POWER QUESTIONS THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY

By Jamie Ford, www.foresight.co.nz, Guest Blogger

“There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life: happiness, freedom, and peace of mind; are always attained by giving them to someone else.”
Peyton Conway March

In his book "Awaken the giant within” motivational speaker Anthony Robbins notes that our life experience is based on what we focus on. And what we focus on is often determined by the questions we ask ourselves on a regular basis.

The best questions to ask yourself are what he calls Power Questions. Power questions are designed to cause you to experience more happiness, excitement, pride, gratitude, joy, commitment, and love every day of your life.

Anthony suggests you come up with at least two to three answers to all of these questions.

If you have difficulty coming up with an answer, just add the word "Could". For instance you might want to ask “What could I be most happy about in my life now?”

Here are some Power Questions you can ask yourself first thing in the morning when you wake up:

1: What am I happy about in my life now?
What about that makes me happy?
How does that make me feel?

2: What am I excited about in my life now?
What about that makes me feel excited?
How does that make me feel?

3: What am I proud about in my life right now?
What about that makes me feel proud?
How does that make me feel?

4: What am I grateful about in my life right now?
What about that makes me feel grateful?
How does that make me feel?

5: What am I enjoying most in my life right now?
What about that do I enjoy?
How does that make me feel?

6: What am I committed to in my life right now?
What about that makes me feel committed?
How does that make me feel?

7: Who do I love?
Who loves me?
What about that makes me feel loving?
How does that make me feel?

Action Exercise:
Use some (or all) of these Morning Power Questions every morning for five days and notice how good you end up feeling.

It really is remarkable how much better you will feel when you make these Power Questions a regular part of each day.

What do you think? Are Jamie and Anthony full of caca de toro, or have they hit on something that you can use to improve your life? Please share your thoughts.

A LETTER TO AARP

Guest Bloggers Walt & Cyndy Miller, Miller Farms Equine Transport

This was sent to Mr. Rand who is the Executive Director of AARP

Dear Mr. Rand,

Recently you sent us a letter encouraging us to renew our lapsed membership in AARP by the requested date. I know it is not what you were looking for, but this is the most honest response I can give you. Our gap in coverage is merely a microscopic symptom of the real problem, a deepening lack of faith..

While we have proudly maintained our membership for several years and have long admired the AARP goals and principles, regrettably, we can no longer endorse it's abdication of our values. Your letter specifically stated that we can count on AARP to speak up for our rights, yet the voice we hear is not ours. Your offer of being kept up to date on important issues through DIVIDED WE FAIL presents neither an impartial view nor the one we have come to embrace. We do believe that when two parties agree all the time on everything presented to them, one is probably not necessary. But, when the opinions and long term goals are diametrically opposed, the divorce is imminent. This is the philosophy which spawned our 200 years of government.

Once upon a time, we looked forward to being part of the senior demographic. We also looked to AARP to provide certain benefits and give our voice a power we could not possibly hope to achieve on our own. AARP gave us a sense of belonging which we no longer enjoy. The Socialist politics practiced by the Obama administration and empowered by AARP serves only to raise the blood pressure my medical insurance strives to contain. Clearly a conflict of interest there!

We do not understand the AARP posture, feel greatly betrayed by the guiding forces whom we expected to map out our senior years and leave your ranks with a great sense of regret. We mitigate that disappointment with the relief of knowing that we are not contributing to the problem anymore by renewing our membership. There are numerous other organizations which offer discounts without threatening our way of life or offending our sensibilities.

This Presidential Administration scares the living daylights out of us. Not just for ourselves, but for our proud and bloodstained heritage, but even more importantly for our children and grandchildren. Washington has rendered Soylent Green a prophetic cautionary tale rather than a nonfiction scare tactic. I have never in my life endorsed any militant or radical groups, yet
now I find myself listening to them. I don't have to agree with them to appreciate the fear which birthed their existence. Their borderline insanity presents little more than a balance to the voice of the Socialist mindset in power. Perhaps I became American by a great stroke of luck in some cosmic uterine lottery, but in my adulthood I CHOOSE to embrace it and nurture the freedoms it represents as well as the responsibilities it requires.

