The Power of Choice

by Bo Bennett, DTM

Where we are today is a result of choices we have made in our past. Choices as minor as what to have for breakfast to choosing what we want to do for a living. Each of us was born with the gift of free will and we have the right to choose our destiny by a series of lifelong decisions. Accept responsibility for who you are and where you are today and understand that with the exception of some external forces, you are where you are because of the choices you have made.

What about choices like going to work? You may be saying, "I have a family to support and I cannot choose to skip work. If I skip work, I get fired." The fact is, you choose not to skip work and keep your job. The choice of skipping work is yours and you must accept the consequences of each of your decisions. Even in the extreme situation that someone has a gun to your head, you have the choice to do what they request, or get shot. Choice is always present and always yours.

What about the person who gets hit by a bus? He obviously did not choose to get hit by a bus, but providing he is still alive, he can certainly choose how he responds to the situation. He can spend the rest of his days focusing on "why me?" and how unfortunate he is, or make millions writing the best seller "Life After Being Hit by a Bus" and help others who happened to get whacked by a Greyhound while picking up a penny on the highway. Although we cannot always choose what happens to us or around us, we can choose how we deal with it.

A successful person understands this concept well and understands that her choices make her who she is today. She does not use the negative statement "I HAVE to" but rather "I WANT to". Having to do something makes you subconsciously believe that you have no choice in the situation, which is rarely ever true. Once you truly understand that you choose to do something rather than have to do it, your attitude becomes positive and you see the benefits rather than focusing on the negative.

Other people will respect you for your candor when being more truthful with a statement such as, "I prefer to". The words "I have to" are often used as a defense mechanism and used as an excuse not to do something. Understand that you have a choice in the matter and be savvy enough to avoid the words "I have to". Those with whom you communicate will respect you more for it.

Remembering and Using People's Names

by Bo Bennett, DTM

It has been said that a person's name is the most important word in the world to that person. Using a person's name in conversation is one of the best ways to build rapport. Sounds good, but if you are like most people, the names of people you meet go in one ear and out the other. So step one is remembering the name.

Many memory experts believe that we all have perfect memories. We are capable of remembering just about any detail from our lives no matter how far back and how specific. The challenge is recalling the information from our memory.

There are dozens of techniques for remembering names; some work for some people and some do not. For this reason, I am listing many of them for you to choose the one that works best for you. You may want to adapt a few techniques rather than just one. For example, use a visual technique for those you meet face to face, and when they tell you the names of their children, use an association technique to associate the person you met with their children's names. The key again is to use what works best for you.

Here are some steps that should all be followed each time you meet someone:

1) LISTEN AND PAY ATTENTION TO THE NAME. So obvious, yet so overlooked. Pay attention to the name when it is given to you and make sure you can recall it 5 seconds later. If you can, you are halfway to putting this name in your long-term memory.

2) Repeat immediately. The first sentence out of your mouth after hearing a name should include that name. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Jennie". Use this instead of "Jennie, it is nice to meet you" because saying the person's name right after they say it is often a mindless automated response that does very little, if anything, toward helping you remember the name.

3) Repeat often. Be careful with this one. You do not want to sound like a psycho, or worse a pushy salesperson, by overdoing it. However, people love to hear their own name and this technique will keep your listener interested in what you have to say.

4) End the conversation with their name. This is the best way to end any conversation. "Jennie, it was great meeting you". This not only once more sinks their name into your memory, but says to the person that you have cared enough to remember their name.

5) Comment on and/or ask questions about the name. "Jennie, have you always been called Jennie or do people call you Jen as well?" or "Do you spell Jennie with a 'y' or 'ie'?" If it is a unique name, ask about its origin or say that it is a beautiful name (if you really think it is).

6) Review. After the conversation is over with the person, review their name and face in your mind several times. Do this frequently over the next 24 hours. As you get better with steps 1-5, this step will become less important.

Memory is linked to your senses and emotions. As you incorporate more emotion and more of your senses into remembering a name, the name will become more difficult to forget.

