesn't win sales – The activities of contacting prospects, asking good questions, presenting solutions and asking for the decision do win sales. Success is often based on how frequently you reach out to people who are willing and able to buy from you.

3. Referrals have to start somewhere - The top sales professionals, those who seem to live almost exclusively from current customers and referrals, had to initiate those contacts to start the process. They paid their dues along the way.

The hidden enemy

The fear of self-promotion is a condition in which even highly competent people receive far less in position, compensation and recognition than they feel they deserve. Doing the best job doesn't always get the best rewards. Those rewards tend to go to people who promote themselves, what they've done and what they can do.

Who are some of the top self-promoters of our day? When you look across all professions, those most famous in the public eye aren't necessarily the best at what they do. Dennis Rodman, Madonna and Bill Clinton are all very capable people. There are also, arguably, others in their respective professions who are more skilled and earn far less in both notoriety and compensation for their efforts. Rodman's willingness to paint his hair different colors draws attention to him, not necessarily to his skills or his results.

This fear of self-promotion manifests itself in professional selling as sales call reluctance®. It appears in several types and works in varying degrees of damage to the sales professional's results.

The symptoms

Sally is a steady, but never stellar, sales performer. She has a proposal she'll be presenting in two days to a new prospect. She has worked over the proposal a dozen times and is checking it again for any typographical errors. Next she'll review her presentation of the proposal and write her key points on note cards for further practice and rehearsal. All of this is done during the sales day, the only time of day when she can contact new prospects. This tendency of always getting ready and rarely getting it done is a symptom of the form of call reluctance® known as over-preparation.

Ryan works hard to project the right image to his customers and prospects. He always looks good and professional, as do his materials and his vehicle. Today, as he goes out to prospect for the afternoon, he'll stop and have his car washed inside and out to maintain that image. This is done at the expense of his prospecting activity, a tendency of sale call reluctance® known as hyper-pro.

The nature and pricing of Judy's product requires that she make her first contact with the CEO of her target prospects. She's uneasy with the idea, so she creatively works her way through organizations by starting with purchasing agents, human resource managers and anyone else who will speak with her. She builds rapport with these people easily, yet somehow she fails to get in front of the owner or boss. Unfortunately, except in rare instances, only that person at the top can decide to buy what she sells. Judy has a tendency toward social self-consciousness, another form of sales call reluctance, marked by an unwillingness to contact people in higher socioeconomic levels and positions of authority.

Jack knows that his financial products sell best by educating his prospective buyers through free seminars. He watches the sales numbers of his peers climb as they present seminar after seminar. Despite the evidence, he continues to contact one prospect at a time to present his products one-on-one. His tendency to shy away from group presentations is the form of call reluctance® known as stage fright.

How to identify sales call reluctance

Fortunately, there are several specific steps you can take to address sales call reluctance® in yourself and/or your sales team. Use these tips first to find where call reluctance® may be hurting you most:

Look closely at activities for trends and tendencies – It's fairly simple to see an overall lack of activity. That could indicate any of several forms of call reluctance®. Check for specifics such as follow up on referrals. Lack in this area may reveal referral aversion, the avoidance of asking for and following through on referral opportunities. Some will often try to mask this condition by vigorously defending the position with statements such as, "Referrals don't work in my business/with my customers/in this industry."
Observe during the sales call – What happened when it was time to ask for the business? Did you or your team member shy away? Did you as sales manager have to close the sale? Avoidance of asking for the order is common, known in sales call reluctance® as the yielder tendency.
Check telephone prospecting activity – If "dialing for dollars" is important to you or your sales representatives, check on the frequency and quantity of calling. When you find low levels here, the telephobia tendency of sales call reluctance® is likely at work and will sabotage even the top professional with the most proven approach.
Use a sales preference assessment – A validated instrument can quantify specific challenges and suggest appropriate steps to address sales call reluctance® issues. It also provides a proof source to show members of your sales team, in an objective way, a comprehensive picture of those areas of improvement.

Overcoming the enemy

Once you've identified and assessed the problem, you're ready to take the appropriate steps to reduce and eliminate some of the sales call reluctance® present in yourself or your sales team. The steps you take depend on the specific areas requiring the most attention. Here are a few examples:

Over-preparation – One client using this instrument had a simple method to address this. He simply chased the sales representative in question out of the office after a certain hour of the morning. That prevented the seemingly endless preparation, which was taking the place of prospecting and selling activities.
Stage fright – Another client has made participation in Toastmasters International a requirement for members of his sales force. Practice in speaking to a group whose purpose is to help the speaker improve has helped even the most fearful become competent enough to look forward to group presentation opportunities. Overcoming this fear has, in many cases, led to breakthroughs in other areas of sales call reluctance®.
Yielder – Role playing, albeit one of the sales professional's least favorite activities, is often indicated as practice in asking the prospect or customer to buy. This practice can make it easier to repeat the behaviors when the real-world opportunities come.
Hyper-pro – Often the simple knowledge that this tendency hurts one's chances to increase sales results is enough in and of itself. In many cases, this is a good example where the understanding of the problem comprises more than half of the solution. The sales professional can take simple and immediate steps to minimize or eliminate the activities which take away from solid prospecting and selling opportunities.

Lets Win Together!

Rajeev Kumar | Head (EPM) - IT Solution Consultant.

Disclaimer:

This email may be confidential. Any distribution, use or copying of this email or the information it contains by anyone other than an intended recipient is unauthorized. If you received this email in error, please advise me (by return email or otherwise) immediately.

Ce courriel est confidentiel. Toute diffusion, utilisation ou copie de ce message ou des renseignements qu'il contient par une personne autre que les destinataires désignés est interdite. Si vous recevez ce courriel par erreur, veuillez m'en aviser immédiatement, par retour de courriel ou par un autre moyen.

Este mensaje es confidencial. Cualquier distribución, uso o copia del mensaje o de la información en el contenido por otras personas distintas de los destinatarios esta prohibida. Si usted recibe este mensaje por error, por favor comuníquemelo inmediatamente mediante reenvío del mensaje o por otro medio.

P Think of environment before printing this page!!

Are you using the 80/20 principle when measuring sales productivity?

2010-10-21T01:14:00.000-07:00

Are you using the 80/20 principle when measuring sales productivity?

I am a numbers gal. When I look at a report or request an online query and can see measurable results, I get a warm and fuzzy feeling. When data is involved in decision making, I feel more confident. But sometimes, even number driven folks like us, have to take a step back and consider activities and qualitative information- and feel just as good.

I was reminded of this important fact when I recently read the thought provoking, entertaining book, "The 4 Hour Workweek: Escape the 9-5, live anywhere and join the new rich" written by Tim Ferris, in 2007 (before the economy tanked). Tim walks us through his personal adventures of success & failure and financial ups & downs- adding his blunt, sometimes hilarious commentary.

One of the things Tom discusses is the 80/20 rule, also called the Pareto principle. The concept, which most of you know, is that 20% of activities drive 80% of your results. In some cases even 10%, drive 90%. (For Tim, if you can achieve 80% of results in 20% of your time, you can use the remaining 80% to focus on what you enjoy.)

Let's apply the 80/20 rule to your sales organization.

20% of your team members drive 80% of your top line revenue
20% of your customers drive 80% of your profit
20% of your sales activities drive 80% of your results

My guess is that most of you agree with these concepts. The 80/20 rule can apply to most situations. Then, why do we ignore this when it comes to measuring sales productivity?

Do More Calls = Higher Quota Achievement?

At one of my prior companies, we had one employee who consistently blew away his sales quota. Did he make the most calls? No. Did he have the highest phone time? No. In fact, he had some of the lowest, measurable productivity stats out there.

When asked about the reasons for his success, this employee shared that he spent a good part of his day completing research, creating his strategy and refining his approach. He also found that starting his contact with a well crafted email, worked better than a telephone call.

Although he was far exceeding his quota, his very low productivity stats, brought down the team average and the Regional Manager was questioned about why the team stats were so low. When upper management heard about this employee, their response was something like "if X employee made even more calls and spent more time on the phone, he would bring in even more sales for the business. That's why we pay him an hourly rate in addition to his bonus. He is a telesales rep- by golly. He should be on the phone!"

Ok.. does this make sense? If this employee begins making calls, just to make calls, he will spend less time on the activities that are currently driving his success. Ultimately, he may drive fewer sales and hurt the business and his own achievement of quota.

Conversely, I have seen many employees with the lowest achievement of quota, have the highest productivity stats. How can this happen? Usually for one of two reasons. The employees are trying hard, but not using the right approach or strategy. Perhaps they need more training or coaching.

The other reason, simply put, is if you ask for stats and reps can control them via a CRM system, you will see stats go up. Numbers like calls and phone time can be manipulated very easily. (I remember one situation where a rep was dialing 1-800 numbers for retail businesses, then waited on hold, just to make her phone time look better. Thank goodness for database analysis and cross-referencing.)

Are All Selling Days Created Equal?

One other point I want to make is.. sales success is not the same by day of week or by hour of day. Every business, depending on their customer base, has more success at certain times and less success at others. You could probably say that 80% of your closed sales, come from 20% of your selling time within a particular week.

For example, if you are targeting IT middle managers, calling them at 4PM on a Friday is very unlikely to yield positive results. Many IT middle managers come in very early and leave before 5PM, especially on Fridays. But, calling them at 7AM on Thursdays may be very fruitful.

With this in mind, are you holding salespeople to the same levels of productivity, for all hours and days of week? Are you asking them to make calls on Friday afternoons just to make your stats look good OR are you investing that time in more fruitful activities, like sales training or team meetings?

And…

The moral of this story, is that anything taken to an extreme can go from good to bad.. asset to liability. Measuring sales productivity is important and expected in any well-run sales organization. But, as leaders, we need to consider the 80/20 principle and add some common sense and flexibility into our measurement processes. All Reps, like all Leaders, do not achieve results the same way.

Lets Win Together!

Rajeev Kumar | Head (EPM) - IT Solution Consultant.
...........................................................................................................................................................................

P Think of environment before printing this page!!

Your pre-call & post-call checklist

2010-10-20T23:24:00.000-07:00

How well did your last sales call go? Did you achieve what you set out to achieve? Do you know what your next course of action will be with that customer/prospect? Do you have evidence that a real sales opportunity exists?

Using a pre-call and post-call checklist is a very useful process when assessing the effectiveness of your sales calls.

Too many sales people, however, invest too little time thinking about and planning their approach to developing prospective sales opportunities. Many sales opportunities involve a range of variables that need to be accounted for and acted upon if they are to achieve a successful sales outcome.

Most of us do not work in businesses where you can get an immediate sales result from one contact only. There are often several steps to achieving a successful sale, and like a good chess player you need to think several steps ahead.

So why leave your sales opportunities to chance?

Showing up with little or no plan leaves you looking unprofessional in the eyes of the customer. And you can't afford that in today's tough and competitive market place.

I suggest You you to use the following checklist to maximise your sales efforts.

Pre-call checklist:

Questions to consider before calling / Approaching on a new prospect or an existing customer:

What is my call objective?
Who do I need to speak to in this business/division/partnership/family?
Who is the key decision maker(s)?
Who is a main influence(s)?
What potential obstacles exist that will threaten the sale?

What stage am I at in the sales cycle?
How will I open the call?
What information do I have?
What information do I need to find out?
What sort of objections emerge out and how will I handle them?

What's my fall back position?
Post-call checklist:

Questions to consider when reviewing your customer sales interaction:

Did I achieve my objective?
What went right?

What went wrong?
What information did I gather?
What evidence do I have that this is still a viable sales opportunity?
Did I advance the sale to the next stage?
What will be my next move?

Who else needs to be involved in the process?
What else do I need to do to progress the sale to the next stage?
When am I next going to see or speak to this customer?
What will be my next call objective?

It is important that you review each of your calls to determine how you went and how you could improve. This tracking process is important for two reasons:

It allows you to determine where you are at in the sales process with that particular customer, paving the way for key action items.

It results in a process of continuous improvement, allowing you to continuously improve upon your prospecting skills as you review what worked well and what did not work well.
Remember everybody lives by selling something and only telling is not selling!

Lets Win Together!

Rajeev Kumar | Head (EPM) - IT Solution Consultant.
P Think of environment before printing this page!!

Passion as a Strategy

2010-06-30T20:27:00.001-07:00

Passion as a Strategy, Plus Other Marketing Tips
To Boost Your Bottom Line

by Beth Goldstein

Nearly six out of 10 new businesses fail before their fifth year. If you've launched a business or are thinking about it, the odds of long-term success are against you! How do the survivors successfully find, attract and keep good customers? What's their secret? Could it be their passion for their business?

There are several ingredients that go into a winning business, including a great idea, a great team, great passion, and great leadership. All are important, but great passion can be the fire that helps fuel the success. It can also destroy the business when it is misguided.

Like all fires, passion can spark other flames and become contagious, igniting the passion of investors, business partners, and customers, as well as employees. If left uncontrolled, passion can consume, destroy, and leave a business with an empty dream. However, when controlled, directed, and focused, it can boost a business's chance for success. Nonetheless it isn't the only important ingredient. A great business idea alone will not make a business profitable, but a passionate team that has the vision and the ability to execute the idea, even if the idea is only pretty good; can help a company achieve success.

Therefore, in order to be successful in business, you don't have to come up with the most ingenious and creative business concept. However, you must have a solid concept that satisfies a need, and you must be able to properly funnel your passion to execute the plan. The failure to fuel your passion can cause you to skip or dismiss basic business principles. In fact, that's where you see really smart businesspeople with good intentions make fatal errors in judgment.

Passion can also be misdirected when you're caught up in the day-to-day activities of your business and don't take the opportunity to sit back and think about how to focus your energy. Joanna Alberti's business, philoSophie's, is a good example of the importance of taking time to reflect on your business goals and where you want to direct your passion. PhiloSophie's is a successful start-up greeting card company launched by owner and entrepreneur Joanna Alberti. In 2005, at the age of 24, Joanna was recognized by BusinessWeek as one of the top five young entrepreneurs under 25. Known for her whimsical designs and her humorous illustrations depicting women and their interests, Joanna's style and creativity fueled her passion to launch a greeting card business just one year after receiving her college degree.

As a business mentor to Joanna, I had the opportunity to work with her as she developed philoSophie's. I also watched her struggle as she worked 20-hour days; often coming into my office covered in glitter from the greeting cards she had hand-embellished. She was doing it all, but was she doing too much?

Joanna was trying to launch her business in so many venues that she was not taking the time to determine who her customers were, why they were buying from her, and what needs she satisfied. She was trying to get into as many markets as possible without thinking about which of them made the most sense for her limited budget and time. She was clearly spread too thin and was unable to prioritize her marketing efforts.

Most business owners, like Joanna are so busy with the day-to-day management of their company that they don't realize the importance of focusing their business passion to reach their goals more rapidly, more efficiently, and with greater overall success. The following is a list of marketing techniques that I helped Joanna implement and always recommend to my students and clients. They are designed to ensure your passion fuels your success, not your demise.

