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“If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

If you’ve been paying attention at all to the news, you’ve likely noticed that there are lots and lots of things to worry about — from man made disasters such as the deficit, antibiotic resistant viruses, crumbling housing market, weak dollar, extinction of polar bears, to the acts of nature such as tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, et cetera. I could go on, but I’ve decided to make a very conscious decision to nurture the beautiful things in life and positively impact the present.

I will admit, it’s a challenge. We are pushed on every front to interact with fear and scarcity. In life, it is my desire to act as a catalyst for abundance, courage, beauty and and strength, by way of self-persuasion as a way to shift reality. I am doing this by switching the frames of everyone I come in contact with.

This is all to say that I’m opening up myself to new ventures. I will always, first and foremost be your go to man for persuasion. Part of persuasion, learning persuasion, teaching persuasion, has always been about hope and abundance, especially in a world that seems sadly lacking in both. This renewed focus is about filling the void and not with stuff (though, I do love stuff — technology and books especially) but to begin to excavate the inner depths with old and new resources and aligning with the proper mindset.

The law of resonance works like this: say you’re an unbelievably happy, upbeat, positive person, and you are working with a very depressive, negative person. . . well, it’s like the rock and the hard place. Either their energy will come up to meet you or your energy will begin to be depleted. Most likely, the two levels meet somewhere in the middle. That’s how it works on an unconscious level, at least.

As a teacher, it is one of my goals to bring the law of resonance to the consciousness of my students, so that events and people around you are no longer capable of pulling down your energy. The vibration of everything affects you and fortunately, these vibrations can be changed and brought up to meet you, but only if you are mindful and deliberate about making that happen.

This isn’t to say there won’t be moments where you need a little support in life, some fortification, someone to build you up when you have challenges. And I am geared to be that for you. I’m relentless about enriching our lives through pure, unadulterated hope.

There are opportunities everywhere if you have the eyes to see them. Even problems we might come up against contain the seeds of their solutions. We all have seeds, many seeds, that we can nurture, bringing focus to what we want to draw to us.

My goal is to teach you to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and your discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” -Patanjali (author and yogi)

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, when you’re a hammer, everything is a nail. To me this saying expresses the limitations we place on ourselves, unnecessary and unconscious limitations, limitations that box us in, keeping us from growing to our full potential.

There is good news if you’ve been going through life as a hammer, especially if you’re not accomplishing what you want to be accomplishing — all that needs to take place is an internal shift in attitude and this shift need not be difficult.

What the heck does that mean, Kenrick? Well, if the way you’ve been addressing challenges hasn’t been working for you, it’s time to try a new approach. Can we agree on that? I mean, the definition of insanity, as given to us by none other than Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

When we’re children, we learn quickly that knives are sharp, irons and stoves are hot and we avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. Well, what happens when we’re adults? We ignore the deep knowing and continue to hammer away at things in ways that don’t work for us.

In relationships of all kinds, when we make decisions, what is it that keeps us thinking we have to be a hammer banging away the the world which we view as nails. It’s habit. Maybe there’s a little apathy mixed in there. Laziness, perhaps. All the usual suspects that keep us stuck in our small models of the world. On the up side, now that you’re aware of it, you can change it.

My approach in life is that I am a magician and everything in my life is a opportunity to create what I want, what will be best for me, for my family, for my students, what will bring the most good to what I do in life.

I didn’t always know I had this ability to create what surrounds me. Because of this, I wasn’t always happy in life. There was a lot of trial and error and stumbling because I always believed, as I had been taught, that work is hard, good things come through struggle. Once I gave up on that notion and decided that all good things come easy to me, I realized I was able to receive good things easily. I began to create my universe full of pleasure, joy, and success, none of which are ‘hard work’. I realized almost in the blink of an eye, that the one thing I was struggling against was myself and the limitations I imposed upon myself.

Isn’t it time you stopped being a hammer and chose something expansive and empowering?

