by Angela Taffs | Jan 23, 2015 | Business Success, Sales and Marketing
We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
Epictetus
I have had to make a great deal of calls over the last few days for a number of reasons and one thing has struck me. The complete inability of people to listen to what I was saying.
Now you could say that as the inability to listen was a recurring theme, the problem could be at my end but without burying my head in the sand, I believe I speak clearly and can explain my needs very simply.
I took extra care with the last few calls trying to find a supplier, yet still, after I explained what I needed, was still met with a barrage of questions that had already been answered. In fact, on one call, the woman asked me the same question no less than five times! I ended up asking her if she had a pen and if so, would she mind writing down my answers so we did not keep going over old ground. Hasten, to say, I will not be purchasing from her.
We were all born (or most of us anyway), with two ears and one mouth. We really should try to use them in proportion. When someone calls to ask about your product or service, there is a tendency to get rather over excited at the prospect of a new sale and start to tell them everything there is to know about your offering, when all they need to know is what is relevant to them and their particular situation. Let them speak and explain their needs, and whilst they are doing so, shut up and listen! You can then explain just the areas of your business that will benefit them which will help build a trust and relationship where they realise you are doing your best to help them.
The more you allow a prospect to talk, the more important they will feel and they will know you have taken the time to hear what they want. If you constantly talk over them and then ask basic questions that you would have heard if you had listened properly, you are likely to make them feel either irritated or not important and as a result likely to lose their custom.
And following on from this point, and what I always teach in sales training, is that when you have given someone some information, give them time to digest it. Let there be a few moments of silence to absorb what you have said. You don’t have to jump in and keep talking to fill the silence. Once you have given information, try counting to seven before you speak again. This simple tip can make such a difference to your sales success. If people don’t get the time to take in what has been said, they tend to say that they will think it over and get back to you. How many times have you heard that? Give them time whilst you have them in front of you or on the phone. And watch your sales improve.
by Angela Taffs | Jan 22, 2015 | Personal and Lifestyle, Running a Business
Do you struggle with keeping business and private lives separate?
Today I had a message from someone who wished for me to act as their mentor on a one to one basis. We were liaising via email and everything was going well until they sent me a request to befriend them on Facebook.
I have a Facebook business page and of course, also a personal profile. After they asked why I had not accepted them, I explained that I kept my business and private accounts separate but we could continue to communicate via email, LinkedIn messaging, telephone or Skype. Whilst I have nothing to hide on my personal page, I see no reason to let a business client have access to my private life and that of my friends and family.
After I refused to accept them as personal friend, the atmosphere turned. The individual insisted that if I wanted their business, a condition was that I had to accept them as a personal friend. Now, as this point I became suspicious of their intentions as there is no need whatsoever for anyone to need to be a friend of mine on Facebook in order to do business with me, and they could not explain their need to me.
After I had pointed this out in a very polite manner, and a few emails later, I decided to decline to work with them as, I tried to explain to them, when I work with clients, it is important to be able to communicate effectively with each other and have a mutual trust and respect which I now felt was lacking between us. I suspect this person had not ever been refused a service before as I was suddenly on the end of a vitriolic attack and warnings of how much money I would lose by refusing to work with them.
This reaction only made me more certain that my decision to keep my business and personal life separate was the correct one.
There can, at times, be a fine line between not wanting to offend a client but also needing to keep them somewhat at arm’s length and getting the balance right can be difficult, particularly in a service industry where personal communication is ongoing. I admit, I do have a few past clients who I now consider to be friends but this has come about over a period of time and mutual interests.
If keeping business and private lives separate is important to you also, then to overcome potential situations in the future, when you are dealing with clients, I think it is important to establish some boundaries at the outset and let clients know which channels are acceptable for contact and during which times of day.
If you do receive a personal Facebook friend request, a polite message explaining that you use Facebook to keep in touch with close friends and family, but would be happy to connect via LinkedIn or other method should suffice. If you are unfortunate to receive a response such as the one I had, then it is only evidence that this person is most certainly not your ideal client and one you will not want to be doing business with.
by Angela Taffs | Jan 19, 2015 | Business Success
Is your business suffering by learning too much?
What a crazy notion. How can we ever learn too much? But just stop for a moment and answer the following:
- How many blogs did you read today and how many online groups did you comment in, or at least spend time reading what others had posted.
- How many magazine articles or books did you read?
- How many social media channels did you post, chat and network in?
I suspect for many this would not add up to minutes but would indeed equate to hours. And I also suspect this is the norm every day.
The question is, is this productive time or not? Whist there is importance to be placed on networking and improving our skills through learning, are we at times doing this in the guise of working when in actual fact we are just procrastinating and putting off some far more important task that could actually make us money?
It is all well and good continually learning and improving your knowledge, but what is the point if you never drag yourself away to put it into practice. There is no point in reading online articles on how to be more productive if you never actually move away from the computer screen and do some manual labour. An example someone once gave me was:
“I know everything there is about how to have a six-pack, but I still don’t have one”.
And this applies when running your business.
Stop kidding yourself and start to take more note of how much time you spend learning about what to do and how much you spend doing it. This really could be the difference between success and failure. Set yourself limits as to how much time you are going to spend doing what and when you are going to do it.
