There is one marketing truth you must understand: People buy when they are ready to buy, not when you are ready to sell. So, just because your lead is not ready to buy today, doesn’t mean they aren’t important. After all, today’s leads are tomorrow’s customers, or next month’s or next year’s. Treating your leads like existing customers ensures they will come directly to you once they are ready to buy. Since I am in the business of essentially selling “money” I figure it is a product everyone eventually will need. The trick is in “reminding” people that I am still alive, still in business, and still anxious to help them achieve their goals.
Archive for the ‘CASB Management Group Inc.’ Category
Marketing 101
Saturday, August 28th, 2010Life Is Short
Saturday, August 28th, 2010
Life is short. No more excuses.
Carrie Garber provides some tips to play with as you continue your process of personal transformation!
Step into total self-love and acceptance.
As you move through your life, how much are your decisions being influenced by wanting approval from others? Are you living someone else’s vision for your life? If so, it is time for you to be grounded and confident in who you are…to embody unwavering trust in your truth. Just imagine how different our world would be if we were all living our most fulfilling lives, overflowing with authenticity and passion.
Stop telling yourself the old stories!
Refuse to give your limiting beliefs and stories any more power. Instead, hold as sacred the creative power of your thoughts and energy. The Law of Attraction speaks to how like attracts like. Given this reality, what do you want to grow more of with your focus? Be crystal clear about the new, empowering beliefs that you are now committed to living, and spend an extravagant amount of time magnifying, savoring and declaring those new beliefs.
Avoid the trap of comparing yourself to others.
How often are you obsessing about others and analyzing how they show up in life? And how often does this lead to worries about not doing it “right,” not being “ready” or not being “good enough?” I want you to know without a shadow of doubt that you are not alone with your fears, doubts and insecurities. We are all on the journey of being human, each and every one of us, no matter how it may look to you from the outside.
Allow your process to be messy.
How might your life be different if you were totally willing to fumble and fall? This is about tapping in the true cost of staying stuck in your comfort zones, continuing to deny yourself and the world of your vision. I want you to declare that this is no longer okay. The world is waiting for your beautiful and unique imprint. You have a contribution to make. So let go and begin taking action.
Release attachment to the idea that it has to be hard.
We tend to have our well-prepared lists of why things are the way they are, as well as a detailed description of the intense challenges or drama associated with making it different. Do your habits and patterns convey disbelief that change and growth could be easy? Well, what if it is? What if, bottom line, playing bigger is primarily a matter of simply letting go of the struggle? Maybe all it takes is to absolutely decide that you are going to release what no longer serves and finally get out of your own way. What if?
We welcome your comments.
The Day Common Sense Died
Saturday, August 28th, 2010An Obituary printed in the London Times – Interesting and sadly very true.
Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.
He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
- Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
- Why the early bird gets the worm;
- Life isn’t always fair;
- and maybe it was my fault.
Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).
His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.
Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.
Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.
Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement. Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by his son, Reason.
He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I’m A Victim
Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.
We welcome your comments
Vampire Thinking
Saturday, August 28th, 2010I recently stumbled onto a concept called Vampire Thinking articled by Carol Gignoux. Vampire thinking is the compulsion we all have to suck the juice right out of our possibilities and opportunities. Instead of acting on a good idea, we excel at finding a slew of reasons we should kill it as soon a possible and move on to continuing our “safe” existence. I’m sure you can relate to this idea because you engage in vampire thinking more frequently than you know. How often do you talk yourself right out of what you really want in order that you may choose for the safe option? And your reasons? Silly and ridiculous?
Like all successful vampires, vampire thinking has a lot of tricks up its’ sleeve, which most people never notice. These tricks, however, are the true disguises worn by vampire thinking and they are important to recognize if we want to fend them off. So we’re going to take off the masks off the vampire tricksters and see what they are really up to.
How many of these Vampire Thinking Tricksters can you recognize in YOUR repertoire of behaviors? Be aware! The more honest you are here, the better your chances to save what you’ve been squandering and retrieve lost opportunities!
Can’t ‘Cause I’m Not Sure
“Well, I would do it if I could be sure it was the right thing or I could be sure it would work”. We can hardly be sure we will take our next breath, let alone do things guaranteed to succeed. We know there are no guarantees. We think we’re being smart about our choices, when what we are really doing is shrinking from our responsibilities and hiding from our true gifts and talents. We like things that we feel we have control over and that are predictable.