Sales at it’s simplest is a communication process says Zig Ziglar, one of the world’s leading sales training coaches. According to Zig Ziglar, you need a process to be successful in sales.

The sales process has a beginning and an end. You’re somewhere on that spectrum. So is your client. Find out where your client is in the process and go there. Don’t try and carry on the process from your point if the client is not in the same area.

Should You Use a Sales Process?

You need a sales process if you’re serious about being a successful salesperson. A process allows you to know where you and the client are at. It allows you to make sure both of you are on the same page in the process.

Be Logical and Client-Oriented

A logical, client-oriented sales process will lead you to a logical closing where you’re not fighting with the client.

Your sales process will help you identify if your prospect is receiving the message that you think you are delivering. Often times, the customer hears something different than what you actually say.

And you always, always, always need to listen for more than words. Listen for meanings of words (intent). You’ll get in trouble if you don’t.

Here are the Zig Ziglar Selling Principles

1. Selling is a process, not an event.

This means there is a beginning, a middle and an end. Do you know where your customer is in the process? Do you know where you are in the process? If the answers to these questions don’t match, then you won’t sell.

When you’re at one end of the process and you’re client is at the other end of the process, it can be frustrating for the both of you. This frustration can often kill the deal.

To reiterate the point, you need to meet the client where he’s at. You’ll only know where he’s at, if your listening to the words and the intent.

2. You make more money solving problems (needs, issues, concerns) than you do selling product.

So you need to find out your prospects problems. Then solve them. Simple, right?

3. People have their own reasons for doing things. They don’t do things for your reasons.

Align your sales process with your clients reasons, not yours.

4. Learn more about your prospect than about your product.

You don’t need to be best friends, but you need to know them as people. You need to know their buying trigger, their interests, where they’re at in the sales process, and their buying points.

If you haven’t already done so, implement a sales process in your organization. If you already have a process, work on lining up with the client on where he or she is at in the process. Zig Ziglar says that as you do this you will close more sales.

In sales, your best bet is to appeal to your prospect’s and client’s emotions. Forget about the logic (for the most part) as it comes in a distant second to emotions. The following story is about how powerful emotions can be. Some college students experimented with this and the results are astounding.

Before class the students all got together and agreed that if the professor moved to the right of the classroom, to the student’s right as they were facing the classroom, the students would sit up and pay close attention. They would be attentive, quiet, smile, and nod approvingly at the professor. But if the professor moved to the left of the classroom, the farther left he went, the students would cut up, act out, throw things, look away from the professor and act disinterested.

Class began. They followed through with their plan and it didn’t take but about a half an hour and the professor was pegged into the right side of the room, standing there for the entire rest of the class with the students absolutely gobbling up everything he said, excitedly listening, nodding, smiling and showing their approval of all that he was doing.

The next day the students decided that they would do the exact same thing but just reverse it. As the class began the professor was already off to the right of the room. Immediately the students would cut up and act up and act disinterested and as the professor would go to the left of the room, they would act interested and they would do what they should. It took not too long and the professor was pegged over into the left side of the room.

The professor was absolutely unaware of what was going on (on the conscious level) but was intensly affected by them (subconsciously).

Why? Well, we like it when people approve of us, we love to be smiled at, we love encouragement, we love to know we’re having a good impact on people, we love it when people have interest in what we’re saying and doing. These are all fundamentally emotional reactions.

How would you like to be able to affect people in that same way and get them doing things and responding to you in ways that up to now has been happenstance?

Something very important to remember when you’re selling is that people are led to make decisions based on their emotions. These emotions bring people to their decisions and logic cements or breaks that decision. Logic is a very minor part. Each person is slightly different, but generally, decision making is based 80-85 percent on emotion and 15-20 percent on logic.

If you are making your living persuading but aren’t using emotions well, you will most likely never make much money, at least the cards are stacked strongly against you. A person who can make strong logical arguments but is not adept at utilizing emotion has the cards strongly stacked against them.