Now here are some techniques used to remember names:

1) Face association. Examine a person's face discreetly when you are introduced. Try to find an unusual feature, whether ears, hairline, forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, chin, complexion, etc. Create an association between that characteristic, the face, and the name in your mind. The association may be to associate the person with someone you know with the same name, or may be to associate a rhyme or image from the name with the person's face or defining feature.

2) Substitution. Take a person's name and substitute objects that you can visualize with that name. Then associate those objects with the person somehow. For example, "Murphy" can be substituted with "Murphy's oil soap". Visualize the person pouring the soap all over them while dancing the jig. Why dancing the jig? The more outrageous you make the visualization, the better it will stick to memory. Just try not to laugh when making the association, especially if the person is in the process of telling you they have just been fired.
3) Paint their name on their forehead. OK, not literally, but in your imagination. Use your favorite color paint and clearly see each letter as you paint it. If you are standing closer than a few feet from the person, do not look directly at their forehead but rather between their eyes.

4) Association with someone you know. Associate the person you meet with someone you know or know of with the same name. Then visualize the person you know in the same situation as the person you have met. For example, if you meet a "Will" picture your Uncle Will (assuming you have an Uncle Will) standing there, in that same spot. To make the association stronger, visualize your uncle Will doing something that he is known for doing - like his loud drunken laugh.

If you forget the person's name at any time during the conversation, THIS IS THE TIME TO ASK. Do not be embarrassed to say something such as, "Forgive me but I've forgotten your name..." or "I am sorry, what was your name again?" Remember that most people forget names. Those who make it a point to humble themselves and ask for a name again are seen as someone who cares about learning the name.

The more you do this, the more second nature it will become and remembering names will be an automatic process for you. Using names in conversation will take you a long way in building and maintaining rapport, as well as helping others to both remember you and like you. You will soon find that remembering names becomes a game and it is really quite fun, not to mention one of the best skills that anyone can possess!

Believe in Yourself

by Bo Bennett, DTM

I have a great idea for a reality TV show. We begin with 10 people who are successful in their fields, but not famous or even well-known. Dress them up in clothing a homeless person would wear, give them a new identity and a history of nothing more than a grade school formal education and a series of odd jobs, then drop each one of our "participants" off in a major US city. The goal is to a) stay in the game and not quit and b) to acquire as much wealth as possible by the end of the season (about 3 months). The rules are that the participants cannot reveal their true identity and they cannot accept help from anyone they know in their real lives. What an awesome show that would be. We would witness the human spirit in action as well as characteristics and qualities of truly successful individuals. How would you do as a participant on that show?

There are so many people who appear to be successful and happy, who are financially well off, yet live in a constant state of fear. This is the fear of financial loss, which is almost universal to all those who are new to wealth. What if I lose my job? What if the market crashes? What if my business fails? All of these "what ifs" conjure up unpleasant thoughts for just about everybody; but those who believe in themselves, in their abilities, talents, and determination, do not fear these potential unfortunate events. A common characteristic among successful people is their knowing that if they lost everything financially, in time they would get it all back and more.

Unless you are a lottery winner or an heir/heiress to a fortune, you have earned what you now have. You must believe that your success is not due to random luck, but is a result of the circumstances that you have created, or at least influenced in the past. Those who fall down and don't get back up are the ones who lack the self-confidence and belief that they are the reason for their success, and if needed, can do it all again.

Donald Trump is a man who proved that success is not in what you have, but in who you are. Here is a man with enough belief in himself to come back from being $900 million dollars in debt to net worth of over a billion dollars in a relatively short period of time. When disaster struck Donald, he did not resign himself to flipping burgers to "make ends meet". His strong self-image and belief in himself allowed him to get right back on top.

Fortunately, very few of us will ever be put to the test of such drastic misfortune. Your belief in yourself is like a no-cost insurance policy that will keep you from fear of financial loss and allow to you enjoy what you have earned. Your talent, abilities, determination, and your other characteristics have gotten you where you are today. Believe in yourself and enjoy success.

Master The Art of Asking Questions by David Rohlander

Master The Art of Asking Questions

by David Rohlander



"Sellin' ain't tellin', askin' is."