1. Profile Your Customers. Who are your most valuable customers? Can you describe them succinctly, in 50 words or less? Profiles are descriptions of your customers' values, beliefs and decision-making processes. While it's important that you understand the products and services that you offer customers, it's even more significant to understand what your customers value and why so you can fulfill their needs. Don't assume you know, ask them.

2. Play 20 Questions With Your Clients. Imagine that your five most important customers are sitting in a room with you. What questions would you ask them about their purchases, their needs and interests, and the factors that influence their decision-making processes? Hopefully you already know how they found your company, what they have purchased, and why. If you don't, these should be among the first questions you ask. Compile a list of 20 questions that will help you define your customers. Then develop a framework that will allow you to obtain critical information, determine the methods you will use (i.e., surveys, market research) and define sources of this data.

3. Remember to Keep Your Friends Close but Your Enemies (i.e., Competitors) Closer. Identify several companies that offer competitive or substitute products or services. Discover what their benefits are to potential or current customers of yours. Now think about how you compete against them by comparing your message, value proposition and target audiences with theirs. Based on your assessment, develop at least three strategies that you will use to position yourself effectively against them and are prepared with this knowledge when prospects ask, "What sets you apart from ABC Company?"

4. Identify Partner Companies That Will Create Win-Win Relationships. What do you expect from a partner and how can it contribute to your company's growth? Can your potential partners' strengths be leveraged to empower your business? What does your 'must have' list look like in order for your partnership to succeed? Do you each add value to mutual companies while not competing with each other? A strong marketing alliance offers many benefits, including reducing risk, sharing costs and improving time to market, so choose your partners carefully.

5. Find Out If Perception Is Reality. How do your customers and prospects perceive you? Branding is the impression you leave through every customer touch point and involves far more than a nice logo or cool tagline. Everything you do has to incorporate your message, because if you dilute it in any way, you won't be sending a clear definition of the value you provide customers. As the saying goes, "Perception is reality," so in order to ensure that your brand is strong, your message must be clear, focused and on target at every touch point.

6. Prepare a Strong Elevator Pitch. Ever find yourself in a room with a key prospect and you couldn't succinctly explain your business to her? Perhaps you rambled on for minutes, never getting to the point, or you froze up. Elevator pitches are designed to help you prepare a very brief pitch explaining clearly to anybody you meet why they would want to continue a dialogue with you at a future point in time. You don't want to tell them everything about your business, just enough to whet their appetite and get them interested in meeting with you again.

7. Align Marketing Programs to Meet Sales Goals. Sales and marketing have to work together to support business growth. Even if the same person wears the sales and marketing hats in your company, you must plan your marketing program based on how many sales leads you need to generate and what your cycle time is. For example, if you know you need 1,000 leads over a six-month period of time to attain the number of new customers required for business growth, proactively plan your marketing programs well in advance so they generate the desired results.

8. Harness Your Passion as a Strategy. Even the most successful companies have their share of business ups and downs. How will you use your passion to get through the rough patches and continue to grow? Consider your passion for your business. What do you love about it? Why are you starting or did you start it? List 10 reasons why you feel passionately about your business. Post this in your office or some place where you will see it every day to remind yourself why you're getting up each morning and going to work (even if that's just down the hall). These 10 reasons will keep you motivated on the good days as well as the bad ones!

Implementing many of these techniques allowed Joanna to candidly evaluate the effectiveness of her strategy for expanding philoSophie's and to successfully channel her passion in the optimal direction. Through hard work she identified her most valuable sales channels and developed more efficient ways of allocating her time, ultimately leading to critical growth in both new and existing markets.

Regards From,

Rajeev kumar
9662046715
Lets Win Together!

How the Technique of Sales Work

2010-05-16T20:10:00.000-07:00

How the Technique of Sales Work

You have your sales team screened, hired, and trained on the features and benefits of your product and now it's time to put their "feet on the street!" But what about their sales approach? Did you think through the possible sales techniques and make an informed choice about what would work most effectively for your product and market? If not, your team may not be off to the fast break you hope for. Take the time to think about what approach would work best for the sales environment your reps will be facing.

If you're in a consulting or service-oriented business you know that it's going to require a relationship building process, but a product sales environment may require the same thing. The art of selling is not as straight forward as you may think. If you haven't been out there and sold before (as many new business owners haven't) then you may benefit from going through this workshop and identifying what you think might work for your business. If you're a seasoned sales professional now in a sales management position there may also be a thing or two for you. In this article, we'll look at some of the more effective selling techniques out there.

Have you ever had someone convince you to buy something you knew you'd never use? How do they do that? Did you want to buy anything else from them? Did you have a good relationship with them? These are some of the questions that come up when you think about what types of techniques your sales team should use.

Early books about sales techniques (I am talking about the early 1900's) included key words like ethics, service, relationships, hard work, doing the best job possible, and loyalty to your company. These all led to the idea of building a friendship and relationship with your customers so they would keep coming back. (Sound familiar?) After about 10 years, other ideas began to surface. Door-to-door salesmen discovered that they could increase their sales by using specific words and specific persuasion methods. This led to the perfecting and proliferation of sales techniques that focused not on the customer's needs or building a relationship, but on closing techniques and methods that rated a one-time sale, which was their only interest.

Different Sales Stages

The foundations of most modern sales techniques lie in five stages of action. These began in the 1950's and include:

1. Attention: You have to get the attention of your prospect through some advertising or prospecting method.

2. Interest: Build their interest by using an emotional appeal such as how good they will look to their boss when they make this deal that will save the company thousands of dollars!

3. Desire: Build their desire for your product by showing them its features and letting them sample or test-drive it.

4. Conviction: Increase their desire for your product by statistically proving the worth of your product. Compare it to its competitors. Use testimonials from happy customers.

5. Action: Encourage the prospect to act. This is your closing. Ask for the order. If they object, address their objections. There are then many variations of closing techniques that can help get the business.

There is a plethora of closing techniques that range from hard sell to soft sell and everything in-between. Some of these include:

· A Direct Close - Simply ask for the order when you are sure your prospect is ready.

· A Deal/Concession Close - Using this closing technique gives the prospect the feeling that they are making a smart choice and saving money (or getting more value). Use it with phrases like "Order today and I can add this other module for only 10 percent more."

· A Time-Driven Close - This one works well with statements like, "prices are going up next week, so you should go ahead a let me place your order today."

· Trial Offer - You can let the prospect use the product at no risk for a trial period. This works well if you're selling products that make people's lives easier. They aren't likely to want to give it back if it has saved them a lot of time and effort during the trial period. On the other hand, if they haven't had the experience with the product you told them they would then you probably won't get another chance.

Many more closing techniques exist, but we're going to focus on one of the more successful techniques for building a large and loyal customer base. That focus is, once again, Relationship Selling.

Selling with Relationship

Did you know that it costs more than five times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep an existing customer? That in itself should help you understand the value of building a relationship with your customers and turning them into both repeat buyers and spokespeople for your company. Word of mouth referrals are still one of the best ways to make new sales. If Joe tells Ed he got a great deal from Joanna at XYZ company, then Ed is more likely to go to Joanna and also buy (or at least be receptive if Joanna calls him to set up an appointment.)

Relationship selling is all about building a friendship or relationship with your prospects and listening to their needs. Once you've built that relationship, shown you care, and earned their trust, you are on the road to making them a customer. Knowing their needs and finding out their secret fears (for example, your client may confide to you, "If I can't make this project work within budget, my boss will probably replace me!") can help you find solutions for them that are exactly on-target with their needs and build an even stronger relationship. With a relationship in place, working out details is a breeze. Those details become obstacles if you don't have the existing relationship.

As a client, some of my best experiences with sales people were with those who honestly listened to my needs, and showed an interest in more than just the business. They came in with a low pressure, open, and honest approach and won my business. I didn't mind setting up appointments for their visits. I looked forward to them. It was low pressure and friendly. My company received good service, good prices, and everyone was happy. I knew they would react quickly if I had problems or emergency needs. So, when competitors called, I quickly told them we were happy with our current vendor - even if they may have been able to give us a better price! That's part of the power of relationship selling!

Most people react negatively to high pressure sales. In relationship selling, high pressure is not typically part of the equation, simply because it's hard to have a friendly relationship with a client who feels pressured by you. In relationship selling, you become a form of support for your clients. Your services or products become something they depend on, and the more you can suit their needs and make their jobs easier, the better they will respond to additional sales offers. You'll also find that relationship selling benefits companies that offer products in very competitive markets - particularly if there isn't a lot of difference between products!

Maintaining Customer Contact

Part of relationship selling involves maintaining regular contact. If you neglect a client who has trust in your integrity as a person and as a salesperson, that client may finally be forced to turn to your competitor. (Who has probably been calling regularly to get their business.) So, make sure you not only build the relationship, but keep regular contact and keep all channels of communication open. Make available several methods of contact for any type of emergency need. Or you may find that, in an emergency, your client was forced to contact that persistent competitor and discovered that, "Hey, he/she's a nice person too! And their product is maybe even a little better! Hmmmm!" So, the lesson is, make sure you maintain contact and are always accessible to your clients, or you may find yourself having to replace them!

An important part of relationship selling is also having the technology available to manage and maintain those relationships. That often comes in the form of contact management software or a good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

A new sales technique that has recently surfaced involves spending significant sales time only with those prospects who offer the highest probability of a sale. Arriving at that determination involves asking pointed questions and letting the prospect do the majority of the talking. The approach is to focus only on prospects who need your product, want you product, and can afford your product. Rather than using the effort trying to turn a low probability prospect into a high probability prospect, you focus your efforts entirely on the high probability group.

Determining who is high probability is done through a series of questions that require positive answers. If at any point, you don't get the answer you need, you end the meeting, thank the person, and leave. You don't waste your time and/or your proposal department's time on putting together a proposal that you know won't be accepted. Now, just because the prospect states that they are not interested, doesn't mean you pack your bags and leave. If they've answered all other questions with the right answers then you can continue the line of questioning until you determine without doubt that they will buy. This means you never ask for the order. If you've done the questioning (interview) session right then when it is completed you and the prospect have come to a meeting of the minds and the logical next step is that they will place an order. Your series of questions has eliminated any objections (or else you have already said goodbye and left!).

Rather than trying to manipulate the prospect and get them to do something they don't want to do, you are letting them come to the decision that it is the right thing to do. You are laying the foundation for a mutually beneficial basis for doing business.

Basic (but Effective) Sales Tips and Techniques

Today there are more types of sales styles and techniques than you can shake a stick at. So how do you know what works and what doesn't? It really boils down to what works for you and what works for your product. Think about your target market and their perceptions about your product type. Do they know they need it and simply have to choose from the various brands on the market? Or, do they have no idea how much the product would help them be more productive? Do they even know about your product? Will the sales call be an education for them - or you?

Think through these things before determining what methods might work for your product or service. It goes without saying that a sales method that works for office supplies won't work for management consulting services. Although they are both targeting a similar market, the knowledge and understanding of your prospects will be much different. They have to be educated about how much they can benefit from consulting services, whereas, they already know they have to have binders to put their reports in, or paper for their copiers.

So, even though there are many sales methods, the choices are narrowed as you think about your market and what their needs are, as well as what their expectations may be.

With that said, let's just go over some things that are beneficial in almost any market. These tips are basic guidelines that most any sales person can benefit from.

· Listen to the emotional side of your prospect or client: Emotions are tied into almost everything we do even if we don't realize it. Client may mention off-hand that they are really stressed-out about a particular project they are working on (even if it doesn't relate to what you're selling them). Make a note of this and see if there is anything you can do to assist them. You may have another client who had a similar dilemma and found a good solution. Make those connections and help where ever you can. You'll be rewarded with loyalty from all of your clients.

· Focus on your prospect or client's needs: We've talked about it before, but it's worth mentioning again. You may be tempted to sell your client your top-of-the-line model gadget when they really only need the mid-line model. By selling them more than they need, you may be cutting off future relations with them. Once they realize (and they will eventually) that they don't need most of what you sold them, they'll feel bitter and resentful toward you for wasting their money and not looking out for their best interest. They'll see you as a "salesperson" and not as a resource.

· Use language that focuses on your prospect or client: Simply changing the way you speak may also make a difference in how you are received by your prospect. Using "you" and "yours," or "you'll find..." rather than "I think" or "Let me tell you about," brings your message a little closer to home and may grab their attention more quickly.

· Help your prospect see the bottom line: If you know your product can help clients save money, or increase profitability, then make sure they understand that. Your product may have an edge in that it includes features that save time. Time is money as the saying goes, and if you can save time your can often sell your product.

· Find out your prospect's priorities: You can save yourself a lot of wasted time and effort by simply knowing how important your product and its benefits are to your prospect. If you've listened to them and determined the need, but still aren't getting anywhere, find out if there are other elements of their business that are taking priority and pushing your sale aside. If you know they have to implement a program before they can spend time considering (or funds purchasing) your product then you can schedule a call back at a later date that may stand a better chance of getting some attention. To do this you have to ask the questions because the information is not always volunteered. (Again, the key is focusing on the needs of your prospect, and having an open relationship already in place.)

More Sales Tips and Techniques

As we mentioned previously, there are a plethora of sales styles and techniques. Here we continue a listing of some of those:

· Know your prospect: Find out as much as you possibly can about your prospect before your appointment. This will not only help you anticipate their needs ahead of time, but will also show them you've done your homework and have an interest in their business other than just selling your product. When talking with them, let them do most of the talking. People usually love talking about their businesses and its successes. For example, you might bring up the fact that you saw they won an award at a regional meeting then let them proceed to fill you in on the details. You might also compliment them on the efficiency of their production system or the quality of their products. This will also open the door to more conversation and the opportunity to learn more about their needs and how your product will fit those needs.

· Focus on why they should buy - not their objections: The idea here is that while you are building up the benefits associated with using your product, they will be minimizing their resistance to it. By focusing on what you know the prospect likes, you are building up the importance of the positive and reducing the importance of the negatives.

· Sell the benefits - not the product: You've heard this one before, but it is worth repeating. In most cases, you're not selling your product, you're selling the benefits the product will produce. In other words, you're not selling digital phones, you're selling the ability to communicate from anywhere. You are selling freedom to leave the confines of the office and still be accessible. You're selling the ability to have a more flexible work schedule. You're selling peace of mind for long trips. You're selling security. Get to the emotional or financial benefits and you're on to something!

· Never rush the sale or the customer: Remember the section about building a relationship with your customers? This is a very important step. It can help give the prospect the right perception of you and your company. Rushing them instead of letting them come to their own decision to buy can create hostilities that can't be overturned. It can make the difference between getting the sale and creating a loyal customer, and having to start over with another prospect. In the competitive climate of many markets, you definitely don't want to risk losing a qualified prospect who you know needs your product.

· Know your products, as well as the market - be a RESOURCE: In order to be seen as a valuable resource for your clients, you have to demonstrate that you not only know and understand your products and the market, but can assist them in making good decisions and provide them with tools to improve their business. If you don't have these skills and knowledge, get them. You'll be rewarded over and over by loyal clients who trust your opinions and advice, and buy from you frequently.

