Todays blog is titled,THE EIGHT-STEP PROCESS TO BETTER ASKING   by Mark Victor Hansen. Mr. Hansen, co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul Series, has for more than 25 years, uniquely focused on the vital elements of human behavior that most affect our personal and professional lives and has influenced society’s top leaders and the general public on a global scale. Below is what he has to say..

When you begin to ask for what you need and want, you’ve taken control of your life, and are proactively steering its direction. Many wonderful and great things come to you as a result.
But just how do you go about getting started asking? Here are the primary action steps to take:

Act as if you expect to get it. It is of primary importance that your state of thinking contain a solid level of certainty and expectation when you ask. This state of mind will affect everything else – your body posture, eye contact, tone of voice, and choice of words. Think for a moment – you’ve been in situations when you’ve asked and had every certainty that you would receive exactly what you were asking for. Remember how you felt then? Keep that in your mind with every request you make.

Ask someone who can give it to you.

Before you ask someone for something, make an assessment of whether or not they will be able to give it to you. Some people are very qualified and motivated to help. Others just aren’t capable of delivering – watch people and review that capacity. Have you ever seen them capable of delivering what you’re about to ask them, or are you just hoping the potential is there?

Get the other person’s full attention.

Your request deserves that respect! If the person cannot give you his or her full attention, set up an appointment, ask to talk during the commercial break, or ask them to schedule time for you in the very near future.

Be clear and specific.

Be as concise as you possibly can in your requests. Ask for what you want, not for what you don’t want. At the same time, be careful what you ask for – more often than not, you get exactly what you’ve requested!

Ask from the heart.

You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough! Keep that unbridle passion for your purpose, project or goal stirring in your soul as you begin to ask, and maintain eye contact throughout the entire ask process. This further establishes your integrity, trustworthiness and passion on the subject.

Ask with humor and creativity.

Humor captures our attention and breaks down our defenses. Creativity disarms our resistance and opens our minds to new possibilities.

Give something to get something.

As Zig Ziglar says, “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”  When you’re asking, always be sure to explain what’s in it for them, how they benefit and win because they’ve acted positively on your request.

Ask repeatedly.

If someone says, “No!” you say “Next!” Expect no’s – even on a repeated basis from the same people you’re asking. Your tenaciousness and perseverance will undoubtedly pay off.

So You’ve Asked and They Still Say “No.” Now what?

Don’t lose your cool when you’re faced with resistance! A powerful request can only be powerful if you’re also willing to be declined. Ask with authority, prepare yourself for a “no,” be gracious in receiving that “no,” then make one of two choices:

* Ask the person you just made the request of to help you with a solution. They may know someone who CAN give you a “yes” and, given some freedom and respect from you, they often wander their own way into providing your “yes.”

* Walk away without burning your bridges. You probably just came across someone who feasibly could not help you. The world is much too small and inter-connected to lash out at even one person.

Continued success,
Herb Hunter, 734-285-6792 , hunter645@aol.com

Paul J Meyer is one of my all time favorites. Today’s blog is by Mr. Meyer titled, The Name Of The Game Is Prospecting. It is loaded with great information.

Written by Paul J. Meyer
A true picture of waste and lack of direction is the salesperson who begins the workday with honest intentions, but with no idea who to contact to make a sale or presentation.

Unless you form the habit of prospecting…
Unless you develop and sharpen that habit into an obsession…

Your day’s work will be aimless,  And, you will accomplish nothing.

No sales will be made unless they are lined up in advance.  Successful sales come about only when you see enough of the right people…at the right time…and under the right conditions. I’ve said it countless times before, and I’ll say it again:
The name of the game is prospecting!

It’s a fact of life that can neither be rationalized nor overlooked: the salesperson who is not prospecting is not selling!

Not long ago, a large direct-sales organization conducted a nationwide survey to determine exactly what part of the selling process was most difficult for sales people…

THREE PERCENT of the sales people polled said the approach was most difficult.

