We as sales leaders so often publish article after article about what type of sales person we need to hire.   If you are experiencing turn over look in the mirror.  Walt Disney often said: “you can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the entire world...  but it requires people to make the dreams a reality."  Another great quote is by Zig Ziglar:  “You can get everything in life you want, if you help enough other people get what they want.”

I think this is well said.... beating up salespeople does not motivate, the stick is a short lived improvement the carrot is fun but it could be only as effective as the contest or money keep coming.   Hire slowly with a process, train your people, treat them with respect and show them loyalty and they will give it back tenfold.     Don’t think loyalty comes just because you hired them... it must be earned!

My two cents we are in the people business when it comes to sales and sales people need real leaders who are honest with them and give respect.  Treat others right and they will walk through fire for you.   Treat them bad and with disrespect and watch out all bets are off.

You can take that to the bank.    

Recruiters  frequently ask me “why am I not successful?” and I tell them this career path is about many process driven activities, it is about passion, planning, perseverance and a lot of dedication to beginning with the end in mind.  What it is not is 9-5. While trying to convey this to one recruiter we mapped his day out and we found some scary practices which I have seen duplicated in the past by so many others. So I had an epiphany and I thought I would share some thoughts with you.  I have been a recruiter and I have supervised recruiters and I have seen the things that cause many recruiters and sales people to be unsuccessful.

There are approximately 260 working days in a year and approximately 22 working days in the average month.  Yes, 12x22=264 but the difference is a holiday here and there.  OK, now, let’s look at working days lost over a period of a year.

1.     Two weeks’ vacation is 10 days lost.

2.     Three personal days is 3 days lost

3.     Average sick days = 6 days a year.

4.     15 minute break in morning and afternoon is 16.25 days lost.

5.     For some of you, ….. 6-8 breaks ( i.e.: smoking, wandering)  a day this is over 60 days lost

6.     One 30 minute errand a week is 3.25 days lost.

7.     15 minutes before lunch and 15 minutes after lunch (whether you leave the office or not) is 16.25 days lost.

8.     Family emergencies and special events average 6 days a year.

9.     15 minutes late to work once a week is 1.62 working days.

10.  Personal calls, business and general ineffectiveness of 30 minutes a day is 16.25 days gone.

11.  First 30 minutes of the day in hellos, coffee and office gossip is 16.25 days lost.

If we add up these times, it amounts to 94.87 days to 154.87 days lost a year because of these habits.  So if we subtract 94.87 days form 260 we have roughly 165 days left.  Divide that by 22 and there are only 7.5 months that we even have available for work. And if you are in the group that takes 6-8 breaks daily you only have 105 days to sell out of a year or divide that by 22 and you only have 4.77 months to sell OUT OF A YEAR

Now, if we are ineffective during that 7.5 months (unenthusiastic presentations, no daily plans, not selling hard, calling dial-a-prayer) then we can see that many of us are producing our year’s volume in less than four months’ time.

WOW, can you believe these numbers?  I could not until I did the math.

Some of us do not exhibit all the traits listed and some of us have even more.  The idea is to understand the compounding effect that any these habits have on our yearly performance.

Now let’s do some simple math, with simple numbers….. Let’s say you are producing 10k monthly and you do that with the dramatic example the 6-8 break person @ 4.77 months worked:

Today with current habits in one year you are averaging 10K monthly only REALLY working 5 months out of the year, producing $120,000.  You would have an addition 6-7 months of production you could add to your production/income equaling an additional $70,000 in production/increase.   At 40%commission that’s an extra $28,000 in your wallet. 

If you are a headhunter, you average 15K monthly over the course of a year with the non-productive behaviors under the above math or scenario in 5 months producing $180,000 but with extra focus you gain an extra $105,000 in production and your income goes up another $42,000 at a 40% commission.

So what do you think… no matter you can see we all waste some daily valuable time and effort, can we reduce this… heck yes!  

"The unexamined life is not worth living." – Socrates

As a leader what does this quote mean to you? And why should I care?
First you care because as a leader you must continually examine where you are and where you are leading yourself and others.
My opinion is that Socrates means is if a person is not open for others to question his or her thoughts and action, or lives in denial of the motivations that prompt his or her thoughts and action, then it is a waste of his or her life. Such a life is a superficial act, revealing nothing new, nothing unique. Such a life is not "real." Socrates also suggests that, in addition to the above response, the "unexamined life" refers to a life whose purpose has never been questioned; a life that has never been analyzed, inquired into or inspected; a life that has not been appreciated beyond face value. By suggesting this, Socrates gives praise to questions such as, "Is there more to reality than that which we can see and touch?;" "Am I living my life according to my own rules, or the rules set for me by others?;"

What You Think About You Bring About

What You Think About You Bring About

Nearly every day I hear someone say something along the lines of “Why does life have to be so hard” or “Why can’t I ever get a break” and sometimes even “Why does everything happen to me.”