· Follow through with promises: If you do nothing else, do this. Always follow through with what you say you are going to do. If you say you'll send a quote by Friday - DO IT! If you say you'll check with someone else in your company about an issue that's come up - DO IT! Don't forget. Use the technology available to you (even if it's a sticky note on your dash board!) and make sure you follow through with your promises. There is no surer way to lose the faith of a prospect (or existing client) than to forget to do something you tell them you will do. If something comes up that forces you to have to delay, call them and give them a heads up. They may have a meeting arranged to present the information you're supplying them with, and if they don't have it you'll both look bad.

· Focus on your client's success: Not to beat a dead horse, but there is tremendous value in being a resource for your client. If you can help them to succeed then they are more likely to help you succeed. Be a coach for your clients (at least in your areas of expertise). You have the unique perspective of seeing how many different businesses operate. Gather this knowledge and share it with your clients or prospects. Make sure they understand that you want to see them succeed, not just sell your products.

· Use explanations rather than excuses: If you do have to explain to a customer why there is a problem with their order, their repair, their service, etc. Explain why the problem is there in the first place, rather than using an excuse. For example, if you provide health care services and you're having difficulty meeting the scheduling needs of the customer, you might it explain it like this, "With this being a particularly bad allergy season we have had more emergency calls due to asthma (or whatever the case may be) and these patients can't wait for a scheduled appointment. Our staff is behind schedule, but we are addressing the problem now by bringing in temporary help for these critical need times. So we should be able to schedule your service on 'x' date." Understanding the problem may help alleviate some of their frustration. Verbalizing the cause may also keep you more aware of the potential problems so you can be more prepared the next time around.

So, there you have several sales tips to keep in mind when you're out there pounding the pavement. Stop, look and listen; it's good advice on the street, and it's good advice in sales.

Technology to Enhance Selling

The tools available to the sales professional are endless. If you had the mind to, you could have four or more electronic devices strapped to your body enabling you to be totally connected and available to anyone in the world at all times. Now that's dedication to keeping the lines of communication open!

· You would have your beeper on your belt for those people you want to hear from but not acknowledge.

· You would have your cell phone in your coat pocket for those people you want to hear from and/or be able to contact regardless of where you are or what you're doing.

· You would have your PDA, Blackberry or other smartphone in your shirt pocket to look up (while driving your rental car) the address of your next appointment. Or you could check your calendar to see where the heck that appointment is supposed to be, surf the net to MapQuest to get directions, check your e-mail, make notes to yourself, check your to-do list when you're bored, etc.

· You would carry your laptop in your black leather executive backpack to use in airports to document the meetings you're at, the sales you made, surf the net, check your e-mail, play Free-Cell, update your contact management software, and complete your expense report. You would then sync that info with your PDA and you're ready for the next day!

· You may even be carrying your digital projector to display those dazzling PowerPoint™ presentations you've put together.

Now there are even Web-based applications for sales that you can access from anywhere using your Web-enabled cell phone, PDA, or good old-fashioned laptop. Isn't technology great!?

In case you've been living in a cave for the past few years, you probably don't know all about CRM and its relationship to Contact Management Software. Basically, contact management software was the foundation for what is now Customer Relationship Management, or CRM. There are many software packages available to choose from that are either simply the contact manager portion, or the full-blown CRM version. You can also find programs that are Web-based to enable you to access your information from anywhere at any time. Regardless of which level your company uses, having some form of contact management software is necessary.

Let's take a closer look at CRM.

Customer Relationship Management

CRM is a strategy, process and technology that lets your company make the most of every sale by optimizing revenue and getting a better understanding of the customer's needs. The CRM universe rolls together sales (as a type of Sales Force Automation), marketing, and customer service into a single software-driven technology. In other words, it includes the areas of your company that affect the relationships with your customers. It puts this information into a single package which encompasses the meat of what every customer-centric business needs to know and keep track of. Every interaction with a customer is recorded in this single system. That information is then used to manage, measure and keep track of the processes of marketing, sales and customer service as they relate to that customer. Overall, it builds greater customer loyalty and a better customer experience.

No more will the Sales department blame Marketing for not communicating with them. No more will Customer Service blame Sales for disgruntled customers. No more will Marketing blame everyone else for not implementing their business solutions. Now everyone can live in one big happy, customer-focused universe that communicates and desegregates the internal workings of the company. Before, no one was accountable for why the customer wasn't happy. There was a lot of finger-pointing and buck-passing. With CRM everyone has access to what's going on with every customer and can access the information necessary to keep that customer happy.

Now, if we focus on the Sales portion of this we see that, with CRM, Sales can build that relationship (remember Relationship Selling) and that relationship can be extended deeper into the company to customer service. So, you have an even greater chance of keeping that customer happy and addressing his needs quickly and efficiently. Marketing can use the data gathered to develop new business solutions, directions, and more effectively communicate the offerings of the company.

Notes about Setting Up Your CRM System As great as CRM is, it can't work without some up-front planning and forethought. For example, before you set up your sales team with a contact management or CRM system you have to first:

· Plan the details of the information you want to collect.

· Set up procedures and protocols for how the information will be entered.

· Standardize phrasing and abbreviations for company names or address information.

· Create drop-down lists for common terms and items that everyone would use.

· Agree on report formats and styles and set up templates.

Once you have the preliminary information identified and squared away, set up time to thoroughly train your sales team and have an accessible resource for future questions and suggestions. It's a process that has to be planned and managed in order to be effective.

CRM is definitely the way of the future. Companies that don't implement some form of CRM may have a hard time keeping their customers as happy as their competitors who have a CRM system do.

Additional Tips for Managing a Successful Sales Team

1. Support your sales team's efforts.

2. Give them the tools and technology they need to succeed and beat the competition.

3. Foster good relationships between your sales team, production and administration.

4. Communicate regularly with your team.

5. Mediate internal conflicts before they drive good sales reps away.

6. Take action to fix problems as they arise, not after you've lost your team.

Lets Win Together!

http://changeforgrowth.blogspot.com/

From Rajeev Kumar

Sales and Personal Selling

2010-04-01T21:53:00.000-07:00

Sales and Personal Selling

Personal selling - Personal presentation by the firm's sales force for the purpose of making sales and building customer relationships. Personal selling is paid personal communication that attempts to inform customers and persuade them to purchase products or services.

Undoubtedly by now you've figured out that marketing enables both individuals and organizations to sell products and services to other people to help them satisfy their needs and wants. At some point in the selling process, personal selling usually becomes involved.

It is the personal selling process that allows marketers the greatest freedom to adjust a message to satisfy customers' information needs. Personal selling allows the marketer or seller to communicate directly with the prospect or customer and listen to his or her concerns, answer specific questions, provide additional information, inform, persuade, and possibly even recommend other products or services.

The personal selling process consists of the following steps:

1) Prospecting

Prospecting refers to identifying and developing a list of potential clients. Sales people can seek the names of prospects from a variety of sources including trade shows, commercially-available databases or mail lists, company sales records and in-house databases, website registrations, public records, referrals, directories and a wide variety of other sources. Prospecting activities should be structured so that they identify only potential clients who fit the profile and are able, willing and authorized to buy the product or service.

This activity is greatly enhanced today using websites with specially-coded pages optimized with key words so that prospects may easily find you when they search the web for certain key words related to your offering. Once prospecting is underway, it then is up to the sales professional to qualify those prospects to further identify likely customers and screen out poor leads. Modern websites can go along way in not only identifying potential prospects but also starting this qualification process.

2) Pre-approach

Before engaging in the actual personal selling process, sales professionals first analyze all the information they have available to them about a prospect to understand as much about the prospect as possible. During the Pre-approach phase of the personal selling process, sales professionals try to understand the prospect's current needs, current use of brands and feelings about all available brands, as well as identify key decision makers, review account histories (if any), assess product needs, plan/create a sales presentation to address the identified and likely concerns of the prospect, and set call objectives. The sales professional also develops a preliminary overall strategy for the sales process during this phase, keeping in mind that the strategy may have to be refined as he or she learns more about the prospect.

3) Approach

The approach is the actual contact the sales professional has with the prospect. This is the point of the selling process where the sales professional meets and greets the prospect, provides an introduction, establishes rapport that sets the foundation of the relationship, and asks open-ended questions to learn more about the prospect and his or her needs.

4) Making the Presentation

During the presentation portion of the selling process, the sales professional tells that product "story" in a way that speaks directly to the identified needs and wants of the prospect. A highly customized presentation is the key component of this step. At this point in the process, prospects are often allowed to hold and/or inspect the product and the sales professional may also actually demonstrate the product. Audio visual presentations and/or slide presentations may be incorporated at this stage and this is usually when sales brochures or booklets are presented to the prospect. Sales professionals should strive to let the prospect do most of the talking during the presentation and address the needs of the prospect as fully as possible by showing that he or she truly understands and cares about the needs of the prospect.

5) Overcoming Objections

Professional sales people seek out prospects' objections in order to try to address and overcome them. When prospects offer objections, it often signals that they need and want to hear more in order to make a fully-informed decision. If objections are not uncovered and identified, then sales professionals cannot effectively manage them. Uncovering objections, asking clarifying questions, and overcoming objections is a critical part of training for professional sellers and is a skill area that must be continually developed because there will always be objections. Trust me when I tell you that as soon as a sales professional finds a way to successfully handle "all" his or her prospects' objections, some prospect will find a new, unanticipated objection-- if for no other reason than to test the mettle of the sales person.

6) Closing the Sale

Although technically "closing" a sale happens when products or services are delivered to the customer's satisfaction and payment is received, for the purposes of our discussion I will define closing as asking for the order and adequately addressing any final objections or obstacles. There are many closing techniques as well as many ways to ask trial closing questions. A trail question might take the form of, "Now that I've addressed your concerns, what other questions do you have that might impact your decision to purchase?" Closing does not always mean that the sales professional literally asks for the order, it could be asking the prospect how many they would like, what color they would prefer, when they would like to take delivery, etc. Too many sales professions are either weak or too aggressive when it comes to closing. If you are closing a sale, be sure to ask for the order. If the prospect gives an answer other than "yes", it may be a good opportunity to identify new objections and continue selling.

7) Follow-up

Follow-up is an often overlooked but important part of the selling process. After an order is received, it is in the best interest of everyone involved for the sales person to follow-up with the prospect to make sure the product was received in the proper condition, at the right time, installed properly, proper training delivered, and that the entire process was acceptable to the customer. This is a critical step in creating customer satisfaction and building long-term relationships with customers. If the customer experienced any problems whatsoever, the sales professional can intervene and become a customer advocate to ensure 100% satisfaction. Diligent follow-up can also lead to uncovering new needs, additional purchases, and also referrals and testimonials which can be used as sales tools.

Sales Management:

Managing the sales process is typically the job of the Sales Manager. Good sales managers usually exhibit the characteristics of: organization, a good personal sales record, enthusiasm, ambition, product knowledge, trustworthiness, mentoring skills, and somebody who is respected by others.

While an in-depth discussion of sales management is beyond the scope of this crash-course, I'll mention one tool often used by sales managers to manage the sales process. This is called theSales Funnel or Sales Pipeline Report.

The Sales Funnel (or Sales Pipeline)

A sales funnel report presents a "snapshot" of your sales function at any given point in time. For conceptual purposes, the sales process is often compared to a funnel where new leads coming into the system (i.e. prospects) are initially placed into the top of the funnel (the widest part) and then worked through the system by informing, persuading, overcoming objections, providing information, demonstrating, providing free samples, etc., etc. until at the narrow part of the funnel, an order is placed and a sales is closed when payment from the customer is received.

The funnel framework works fairly well because for all new leads that are generated by marketing, there is a closing rate that represents the sales that ultimately result. The number of resulting sales is usually significantly less than the number of total leads generated hence it is useful to think that as leads work their way further down the funnel there will be less and less of them until they come out the narrow end of the funnel as sales.

One important thing to note is that organizations define each phase in the sales process (or, part of the funnel) differently. Each step working through the funnel should have clearly defined criteria that go along with it so at each part of the funnel, there is specific knowledge about all the leads at that stage. In other words, leads become more and more qualified as they work their way through the funnel and at each step, you will know exactly what that specific level of qualification is. Another important thing to keep in mind is that the funnel is a great way to track and forecast sales, as well as, gauge marketing activities.

By running a Sales Funnel Report, the sales manager can visually see how many leads are at each step, if there are any "bottlenecks", or if there are an insufficient number of leads at any stage. Armed with that knowledge, then the sales manager may instruct his or her sales force where they should focus more attention to keep sales at the desired level. He or she can then also work closely with the marketing manager to ensure they are generating enough leads to hit sales goals, whether the leads are of high enough quality, or what further needs to be done to hit sales goals.

In short, the funnel can clearly point out what adjustments need to be made within the sales function to hit sales goals. That might mean that marketing activities need to be adjusted, that addition sales training is needed, or that sales personnel need to focus their efforts and activities on certain parts of the sales pipeline to keep the entire process on balance and running smoothly. The sales funnel also helps sales and marketing work closely together to meet organizational sales objectives. It is a wonderful management tool.

Sales tips:

I think success in sales depends upon some basics. I can humbly share a few pointers that I think have allowed me to enjoy success in sales:

1) Be sincere with people. Too many sales people act in a manner that seems artificial or they only feign interest in their prospects' problems and concerns. People are smart and see right through such insincerity. If you are not sincere and honest with everyone you meet then you should not be in sales.

2) Sell products or services that you believe in and that have customers you gravitate toward naturally or that you inherently like and want to be around and learn more about. If you do not have a passion for the product and the customers then you will not be happy--or very successful.

3) It is vitally important to constantly hone your sales and communications skills. Continuous growth and training in formal professional selling techniques is also very important. Take training classes, listen to professional development audio podcasts and seminars, read all the professional development material you can get your hands on, and start a program of self-study and development in sales today if you haven't already.

4) First listen to your customer, understand his or her wants and needs, and only then try to determine whether or not you can deliver the product or services to meet those wants and needs. If you approach a prospect with a solution before understanding the problem you are likely to be wrong about the solution.

5) The best sales people ask a lot of questions and genuinely listen to the answers before speaking again.

6) Your prospects and customers are all different so you should treat them differently.

7) The best sales people listen much more than they talk.

8) Find out what your prospects want and then give it to them.

9) If you cannot give your prospects what they want tell them so and help them find what they are looking for elsewhere...or at least point them in the right direction. You'll help them and learn more about your own market in the process.

10) If you think that you cannot make it in sales as a profession then you probably should not even try.

Lets Win Together!
http://changeforgrowth.blogspot.com/

From Rajeev Kumar

The Sales Process

2010-04-01T21:31:00.001-07:00

The Sales Process

Most business owners would like to focus all their energy on daily business operations and serving existing client demands. It's critical to your success, however, to focus on gaining new business from current and potential customers in order to grow and sustain your company.