So how do we do this? Well, stay tuned for an upcoming article for more information about getting to your prospect’s and client’s emotions.

“It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.” — Pablo Picasso

Sometimes in persuasion, the thing to do is to get provocative. I’m not talking about being inappropriate or crass, I’m not talking about being overtly sexual, but I am suggesting that you access the core drives a little, those primal drives that link each and every one of us as human animals, and specifically I’m thinking of the drive to reproduce.

When you hear the word seduction your mind probably thinks of sex or luring someone away from proper conduct or accepted mores. Another definition of seduction is to win over and attract. Sounds a lot like persuasion. We are literally enticing someone into our mindsets or desired outcomes.

A friend of mine told me that they flirt with everyone they come into contact with — men, women, waitresses, mechanics, grandmas, grandpas, all ages, nationalities, shapes, and sizes. At first this struck me as incredibly weird but as I began to watch him, I noticed that what he called ‘flirting’ I recognized as being very charming. When I reframed his flirtatiousness as charm, I fully understood his reasoning.

Here’s another way to view this: it’s rapport with a twist.

Not everyone can pull this off and absolutely, there’s a time and a place for everything. A caution for women: men are highly susceptible to flirtation and charm and very clear boundaries should be maintained at all times.

Here’s another way to access this powerful motivator, simply insert into your conversation words that are titillating. This is a more subtle way of stimulating this drive that can give sometimes vague, sometimes intense triggers of that core drive.

Phew. . . did you catch that? I was just giving an example and got a little carried away, but now you get the idea.

Don’t go too off the charts with this one or people might think you’re creepy, but there is great benefit in turning on the lights and bringing these things out into the open to expose how they can turn us into better persuaders.

So while I may not exactly admit to being a flirt, I will say that I do enjoy the process of charming as a way to persuade and, in general, a way to make people feel good.

The bottom line is that if you’re not closing sales, you’re not making money. It won’t be long before you’re out of a job. Unfortunately, many salespeople don’t know how to close the deal. Or they try to close too early.

Did you know that 4% of salespeople make 60% of all sales? Why do only 4% make so many of the sales? Because they ask for the sale more than six times in a close.

But you can’t close the sale, if you don’t first establish yourself as the solution to the prospect’s problems. You have to ask questions to first find out the problem and then to help the client see how you are the solution to the problem.

If people don’t trust you, they won’t buy. This is the number one reason why people don’t buy. People probably don’t think you’re a liar. But they probably don’t have enough information to fully believe that your product is the solution to their problem.

They bottom line is that you can’t close until you have established sufficient value in the client’s mind. Don’t do it too early. If you do, the client won’t buy. You know how it is on the buying side. If you don’t see the value, no matter how persuasive the salesperson, you’re not going to buy.

So Zig Ziglar, one of the world’s leading success coaches says that you must “Start with your most valuable point”. This is the biggest selling point for the client. Show how your product can solve the prospects most pressing problem.

Once you’ve started with your most valuable point, you can start adding trial closes: How do you feel about what you’ve heard so far? Are you interested in saving money? When would you like to start saving money? These types of questions will help you get inside the mind of the customer and help you understand what kinds of questions you need to address.

Ziglar also says, “When the client says no they are not going to change their minds. They make new decisions based on new information.” What does this mean? It means that when the customer says “No”, it’s because they don’t have enough information to say yes. You must provide them with that additional information so that they can say yes.

Persistence really does pay. If you really believe you have a solution to their problem, you will persist until they understand what you have. Hone your closing skills and you’ll find yourself rising to the top of your profession. Zig Ziglar has many more programs on selling and personal development that will help you in your personal and professional aspirations.

The first time I heard of being in ‘the zone’ it was from an athlete who described a run they had taken where everything was perfect — the speed, the temperature, their breath, their body with ease and elegance, moving down the path. The zone can be achieved in all things — sports, writing, selling — and is something we all would do well to strive for.