Striving to Always Be Right
Many of us find it very important to engage in “I’m right and you’re wrong” thinking. There’s something about being right that feeds our ego and our need to compete in the pecking order around us. Being right actually restricts our ability to develop naturally because all of our energy and our focus goes into being right. We don’t ask questions because we may be wrong, and we don’t allow ourselves to risk making mistakes.
Looking Good at All Costs
Its basic vampire thinking premise is to always do whatever we must do to not look bad. If we have to lie, cheat, steal (even on a small scale) we will do what it takes to look good. Of course many unethical, unlawful, and harmful things are done in the name of looking good. There are also many less obvious and smaller scale actions that we take regularly such as telling little white lies, exaggerations, misrepresentations, gossip, and putting down or competing with others all to make ourselves look better.
Can’t make a Decision
“I wish I could decide but I just can’t so I guess I won’t do it”. In this trickster thinking, the person tries to take themselves off the hook by backing down as the safe thing to do since they can’t decide. If you look at this reasoning you can easily see the flaws and the smoke and mirrors in this way of thinking. Of course you can decide – unless you are too busy coming up with all of the reasons why you shouldn’t do it!
Justifying my Actions and Rationalizing my Behavior
Justifying and rationalizing are the excuses and so called “causes” we use every day in the place of growth steps and taking the right actions: “I was sick”, “I was tired”, “I was too busy”, “It was too late”, “It wasn’t my fault”, “They don’t care any way”, “It makes me uncomfortable”, and on and on and on. Those excuses continually rob us of opportunities to do good things in the world for ourselves and others. And because they are so commonly used and accepted, we have lost our awareness of them and the thieves they are.
Is there a day that goes by when you don’t justify your behavior or actions either to yourself or to others? I doubt it. Do yourself a favour and count the times you rationalize in a day and the times you rationalize in a week and see what number you come up with. Then look at that number of cowardly acts and “copping out” choices as the number of good acts you were not able to do for yourself and others as a result.
I wish you luck as you uncover and expose the vampire thinking tricksters that are sucking the fun and satisfaction from your life every day. I wish you the courage to face the vampire thinking tricksters squarely and bravely and put them in their place! All the richness, variety and spoils of the life you’ve been avoiding await your courage and determination. You can let go of these sucking pests and live boldly by YOUR rules – not theirs! We welcome your comments.
How The Super Rich Think?
Saturday, August 28th, 2010Saw this article and thought, right on!
Have you ever wondered how the super rich think?
We’re not talking about “The Millionaires Next Door” here … we’re talking Billionaires.
Do they believe in the “law of attraction”? Do they “follow their passion”?
Do they play nice? What are the rules of money at the billionaire level?
In the book, The Family Office: Advising The Financial Elite, Keith Bloomfield and Russ Prince, summarize the behaviours of the rich.
And you may not like what you’ll find here. And you may not agree with it.
| Rule | Millionaire Next Door | The Super-Rich |
| Commitment | Seek work/life balance, where money is only one piece of the equation | Creating wealth is regularly the top priority and overarching motivation |
| Self-Interest | Looking to make everyone “happy” or get a fair deal | Pursue only those activities that have significant probability of generating above-average financial returns |
| Line of Money |
Believe if they do what they love, the money will follow | Pursue only those activities that have significant probability of generating above-average financial returns |
| Connections | Network with a lot of people for social cultural and business purposes |
Build strong relationships with a handful of strategically valuable people |
| Payouts | Create rapport and look to help others | Ensure each party is duly compensated for his or her contribution |
| Failure | Failure is a major obstacle that can cause setbacks reassessments and new directions |
Failure is a learning experience and a motivator |
| Centered | Concentrate on overcoming weaknesses and becoming a well-rounded person |
Concentrate on their strengths and delegate everything else |
Source: The Family Office: Advising The Financial Elite
Interesting?
Many of us believe that the super rich have some “secret knowledge” of how to make money. They don’t. But their belief system and their habits are very different from the common millionaire. Something we’ve observed is that they tie all their actions to their goal of making money. All of them.
They don’t waste time on any meaningless (to them) social interaction. They don’t waste time trying get their peers to approve of them. And they don’t care to build a huge social network.
They’re habits fall in line with a lot of what is shared on the above chart.
Are they right or wrong? Ah, that’s for you to decide. We welcome you comments.
Could You Be A Genius?