Your website generously offers us the opportunity to receive all communication in Spanish. ARE YOU KIDDING??? Someone has broken into our 'house', invaded our home without our invitation or consent. The President has insisted we keep the perpetrator in comfort and learn the perp language so we can communicate our reluctant welcome to them.

I DON'T choose to welcome them.

I DON'T choose to support them..

I DON'T choose to educate them.

I DON'T choose to medicate them, pay for their food or clothing.

American home invaders get arrested.

Please explain to me why foreign lawbreakers can enjoy privileges on American soil that Americans do not get?

Why do some immigrants have to play the game to be welcomed and others only have to break & enter to be welcomed?

We travel for a living. Walt hauls horses all over this great country, averaging over 10,000 miles a month when he is out there. He meets more people than a politician on caffeine overdose. Of all the many good folks he enjoyed on this last 10,000 miles, this trip yielded only ONE supporter of
the current administration. One of us is out of touch with mainstream America . Since our poll is conducted without funding, I have more faith in it than one which is power driven.

We have decided to forward this to everyone on our mailing list, and will encourage them to do the same. With several hundred in my address book, I have every faith that the eventual exponential factor will make a credible statement to you....

I am disappointed as hell.

I am scared as hell.

I am MAD as hell, and I'm NOT gonna take it anymore!

Walt & Cyndy

Excellent letter and here is the link from snopes so y'all don't have to look it up.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/aarp.asp

Well, folks, what do you think? I'm inclined to think she makes a lot of sense and may just drop my AARP membership.

Hank

TEAM BUILDING

By Hank Trisler

Gresham's Law (GRESH-ums law) noun: The theory that bad money drives good money out of circulation. [Coined by economist Henry Dunning Macleod in 1858 after Sir Thomas Gresham (1519-1579), financier and founder of the Royal Exchange in London. Gresham, a financial adviser to Queen Elizabeth I, wrote to her “good and bad coin cannot circulate together.”]

Gresham's Law says that when both are required to be accepted as legal tender, inferior money remains in circulation while the good money tends to be hoarded or exported.

Examples of bad money could be counterfeit notes, coins that have their edges scraped off to siphon precious metal, or two legal tenders where one is intrinsically superior (e.g. a gold coin vs. a paper note of the same face value). In general, the law applies to situations outside the financial world as well: for example, bad politicians drive out good ones.

“But the main blame for the debasement lies with the Tories, who have conclusively confirmed that there is a Gresham's Law of politics: the most squalid party drags the others down towards its level.” Roy Hattersley; Exploitation Dressed Up As Compassion; The Guardian (London, UK); May 2, 2005.

“So what does that have to do with team building?” You might well ask. “Isn’t that about climbing ropes and paddling canoes and like that?”

I reply, Nah, that’s just programs to justify having a party at company expense. Team building is something you do every single day with your every word and action.

Gresham’s Law explains why we see good, intelligent, compassionate managers build squabbling, avaricious and lazy sales forces. We managers can’t get the people we want, so we settle for those we can get and then cry about our lot in life. Your best recruiting tool is your existing sales force. You will not be able to hire sales stars if they have to run in the same harness with slugs. The very best method of increasing the production of a sales force is to increase the minimum acceptable production.

Enforce it diligently. Every month look at each person in your sales force and determine whether they are a profit center or a loss center.

If a person is below your minimum acceptable sales production, you must help them increase their sales, or find a position with another company, and do so within ninety days.

Allowing them to hang around longer does no favor to them and will be the destruction of your sales team. You spend most of your time trying to make good wine out of bad grapes, when you should be lavishing your attention on your top producers.