There are days when I’m speaking to my students on a coaching call and days when I’m giving in person presentations where I’m “on”, where I know I’m affecting people deeply and meaningfully. Of course I strive for that each and every time and hit the mark most days. (I also know that we all are prone to an off day and instead of getting down on myself for the rare off day, I view them as lessons on what to improve instead of dwelling in the ‘oh woe is me’ mentality.)

I have a friend who’s a massage therapist. She told me a story about how after nine years of doing massage, she finally felt she gave a really phenomenal massage for the first time recently. She said, “I have known on several occasions when the massage I’m giving is awful, where I’m not going to see the person again under any circumstance because I’m absolutely not connecting with them or they aren’t connecting with me, but I never could tell when I was giving a really good massage and I think that’s because I wasn’t giving really good massages. I think I was giving mediocre massages that people were appreciative of just because most of the time when we’re touched in a healing way, it feels good whether it’s amazing or not.”

This shocked me and intrigued me. I had to know what had changed. How, after nine years, did something switch from mediocre to phenomenal. I asked, “What did you do differently?”

“It’s the strangest thing,” she said. “I didn’t have my mp3 player in the office. And usually when there’s no music, the client wants to talk, but I made a conscious decision to have it be completely silent. And then I imagined myself on the table, almost as if I slipped into their skin, and simply listened to what their body wanted. And when I was done, I felt I had been in a trance for an hour.”

In my mind, she achieved the zone. And whats more, she achieved the persuasion zone. Because what does this sound like but rapport? She figuratively slipped into her client’s skin. She could feel what they needed and knew how to meet them at that level.

This can be done in absolutely every one-on-one work situation or personal situation, it can be done in absolutely every group situation, and the first step is to become aware that this is what needs to happen.

The Auto University Defined

I don’t know if Zig Ziglar was the first to coin the phrase “Auto University”, but he’s definitely one of the strongest proponents of it. In fact, he claims, “It’s the most important university in America.” I agree with him.

Naturally, the Auto University’s classroom is your car. If you have a CD, tape, or MP3 player, then you have all of the equipment you need to enroll in Auto University. Auto University will teach you some of the most important skills you need to be successful at your job.

Is Auto University for you?

If you’re like a lot of Americans, much of your commute time is spent listening to music or other programs. While their entertainment value may be high, they’ll have no effect on your long-term success.

If you’re interested in a mediocre life, then the Auto University is not for you - keep listening to the mind-numbing drivel spewing from most of America’s airwaves.

So if you want to join the highest ranks of your profession, start your own collection of motivational and skills-oriented CDs or tapes.

When’s the Best Time to Listen?

How about every time you get in the car? If you’re a regular professional, you should have the Auto University going every minute of your commute.

A recent study by IBM finds that “45% of all drivers surveyed report traffic congestion increases their stress levels”. How about turning that stress into something more productive, like learning a new skill? By spending your traffic time listening to successful audio programs, you could become an expert in your chosen area very quickly.

If you’re a sales professional, you’ll find plenty of time to listen to audio programs between appointments. As you learn vital selling skills, you’ll find yourself closing more deals and with increased success. Find the best programs and listen to them until you have completely assimilated them into your way of selling.

You’ll be more excited going into a sales appointment when you know you’re going to try a new sales technique you just learned on the drive over. In fact, the best salespeople hone their sales skills on downtime in between appointments.

What Should You Listen To?

There are a lot a so-so audio programs out there. Lots of self-proclaimed business experts. Look for the world’s best. Don’t settle for imposters. Here are some names to start with: Jim Rohn, Napoleon Hill, Tony Robbins, Jay Abraham, Denis Waitley, Earl Nightingale, Brian Tracy, and Zig Ziglar.

Remember to keep learning or else you’ll stagnate. The Auto University will keep you fresh and up-to-date.

Jim Rohn once said, “Formal education will earn you a living. Self-education will gain you a fortune. You decide how much fortune by how much self-education you get.” What are you doing to increase your fortune? Enroll in Auto University today.