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
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7 Secrets To Small Business Success
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010Each year, Profit Magazine publishes its list of Canada’s Top 50 Fastest Growing Companies. Last year, Ian Portsmouth, Editor of Profit, took it upon himself to find out what these fast growing companies had in common in order to determine how to build a successful small business in Canada. The following is a list of Ian’s findings:
Secret #1 – Steal the Best Ideas: Find great tactics and strategies outside your own industry and incorporate them into your business. Think of companies that you love doing business with in both your business and personal life. What are they doing to get and keep your business? How can you incorporate that into your business?
Secret #2 – Be Like Advil: Relieve someone’s pain better than anybody else does. The fastest growing companies are agile – they can make decisions and respond to customers’ needs quickly. Capitalize on your size to compress decision making.
Secret #3 – Seek Trusted Advisors: 50% of the fastest growing companies have advisory boards comprising of entrepreneurs and executives from many fields. Join peer-advisory groups such as Entrepreneurs’ organizations, Women Presidents’ organizations, etc.
Secret #4 – Find and Keep the Best: 86% of the fastest growing companies offer staff individual performance bonuses and 48% engage in profit sharing
Secret #5 – Export Like Crazy: Fast growing companies are always on the look out for new markets and opportunities.
Secret #6 – Beg, Borrow, but Don’t Steal: Be creative in finding the capital you need to grow. The fastest growing companies use a wide variety of capital including personal finances, banks, leasing companies, factors, suppliers, employees and bartering. Remember, Cash is King. Rapid growth can spell disaster if undercapitalized.
Secret #7 – Get Lucky: Exponential growth requires a few lucky breaks but Canada’s top entrepreneurs create their own luck. When surveyed about their success, they attribute 96% of their success to persistency and a positive attitude
Success is a State of Mind
Monday, December 7th, 2009Do you ever wonder why some people seem to attract success effortlessly, while other people seem to dig it out in the trenches everyday and never get very far? Why is it that some people seem to realize their dreams so easily while others seem to constantly struggle? The root cause of success is not necessarily what you do, but rather how you think. I’m sure you’ve heard the old saying “if you believe you can then you can, and if you believe you can’t then you won’t – either way you will be right”. Nothing could be more true. It is our state of mind that lets some see light where others see dark, and lets some see opportunities where others see only problems.
In sales, your state of mind will make or break your career. It will affect your success more than any technology, marketing campaign or web initiative ever can. In many markets across North America, a “success” state of mind is needed more than ever before as we are bombarded with bad news about the economy more than at any other time in history. Here are some suggestions for regaining your success state of mind:
Rebooting Your Career for 2010:
- Remember your passion – before you tackle the “how”, remember your “why”. There was some reason you ventured into this career, what was it?
- Vision – Take some time during December to plan ahead and fine tune your vision for the new year so you can start 2010 with a clean slate.
- Business Plan – Once you define what it is you want to accomplish in 2010 (e.g. your income goal) the next step is to define what activities you need to do every day to achieve your goal. How many transactions will you need to close? How many per month? How many per week? How are you going to track your progress to make sure you stay on track? Leave nothing to chance.
The Do’s and Don’ts:
- Don’t compare yourself to others (everyone has their own unique path to follow).
- Do identify your strengths and weaknesses (so you know what you need to work on).
- Do find something that gives you inspiration (and keep reminding yourself of what that is).
- Do create a plan and stick with it (even when it doesn’t seem possible, don’t give up).
- Do continue to educate yourself (and put into practice what you learn).
- Do make a conscious effort to stay positive (it is a choice, and the choice is yours).
Your attitude will determine your success
Friday, June 19th, 2009How do we measure our success? It is a concept I stuggle with given that people measure success diferently. In my mind It is not a finite measurment. Success is always a compared to what, or a compared to who, type measurement. Most peoople would acknoledge that Warren Buffet is sucessful, but when compared to Bill Gates maybe not as much.
Attitude plays a big role on how you view success. Attitude will figure in every equation of performance. If you are honest with yourself it may be time for a change within several aspects of your sales and marketing plan. Faced with three alternatives for action: Stay with the status quo, get on the right track, or find another vocation—which do you choose?
There is only one wrong choice:
Stay with the status quo
Under-performance is one thing. Acceptance of mediocrity is a whole new ball game. Nothing can cause your attitude to get worse than failure to reach your goals. And the worse your attitude becomes, the more you will tend to under perform. It is a vicious cycle. No one ever went from failure to success by sticking with the status quo. The time to break this cycle is now—if you really want to succeed.
How to break the cycle. The first step in breaking a cycle of under-performance is being honest. If you really want to succeed, you will take the actions necessary to bring success. If you don’t really want success, you will tend to stick with exactly what you are doing now. If you really want success, take an accounting of what you really need to do:
Þ Do you need to change a negative attitude to positive?