SIX PERCENT said representation was the hardest.

TEN PERCENT experienced the most difficulty with closing…

BUT, FORTY-NINE PERCENT were honest enough to admit that prospecting was the most difficult phase to master.
Do you know what that means?
It means that no matter how skilled or successful you are now, you can be beaten by anyone who masters the art of prospecting.

It is IMPERATIVE that you develop a consistent and ongoing system of prospecting.  This is not something that you just do on Monday.  It is something you do at least six days a week until you develop:

a prospecting AWARENESS,

a prospecting CONSCIOUSNESS,

a prospecting ATTITUDE, and

a prospecting HABIT.

Set a goal to not conclude a sale until you have at least four to eight referrals from the new client.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who KNOW and those who DON’T KNOW.

Who do you know in every area that can be a resource or piece of your network that can lead you to a prospect?  The daily habit of prospecting will add to your system, will add to your sales expertise, and more importantly, will add to your enthusiasm and increase your effectiveness in every area of marketing.

The foundation of all successful sales people is prospecting.

I became quite famous years ago for developing a prospecting system in the marketing organizations I headed. One of my favorite lines (which has been quoted thousands of times) is: I would rather be a master prospector than the wizard of speech and have no one to tell my story to.

Your prospecting consciousness is the KEY to your business, the SOURCE of your sales achievements, and the BEGINNING of each successful day.

Prospecting is to successful selling as breathing is to living.

The SUCCESSFUL SALESPERSON must prospect all the time – every day, every hour, every minute – in order to survive and to win!

In successful selling,

The name of the game IS PROSPECTING!!

To Your Success,

Herb Hunter, 734-285-6792, hunter645@aol.com

We want to be successful; we want to live a life of significance filled with joy, happiness, meaning and purpose. What is holding us back? Is it a lack of time, money, education or genetics? Og Mandino suggests that the single greatest barrier is simply unhealthy habits of thinking.

In Mr. Mandono’s bestseller, The Greatest Salesman in the World, we find the Ten Scrolls, ten time-tested principles of success. In Scroll I, Og writes, “As a child I was slave to my impulses; now I am slave to my habits. I have surrendered my free will to the years of accumulated habits and the past deeds of my life have already marked out a path which threatens to imprison my future.” Og continued, “My bad habits must be destroyed and new furrows prepared for good seed.”

Do our current habits of thinking drive and support success or sabotage our efforts? If it is the latter, what price are we paying in our businesses and personal relationships when we allow our thoughts to control our lives?

Is it time to prepare new furrows, new neuropathways, by consciously planting new and healthy thoughts in our minds? What can we reasonably expect as these new and good seeds grow and mature? James Allen gives us this profound promise. He writes, “Radically alter your thoughts and you will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will affect in the material conditions of your life.” How is this possible?

When we are committed to altering our thoughts and consciously engage in this process, we learn how to step back from unhealthy thought processes and make different and better choices. From this heightened level of awareness we focus on connecting, loving and serving others. As a result, huge reserves of cooperation and productivity are unleashed in others and we are the beneficiaries.

From up here, free from the dark dungeons of fantasy and imagined catastrophe, we engage in vivid visualization that is clear and constructive. We receive inspired ideas, impressions and solutions to problems that ignite our passion – a willingness to suffer for something we love. We feel connected and in partnership with a power greater than ourselves. Our self- esteem begins to heal.

We bring this clear and inspired vision into the now. Instead of being acted upon, we are in passion-driven action creating value everywhere we go. We are real, genuine and authentic without the need to impress, pretend, feel ashamed or fear. We fully use our natural genius and experience a deep sense of accomplishment. We let go of the need to be right. We let go of resistance, resentment and even rebellion. We find joy in our journey regardless of the firestorms of life that may rage around us.

In short, we more clearly see opportunity while others remain mired in fear, frustration and discouragement. We live on purpose, serve others and intentionally create the success we desire.