I heard this simple but true homily years ago when working in Texas. Merrill Lynch spent thousands of dollars and six months in California and New York
on sophisticated courses and seminars to train me to sell stocks and bonds. Yet, over the years this bit of country wisdom from Texas has been one of
the most powerful and useful lessons I've ever learned. To be successful in sales, you must master the art of asking questions.


WHY?

One of the most obvious reasons you ask questions is to acquire information. The conscientious professional will spend a great deal of time and effort to
learn about their client.


The person asking questions is always in control of a discussion. This control can be used gracefully to lead and direct the client to a successful
outcome or it can be abused. As a professional, it is your responsibility to serve the client in a thorough and proper manner. It is impossible to do
this if you do not have enough accurate information. The most efficient way to get the necessary information is to ask questions.


There is a big difference between efficient and effective communication. Some sales people believe a day of golf is a great way to solidify a new
relationship. It's not. Your goal should be "frequency of contact."


Frequent short contacts and encounters will build stronger relationships and make you more memorable to your client. If you are new in business a good
way to develop this habit is using a checklist. First list all your clients and prospects. Then make a list of all the ways you can make contact: phone,
e-mail, fax, letter, lunch, appointment, racquetball, golf. the list is endless. There are numerous software programs that will help you. Review
this list at least weekly to see who you have forgotten, to plan the next mailing campaign and/or benchmark your actual activities to your goals.


How often should you make contact? That depends on the relationship and the nature of your business. Everyone in your database should hear from you at
least quarterly. Clients get very annoyed if they only hear from you when you want to make a sale or collect a check.


Obviously, the goal is to graciously ask questions during these encounters. Art comes into play in the manner that you ask the questions. No one likes
to feel like they are in a deposition. Remember, you are striving to build long-term profitable relationships.


The real key is to understand how the client feels about certain issues and what are the emotional dynamics of the decision making process. How do you
get to this next level of understanding? The answer is, asking more questions.


Questions are the keys to unlock the vaults of information, needs, wants and emotions. As you master the art of asking questions you will gracefully
control the discussions with your clients. As Martha Stewart would say, "It's a good thing."


WHO ARE YOU?

It's time to go from preaching to meddling. The most important person you have to ask questions, is yourself. Why do you do what you do? What are your
motivators? How can you improve? What are your values? Is your behavior consistent with the things you say that you believe?


The best test of 'who are you' is the quality and quantity of referrals you receive. As you build relationships with others are they able to determine
your beliefs by how you behave? They don't need to have a long explanation about the history and values of your company. They just listen to what other
people say about you and your reputation.


Clients will trust a person who they believe has integrity. Without trust it is impossible to elicit honest feedback from a client. To learn a specific
process on how to build trust on purpose, refer to Values-Based Selling; The Art of Building High-Trust Client Relationships by Bill Bachrach (at this
time it is written for Financial Services Professionals).


WHO CARES?

There are at least four groups of people who are critical to your professional development. They are co-workers, centers of influence, vendors
and your clients. How much do you care about each of these groups?



Co-workers

Your co-workers are a vital part of your professional team. If you don't have time to show your co-workers that you care about them, in time they
will show you that they don't care about you either. The best way to show interest and concern is to ask them questions.


The depth and quality of the question you are comfortable asking a co-worker will be a reflection of the quality of your mutual relationship. As you
become astute at listening you realize how much you can tell about someone by the type of questions they ask. Peter Drucker spends a major part of his
time during lectures at Claremont Graduate School teaching students the value of "asking the right question." The depth of the question shows the
depth of understanding a person has of a problem.


Centers of Influence

Centers of influence are those people who respect you and whose position or experiences naturally enable them to send you a continual flow of referrals.
They are the most valuable kind of marketing and public relations you can ever have. When you ask them questions it is an opportunity to show your
interest and concern for them.


Vendors and Colleagues

Vendors and other professional colleagues are also critical to your development. Do vendors and sales representatives from your suppliers refer
you accounts? Sure, it helps to refer them business too, but develop the habit of asking good questions and listening well.