In his household Zig Ziglar was the only one who liked to play golf. He tells the following story about one hole he played with his less than enthusiastic son.

On one golfing outing, Zig Ziglar’s son found himself on the green with a chance at Birdie, and perhaps more importantly, with a chance to beat his dad at a hole.

With only a short distance to the hole, Zig Ziglar lined his son up. His son was able to sink the ball for birdie. His son jumped for joy. Next, Zig Ziglar stepped up to his own ball to try for birdie.

Zig Ziglar was also lined up for an easy Birdie. He thought about missing the shot, but knew this would only be a hollow victory for his on-looking son.

Zig Ziglar wondered if his son had been pulling for him, even though it would mean that his son wouldn’t win the hole. His son said that he always pulled for him.

Zig Ziglar’s son demonstrated pure love for his father. He pulled for him because it would be for his father’s benefit to sink the putt.

Zig says we can develop this pure love with his H.E.A.R.T. acronym:

Honesty

Empathy

Attitude - for you, your prospects and your profession

Reserves - Physical, spiritual and mental

Toughness - learning to love is tough.

In expanding this acronym, Zig Ziglar explains that as a salesperson your values need to be higher than any other professional’s. When you’re in the profession of persuading, you need to have the interest of the prospect at heart.

If you have the right attitude, the right spirit, you are convinced of what you’re doing and you have love in your heart, you’ll pull for people to buy your product for their benefit.

You need this kind of love as a salesperson.

One of Zig Ziglar’s most famous quotes is, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care about them.”

Learn to want your prospects to buy because you know they win with your product. Communicate with your feelings and beliefs.

The minute you start pulling for them to buy for their benefit, you become more professional, more effective, more loving and you sell more. And you’ll be able to sell them again and again and again. Before long, they’ll send you to their friends and relatives

You want your customer to be the big winner. When you learn to pull for her, you’ll be well on your way to becoming the person you want to be. Put your H.E.A.R.T. right with a little self-evaluation and self-correcting.

A true story about being humorous

A good friend of mine is one of the top salespeople in the car business. He’s very good at all the areas of selling. He is good at closing, prospecting, following up, the basics etc. But my friend has a pure talent for making people laugh.

Here is what he used to do. Picture a jam packed showroom on a Saturday. My friend would get out of his cubicle wearing these silly black glasses, with the big nose and the moustache and come to the middle of the showroom and start this hilarious speech in front of everyone. He did have a talent for being a great public speaker. But a gimmick like this worked very well for him. So get creative and see what works for you. But the idea is to be humorous and not rude.

If you have a great sense of humor, use that to you advantage. No need to turn into a stand up comedian like my friend but learn to entertain. You can easily see that the superstars in the car business are all salespeople who have a great sense of humor, follow a plan and work smart. They spend an ample amount of time, money and effort getting better at selling. And they are all very likeable people. But the average salespeople are the ones that are stubborn and think that there is no room for improvement. These are the sales people that usually never grow. Make a friend before you sell something. And building rapport is the same thing as making a friend.

Pitfalls of building rapport and getting caught up

Doesn’t it feel good when you sell a vehicle and have a happy customer because you made a friend? Well then you need to build a lot of rapport. But remember your main objective, and that’s to sell a car. So try not to get emotionally involved with the customer. There is a big difference between getting emotionally involved and building rapport. Avoid believing everything that the customer tells you. If you start to sympathize for the customer then you’ll have a tough time closing the deal.

Take a moment to think about this: How will you present a deal to your managers if you’re emotionally attached with the customers situation. Don’t ruin your selling ability by sympathizing for the customer. This will completely ruin your deal.

Empathizing with the customer is the way to go. Everyone of your customer is buying a very expensive product when they buy a car. So yes it is good to understand their feelings. If you understand them then it will become easy for you to gain their trust. But don’t loose track of the sale by sympathizing. Rather empathize, make a friend and sell the vehicle properly.