I encourage each of you to get the book, The Greatest Salesman in the World. It can change your life.

To your success,
Herb Hunter, 734-285-6792, hunter645@aol.com

A good friend of mine recently came across the Positivity Blog by Henrik Edberg and sent it to me. I just love it! He has great content – one post I wanted to share is about one of my favorite leaders – Abraham Lincoln. This may be a little long  – but the advice is fantastic!

“Die when I may, I want it said by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.”

“With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.”

Even if you are not an American – as I – you’ve probably still heard of Abraham Lincoln. He was the president who introduced and worked on measures to free the slaves and led the country through the Civil War. A war that had just ended when Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in Ford’s Theatre.

But what can Abraham Lincoln help us with today? Well, here are 10 powerful and timeless fundamentals. I hope you’ll find something helpful.

1. See the positive in people.

“If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.”

“The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.”

What you focus on you will find. In a situation, in a person. There is always plenty of good things and plenty of bad things to discover.

So you need to keep your focus steadily on what you want to find. Don’t let it waver just because you are in a “negative” situation or someone just said/did something “negative”. If your focus gets scattered, try to get it back into a more useful place as quickly as you can.

You can develop whatever view of the world and people that you like. You can go looking for the negative in people and feel a short burst of good emotions as find something negative about a person and feel like you are “right”.

Or you can develop a habit of looking for the positive. A habit where you can expect people to treat you in a positive way.

Because we do to a large extent teach people how we want to be treated. If we expect other people to help us and treat us well then they are more likely to do so than if we are negative and expect to be treated poorly.

This may sound a bit weird, but how we expect to be treated can have a big effect on how the world sees us.

2. Be honest.

“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.”

This is a pretty practical thing. Being honest will for several reasons work better in the long run. Of course, you don’t have to go out of your way to be honest and hurt people though. You can just as well choose to be silent if you like. Here are just a few practical reasons to minimize or just stop lying altogether.

* Your words aren’t everything. Words are only 7 percent of communication. The rest are body language and your voice tonality. And it’s through those channels that the real you will shine through. People will in some way sense that something is wrong, that you aren’t being honest and authentic if those 93 percent of how you communicate aren’t in alignment with your words. So lying is just a short term solution. Sooner or later people will pick up on it.
* Poor self-image and stress. Cultivating a self-image as someone who lies will make you feel worse about yourself. You’ll feel like a fake and your self-esteem plummets. And if you on the other hand are honest you don’t have to feel like someone that is trapped or on the high-wire all the time.
* People really appreciate authentic communication. What separates people is to a large extent the walls that they build up between themselves. When you put aside personas and lies you can build real connections between you and other people. If you remove these walls of insulation then the people or you are interacting with are likely to reciprocate. And so your relationships can improve and are less likely to be damaged by miscommunication.

3. Unite.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Ego excludes and divides. The ego loves to make someone “the other” to strengthen its own power. It want’s to feel “more” than someone else. More clever. Prettier. Cooler. Wiser. Or more like a victim.

And by making the other even more wrong in your mind the ego grows stronger. However, the ego boosts of good feelings are just temporary. You have to reinforce them continually, just like a caffeine habit.

Consciousness and intelligence includes and accepts. You don’t have to be seduced by your ego’s wish to make people other than you. You can look at the positive in them and at the things you agree about. And be accepting.

Remember, when your thoughts are buzzing around in your head and telling you to exclude or divide in some way then you are listening to your ego. It may tell you that paragraphs just above this one are cheesy and stupid. You may not want to take such thoughts too seriously. You don’t have to.

The most useful advice I’ve found so far to get a handle on the need to divide is to not identify so much with my thoughts or feelings. That doesn’t mean that I stop thinking or feeling. It just means that I realize – and remember in my everyday life – that the thoughts and emotions are just things flowing through me. And that I am the consciousness observing them.