Clients

The fourth group is clients. Surely you have heard of the "silent close." Well, as a professional speaker I have learned a new appreciation for
silence. It is not effective to talk nonstop and at a fast pace. People need time to process information. After you have said something significant or
asked a good question, be silent, let them process the thought. When dealing with your clients, or any one else, you must mentally control your impulse
to fill long pregnant pauses of silence with your own voice. Silence is a beautiful thing.

Attorneys are trained to never ask a question unless they already know the answer. The more you study people the better you will get at making accurate
assessments. A new book that discusses this idea is Reading People, by Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, Ph.D. and Mark Mazzarella. They make the following
observation.

"We have to watch the way people behave toward others if we want to get the fullest sense of who they are. All the other factors covered in this book-
appearance, body language, environment, voice, even the words people speak-must be viewed alongside their actual behavior in the real world."

To master the art of asking questions you have to become a student of people. This takes time. It's not a matter of memorizing a few good
questions. It's the ability to read or see what is going on and have the confidence to ask the big question. One of the tricks to help you in this
area is to do your homework before you meet with a client.

Basic information gathering can go on for a good 15 to 20 minutes. Examples of these types of questions are below.


Needs assessment-

How do you manage your business/clients?

What have you done in the past that's been most successful?

Any mistakes you'd like to avoid in the future?

What are you looking for in a _____________?


Wants assessment-

How do you feel about ________________?

(Use the word 'feel' with women & they'll tell you what they think)

(Use the word 'think' with men & they'll tell you how they feel)


Are you comfortable with your current growth plans?

(If yes or no, ask-How come? Tell me more? Could you explain that to me?)

Tell me a bit about where you plan to be in ten years?

Understanding of motivators in a business environment-


How did you get to this position?

What do you enjoy most about your job?

What do your people do especially well?

What's working well for you?

Why do you work here?

The pace slows and specific questions are asked about areas where known
problems existed.


"What's your employee turnover like?"

"How do you measure customer satisfaction?"

"How's your cashflow?"

"Could you explain that a little bit more?"

By being patient, asking simple questions that are directly related to their situation and then using the power of silence and intently listening,
meaningful dialogue will be realized and ultimately great results are achieved.


Listen, Listen, Listen

There are many types of questions. Open ended versus closed, leading questions, hypothetical and the list goes on. Then there are the levels of
questions. You need to get to a person's emotions and prejudices.

As you study people you will continue to develop more understanding. Additionally, there are two critical ingredients you will want to master.
The first is trust. You have to build a pattern of behavior that will allow a person to trust you. Trust comes from asking good questions, consistent
behavior and keeping your commitments.

The second is empathy. This relates to how much you really care. It does not matter what level of education a person has they seem to know if another
person is real or not.

Most decisions are made from an emotional frame of reference. Emotions are the trigger in the decision making process. Emotions and feelings are not
right or wrong. Feelings are based on past experiences. The good news is that feelings can change when a person goes through new experiences.

Your questions can be powerful. The way you use questions is important. What are your intentions with asking the questions? Do you have personal
integrity? Can you be trusted? How well do you understand and read people? How well do you listen? Your ability to put all these elements together will
determine if you are an artist.

Effective communication requires more than talent. It involves trust, understanding, empathy and resolution. It is an art that can be learned and
developed.

Specific Purpose

Specific Purpose
by Bo Bennett, DTM

In the movie The Jerk, starring my all time favorite actor/comedian, Steve Martin, Nathan (Steve) set off to discover his "special purpose". Once he knew what it was, or thought he knew what it was, his life had meaning and direction. In real life, the same holds true. However, to avoid laughing every time I say "special purpose" (if you have seen The Jerk, you understand why) I prefer to refer to one's ultimate life goal as "specific purpose".

A few days ago, we contemplated our general purpose in life, which answered the general question, "who will benefit from our existence?" Now with our specific purpose, we answer the question, "what are we going to do with our lives?" with more detail and thought.

Before you start breaking a sweat with anxiety over this question, let me preface the remainder of this topic with these words: very often people never set goals for the same reason some people never find true love - they are "waiting" for that perfect someone (or perfect whatever in the case of goals). Rarely do people know exactly what they want and it is even less common for people to know their ultimate goal in life. No sweat. Just be as specific as you can. If the most specific you can be is "I wanna be rich!" then I would ask you to define what "rich" means to you. The more specific you can be the better.