The selling process has six key steps. Virtually every sales interaction will follow these steps, whether it lasts several minutes or several months:

As you develop a sales process that is right for you and your business, here are some other pointers to keep in mind:

Continuously improve your sales skills, learn from others and stay open to new ideas.
Be sincere about your desire to help the prospect. Making the sale should be your secondary objective. This attitude will come through in every encounter and will help you build long-term relationships.
Contribute more than just your product. Provide industry news updates, creative ideas, and business advice as part of the service you offer.
Be direct with your communication. Beating around the bush only frustrates people. Answer all questions. Never patronize.
Enclose your business card with every letter and note.
Thank people who refer prospects to you. If the referral results in business, send a small, business-related thank-you gift also.
Never lie. Don't badmouth the competition or say negative things about their clients. Don't gossip.
Don't overbook yourself so much that you don't have time to listen and be available to your customer for their questions and comments.

Lets Win Together!
http://changeforgrowth.blogspot.com/

From Rajeev Kumar

Sales Process

2010-04-01T21:27:00.001-07:00

Lets Win Together!
http://changeforgrowth.blogspot.com/

From Rajeev Kumar

Forecasting your Sales

2010-04-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Sales forecasting is a difficult area of management. Most managers believe they are good at forecasting. However, forecasts made usually turn out to be wrong! Marketers argue about whether sales forecasting is a science or an art. The short answer is that it is a bit of both.

Reasons for undertaking sales forecasts

Businesses are forced to look well ahead in order to plan their investments, launch new products, decide when to close or withdraw products and so on. The sales forecasting process is a critical one for most businesses. Key decisions that are derived from a sales forecast include:

- Employment levels required
- Promotional mix
- Investment in production capacity

Types of forecasting

There are two major types of forecasting, which can be broadly described as macro and micro:

Macro forecasting is concerned with forecasting markets in total. This is about determining the existing level of Market Demand and considering what will happen to market demand in the future.

Micro forecasting is concerned with detailed unit sales forecasts. This is about determining a product's market share in a particular industry and considering what will happen to that market share in the future.

The selection of which type of forecasting to use depends on several factors:

(1) The degree of accuracy required – if the decisions that are to be made on the basis of the sales forecast have high risks attached to them, then it stands to reason that the forecast should be prepared as accurately as possible. However, this involves more cost

(2) The availability of data and information - in some markets there is a wealth of available sales information (e.g. clothing retail, food retailing, holidays); in others it is hard to find reliable, up-to-date information

(3) The time horizon that the sales forecast is intended to cover. For example, are we forecasting next weeks' sales, or are we trying to forecast what will happen to the overall size of the market in the next five years?

(4) The position of the products in its life cycle. For example, for products at the "introductory" stage of the product life cycle, less sales data and information may be available than for products at the "maturity" stage when time series can be a useful forecasting method.

Creating the Sales Forecast for a Product

The first stage in creating the sales forecast is to estimate Market Demand.

Definition:
Market Demand for a product is the total volume that would be bought by a defined customer group, in a defined geographical area, in a defined time period, in a given marketing environment. This is sometimes referred to as the Market Demand Curve.

For example, consider the UK Overseas Mass Market Package Holiday Industry. What is Market Demand?

Using the definition above, market demand can be defined as:

Defined Customer Group: Customers Who Buy an Air-Inclusive Package Holiday
Defined Geographical Area: Customers in the UK
Defined Time Period: A calendar year
Defined Marketing Environment: Strong consumer spending in the UK but overseas holidays affected by concerns over international terrorism

Recent data for the UK Overseas Mass Market Package Holiday market suggests that market demand can be calculated as follows:

Number of Customers in the UK: 17.5 million per calendar year
Average Selling Price per Holiday: £450
Estimate of market demand: £7.9 billion (customers x average price)

Stage two in the forecast is to estimate Company Demand

Company demand is the company's share of market demand.

This can be expressed as a formula:

Company Demand = Market Demand v Company's Market Share

For example, taking our package holiday market example; the company demand for First Choice Holidays in this market can be calculated as follows:

First Choice Holidays Demand = £7.9 billion x 15% Market Share = £1.2 billion

A company's share of market demand depends on how its products, services, prices, brands and so on are perceived relative to the competitors. All other things being equal, the company's market share will depend on the size and effectiveness of its marketing spending relative to competitors.

Step Three is then to develop the Sales Forecast

The Sales Forecast is the expected level of company sales based on a chosen marketing plan and an assumed marketing environment.

Note that the Sales Forecast is not necessarily the same as a "sales target" or a "sales budget".

A sales target (or goal) is set for the sales force as a way of defining and encouraging sales effort. Sales targets are often set some way higher than estimated sales to "stretch" the efforts of the sales force.

A sales budget is a more conservative estimate of the expected volume of sales. It is primarily used for making current purchasing, production and cash-flow decisions. Sales budgets need to take into account the risks involved in sales forecasting. They are, therefore, generally set lower than the sales forecast.

Obtaining information on existing market demand

As a starting point for estimating market demand, a company needs to know the actual industry sales taking place in the market. This involves identifying its competitors and estimating their sales.

An industry trade association will often collect and publish (sometime only to members) total industry sales, although rarely listing individual company sales separately. By using this information, each company can evaluate its performance against the whole market.

This is an important piece of analysis. Say, for example, that Company A has sales that are rising at 10% per year. However, it finds out that overall industry sales are rising by 15% per year. This must mean that Company A is losing market share – its relative standing in the industry.

Another way to estimate sales is to buy reports from a marketing research firm such as AC Neilsen, Mintel etc. These are usually good sources of information for consumer markets – where retail sales can be tracked in great detail at the point of sale. Such sources are less useful in industrial markets which usually rely on distributors.

Estimating Future Demand

So far we have identified how a company can determine the current position:

Current Company Demand = Current Market Demand x Current Market Share

How can future market demand and company demand be forecast?

Very few products or services lend themselves to easy forecasting . These tend to involve a product whose absolute level or trend of sales is fairly constant and where competition is either non-existent (e.g. monopolies such as public utilities) or stable (pure oligopolies). In most markets, total demand and company demand are not stable – which makes good sales forecasting a critical success factor.

A common method of preparing a sales forecast has three stages:

(1) Prepare a macroeconomic forecast – what will happen to overall economic activity in the relevant economies in which a product is to be sold.
(2) Prepare an industry sales forecast – what will happen to overall sales in an industry based on the issues that influence the macroeconomic forecast;
(3) Prepare a company sales forecast – based on what management expect to happen to the company's market share

Sales forecasts can be based on three types of information:

(1) What customers say about their intentions to continue buying products in the industry
(2) What customers are actually doing in the market
(3) What customers have done in the past in the market

There are many market research businesses that undertake surveys of customer intentions – and sell this information to businesses that need the data for sales forecasting purposes. The value of a customer intention survey increases when there are a relatively small number of customers, the cost of reaching them is small, and they have clear intentions. An alternative way of measuring customer intentions is to sample the opinions of the sales force or to consult industry experts

Time Series Analysis

Many businesses prepare their sales forecast on the basis of past sales.

Time series analysis involves breaking past sales down into four components:

(1) The trend: are sales growing, "flat-lining" or in decline?
(2) Seasonal or cyclical factors. Sales are affected by swings in general economic activity (e.g. increases in the disposable income of consumers may lead to increase in sales for products in a particular industry). Seasonal and cyclical factors occur in a regular pattern;
(3) Erratic events; these include strikes, fashion fads, war scares and other disturbances to the market which need to be isolated from past sales data in order to be able to identify the more normal pattern of sales
(4) Responses: the results of particular measures that have been taken to increase sales (e.g. a major new advertising campaign)

Using time series analysis to prepare an effective sales forecast requires management to:

Smooth out the erratic factors (e.g. by using a moving average)
Adjust for seasonal variation
Identify and estimate the effect of specific marketing responses

Lets Win Together!
http://changeforgrowth.blogspot.com/

From Rajeev Kumar

New Sales Strategies for New Business Models

2010-04-01T20:57:00.000-07:00

When strategies change, downstream tactics must change to support them. And when business models themselves change, even the downstream strategies must change.

One of those business model-change times is upon us, and requires a fundamental shift in sales strategy. In this case, it's about moving from a competitive model to what I'll call a commercial model.

The shift is dirt-simple to explain and understand. Yet it's anything but simple when it comes to executing on it. The shift from competition to commerce seems to undermine many unconscious habits and instincts we have acquired over the years.

In particular—selling based on competitive models is becoming not just passé, but positively dysfunctional. You might even call it "competitive disadvantage."

Business Models

Old approaches to selling were built to support old business models.

The old competitive business model. Most of us have been raised on the idea that business is fundamentally about competition. Sustainable competitive advantage. Winning. Gaining the competitive edge. Anti-trust legislation. The power of free markets. Be number one or number two in all your markets. Market share. Five forces of competition. These phrases and concepts are mother's milk to businesspeople of the last four decades.

They worked well, for a long time. They helped create complex corporate forms of organization which competed with each other to provide consumers with better and better solutions.

The new commercial business model. But things are changing radically. The benefits group that used to report to HR? It's now outsourced to a company providing benefits services under a 5-year contract. The old IT department? Partly shared-services, partly outsourced, heavily globalized.

The dominant change in business these days is not globalization, or networking, or outsourcing, but a potent blend of all three. Business is moving from direct reporting relationships to commercially contracted relationships; from in-house to outside resources; from vertically managed to horizontally coordinated; from command and control to influence; from vertically integrated companies to interwoven supply chains; from competing to collaborating.

It is moving from a competitive model of permanent corporate competitors to a commercialmodel of entities buying from and selling to each other.

And that changes how we must think about selling.

New Sales Strategies Needed

In the new business model, selling is more important than it used to be. But the same old sales approaches won't work. There is much more selling to be done; and the nature of the buyer-seller relationship is changing fundamentally.

More selling to be done. In the competitive model, buying was done at the front end of a company's business process, and selling was done at the back end. In between—a lot of internal transfers.

Every time a company outsources a function, an internal reporting relationship is replaced by an external commercial relationship. That requires selling where it didn't exist before.

When a company re-designs a business process, it defines discrete sub-processes which are candidates for outsourcing. Technology and global communications make global scale possible, driving down costs and making outsourcing even more likely. It all adds up to more outsourcing—more supply chain configurations—and more opportunities for selling.

Old sales models, being infrequent, were built around transactions—the one-night stands of the business world. They began with introductions, and drove for "closing"—in as short a time as possible—before moving on to the next "pitch" at the next "dog and pony show."

But selling is no longer an episodic, intermittent affair. It is now an ongoing, unceasing, integral form of relationship between buyer and seller. It doesn't just involve a raw materials supplier and an end user—it deals with everyone in between, from systems suppliers to recruiters to temp agencies. Commercial buy-sell relationships are no longer one night stands—they are frequent, pervasive, and ongoing.

Changing Relationship. In the competitive business model, sales was a function—one of several—whose role was to contribute to the sustainable competitive advantage of the corporation in its never-ending fight against Competitor X. Customers were either means to a larger end—poker chips in a game between competitors—or competitors themselves.
The dominant sales approaches stressed keeping your cards close to your vest. Don't reveal information; don't quote price until you've established value; always be closing.

The competitive view implied zero-sum selling; either the customer is going to win, or I'm going to win, and since I get paid on each transaction, I will go for a win on every deal in every quarter.

That may have worked in a world of infrequent, one night stand commercial relationships. But in a world of interdependent supply chains, where customers want fewer suppliers with longer-term dependability, one-off hustling is a detriment.

Finally, in the old world, buyers knew what they wanted and could say so clearly to sellers. In the new world, with so much outsourced, buyers depend on suppliers not just for expertise, but for perspective, judgment and wisdom.

This means (as Jeff Thull points out) that doing a great job of listening and asking probing questions—consultative selling—is not enough. Customers depend on trusted suppliers to collaboratively help determine their needs.

Six Gut-Checks for Your Existing Sales Strategy

Check your existing sales model by asking questions in these six areas:

Confidentiality. Do you start by presuming confidentiality of information with your clients? Unless it's illegal or unambiguously harmful to someone, start by assuming you'll share it.
Proposals. Invite your clients to write all future proposals together with you, in the same room, at the same time. On the same side of the desk.
Client Plans. Do you write 1-year client plans? Or 3-year? Why not write 5-year plans—and review them for realism with your clients?
Purchasing and contracts. Stop trying to go around the contracts people; they are your new clients. Your old client said so. Deal with it, and start treating them as clients.
Long term value. Every time you negotiate a contract or sale, discuss with the client: Is this fair to each of us? If we did this deal ten more times, would it feel right? If not, how we can we redress the balance on the next nine?
Relationships, not transactions. You are not seeking one night stands. Let your competitor have those. You are not seeking transactions, but relationships. The best short-term performance does not come from short-term management—it comes from long-term management practiced consistently.

The old model of competition-based, me-vs.-my-client, transactional selling is slowly but surely going to die off. It is dying off because we are moving into a world that values long-term, collaborative relationships.

The value of sales is far higher in the commercial world we are moving into, if we can only remember the new rules for selling are different from the old rules. They are the rules of commerce—not the rules of competition.

Lets Win Together!
http://changeforgrowth.blogspot.com/

From Rajeev Kumar

Creating a Best Business Model

2010-04-01T20:52:00.000-07:00

Determine whether your business will succeed by evaluating these six aspects.

Great business models depend on developing three "green lights," or qualities that help the business succeed: finding high-value customers, offering significant value to customers, and delivering significant margins. Great business models also avoid three "red lights" that can derail a business: difficulties in satisfying customers, trouble maintaining market position, and problems generating funding for growth. The list below outlines key factors in determining whether your model meets each green light and avoids the red lights. Examine your own business to see if you meet the criteria for success and, more importantly, to correct any weaknesses you might have.

Green Lights
1. Acquire high-value customers.
High-value customers doesn't mean rich customers, but customers who meet the following requirements:

Are easy to locate
Allow you to charge a profitable price
Are willing to try your product after minimal marketing expenses
Can generate enough business to meet your sales and profit objectives

Customers don't necessarily need to be the end users of your product or service. They could be retailers, distributors, catalogs or whomever you sell your product or service to. If your end users or distributors don't fit this profile, you can still meet this requirement by attracting high-value customers through partnerships or alliances with companies in the market.

2. Offer significant value to customers.
There are a number of ways you can create significant value and competitive advantage, including the following:

Unique advantages in features and benefits
Better distribution through retail or distribution
More complete customer solutions through alliances with other companies
Lower pricing due to manufacturing efficiencies or pricing options
Faster delivery, broader product line or more customization options

The rise of the internet, outsourcing and, most of all, the increased willingness of companies to partner in creative ways to serve customers has resulted in every industry creating innovation in business strategy. This gives you opportunities, but also makes it imperative that you stay on the creative edge to fend off competition.

3. Deliver products or services with high margins.
Better manufacturing costs due to overseas manufacturing is typically not the clear way to higher margins, as competitors will typically match your costs in the end. Higher margins come from having a product that can be made from an improved process or by having features that provide significant value and allow you to charge more. You can achieve high margins with other tactics, including the following:

Use a more efficient distribution channel.
Require less sales support and sales effort.
Have an industry-leading lean manufacturing process.
Offer more auxiliary products or other opportunities for revenue without increasing cost.