Þ Do you need to go from being hampered by call reluctance to surpassing all obstacles?
Þ Do you need to find out where the business really is and continuously attack on all fronts?
If you are not succeeding and you don’t think that you need a change in these three areas, you are not being honest with yourself. It is now time to enlist the help of others. Choose some mentors from your boss, peers (especially top producers), family, and targets.
Ask them to be painfully honest. This is important because your inner circle will not want to hurt your feelings. Just because you are not a top producer does not mean that they don’t like you. You must convince them that you only want feedback which will improve performance. You have to convince them that you will not be defensive—and you must deliver on this promise. Just listen and absorb—do not respond.
You are not interested in affirmation of any positive aspects of your execution. Any positive affirmation will point you back to the status quo. You may even choose to abandon the positive aspects of your game plan to accomplish more in the long run.
If people are being honest, you will hear statements such as:
Þ You seem to miss larger opportunities that are presented because of smaller obstacles;
Þ You focus on the negative aspects of your job;
Þ You don’t seem to be able to solve complex problems; and
Þ You seem to hang around the office too much.
Using the information. The purpose of this research is not to make you feel bad and cause your attitude to get worse. The reason that we ask an alcoholic to announce their disease is to begin the road to recovery. The solutions for your recovery are quite simple. If you need to go where the business really is, then find out where it is. If you don’t know, ask your boss or top producing peers.
Every office or company has top producing individuals from whom the information is readily available; you do not have to reinvent the wheel. The process of benchmarking uses the knowledge of those around us. Take a top producer out to lunch. Spend a day with him or her. Volunteer to be his or her assistant for one month. If you don’t know the answers, become a sponge for information instead of a mediocre complainer stuck in the muck of the status quo.
What if you really don’t want success? If you really don’t want success, then the time for honesty is now. Salaried workers in the government sector may be able to reach retirement by coasting. Not so for commissioned sales personnel. There is nothing wrong with recognizing that you are in the wrong industry—or wrong aspect of the industry. It is wrong to not recognize that fact and continuously be miserable because you are under-performing with regard to your expectations.
If you can be happy in a salaried job with delineated responsibilities—then take action to achieve that position. The key is happiness. If your happiness comes through accomplishing independent successes in a self-directed career, then take the actions necessary to achieve your goals. There is no greater reward than that.
We welcome your response.
Synergy Marketing
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
I love the idea of developing partnerships with realtors, financial planners, accountants, lawyers, bankers and other professionals that we can share our clients with. Check out my musings to learn more about how it works.
The rules of maximum synergy marketing dictate that if we are marketing by ourselves we are wasting synergy. As business people we all recognize that we have a limited amount of our most precious resources—money and time. It is our lack of time and money that limit our ability to market effectively. We know we must market to increase our productivity and income. We also know that we don’t have the time to market as we would like. Since we don’t have time to market consistently, we must make every marketing activity as effective as possible.
It seems that everyone is interested in partnering to lower the costs of their marketing, finding additional sources of revenue or navigating an additional way into the hearts of their clients.Yours is not the only product which is purchased by your target audience. By opening your eyes a little wider you will find the perfect synergy marketing partners that will enable you to increase your marketing effectiveness.
Who are the perfect synergy marketing partners? They share the same target market as you but sell a product which is related and non-competing. Maximum synergy marketing indicates that you must also know from whom else your targets will purchase on a regular basis. In many cases, this is not hard. If your customer purchases a home they are going to need insurance and moving services. If they have just purchased their first home they might not be thinking about how that purchase fits into their long term financial planning—but they should be doing just that. In other words, you must know their purchase patterns and also anticipate the needs that your targets may not anticipate.
The basic question to ask about your synergy marketing partners: how can they benefit from your marketing efforts and how can you benefit from theirs? Why should you spend your resources (time and money) contacting customers and not achieve a second objective for another individual or company who could also include you within their marketing efforts? Sometimes these actions can be as easy as adding another flyer into your mailing (and vice-versa). Sometimes these actions might involve jointly calling upon targets which will take advantage of previous relationships built up by the synergy partners. In other words, you introduce me to someone you know and I will introduce you to someone I know.
As your eyes open wider, you will find that anyone who is operating his or her marketing plan within a vacuum is not taking advantage of many synergy opportunities which revolve directly outside of his or her narrow field of vision. Why market alone when you can have many people marketing for you? This is what synergy is all about!
We welcome your comments.