It seems that the majority of people in our world these days seem to struggle from day to day in one area or another in their lives.

Most believe that they are just a victim of circumstance and that they have no control over these seeming difficult situations. The majority believe that it is simply by fate or chance that they must endure these unpleasant and uncomfortable situations and circumstances, and that there is absolutely nothing that they are capable of doing that will change them.

This reasoning, as legitimate as it may seem, couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact is that whatever may be happening in ones life is happening because that is exactly what the individual is causing to happen on either a conscious or subconscious level.

Sound crazy? Many think it does, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t the truth. It is the absolute truth.

Everything that manifests in our world must begin as a seed whether it be humans, plants, animals, illness, or disease. It is absolutely impossible for anything in the universe to exist without starting from something.

So what does that have to do with your thoughts, whether they be conscious or subconscious? Allow me to explain. The human mind is made up of two components. The conscious mind and the subconscious mind. Your conscious mind is the rational portion of your mind and it establishes it’s beliefs based on the 5 physical senses of hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch. The information that is gained from these senses is sent to the brain, which is the physical tool of the mind, and then combined with an emotion which in turn establishes a belief.

Each and every belief you currently have or that you have held in the past, concerning anything, at one point was established through your conscious thought process and has been stored in your subconscious mind as fact. When the rational conscious mind comes upon any situation, it accesses the data storehouse of the subconscious to assist it in making a determination regarding an event, situation or circumstance, that it previously stored there, and makes a choice as to how it will react to the circumstance based on that information.

The subconscious cannot differentiate between what is true or false, good or bad, right or wrong. It has no reasoning ability whatsoever. It has no way of knowing what the conscious is giving to it. The only functions that the subconscious has the capability of is…

#1) Accepting and storing whatever data has been sent to it, whether it be true or false, by the rational thinking conscious mind.

#2) Going to work to manifest the data that it was given, and bring it into physical being through the law of attraction.

Each thought that is created and each belief that is established acts as the seed. If the thing that you want creates conflict in your subconscious based on an old belief, negative energy is created and the seed can only produce negative results. If the conscious and subconscious are in harmony regarding the thing wanted, positive energy is created and only positive things can be produced.

When a firm belief is established at some point in life (usually in the childhood years) and then later in life that belief is challenged, it creates conflict, between the conscious and the subconscious which in turn creates negative energy which then attracts additional negative energy to it, and actually creates those very things that you consciously claim that you don’t want to happen.

In other words, if you consciously want something, whether it be money, relationships, etc. and aren’t receiving it, you have a subconscious belief that is contrary to what you consciously claim that you want and it is that belief that is keeping whatever it is from being realized in the physical world, and in many cases creating exactly the opposite of what it is that you want.

Although this isn’t knowledge that is held and accepted by the majority, it has been scientifically proven through quantum physics and has actually been known and shared by spiritual teachers for thousands of years. What many used to call un-provable nonsense is now actually being discovered and proven by modern day science.

So how can you overcome this conflict and begin producing only the desired results? By releasing the old negative emotions that have been stored in the subconscious and guarding what you allow to be stored in it in the future. Become conscious of what you allow the subconscious to absorb and begin the habit of feeding it only the information that will serve your needs.

Begin each day by absorbing some positive information from some source and eliminate the constant negativity that is continually shared through people, TV, newspapers, etc.

It is this constant bombardment of negativity that plays a huge role in shaping your thoughts, both conscious and subconscious, and it is those thoughts that determine your life.

What You Think About You Bring About.

"It's my fault"

Whether I succeed or fail it is my choice and my doing....whether I make the decision consciously or unconsciously.

Everyday we have an opportunity to begin again.   We get a fresh start.... a
new beginning if you will.  

People blame their plight in life on other people but we have to own that we made those decisions, we had involvement in the outcome.  Even if someone made the decision for you, somewhere they formed an opinion of you and that is how the decision was made. 
Right or wrong we have to live with our daily choices we have made in our life.

Every once in a while I get to feeling sorry for myself and I simply have to read the following poem and I snap out of it.

"I have never seen a wild thing feel sorry for itself.  A bird will fall frozen dead from it's branch without ever
feeling sorry for itself."
H. Lawrence

 I tell my self I am responsible for my outcomes.  If it fails it is my doing not someone elses fault.