I recall a real estate broker once telling me that if she dehired all her low producers, she’d be alone. GOOD! I told her she’d be better off alone, as she was likely taking some of her personal production just to keep the turkeys afloat. It took guts, but she made a clean sweep of the office and said she had never felt better. She had more time for her personal business and was very selective in allowing new people to join her. When she had one really good person, that person brought a friend in for an interview.

And so it grows. If you have a really great success sales atmosphere in your store, you’ll attract the sort of salesperson you want. Conversely, you’ll never get the people you want if you ignore Gresham’s Law.

SALESPERSON'S BIGGEST MISTAKE?

by Hank Trisler

"So what's the biggest mistake salespeople make with you, Chat?" I was talking to a tennis partner during a break in the hostilities this morning. Chat Forbes is the purchasing manager for a respected manufacturer in Silicon Valley.

I had expected him to say they talk too much, as that would have reinforced my long-held belief, but it didn't go that easily.

"They call on me too often," Chat said. "Some of them call me every week and they drive me nuts. I can't get anything done when I'm always talking to salespeople."

"How often should a salesperson call on you?" I asked.

"Well, there's a fine line they need to walk," Chat said. "They need to call often enough to find out when I need something, but not so often as to become a pest."

"How often is that?"

"There's the problem. I don't know. That's the fine line."

"How can they determine how often is too often without talking to you?"

"There's the problem," Chat said.

Now you may find this very unsatisfying. I certainly did, but there you have the problem in the real world with real buyers and sellers.

Here's the question I pose to you for your consideration and discussion: How often should a salesperson call on a customer and how is that frequency arrived at?

I'll be waiting for the fruits of your thinking.

SILVERBACK SELLERS

by Hank Trisler

So you have a few miles on your chassis. So you've got a little gray in your hair, or hair in your gray. So occasionally you lose your car in the parking lot and can't accurately recall the spec sheets. Does that mean you can no longer function as a sales professional? Hell, no.

Selling is one of very few TRULY equal opportunity employers. It just doesn't matter what gender you are, or which race or how old. If you can think and listen and talk or write, you can sell.

Silverback Sellers is a group dedicated to the furtherance of senior salespeople.

Why a Silverback? Well, they're gentle creatures until you mess with them. They neither offer, nor suffer offense gladly. They got to be old because they learned to survive in their environment, just like a good senior salesperson. They help the younger members of the family learn to survive, as well.

Our group will share ideas, leads and experiences. There will be a place to pitch products, proposals and opportunities, but not in the main discussion area. We'll have a separate area for commercial ventures and the main discussion threads will remain blissfully spam free.

Please take two minutes and forty seconds to squint at the video attached. You might find it informative.

I think you'll find this a refreshing and illustrative group, but your input will be necessary to make it that way. Please click on this link http://bit.ly/44UYKa to visit our group and hopefully join. Your thoughts, questions and comments are welcome, as always.

NEW NO BULL SELLING

by Hank Trisler

You've heard them sing about it around the campfires and now you can experience it first hand. The brand new and vastly improved NO BULL SELLING has now been printed and copies delivered to me.

You can learn how to sell at high levels and retain your sanity while doing it.

This modern day sales classic is divided into two sections:

• GETTING SOMEONE TO SELL TO

and

• SELLING SOMEBODY

You're going to learn and laugh out loud while doing it. Don't believe me, ask the thousands of top sellers who have already read it.

Enough of this chit-chat. Click on http://bit.ly/WaOzK and place your order TODAY. You'll never find a better use for twenty bucks.

HI TECH, HI TOUCH

By Hank Trisler

John Naisbitt, the author of the venerated Megatrends 2000, popularized this phrase in his first book, Megatrends. He postulates that reliance on technology isolates us and deprives us of the human contact we so desperately need. I can identify with that.

When I ran a real estate company, I was shaved, showered and in the office in suit and tie by 8:30 in the morning. Every day I met new friends and lunched at a different restaurant. I heard and told jokes and generally had a wonderful time.