If you aren't sure of your industry's standard ratios, check out your industry reports.

Red Lights
1. Provide for customer satisfaction.
Consider whether it will be difficult--and therefore expensive--to satisfy customers once they buy. Some of the aspects of a business that create high customer satisfaction costs include:

High warranty costs
Extensive technical support
Extensive installation requirement
Extensive customer services
Interface problems with other equipment

Customer satisfaction costs, which occur after the sale, are red flags because the costs are typically high and don't produce revenue or profits. If your type of product might have high customer service costs, you need to configure your business to put these costs on someone else, either with partnerships or alliances or by restricting your sales to an aspect of the business that doesn't require customer satisfaction costs.

2. Maintain market position.
A good business model uses its resources to improve its market position, adding new products, features and customers or expanding into new applications. The red flags that indicate it will be difficult to maintain market position include:

Two or three major customers buy most of your product.
Major potential competitors control the distribution network.
Technology changes rapidly and requires high-risk product development.
There are alternative technologies being developed to meet the same need.
You have well-funded potential competitors who could quickly move into your market.

Long term, your ability to hold market position is determined by the characteristics of the overall market. For example, a company involved in the semiconductor manufacturing business must adjust and guess right on constant changes in technology to hold market position. Sooner or later they will guess wrong and fail.

3. Fund the business.
Startup costs, operating capital, personnel costs and overhead costs are just a small percentage of the funding requirements for any business. The question is whether the investments will have a high return and whether the business can grow without substantial new investments. Red flags for a business model regarding investments include:

ROI is less than 25 percent in the first three years.
Incremental production of products or services requires substantial additional investments.
Fewer than 50 percent of the investment required will be used in revenue producing areas, such as sales and production.
Investments have to be made prior to sales commitments.
Industry as a whole has a poor ROI or poor profitability.

Money is available for the right plan and the right model. You'll find money available if your ROI is right and if you have financial leverage, which means your initial investment will allow you to double or triple sales without requiring any more funding.

Lets Win Together!
http://changeforgrowth.blogspot.com/

From Rajeev Kumar

Top 5 trends to make money in 2010

2010-01-13T05:57:00.001-08:00

Top 5 trends to make money in 2010

2009 was a tough year, but 2010 offers a fantastic opportunity for both start-ups and established businesses to make money in a number of different ways.

Whether it is through taking advantage of other business's misfortune in the recession; providing much-needed short-term business solutions; or altering your business values and beliefs to take advantage of new trends, 2010 is the year in which your business can really get back on track and make you some serious money.

Let's be honest, 2009 was difficult year for many businesses. While some have experienced profit growth and subsequently expanded, for most it has been a year of consolidation, protection and survival.

However, with the recent news that the end of the recession is looming (even if it's not here yet), 2010 looks to be a promising year in the world of business.

At the start of every period of growth, experts always identify a series of trends that businesses will move towards. Hot trends tend to mean hot demand – and where there's demand, there are profits to be made.

We've put together what experts have told us are likely to be the top 5 money-making business trends in 2010. Get your business on the bandwagon, and you might find 2010 could turn out to be your most profitable year yet.

Target green to save the environment

Green issues will continue to dominate the political and business agenda for the foreseeable future – and every business can benefit from this. You don't have to necessarily start selling or providing environmentally friendly products or services, although this could generate interest if applicable to your business. Instead focus on making your business green and using what you are doing as a marketing advantage.

Being an environmentally conscious business can earn many admirers and even set you apart from the competition, allowing your company to win business from equally environmentally sensitive clients. Look for green alternatives in every area of your business. For example, avoid sending invoices through the post and use a digital option via email instead. Businesses that make a genuine commitment to going green often find that the cost savings are more beneficial than the marketing kudos.

Seize the moment: Take advantage of the economic climate

In times of recession – and post recession – everyone is looking to save money wherever they can.

As a start-up you can provide short-term solutions to these businesses looking to save money. For example, by providing staffing solutions to companies that have had to lose employees, or office solutions to companies unable to afford staff to man the phones, there is world of business opportunity available.

And start-ups are not the only ones who can take advantage. It is no secret that people have less money to spend these days, and the last thing a business wants is for customers to stop spending altogether. So where possible, reduce prices and provide the customer with what they're looking for – a quality product or service that offers full value for money. This will certainly affect your profit margin on each sale; however a higher volume of sales will generate increased turnover and profits in the long run.

24/7 health concerns

Entrepreneurs are at the forefront of the latest money making trend: cashing in on the health conscious among us.

Consumer health concerns are providing a rich opportunity for businesses. Whether it's through providing a personal service or helping direct people to fast health solutions, this cannot be dismissed.

It's no surprise that health is now a 24/7 concern for many people. In a society where people get what they want, when they want it, the issue of health is on the agenda.

The NHS might not be able to get its computer systems right, but maybe you can. Is there some way your business can help people access healthcare information from their computer when it suits them? Can you help them get medication round the clock, perhaps by offering a pharmacy collection and delivery service?

Looking after the difficult consumer (they can be the most profitable)

There are a large proportion of people within your target market who are in effect, ahead of the game.

These people are becoming harder to please. They only react to authentic or amusing and clever advertising, are only loyal to brands and companies that consistently provide good products and a good service, and they respond best to those businesses that interact on their level.

Luckily for your business, accessing this sub-target market is not only possible – it's profitable. By making sure the basics of your business are 100% spot on, satisfying this group of people should not be a problem. For example, make sure your website is accessible on mobile phones as well as computers; provide a knowledgeable service that continues to offer support and assistance; and give them a product that works. These tech-savvy individuals will soon move on if you give them a product and service that fails to deliver.

Digital technology

The internet continues to be the biggest opportunity for any business anywhere. Never before has it been possible for a business to reach so many targeted customers and have an interactive conversation with them.

Web apps (applications) are massive at the moment, and will only be bigger in 2010. By solving problems that technology customers are experiencing, traditional software programs are under real threat. To enter this market is not impossible, but requires creative thinking and a proven solution to technological problems.

And mobile apps are no different. As more people are relying on their mobile phones and the web continues to move to wireless, this industry is there for the taking. Ideas that bring technologies together will dominate in 2010. To help with this, Microsoft, Apple and Google have all launched third-party mobile app markets – so there really is money to be made here.

You don't need to be a computer developer to put an app together. If you have a good idea and can plan it well, there are plenty of freelance programmers out there who will do the hard work for you. Look on sites like Elance to find the best people around the world.

Lets Win Together!
http://changeforgrowth.blogspot.com/

From Rajeev Kumar

What is Sole proprietorship in India?

2010-01-03T08:24:00.000-08:00

What is Sole proprietorship in India?

The sole proprietorship is the oldest, simplest, and most common form of business entity. It is a business owned by a single individual. For tax and legal liability purpose, the owner and the business are one and the same. The proprietorship is not taxed as separate entity. Note that the earnings of the business are taxed at the individual level, whether or not they are actually in cash. There is no vehicle for sheltering income. For liability purposes, the individual and the business are also one and the same. Thus, legal claimants can pursue the personal property of the proprietor and not simply the assets used in the business.

ADVANTAGES OF A SOLE PROPRIETORSHIP

Perhaps the greatest advantage of this form of business is its simplicity and low cost. You are not required to file with the government, nor are any legal charter required. The sole proprietorship form of business has other advantages:

The owner or proprietor is in complete control of business decisions.
The income generated through operations can be directed into the proprietor's pocket or reinvested as he or she sees fit.
Profits flow directly to the proprietor's personal tax return; they are not subject to a second level of taxation. In others words, profits from the business will not be taxed at the business level.
The business can be dissolved as easily and informally as it was begun.

These advantages account for the widespread adoption of the sole proprietorship in the India. Any person who wants to set up shop and begin dealing with customers can get right to it, in most cases without the intervention of government bureaucrats or lawyers.

DISADVANTAGES OF THE SOLE PROPRIETORSHIP

This legal form of organization, however, has disadvantages:

The amount of capital available to the business is limited to the owner's personal funds and whatever funds can be borrowed. This disadvantages limits the potential size of the business, no matter how attractive or popular its product or service
Sole proprietors have unlimited liability for all debts and legal judgements incurred in the course of business. Thus, a product liability lawsuit by a customer will not be made against the business but rather against the owner.
The business may not be able to attract high-calibre employees whose goals include a share of business ownership. Sharing the benefits of ownership, other than simple profit-sharing, would require a change in the legal form of the business.
Some employee benefits, such as owner's life, disability, and medical insurance premiums, may not be deductible, or may be only partially
deductible from taxable income.
The entity has a limited life; it exists only as long as the owner is alive. Upon the owner's death, the assets of the business go to his or her estate.

Lets Win Together!
http://changeforgrowth.blogspot.com/

From Rajeev Kumar

THE SPIRITUAL JOB SEARCH

2009-11-29T03:51:00.001-08:00

THE SPIRITUAL JOB SEARCH

I once read somewhere that eighty-five percent of people acquire their current job through the recommendation of a friend. This is contrary to the misguided belief that the proper way to find a job is constructing resumes, internet searches, classified searches, emails, faxes, persistent phone calls, and so on. Rather, the true secret to successfully conducting a job search is to treat your entire life as an interview. That is, realizing that the vast majority of people find their jobs as a result of establishing a meaningful connection with another human being, you should focus on presenting yourself to the world in a way that is consistent with the type of job opportunity you would like to attract.

What I am saying here touches on a principle that I have elaborated on in previous articles which is that of being preceding doing, which, in turns precedes your having that which you have desired to have. This same wisdom has been captured in our culture in the saying, "fake it 'til you make it." This is simply another way of saying that you must learn to be that which you want to be before you can indeed be that which you envision yourself to be.

Recently I have been studying one of the great iconic figures of the twentieth century, Muhammad Ali, and came to realize that this was something he understood well and lived every day in his life. If you are a student of history, black history, or even boxing history, you should well know that long before the world came to acknowledge him as the "greatest of all time" he consistently- and often to the chagrin of the world- proclaimed himself to be that. All that he was doing was faking it until he made it. In other words, Ali understood that in being in his own mind (or at least constantly trying to convince himself that this was true) that which he eventually wanted to become, he would initiate the thoughts consistent with this state of being, which would, in turn, lead to him doing actions that the greatest of all time would do, which would in turn lead to him having all that the greatest of all time would. He understood quite well the mechanics of manifestation, as evidenced by what he manifested in his own life – him becoming the greatest of all time.

So, in your own life, if you are to have the life of your dreams, you must learn to be that which you want to eventually become right now. Therefore, if you eventually want to become, for example, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, you must right now begin to present yourself to the world as if you already were the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, in terms of your overall self-presentation to the world of dress, speech, and manner. Projecting your future into the present will only have the effect of the world responding to you as that which you are projecting, and before you know it, "the future" will merge into your present reality.

Going back to our initial point about how most people find their current job through a friend, and therefore, all chance meetings should be treated as interviews, means that being that which you envision yourself becoming will lead to you attracting people that are currently in the position which you would someday like to be. Think about it. People that present themselves to the world as thugs attract other thugs; people that present themselves as athletes attract other athletes; hippies attract other hippies; and so on. Therefore, the way in which the law of attraction (like attracts like) applies to your job search is that if you learn to be that which you seek, that which you seek will be attracted to you. Thus, the best advice I can give you in your job search is to learn to match your current dress, speech, and manner with that of the type of position you would like to be in, and certainly you will attract the type of people that are currently doing that type of work (they will want to connect with you because your overall styles in life are consistent with each others) to you.

It has been said that the great philosopher Nietzsche's entire philosophy can be reduced to the importance of style. This point that I am trying to make about how people will matching styles are drawn to each other in life is the essence of what I am trying to say about life as an interview. Every type of employment can, in a sense, be evaluated in terms of the overall style of the people that are in that type of environment. What type of dress is required in the position you want to attract? Is it suit and tie? Is it t-shirt and jeans? How do people speak in the position you want to attract? Do they speak the king's English? Do they speak broken English? What kind of mannerism to these people have? Are they upright and dignified in their manner? Are they harsh and abrasive? All of these things are part of what I mean when I speak of the style of a position. If you can successfully evaluate the style of the position which you would like to attract to yourself, and learn to mold yourself into that style, you will find that the only people that are drawn to you are those whose style (because they are in that position you are seeking) matches your. And from there, it is only a matter of connecting with the new people which you draw into your life, and flushing out the way in which these relationships can be beneficial to all parties involved, the least of which is your own financial life.

Lets Win Together!
http://changeforgrowth.blogspot.com/

From Rajeev Kumar

A COMMERCIAL GENIUS - The Story

2009-11-01T23:38:00.001-08:00

A COMMERCIAL GENIUS

(The story is in bold letters)

In the city of Supratishthita a scene of great animation prevailed. Everywhere surging crowds were gesticulating, shouting, talking. On the market-place a group of Brahmans were engaged in a dispute about the various interpretations of the holy books ; a band of chanters were intoning the sacred hymns of the Vedas ; in a corner gamblers were enticing victims to their net by reminding passers-by of the treasure that may be won by the successful gamester; in another corner a knot of merchants had met together to discuss the science of money-making. "Would you like to hear the history of my commercial career?" asked one of the merchants of his fellow-traders. " I am the son of a merchant," he continued, as they assented, "and was born after my father's death. My mother, who was robbed of all her property by unscrupulous relatives, brought me up by dint of great industry and much self-sacrifice. So poor were we that I was instructed in reading and writing by the charity of a kind teacher. Then one day my mother said to me, ' You are now old enough to begin to earn your living. You must choose a trade. In this country there lives a very rich merchant named Visakhila, who has means enough to lend money to young men of good family to give them a start in life. You must entreat him to put you in the way of beginning some business.'

Q. 1. Is any man altogether " self-made "?

A. - In a country district it might be possible for a man to make his fortune starting empty-handed, by adopting the same plan as the mouse merchant in taking some natural product of the country which belongs to no one and selling it, etc. But in a town this would be impossible, for nothing of value has no owner in a city, and so, except by dishonest means, a man of no possessions whatsoever could not possibly obtain the wherewithal to find food and clothes, much less start a trade or business.

So-called " self-made " men are numerous enough, but few, if any, are entirely self-made, most of them having had money or goods given or left to them, no matter in how small a quantity, with which to begin, and but for charity in the way of food or clothes, few of these would have lived through the early stages of making their wealth.

Q. 2. What circumstances were against the boy ?

A. (a). He had never known a father, and no amount of intimacy with other mature men could teach the knowledge that comes, perhaps unconsciously, from living under the same roof as one's father.

(b). His mother was robbed of her property, and consequently must have been too preoccupied at times to think of her son's upbringing, probably just at the time when he needed most attention.

(c). He was forced to start his career before his ideas had had time to settle.

(d). He had no one to help him in choosing his career.

(e). He had to visit the wealthy merchant as a beggar with the prospect of being indebted to him for many years.

(f). He had no training for any business, and no influence to help him.

(g). He had no money or property with which to open a business.