A specific purpose is like a personal "mission statement". It's funny how businesses realize the importance of this structure and purpose, yet individuals do not. Make your personal mission statement as detailed and descriptive as possible. When writing it, use the present tense with statements such as, "I am a commander in the air force leading over 100 soldiers, traveling all over the world while meeting new people". While you are writing this all down, visualize it as well. Visualization is an important part of success, one that will be referred to many times in this program, so now is a good time to start putting it to use.

Once you have your specific purpose, you are free to add to it, alter it and even completely change it. Identifying a specific purpose is a very good starting point, but be forewarned that it should not control your destiny. Life is full of changes and these changes may bring new opportunity and desires to you. Keep an open mind. If after spending years pursuing a career as an astronaut, you decide you really want to be a ballerina, then change your specific purpose. Just make sure changes made to your specific purpose are not due to failure or frustration, but rather a true desire in your heart.

Getting to YES

Getting to YES

Am I correct in assuming that your success is very important to you? By now, you are aware of the importance of sales and how everybody sells something, aren't you? Don't you agree that sales is really about influencing others? Therefore, getting others to agree with you would be an incredibly powerful skill to master, wouldn't it?

You have just witnessed a technique used to get a "yes" response. This technique is based on the Socratic method, which is all about asking questions. This is an excellent technique for asking for referrals, closing sales, or persuading others. When you ask someone a question, assuming they are listening, they always answer it. They may not answer it out loud, and they may answer it with "I have no idea", but the question is always answered. One of the powerful uses of questions is to keep the attention of the listener or reader. The technique used above also uses questions to elicit a yes response. This "warms up" the listener by getting them in a positive frame of mind.

Let's examine how this works in detail. We begin by determining our goal. My goal was to get you to agree that getting others to agree with you is an incredibly powerful skill to master. If I had just opened with the statement, "Getting others to agree with you is an incredibly powerful skill to master" you may have agreed with me or you may not have. If you did not agree with me, you would be in "defensive mode" and even if I had proven my point later in the article you would not be as open to the idea. Now my example is a fairly easy sell, but this technique works equally as well with harder to sell ideas, products or services.

Now that we have our goal, we need to work backward and create several questions that we are confident will result in yes responses. In order for this technique to be effective, these questions must be relevant. You may be able to trick someone into saying yes by asking, “Would you like to have more money? Do you love your kids? Do you want to buy my widget?”—but their final yes will almost definitely be followed by an emphatic “NO!” Using a logical progression of questions that get yes responses make it easy for the listener to answer yes to our final question.

Here are some suggestions for formulating supporting or leading questions.

• Use yes tags. Yes tags are phrases such as, "isn't it", "don't you agree", or "wouldn't you say". These phrases can be placed anywhere in the sentence and should be mixed up for maximum effectiveness.
• Soften your questions. If you use hard questions as leading questions, this technique may backfire on you. A "hard" question is one that uses definite terms that leave little room for flexibility. For example, "Smoking is the most deadly habit on earth, don't you think?" is not as easy to agree with as "Smoking is one of the most deadly habits on earth, don't you think?" Remember, you want to phrase the leading questions in such a way that it is almost impossible for others to disagree.
• Phrase in the positive. Questions should be phrased in the positive whenever possible. My opening question, "Am I correct in assuming that your success is very important to you?" could have been written as "Am I correct in assuming that you not achieving success would be a bad thing?" The mind remembers "achieving, success, bad thing" and that is not the message to which we want our listeners to agree.

If you are thinking that this technique sounds a little manipulative, remember that the difference between manipulation and influence is intent. This technique is best used to counter other people's natural "no" defensive response, not trick them into a "yes" response. Just as a knife can be used to kill, it can also be used to heal.

Questions are a very powerful and effective form of communication that can be used in many ways. This technique, when used properly, can help you to become more influential, help you to become a better communicator, and bring you another step closer to success.