Then I got into the training bidness and moved my office to my home. I now have a computer, fax machine, cell phone, voicemail, a website and e-mail. There is even a program which will link to GoldMine and extract pertinent material from fields and print out a 40-page + - proposal which one can then e-mail, post or fax to a customer completely obviating the need to talk to the pesky buggers at all.

It's been six days since I started my car. My only contact with people is when I go out for a training session, tennis, golf or a lunch with my old buddies. Other than that, I communicate with electronic devices and comparatively little of that. This existence can be narrowing for a person. One's interpersonal skills can rapidly atrophy, not to mention one's personal hygiene.

I'm not the only one it's happening to, either. Salespeople in general are making fewer personal calls and relying more on electronics to do their talking for them. We are in danger of losing the human touch.

My Barbara got a star in her windshield from a rock tossed out by a truck. She wanted me to make it all better, which I did by giving her the number of our insurance agent in San Francisco. We've been with this agent for over twenty years. He's an old family friend. He'd retired, so Barbara found herself talking to a woman she had never met. The woman said that Barbara would have to make a claim directly with CNA, the carrier. Barbara called CNA three separate times, each time going through voicemail hell prior to being disconnected.

Barbara reappeared in the office. This was not going the way I had hoped it would. "Can you tell me," she said, knowing damn well I couldn't, "why we should continue to pay premiums to an agent we no longer even know, whose office is fifty miles away from us, when all they do is refer me back to the carrier, who will not take any of my calls?"

That's how I came to be assigned the task of finding a new insurance agent. Fortunately, Jim's a really nice guy, an insurance agent and he belongs to my tennis club. I see him two or three times a week and we always have pleasant chats. I decided to ask him if he would be interested in being my new agent.

"I'd be happy to," Jim said. "Why don't you fax me the front page of your existing policy, so I'll know what we're talking about."

That seemed reasonable, so I faxed him the first six pages, as I wanted our whole shebang insured. I stressed that our decision would be based a lot more on personal service than on price. I also mentioned that I had some concern about his being a direct writer (Allstate) than an independent agent, as I wanted someone to represent me, rather than an insurance company.

A couple of days later, I saw Jim at the club, but he said nothing about insurance, so I let it slide. That afternoon I got a fax from him, asking me to fax him social security numbers, driver's license numbers and dates of birth for both Barbara and me. His fax further assured me that he had been an Allstate agent for twenty-eight years and he felt he worked for the policyholder, rather than the company. I faxed back the numbers with decreasing enthusiasm.

I saw Jim twice more and we chatted, but not about insurance. I finally got a five-page fax outlining his suggestions for our coverage and quoting prices in detail. He again assured me that he prided himself on his high level of personal service.

As much as I like Jim, I'm not going to buy any insurance from him. I wanted someone to come out and schmooze with me the way insurance guys used to do. Someone to tell me I had the best possible coverage at a reasonable price. Someone to sell me, but Jim sent me faxes full of numbers I didn't clearly understand or care much about. That's just not going to get it.

A Carnegie Mellon study links the Internet to increasing loneliness. They say the average person has but sixty-six people in his/her social circle. Sixty-six? I've seen families bigger than that.

George Quinn is one of the brightest and best people I know. He's a land developer and could easily hide behind his computer without much danger of human involvement. But every day he dresses in coat and tie and goes to his office to talk with people. He has lunch nearly every day in a restaurant with someone different. I call him "Sir Lunchalot."

I'm pleased when it comes my turn to have lunch with George. He always has something interesting to say and interesting questions to ask. He reads omnivorously and is prepared to discuss anything he's read. He's a thoroughly fascinating man and my life would be poorer were it not for him.

Did technology make George the way he is? Not bloody likely. He got where he is and the way he is by interacting with people every day. To improve your business and your life, reach out and touch someone.