(h). He must have felt himself a burden on his mother, and later must have felt her a burden on himself, even though he was repaying her a debt.

(c), (d), (e), and (g) should be considered as advantages and not as disadvantages in his case. But, since he was exceptional, I have changed their position, placing them under the category of disadvantages, as they would be to the ordinary boy.

Q. 3. What circumstances were in his favour ?

A. (a). He had a generous and devoted mother.

(b). He was given an education of sorts, when none was to be expected.

(c). Starting life thus early he learned to act for himself and to form his own judgments, so that at the age when most boys are only beginning to feel their feet he was already a map.

"So I went to his house full of hope, but made my entry at a most inauspicious moment, for at that very instant he was saying to a youth who was engaged in an interview with him : *Look at that dead mouse lying on the floor. Why, if you had brains, you might even make money out of that ! But you, blockhead that you are, actually have not been able to keep the money you received from me, much less increase it!'

Q. 4. Is it usually a token of brains to be able to make money get money ?

A. As a general rule it requires a man of brains to make money get money, especially in trade and commerce ; and from the earliest times it has been considered a clever performance to do so. Moreover, the older the world grows, the harder money-making becomes, owing to increased competition, and still more does it indicate the active brain to make money get money. But it does not always follow that a man who has made a fortune is indebted only to his brains for it. For instance, in stock broking and insurance there is a large element of luck which plays as important a part as brains in the success of such a venture, wherein anyone is as likely to succeed as a clever man.

Q. 5. Is it an advantage to a boy to have money to start in life ?

A. This depends on the boy's character, whether he be a spendthrift or thrifty, well trained in the value of money, spoilt, or brought up sensibly. To a normally educated boy, mentally balanced and destined to earn his own living, a moderate sum of money is a decided advantage in saving him the drudgery of poverty during his early days, thus leaving him free to devote all his energies to furthering his education, and so making for quicker promotion. But to one not so self-controlled money obtained otherwise than by work is apt to lead to various extravagances and ultimate indolence and uselessness.

" When I heard this, a sudden idea seized me and I exclaimed : ' I will take that mouse from you as my stock in trade.' So saying, I picked it up off the floor, wrote him a receipt for it, and departed with my prize, to the great amusement of the merchant.

Q. 6. Did the boy show business-like qualities here ?

A. Business-like qualities were shown in the prompt seizing of the opportunity and the attention to detail in signing a receipt for such a trifle. But he acted rashly in making the merchant his creditor

even by so little as a mouse, for he had no notion at the time what he could do with it or how he could repay the debt. Business-like though he was, luck was on his side, for no one can know beforehand whether a given opportunity is the chance of a lifetime.

" Now mark the progress of my dealings with the mouse. " First I sold the carcass to a merchant as cat's meat for two handfuls of barley ; then I ground down the barley and procuring a pitcher of water, I took up my stand at the cross-roads where there were some trees to shelter me from the sun, just outside the city. A group of woodcutters passed by, so I politely offered them the water and the barley, which they gratefully accepted, for they were parched with the midday heat, and each in return for my proffered refreshment gave me two pieces of the wood he had just cut.

Q. 7. What qualities necessary for successful business did he display in this transaction ?

A. He knew where to sell the carcass profitably, and having done so knew how to create a market for his barley. He had the imagination necessary to advertise his goods in the right place and manner and at the right time. And most of all he had an original idea and brains enough to carry it out successfully.

" Well, I took all these pieces of wood to the market, where I sold them at a good price, purchasing with part of the money so obtained a further quantity of barley, and taking up my stand in the same place to supply the thirsty woodcutters again with water. This I did every day, the men continuing to bestow on me in return pieces of their wood, till in the end I had collected wealth enough to buy up all the timber the woodcutters had felled during three days. Fortune once more favoured me, for suddenly there came a great scarcity of wood throughout the land owing to the heavy rain, so I disposed of all my stock of timber at an increased value, and with the gold thus gained I bought a shop, where I have since prospered exceedingly. Then I remembered my former benefactor who had put me in the way of all this advancement, and making a mouse of gold, I carried it to him as a present, to recall to his mind the youth who had one day come to ask his help and had taken no aid from him but the carcass of a mouse.

Q. 8. Had the young man cause to be grateful to the merchant ?

A. He had very little reason to be grateful to the merchant, for the latter had not troubled himself about the boy at all, except in letting him take away a carcass which was of no value to himself. He had not even suggested how the mouse could be made to get money, so that little credit attached to him for the bare idea.

'*He was so impressed by the story of my progress that he paid me the greatest honour he could bestow on me : he gave me his daughter in marriage, and in consequence my fame spread abroad through the land, where I am known to all by the name of the mouse merchant. So from small beginnings can come great consequences, if only one has the wit to seize the opportunity." When the merchants who were gathered round him heard this tale they could not help applauding

the ability which, without a solitary coin in the world, had advanced to so high a station.

Q. 9. How would you sum up the mouse merchant's character ?

A. He was plucky in starting on his own without support, impetuous in seizing the first opportunity that offered without weighing it previously, shrewd and imaginative, ambitious and quick to act, philosophical in making the best of his bad luck and not giving way to bemoaning his fate, generous and grateful to his benefactor, boastful and wrongly proud of his achievements, estimating his own ability too highly and not giving due credit to the kindness of Fortune.

Q. 10. Was he fortunate or did he make his own good fortune ?

A. He was fortunate in that some unknown power prompted him to try his luck with the mouse's carcass, but once that was done he contributed largely to his own good fortune by his capacity for business and his ambition, which led him into making something like a corner in timber, when once again Fortune favoured him. And then once more he helped himself by opening a shop which prospered, thanks to his own energies.

Q. 11. Is imagination necessary to make a good man of business ?

A. Few men could build up a successful business without imagination, for lacking it men sink into ruts from which they cannot escape, their energies fail, and they become machines, with fatal consequences to their business. This is what occurs in long-established firms where new blood is seldom introduced, with the result that younger houses, managed by men of ideas, spring up and take away the custom of the older and routine-bound. Still more is imagination needed in the case of firms starting some new business—that is, a business that has never been attempted before—for since there is no experience to guide the pioneer, everything connected therewith must be imagined before being put to the test. Imagination is the most important quality necessary to a successful undertaking. Our merchant possessed it. Once the idea of the mouse's carcass had taken hold of him he imagined the whole scheme : selling, advertising, reselling, and so on, until he was wealthy enough to purchase a shop.

Q. 12. Does success in business depend as a rule on extraordinary talent and originality ?

A. The owner of a business is far more likely to succeed if he possesses originality which suggests new methods than if he plods on in the hackneyed style of the everyday world. So also a brand-new kind of employment, if sound, is more likely to prosper than a new method of an old kind of business in which there is keen competition. These cases both apply to the owner. But in the case of employees, it is not always the man of talent and originality who gains promotion, though in many cases these qualities will lift a man out of his turn over the heads of others not so original but quite as industrious.

NOTE

The answers to the questions in the above text are by a young Cambridge graduate who was about to enter upon a commercial career. Students may compare and contrast the general character of these questions with those set by Professor Hugo Munsterberg, of Harvard University, in a volume intended for the practical business man,* and may select from Professor Miinsterberg's test questions a dozen which they consider as comprehensive and searching as those in this text. They may also analyse the same Professor's dictum that " all business is ultimately the affair of minds. It starts from minds, it works through minds, it aims to serve minds," and trace how far this proposition is illustrated by the Hindu merchant's career.

* Business Psychology, by Dr. Hugo Munsterberg. Chicago » 1915.

(Q. 1). We all make or unmake ourselves.Our pride admits the former fact, but refuses to go further and admit the latter, generally ascribing the unmaking to unfortunate circumstances. Hindu religious philosophy teaches that every individual is born with powers and tendencies which are the result of his deeds in past lives ; that no man suffers through another's sin, or gains happiness through another's mediation. In this sense, therefore, every man is self-made.

(Q. 10). According to Hinduism, the youth was reaping the result of his good deeds in previous incarnations. Man can be neither fortunate nor unfortunate by chance, since everything is the effect of a cause. The doctrine of Karma eliminates the idea of chance ; but it does not do away with the doctrine of Free Will ; in fact, what is Karma but the accumulated result of Free Will?

(Q. 11). Students may compare what is here asserted regarding the necessity of imagination in business with Professor Miinsterberg's opinion that " No business life is really successful which is not aided by some kind of imagination. Nobody lives from the satisfactions of the present only. Anticipated joys of the future are the chief motives to action. Every successful life is, after all, a life with a life plan."

Lets Win Together!

Rajeev Kumar

Top 10 Richest Person In The World 2009

2009-10-10T04:48:00.001-07:00

Top 10 Richest Person In The World 2009

1) The American investor and philanthropist Warren Buffet is worth an estimated $62 billion, up $10 billion from a year ago thanks to surging prices of Berkshire Hathaway stock, according to Forbes magazine's annual ranking of the world's billionaires.

Click Here to know More about him

2) Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helu was named the world's second richest man, with a net worth of around $60 billion, up $11 billion since last March.

Click Here to know More about him

3) Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, is now ranked as the world's third richest person. At $58 billion, his net worth is up $2 billion from a year ago.

4) Steel giant Lakshmi Mittal placed fourth with 45 billion dollars

5) Petrochemicals tycoon Mukesh Ambani placed fifth with 43 billion dollars

6) Anil Ambani at sixth position with 42 billion dollars

7) Ikea store chain owner Ingvar Kamprad was seventh at $31 billion

8) Property magnate K.P. Singh came in eighth on the list, with a fortune estimated at 30 billion dollars.
9) Aluminum giant Oleg Deripaska was ninth at $28 billion

10) Aldi store chain owner Karl Albrecht was 10th at $27 billion

The Millionaire Mentality -- according to J. Paul Getty

2009-09-19T11:08:00.001-07:00

The Millionaire Mentality -- according to J. Paul Getty

I believe in learning from those who have succeeded. When it comes to profits, I study the writings of those who are great successes.

J. Paul Getty was one of those. He made big money in oil exploration, and made another fortune in art collection and evaluation. In the mid-1960s, he published a book which was a collection of essays, called "How To Be Rich."

Here's one of Getty's pieces of advice…. On how to achieve the Millionaire Mentality.
Getty says that he believes that most people fall into one of four general categories….

1. Those people who work best when they are working for themselves. They don't want to be employed by anyone, and want complete independence. The don't care for the security that they get from a salaried job. Instead, they want to createtheir own security on their own, and keep their own future in their own hands. In short, they want to be their own bosses, and take the responsibilities and risks which is associated with this.

2. Those people who for whatever reason, don't want to go into business for themselves, but work best when they are employed by others and share in the profits of the business. In this category you'll find the top-flight salespeople, who like to earn a commission for everything they sell, to some of the world's top executives.

3. Those who only want to be salaried employees, who work best when they are employed by others and they enjoy the security of a good salary. They are content with receiving a regular salary with the hope of the occasional raise. According to Getty, they don't have the initiative and independence, and maybe also the self-confidence, of those on the first two groups.

4. Those who work for others but who have a consistently negative attitude towards their jobs and employers. Their motivation is low. Their work could in fact even be a drain on the businesses they are working for.

I think Getty is probably right, and you probably can divide people into these general four categories…. In the small business world, everyone talks about person of type number 1. But there is nothing wrong if you fit into one of the other categories (well, except perhaps category number 4, which isn't a very flattering category).

This gets back to what Gordon Alexander is constantly saying…. What do you want? What do you enjoy?
Getty then starts to talk about what he calls the "Millionaire Mentality." Here's what he says…..

"Like it or not, there is a thing that can be called The Millionaire Mentality. There is a frame of mind which puts an individual a long way ahead on the road to success. In short, The Millionaire Mentality is one which is always and above all cost-conscious and profit-minded. It is most likely to be found among men in the first two categories I have cited."

How to be Rich by J. Paul Getty, p. 41
There's the concept, floating around in Getty's time, and still floating around today, which says "You have to think BIG to make a profit." Getty says that no other concept has been more widely misinterpreted.

YES - you must have imagination. You have to be farsighted. You must have dreams. You have to be willing (according to Getty) to spend and risk money (OR your time - I would add). BUT only when the expenditure is justified, and the risk is carefully calculated and you can see it's worth it.

About this, Getty says….
"In my opinion, it's more important for the man with The Millionaire Mentality to be able to think small than to think big - in the sense that he gives meticulous attention to even the smallest details and misses no opportunity to reduce costs in his own or his employer's business."

How to be Rich by J. Paul Getty, p. 43.
Essentially, according to Getty, you HAVE to be profit-conscious. That means doing things like keeping to a budget. You can't just spend with an open-hand on anything you fancy. That's a big mistake some people make in business (and it's something I have to watch myself)….

I once read a story about a group of people who decided to start a consulting company. The first thing they did was rent out an office in the expensive part of town. They furnished their office with the most costly furniture. They had the highest quality custom-made curtains, the most fashionable mahogany desks, the most expensive plush carpet. It was a wonderful place to work - they spent a lot of money making sure it was so. The only problem - they had no customers. They went bankrupt in just a few months.

In some ways, Getty took his penny-pinching to its extreme in his personal life, and I wouldn't recommend that. But in your business, it's good to keep an eye on costs, and be conscious of where profits can be increased, and costs reduced without affecting those profits.

So if someone asked him advice on how to make money, this is the way that Getty would reply. Now, how can you use it yourself?

Career Counselling

2009-09-15T07:42:00.001-07:00

Career Counselling

Career planning should be done to know what your goals are, where you stand and how far your goals are. You deserve a good salary, but you also need job satisfaction. Career counselling will help you find out what you need and what you deserve. Opportunities and hurdles will keep on coming in your life, but it is your determination to make use of the opportunities and remove the hurdles that would matter in the end.

The Career Counselling Process

Self-Assessment
You should assess yourself before planning your career goals. Self assessment is important for knowing your own personality traits, strengths and weaknesses, interests, skills, values and beliefs. These parameters will help you in making decisions regarding your career.

Industry Analysis

After analyzing yourself, you must explore your career options based on your interests, skills and your academic background. For the purpose you may prepare a list of options available to you and choose the best one. After you have chosen your field, you need to further explore the field and the various job profiles available in the area. You should be aware of the educational background, skills, competencies, training, experience, etc. needed to achieve your goals.

Planning

After collecting all the information about the area you are interested in, you should develop a strategy to to meet your goals.

Evaluation

Evaluation is needed to assess your present status. It is important that you assess yourself from time to time to know whether your are on the right track or not. If you find that you are not on the right track you must reconsider everything regarding your career and set up new goals.

Salary Negotiation

2009-09-15T07:41:00.001-07:00

Salary Negotiation

It is believed that salary negotiation is an art. A systematized process of salary negotiation actually helps the prospective employers in hiring the best suitable candidates. Salary negotiation, a critical and crucial step in the selection procedures also helps in filling the vacancies more quickly in bigger organizations. But the process of salary negotiation should be handled in a timely and effective manner. At the same time, it is also true that salary negotiation is one of the most under-rated and neglected aspect of the hiring process.