My personal plan is to spend half an hour each morning with my cup of tea reading online articles and making notes about salient points. I spend the last half hour of each day with my nose in a book. Anything else I spot during the course of the day, I bookmark and then block out Wednesday mornings each week to go back and read in more detail. This includes webinars. Nearly all of them these days are recorded for you to listen to after the event.
Now, I am no angel and I regularly fall off track. This morning was a case in question which led me to write this article. I had a task that has been outstanding for a while but is getting more and more urgent. I had blocked out in my diary to complete it today but then let myself get sidetracked in the name of more research. What a load of baloney!
If I don’t have enough knowledge to complete the task by now, I shouldn’t even be contemplating doing it. I suddenly realised what I was doing and pulled myself back in check but before I knew it another bright shiny object that was far more attractive popped up and I then spent I dread to think how long creating pretty images in Canva that I could use as part of my task.
Is this resonating with anyone else out there? Are you in danger of learning too much? Do yourself a favour and really keep a track of how much you are ‘learning’ and how much you are doing. Don’t use excessive learning and research time as an excuse for not getting on with the day job. You may just find that by ‘doing’ you will make far money and will learn by experience along the way.
by Angela Taffs | Jan 18, 2015 | Business Success, Personal and Lifestyle
An alternative way to achieve your goals
Recently I read an article by James Clear which had a light bulb effect on me. All my life I have focused on setting goals and have to say, have achieved the majority of them. But what about the times when I failed to achieve results that I so desperately wanted?
By not achieving them, did this make me a failure? Of course not, but it certainly made me feel that way.
Take the example of losing weight. I set myself a goal to lose one stone within 2 months. The end of the 2 months came and I weighed myself and had lost 10lbs. I was 4lbs short of my goal and therefore deemed myself as having failed.
Now I realise how ridiculous that situation was. I was 10lbs lighter. That was a result! And a successful one at that. I had achieved something and yet felt that I had failed.
So how about not setting goals any more but set about following a system that ultimately will get you to your desired results.
James explains this so well in his article by describing the difference between goals and systems.
- If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.
- If you’re a runner, your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the month.
- If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal is to build a million dollar business. Your system is your sales and marketing process.
Now stop and think, if you didn’t set a goal but followed a system, would you still achieve results? The probability is that you would.
So instead of me setting a goal to lose one stone, if I set up a system to eat more healthily and exercise more each week, it is inevitable that I would lose the weight. The bonus to this is that I would keep the weight off as the healthy eating and exercise would become a habit, or rather a lifestyle change, to be constantly continued. This can be better than setting a goal which once achieved, the motivation to continue at what you were doing previously instantly diminishes.
The same is true of a runner training for a race. Once the race day has come, the motivation to continue training tends to leave. I once trained for a marathon and after completing it, lost all motivation to run again as I had nothing to aim for that was as challenging.
So start to commit to a system rather than setting yourself a goal.
If you set a goal to start a home business and earn £500 extra each month, the stress of not achieving that figure would increase your stress levels and reduce your happiness, probably to the extent that you would give up after 6 months. If instead, you said you were going to let 3 people each day know about your new business venture, the laws of probability dictates that you would start to slowly but surely gain new customers and build an income that would last for the long term.
So if you are planning on achieving something, try changing your mindset from setting a goal to setting up some systems to take you towards your desired outcome. You might just find it more fun and more easily achievable than you imagined. Give this alternative way of thinking a go and achieve results that may otherwise elude you.
by Angela Taffs | Jan 18, 2015 | Business Success, Personal and Lifestyle
I read a lot. I read motivational, inspirational and self-help books and there is one recurring similarity amongst nearly all the authors. They all seem to have had a particularly traumatic or deprived period in their life.
So does this make the difference between success and failure? I don’t have the answer to that but would love to know the statistics.
From Oprah Winfrey to Suze Orman, Denis Duffield Thomas and on to the likes of Maya Angelou and Louise Hay, they have all suffered terrible times in earlier years only to rise from the ashes and hit the heights of success.
From poverty and rape to teenage pregnancies, mental and physical abuse, these women have suffered in a way I can’t even imagine. So did this make a difference in their determination to succeed?
Do you have to have suffered extreme hardship to gain that desperation to make a different life for yourself? Is it more difficult to come from a secure, happy and comfortable background and make it to the top?
Perhaps the answer is yes.
Maybe, being surrounded by home comforts, and knowing there is someone there to turn to and take care of us if it all goes wrong, gives us such a sense of security that we do not drive ourselves as hard as though who have no one to turn to and nowhere to go if they fail.
I work incredibly hard and very long hours to build my own business, but ultimately, if it all fails, I have a very nice home with a roof over my head and my husband to take care of me. If I was living alone and in danger of losing my home, would I work even harder or find different ways to be 100% sure I made it the success I want it to be? Would that desperation to remove myself from a certain situation drive me all the more harder?
Whether we come from comfortable backgrounds or not, in order to be successful we have to have our internal drive. I am not wholly sure where mine comes from and I didn’t suffer any particularly traumatic period in my life that I can pinpoint, or remember. If I had, would I have already achieved the pinnacle of success I am striving for before now?
As I said before, I don’t have the answers here but it is a thought that has come into my mind more than once.
I would love to know your opinions on this subject. Leave a comment below or pop over to the Facebook page and let me know your thoughts.
With much love
Angie x