Tips for Salary negotiation:

Most of the people are not aware of the right salary negotiation process. Salary negotiation needs a good sense of balance. It is quite natural that no company would afford to loose a potentially eligible candidate in today's competitive job market. One must remember that to a great extent, a candidate's present salary also determines the future salary.

Handling Money Questions

How Much are You Worth?

How to Get the Raise You Deserve?

Pay packages differs depending on the industry standards set for different positions. You should be fully prepared before you start your negotiation process. Here is a list of some salary negotiation tips that will help you in achieving the best deal:

· Begin the salary negotiation process only after receiving the formal offer from the company.

· Do some research and properly evaluate the job profile and the offered pay packages in the market before you start your final negotiation process.

· Don't lie about your previous pay package or salary.

· When you are negotiating don't forget to negotiate about the entire offer including performance bonus and other benefits and not only the salary part.

· It will ultimately raise your overall remuneration as expected.

· Your appearance and mannerism also influences your salary negotiation success rate.

· Know your limits and always be aware of the things that are not negotiable and try to avoid those parts that will only lead to friction. Be clear and straight forward.

· Most importantly, know about your strengths and your worth on the basis of an anecdotal information about how people having similar qualification like you are generally paid in the market. Your extra skills that you feel are important to the position will give you an extra edge.

· Try to examine your own as well as the needs of the company. It will help you in selecting the right pay package that aptly suits your needs and qualification.

· Exploring alternatives will help you in creating several options that satisfy everyone's needs and interests.

· Last but not the least, focus entirely on your objective criteria and your goal. If you have the winning tendency it will create problems in the salary negotiation process.

The Peter Principle

2009-08-18T09:44:00.001-07:00

The Peter Principle

Bureaucracy at Work

The Peter Principle concept was describes the pitfalls of the bureaucracy in organizations witnessed during his extensive research into business organization and its management.

The Peter Principle book has attained such renown that The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as "The theory that employees within an organization will advance to their highest level of competence and then be promoted to and remain at a level at which they are incompetent." ... "In a hierarchically structured administration, people tend to be promoted up to their level of incompetence," or, as Dr. Peters Principal explained more simply, "The cream rises until it sours."

The Peter Principle is so appropriate and meaningful a lesson for business, that it has found its way into Master Degree (MBA) curriculae as a foundation for the next generation to protect itself. But it seems that this hierarchy within companies continues to be the organizational structure of choice for government and big business.

What is the Peter Principle?

Peter Principle Management is the concept that in bureaucratic organizations, new employees typically start in the lower ranks, but when they prove to be competent in the task to which they are assigned, they get promoted to a higher rank, generally management. This process of climbing up the hierarchical ladder can go on indefinitely, until the employee reaches a position where he or she is no longer competent. At that moment the process typically stops, since the established rules of bureaucracies make it very difficult to "demote" someone to a lower rank, even if that person would be a much better fit and happier in a non-management role. The net result of this principle is that most of the management levels of a bureaucracy will be filled by incompetent people, who got there because they were quite good at doing different (and usually, but not always, easier) work than the work they are currently expected to perform.

According to Laurence Johnston Pieter: Work is accomplished by those employees who have not reached their level of incompetence. Thus we can see why organizations still function even as Peter Principled employees accept one too many promotions. Laurence Peter provides an insightful analysis of why so many positions in so many organizations seem to be populated by employees who seem incompetent. This concept is likely to be ignored by most senior managers since to admit one's organization is suffering from this bureaucratic malady is admission that people have been improperly promoted. This, in turn, suggests that senior management might have attained their own level incompetence, and the problem is easily ignored, lest it become suggested that senior management be more closely examined for their incompetence.

An example:

If you're a proficient and effective software developer, you're most likely demonstrating peak competence in your job right now. As a result of your performance, your valuable contribution results in a promotion to a management position. In this new position, you now do few of the original tasks which gained you acclaim. In fact, little of your current job remains enjoyable, therefore your heart is no longer in your work, and it shows. Given this, promotions stop, and there you stay, until you retire or your company goes under due to mismanagement.

Companies will attract and expand on a certain level of incompetence. Once a company forms a culture of incompetence, only the incompetent staff will remain, and the competent ones will tire of trying to soar with eagles while surrounded by turkeys, and therefore leave.

The end result is that non-growing companies are more likely to have incompetent employees at many levels of the organizational structure whereas growing companies add new positions and employees so fast that the inevitable results of the Peter Principle may be forestalled so long as growth continues.

Management consultants who recognize that the Peter Principle is in full swing in their clients organization often recommend percussive sublimations and lateral arabesque for high ranking employees to make room for new employees, because new employees are not yet at their level of incompetence thus they can actually do the work they were hired to do which increases total output of the organization.

--
Lets Win Together!
Rajeev Kumar

7 Strategies to Build "Negotiating Power"

2009-07-28T05:37:00.001-07:00

7 Strategies to Build "Negotiating Power"

When negotiating the final terms of complex deals, many sales pros find themselves in a situation where the customer holds all the cards. Because you've invested time in the opportunity, and may have made quota commitments to your manager, your customers feel they can simply dictate terms. That's a recipe for a win-lose outcome, with YOU on the losing end if the deal.

To create a win-win outcome, you must continually accumulate a counter-balancing "negotiating power" throughout the sales cycle. Here's how it's done:

Strategy #1: Eliminate or thwart competitive threats.
Convince the customer that your product or service is the only one that can adequately fulfill the customer's needs.
Strategy #2. Develop at least three contacts inside the customer firm.Provide perspective to your solution-building process and information about the motivations and politics inside the customer's firm.
Strategy #3. Show the customer your ability to see beyond the obvious.
The customer can't know everything about the firm, much less the market, so being an "outsider" gives you the ability to see situations more objectively.
Strategy #4. Create the legitimacy that comes from consistency.
Remain aware of the strengths and limitations of your offerings, adhere to your firm's policies and procedures, and be willing to explain why they make sense.
Strategy #5. Position all interactions in terms of mutual success.
A productive relationship is based upon mutual respect and understanding, and a sense of working together to achieve mutual goals.
Strategy #6. Generate a solution that matches the customer's needs.
Your value to the customer skyrockets when you help the customer to crystallize needs and visualize the right solution.
Strategy #7: Differentiate yourself from other sales reps.
Communicate clearly how you, as an individual, are a unique resource to the customer and use your own unique personality to your advantage.

It's Not the Golf Course Anymore

2009-07-28T05:33:00.001-07:00

It's Not the Golf Course Anymore

"Years ago, a successful sales rep knew how to optimize their time by 'reading' their prospects," says Rajeev Kumar in a recent post at the Modern B2B Marketing blog. "A day would be spent golfing with a good bet." But everything changed when prospects began researching their options online, thus "preventing the sales rep from deciphering the buyer's intention from their physical actions," he writes.

To compensate, a new assessment process has recently emerged: social selling. "Social selling is the use of Web 2.0 technologies merged with traditional sales strategies" to accomplish what that game of golf did in the past, He explains.

So how does this new process work? He defines "true social selling" by clearing up some common misconceptions about it:

Misconception: "Marketing tells sales when they need to work with a prospect."
True Social Selling: "Marketing passes leads to sales, and, if needed, sales passes leads that need nurturing back to marketing."

Misconception: Sales [and marketing] must learn to use new email or other tools that require training.
True SS: Sales can use Outlook to reach prospects, and data is sent [back] with enhanced information about opens and click-throughs [for marketing].

Misconception: Staff must go to multiple websites to get prospect contact info.
True SS: Staff can access sites such as "Jigsaw, Demandbase and LinkedIn directly through the tools they are already using."

The Po!nt: Save golf for the weekends. By using the latest Web 2.0 tools, marketing and sales can take the prospect-to-client nurturing process to a whole new level.

Lets Win Together!

Rajeev Kumar

Top 10 things that couples must avoid saying in bed

2009-07-28T04:53:00.001-07:00

Most of us know about the various things that turn on our partners and the small bloopers that put them off. While enough has been said about how to build the mood for a steamy pleasure session, you probably don't know about things that could spoil the pleasure once you are in the action.

Apart from your annoying bedroom habits, extreme intimate gestures, wrong sexual positions, disliked physical attributes; there are certain unintentional things, which, if said at the wrong time, can act as libido killers. It's evident that while having sex, there are several things on a couple's mind but the issue creeps up when couples let these things come in way of those most cherished moments and thus end up killing the passion.

It is rightly said that sex is the art of love and it must be done in the most enjoyable and most satisfying manner. To enjoy this intimate and private activity, couples shall let go of all their apprehensions, fears and insecurities. But unfortunately, the looming anxieties find their ways into our bedroom lives.

Dr. Harrybhai, relationship counselor asserts, "Sex is to be enjoyed in the present and if any partner thinks about impending things from past or future, it would act as disruption. Saying anything outside your bedroom conversations will become a deviation. Your partner might feel offended and unloved. Understand the fact that your partner will not accept anything outside your intimacy, to enter your isolated sexual moments, and hence such intrusion is highly opposed."

Top 10 things that couples must avoid saying in bed:

Are you enjoying?

This is the most common and the worst of all situations that couples come across. Though it's good to be communicative with your partner about things that are enjoyed or disliked in bed but that doesn't mean you start interrupting in between the act thus killing the heating passion.

Sex and relationship expert, Dr. Rajeevbhai says, "Asking your partner again and again to evaluate your performance and speak out their pleasure level might just leave them irked and it is a symptom of performance anxiety where you are more concerned about how the act is progressing and less focused on the pleasure quotient. You maybe either too probing whether your partner is enjoying or too anxious whether you're able to give satisfactory amount of pleasure."

Are you through darling?

Again, this is a repetitive mistake that most couples would make in bed. Sex is something you should enjoy not obligate, so treat it like a necessity of life not a duty that has to be fulfilled each time you get intimate. "If you keep interrogating your partner on whether they're 'through' with the act might sound like you're no more interested in the act and waiting for it to get over soon. It also makes your partner feels apprehensive if the sexual act is becoming a burden on you, so try and avoid being too inquisitive rather let your partner also enjoy the act as much as you did," suggests by Baba Shri Shri Harryjee, a clinical psychiatrist.

Dr. Rajeev Bhai

WHAT’S the difference between an orgasm and an apple?

2009-07-20T06:20:00.001-07:00

Having a good old-fashioned orgasm could save your life

WHAT'S the difference between an orgasm and an apple? Absolutely nothing – because they're both supposed to keep the doctor away.

That's according to an NHS leaflet doing the rounds in Sheffield.
This leaflet suggests there's too much emphasis on safe sex and not enough on pleasure — and highlights the health benefits of regular orgasms.
Which does raise the question of whether regular sex really is good for you or not.
After all, sex is one of those subjects, like booze or chocolate, which is always hitting the headlines — and is either a lifesaver or a killer, depending on which way the wind is blowing.
Certainly, the health benefits of regular rumpy pumpy are aired more than the average set of bedsheets. Top of the list is "sexercise" — the idea that horizontal jogging is a proper workout.
"Take more exercise" is something doctors are always banging on about.
But does banging on the headboard count? Probably not. Because health gurus reckon the amount of exercise we need is about 30 minutes per day at least five days a week.

Unless you're in a charity bonkathon, that's a target you're unlikely to meet. In fact, the average lovemaking session only uses about the same energy as climbing a couple of flights of stairs. Having said that, on the exercise front, every little helps — so don't let that put you off.

Besides, regular sexual activity — including DIY — is linked to other health benefits, such as a reduced risk of prostate cancer in men.
It has other big advantages, too.

Humping
It may reduce pain caused by migraine, arthritis and back trouble, boost your immune system and lower your blood pressure. Also, what goes on below the belt may help what's going on between your ears — a healthy sex life is linked to improved self-esteem, better sleep and reduced tension.

But what about the health hazards of regular humping? There are a few.
Unwanted pregnancy is the obvious one. Then there are sexually transmitted infections, with effects ranging from minor inconvenience through infertility to death. And there are lesser known scenarios where a "healthy sex life" can backfire.

Recurrent "orgasm headache" is one — it's a type of migraine most common in men which makes their climax more "Aaaargh!" than "Ooooh!"
It's not all good news on the prostate front, either. Have a PSA test — a blood test looking for signs of prostate cancer — within a couple of days of orgasm and the result may be artificially high. That's enough to wipe the smile off your face and cause you some serious worry.

And what about the old chestnut that blokes with dicky tickers might find a legover means their life's over?
Here are the facts — and they're reassuring. The odds of a healthy 50-year-old having a heart attack mid-bonk are two in a million — in other words, nearly zero. If you're a dodgy cardiac case, the chances increase ten fold — but ten times nearly nothing is still nearly nothing.

So, on balance, I'd say sex is good for you. But then I would, because I'm a bloke.
Of course, many of the benefits may be linked more to being in a happy relationship rather than simply to the number of orgasms you have per week.
Whatever. It's much more fun than an apple a day.

--
Lets Win Together!

The Garden of Your Mind

2009-07-17T11:35:00.001-07:00

The Garden of Your Mind

If you think of your mind as a garden, what have you planted? You know what's planted there by what's growing!
If seeds of doubt are planted, life may seem uncertain. The harvest may include questions such as 'Do I deserve to get what I want in life?', or 'Can I succeed?' or 'Will I ever be good enough?' These seeds can be planted very early in life without our consent however, once you find them they must be made into compost! If you find these weeds popping up, dig down to extricate the roots completely. Even after doing this, you may find tiny shoots still. They are hardy plants. Weed often. As you remove each weed, remind yourself that you deserve a beautiful, productive, well-balanced garden.

If you find that your 'garden' is overcrowded and little grows well, you may need to transplant some items to your nursery bed and save them for another season. Simply look at the size of your garden plot right now. What are the most important 'crops' right now? Perhaps you have small children who need attention. You may have to save the 'I should write a book' seeds for another time. When you look at the garden and see that it is unbalanced, be ruthless. Look at the needs of the seeds you want to grow and make room for only those. Save the others for another season. What do you need to transplant?

If a plant has completely overshadowed the entire garden, it may need pruning. This sometimes happens when that one plant is receiving all the nutrients, time and attention. Others cannot flourish unless they were planted because they prefer shade. Are there some seeds in your garden that cannot grow because they need more light? You may have to prune that one big tree! Yes, you likely can make a great case for keeping it. Of course you can because that's where you have been putting so much fertilizer for so long and you just know you were doing the right thing. What's shriveling from the lack of the sunlight of your attention? Prune!

Do you regularly visit other gardens to stimulate your imagination, or to verify your choices? It's wise to do this. Spending all your time in your own garden is limiting. You learn very little and your garden seems so very big. Expand your thinking. See what others are planting and the effects. A new plant may be just what your garden needs for beauty, balance or new growth.

Check your garden for slugs. They are attracted to conditions of dampness and coolness. They feed on decaying plant matter. Do you have any slugs in the garden of your mind? If you are focused on what is wrong with things, on what is not happening, on negative judgments about yourself and others, these could well be 'slugs' for you. As with real slugs, the first step is to eliminate places where they can hide. Dark places where sunlight cannot reach. They need to be handpicked off. Draw them out in the dark, put them in soapy water and throw them on the compost. Slugs have no redeeming features. They take away valuable much time and draw much negative attention. Remove all slugs and set up barriers to keep them out so you never have to deal with them again.

Your life, just like your garden, is never balanced but always balancing.
Be a master gardener!

--
Lets Win Together!

For Multi Edge Info Solutions

Rajeev Kumar (Business Consultant)
Cel: +91-96620-46715 / +91-992494-8399 / +91-98240-15177 / +91-99042-01260
Phone: +91-79-6522-7623
URL : www.meis.in & www.meisc4g.weebly.com

Chat Support ID:
Gmail: mailtork123@gmail.com
MSN: changeforgrowth@hotmail.com
Yahoo!: raj_ricky@yahoo.com

Address : 11, 1st Floor, Uplav Society, Nr. Bansidhar Garden, Anjali Char Rasta,
Paldi, Ahmedabad - 380007 (INDIA)

"MEIS" Mission & Vision

MEIS is the market leader in cutting edge, information and communication technology based products and services for a diverse range of industries. MEIS mission & vision is to Ensure Trust in Technology by consistently being:

1. Professional
2. Result driven
3. Customer Oriented
4. Innovative
5. Committed
6. Trustworthy

Enabling your business
Our core business is enabling your business. MEIS Competence Centres are driven by these values which are translated into the Competence Centres' strategies.

Product Range: (Softwares)

1. i-School For Schools (CIIE - IIM-A)

2. i-Campus For University and Colleges (CIIE - IIM-A)

3. eZee FronDesk NextGen For : hotels, motels, resorts, clubs, B & B's, small hotel franchisees, clubs, condo's, hostel, apartments.

4. eZeeBurrP for : Restaurants, bars, night clubs, quick service restaurant, delivery and take away etc.

Chanakya's Quotes - Worth reading a million times

2009-07-17T11:04:00.001-07:00

Chanakya's Quotes - Worth reading a million times…

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ***

"A person should not be too honest.

Straight trees are cut first

and Honest people are victimised first."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC 75 BC)

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ***

"Even if a snake is not poisonous,
it should pretend to be venomous."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275 BC)

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ***

"The biggest guru-mantra is: Never share your secrets with anybody. ! It will destroy you."

Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275 BC)

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ***

"There is some self-interest behind every friendship.
There is no Friendship without self-interests.
This is a bitter truth."

Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275 BC)

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ***

"Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions - Why am I doing it, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply
and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead."

Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275 BC)

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ***

"As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it."

Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275 BC)

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ***

"Once you start a working on something,

don't be afraid of failure and
don't abandon it.
People who work sincerely are the happiest."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275BC)

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ***

"The fragrance of flowers spreads

only in the direction of the wind.
But the goodness of a person spreads in all direction."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275BC)

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ***

"A man is great by deeds, not by birth."

Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275BC)

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ***

"Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years.

For the next five years, scold them.
By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend.
Your grown up children are your best friends."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275BC)

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ***

"Books are as useful to a stupid person

as a mirror is useful to a blind person."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275BC)

************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ***

"Education is the best friend.

An educated person is respected everywhere.
Education beats the beauty and the youth."
Chanakya quotes (Indian politician, strategist and writer, 350 BC-275BC)

Lets Win Together!

Lyric - If I Were A Boy lyrics

2009-07-15T21:09:00.001-07:00

If I Were A Boy lyrics
Songwriters: Carlson, Britney; Gad, Toby; Knowles, Beyonce;

If I were a boy even just for a day
I'd roll out of bed in the morning
And throw on what I wanted
And go drink beer with the guys

And chase after girls
I'd kick it with who I wanted
And I'd never get confronted for it
'Cause they stick up for me

If I were a boy
I think I could understand
How it feels to love a girl
I swear I'd be a better man

I'd listen to her
'Cause I know how it hurts
When you lose the one you wanted
'Cause he's taking you for granted
And everything you had got destroyed

If I were a boy
I would turn off my phone
Tell everyone it's broken
So they'd think that I was sleeping alone

I'd put myself first
And make the rules as I go
'Cause I know that she'd be faithful
Waiting for me to come home, to come home

If I were a boy
I think I could understand
How it feels to love a girl
I swear I'd be a better man

I'd listen to her
'Cause I know how it hurts
When you lose the one you wanted
'Cause he's taking you for granted
And everything you had got destroyed

It's a little too late for you to come back
Say it's just a mistake
Think I'd forgive you like that
If you thought I would wait for you
You thought wrong

But you're just a boy
You don't understand
And you don't understand, oh
How it feels to love a girl
Someday you wish you were a better man

You don't listen to her
You don't care how it hurts
Until you lose the one you wanted
'Cause you're taking her for granted
And everything you had got destroyed
But you're just a boy

The Song which Inspires Me.....

2009-07-15T09:27:00.000-07:00

The Song Which Inspires Me..... is

"I Believe I Can Fly"

I used to think that I could not go on

And life was nothing but an awful song

But now I know the meaning of true love

I'm leaning on the everlasting arms

If I can see it, then I can do it

If I just believe it, there's nothing to it

I believe I can fly

I believe I can touch the sky

I think about it every night and day

Spread my wings and fly away

I believe I can soar

I see me running through that open door

I believe I can fly

See I was on the verge of breaking down

Sometimes silence can seem so loud

There are miracles in life I must achieve

But first I know it starts inside of me, oh

If I can see it, then I can do it

If I just believe it, there's nothing to it

I believe I can fly

I believe I can touch the sky

I think about it every night and day

Spread my wings and fly away

I believe I can soar

I see me running through that open door

I believe I can fly

Hey, cause I believe in me, oh

If I can see it, then I can do it

If I just believe it, there's nothing to it

I believe I can fly

I believe I can touch the sky

I think about it every night and day

Spread my wings and fly away

I believe I can soar

I see me running through that open door

I believe I can fly

Hey, if I just spread my wings

I can fly

I can fly, hey

If I just spread my wings

I can fly

Fly-eye-eye

Do u Know?

2009-06-29T20:49:00.001-07:00

Do u Know? - Four Quadrants.

Have you ever wondered why some people work less, earn more, pay less in taxes and feel more financially secure then others?

It is simply a matter of knowing which quadrant to work in and understanding the difference between an employee and business owner.

Why is it that in the industrial age most parents wanted their children to become medical doctors, accountants,lawyers...and why in the information age these professions are under financial attack?

Understanding this in theory is one thing the question is: How do you change from being an employee to an business owner?

If you are open to moving beyond your secure job and ready to make deep professional and financial changes and wanting to move from the Industrial Age to the Information Age... go through my article Rich Dad Poor Dad - From Robert K

Rajeev Kumar

http://changeforgrowth.blogger.com

Motivational Stories - THE 4 WIVES

2009-06-29T11:50:00.001-07:00

Motivational Stories - THE 4 WIVES

There was a rich merchant who had 4 wives. He loved the 4th wife the most and adorned her with rich robes and treated her to delicacies. He took great care of her and gave her nothing but the best.

He also loved the 3rd wife very much. He's very proud of her and always wanted to show off her to his friends. However, the merchant is always in great fear that she might run away with some other men.

He too, loved his 2nd wife. She is a very considerate person, always patient and in fact is the merchant's confidante. Whenever the merchant faced some problems, he always turned to his 2nd wife and she would always help him out and tide him through difficult times.

Now, the merchant's 1st wife is a very loyal partner and has made great contributions in maintaining his wealth and business as well as taking care of the household. However, the merchant did not love the first wife and although she loved him deeply, he hardly took notice of her.

One day, the merchant fell ill. Before long, he knew that he was going to die soon. He thought of his luxurious life and told himself, "Now I have 4 wives with me. But when I die, I'll be alone. How lonely I'll be!"

Thus, he asked the 4th wife, "I loved you most, endowed you with the finest clothing and showered great care over you. Now that I'm dying, will you follow me and keep me company?" "No way!" replied the 4th wife and she walked away without another word.

The answer cut like a sharp knife right into the merchant's heart. The sad merchant then asked the 3rd wife, "I have loved you so much for all my life. Now that I'm dying, will you follow me and keep me company?" "No!" replied the 3rd wife. "Life is so good over here! I'm going to remarry when you die!" The merchant's heart sank and turned cold.

He then asked the 2nd wife, "I always turned to you for help and you've always helped me out. Now I need your help again. When I die, will you follow me and keep me company?" "I'm sorry, I can't help you out this time!" replied the 2nd wife. "At the very most, I can only send you to your grave." The answer came like a bolt of thunder and the merchant was devastated.

Then a voice called out : "I'll leave with you. I'll follow you no matter where you go." The merchant looked up and there was his first wife. She was so skinny, almost like she suffered from malnutrition. Greatly grieved, the merchant said, "I should have taken much better care of you while I could have !"

Actually, we all have 4 wives in our lives

a. The 4th wife is our body. No matter how much time and effort we lavish in making it look good, it'll leave us when we die.

b. Our 3rd wife ? Our possessions, status and wealth. When we die, they all go to others.

c. The 2nd wife is our family and friends. No matter how close they had been there for us when we're alive, the furthest they can stay by us is up to the grave.

d. The 1st wife is in fact our soul, often neglected in our pursuit of material, wealth and sensual pleasure.

Guess what? It is actually the only thing that follows us wherever we go. Perhaps it's a good idea to cultivate and strengthen it now rather than to wait until we're on our deathbed to lament

Four Quadrant of Income Group

2009-06-24T10:10:00.001-07:00

One of the early eye openers for me is about this book of the famous author Robert Kiyosaki entitled Rich Dad Poor Dad. In this book, Robert Kiyosaki had two dads, one is his biological dad tagged as "poor dad" and one is his friend's dad tagged as "rich dad." Both dads taught Robert Kiyosaki how to reach his financial goals and achieve success but with different approaches.

His poor dad spent so much time in school earning him a doctorate degree landing on a high paying job but ended with a lot of bills left unpaid while his rich dad did not finish school but ended up owning a business empire. How did this happen? Just look at the contrasting ideas each dad have:

His poor dad says: "I CAN'T AFFORD IT!" while his rich dad says: "HOW CAN I AFFORD IT?"

His poor dad says: "MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL!" while his rich dad says: "LACK OF MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL!"

By viewing these two contrasting ideas, his poor dad's brain stopped working when he said those, killing his initiative and promoting negativity while his rich dad's brain kept on thinking on ways creating initiative and promoting optimism. Which one is best? Of course, undeniably, it's rich dad's ideas!

Robert Kiyosaki continued and coined the term RAT RACE. This is the race of our lifetime INCOME and SPEND. We receive our income regularly from our paychecks yet we spend the same to pay bills and satisfy our wants. We are now trapped in this rat race. We live our lives to pay our everyday bills! Now, how can we escape from this rat race trap? By understanding the Cashflow Quadrant.

This is understanding where our income flows. It was divided into two main sections. The left side called "Active Income" and right side called "Passive Income." What's the difference? Active Income says "You Work For Money" while Passive Income says "Money Works For You."

It is then further subdivided into four quadrants. Quadrant 1 is the so-called Employees. Quadrant 2 is the so-called Self-Employed. Qudrant 3 is the so-called Big Business Owners. Quadrant 4 is the so-called Investors. Where do you belong to these four quadrants? Let's examine it one by one:

Quadrant 1 - EMPLOYEES. I do think that most of us belongs here. We have a job. We have to work hard, follow instructions from our bosses and superiors and get paid. We don't own our time. These are people who love security or tenure. They will work hard to climb up the corporate ladder. The higher they climbed the ladder, the higher they pay is. Sad to say, the higher their pay is, the higher also their taxes. And it's not them getting rich, it's their bosses, it's their company. Time will come, they will get tired. Their body will collapse because of age. And when they stopped working, they will also stop receiving income.

Quadrant 2 - SELF EMPLOYED - They work for themselves. The difference with the employees is that self-employed own their time since they don't have superiors. They can decide for themselves. These are people who loves to be independent. They don't want to work for others, instead they want to work for themselves. These are doctors, lawyers, and small business owners. But still, they are an employee of themselves. And if they stopped working, they will also stop receiving income.

Quadrant 3 - BIG BUSINESS OWNERS - They love delegating tasks. They concentrate their efforts more on activities which produces most profits. They hire people who are more intelligent than them to do the work for them. They have built a solid system and they own it. They have built their resources to make this possible. And so they can leave for vacation and can leave work for some time but still earns money because there were people working for them. Examples of this are the taipans and tycoons and some franchisers who have built a solid business.

Quadrant 4 - INVESTORS - These are people who have built their assets and are not working for money anymore. Instead, the assets they have accumulated works for them providing them constant income even if they don't work. These are people who are called "living on interests". They are living thru the interests of their assets and investments. Money works for them. They have invested their money to have more money. They can differentiate which one is an asset and which one is a liability. Examples of these are investors in the stock market, real estate, etc.

Did you see the difference? The only way to escape from the rat race is by travelling from active income to passive income, from employee or self-employed to becoming a big business owner or investor. And this is the challenge that Robert Kiyosaki left to us readers.

As a final note, I'm leaving this quote from Mr. Kiyosaki.

"The rich buy assets. The poor only have expenses. The middle class buys liabilities they think are assets. The poor and the middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them."

--
Lets Win Together!
http://changeforgrowth.blogspot.com/

From Rajeev Kumar

Change4Growth

Why It Is So Hard To Let Go

Why It Is So Hard To Let Go

SCAR

Solid Teamwork For Success

How to over Come Sales Call Reluctance

How to identify sales call reluctance

Are you using the 80/20 principle when measuring sales productivity?

Your pre-call & post-call checklist

Passion as a Strategy

Passion as a Strategy, Plus Other Marketing Tips To Boost Your Bottom Line

How the Technique of Sales Work

Maintaining Customer Contact

Sales and Personal Selling

The Sales Process

Sales Process

Forecasting your Sales

New Sales Strategies for New Business Models

Business Models

New Sales Strategies Needed

Creating a Best Business Model

Top 5 trends to make money in 2010

Top 5 trends to make money in 2010

What is Sole proprietorship in India?

What is Sole proprietorship in India?

ADVANTAGES OF A SOLE PROPRIETORSHIP

DISADVANTAGES OF THE SOLE PROPRIETORSHIP

THE SPIRITUAL JOB SEARCH

A COMMERCIAL GENIUS - The Story

Top 10 Richest Person In The World 2009

The Millionaire Mentality -- according to J. Paul Getty

Career Counselling

Salary Negotiation

The Peter Principle

7 Strategies to Build "Negotiating Power"

7 Strategies to Build "Negotiating Power"

It's Not the Golf Course Anymore

It's Not the Golf Course Anymore

Top 10 things that couples must avoid saying in bed

WHAT’S the difference between an orgasm and an apple?

Humping

The Garden of Your Mind

Chanakya's Quotes - Worth reading a million times

Lyric - If I Were A Boy lyrics

The Song which Inspires Me.....

Do u Know?

Motivational Stories - THE 4 WIVES

Four Quadrant of Income Group

Passion as a Strategy, Plus Other Marketing Tips
To Boost Your Bottom Line