When you realize and remember this it enables you to control the thoughts and feelings instead of the other way around. It enables you to not take your thoughts too seriously and actually laugh at them or ignore them when you feel that your ego is acting out.

When you are not being so identified these things you become more inclined to include things, thoughts and people instead of excluding them. This creates a lot of inner and outer freedom and stillness. Instead of fear, a need to divide your world and a search for conflicts.

4. Create a friend where there is none.

“The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.”

“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”

This is similar to tip #1 and # 3. But slightly different, seen from a slightly different perspective. It is a helpful and a bit unusual way of looking at people who you might perceive as different or other than yourself.

Turning an enemy or someone we don’t like into a friend is difficult because first impressions can be powerful. Our concept of a person can remain intact if we don’t push further and question and explore it. But if you get to know someone better you can often find out quite a few positive and interesting things about them. People are often more intriguing than your first impression of them.

Of course, since the ego needs to tell you that you are right and someone else is wrong then it can be hard to change your opinion of someone. That opinion of him/her is tied up in your ego and fuels your sense of being “right”. Again, the key and the way out here is to not take your thoughts or emotions too seriously. To stay on top of them instead of letting them overwhelm and control you.

This can allow you to open your mind to a change in the relationship.

Now, how can you make him/her your friend? One suggestion would be to follow tip # 1 and start looking for the positive in the person. Then to take the first step and give some kind of value – like help for instance – to that person. And then to take more steps if s/he is not convinced that you want to change the relationship.

5. Believe in and go after your own success.

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”

“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”

If you think you can succeed then you can. Your belief in your own ability to succeed is essential and does not only motivate you to keep going.

It will also tune your reticular activation system – a system within your mind that focuses on things in your surroundings based on what you are thinking – into finding opportunities and solutions in all the those things that are in the background of your world right now. It can become a little bit freaky as things that have been there for a long time start to “pop up” as you change what you are focusing on.

You may have heard that you just have to believe that you can achieve something to do it and that the how you will do it will then present itself along the way. Well, this is how that works. Whatever you focus on persistently you will find in your world. So be careful what you focus on. Remind yourself to keep your focus on what you want. Not the opposite, as is often popular but ineffective.

And don’t wait for too long. Procrastination may just leave you with the crumbs or sometimes nothing really. Taking action is awesome. But taking action with little delay will increase the probability of you actually getting what you want before the window of opportunity closes.

So develop a Just do it! habit. Learn to do some planning but then to take action quickly despite what excuses or other negative things your thoughts and emotions may put up in your way. Know that they may just want to protect you from uncertainty and risks. But also know that you are in charge of them and not the other way around.

6. Persist.

“Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.”

Persistence might not exactly be the sexiest sounding quality. It might not sell a lot of products to people looking for the magic pill. But it is an immensely helpful quality to cultivate and put to use.

If you fail, what do you do? You dust yourself off and try again. If the success you are looking for won’t come that quickly – a pretty likely scenario – then you have to persist. Persistence may be one of the most useful qualities one can have. Not only because you will still be out there in a less competitive playing field as lot other people have given up and gone home. But also because developing patience and being persistent will enable you to get what you want. It may just take a little longer than had hoped for.

7. Sharpen your ax.

“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my ax.”

Instead of just starting to chop with a blunt blade for hours on end it’s a whole lot smarter to first sharpen the blade and then take on the physically harder task of bringing the tree down. This goes for everything.

If you are prepared then it will often be a whole lot easier to get something done. Sometimes it can be the thing that separates people that either keeps chopping until they can’t take it anymore and give up and the people who could get the job done.

So success is not just about doing hard work. It’s also about sharpening your ax at regular intervals and learning new and better ways to take down the trees in your life. And it’s about remembering what trees you want to take down rather than just any tree. However, you don’t want to get stuck in this stage and never take action. As with all things, you have to find a balance by experimenting.

Four suggestions for sharpening your ax are:

* Educate yourself. Do some research into the whatever you want to achieve. Look for the most common mistakes people make. Read books and online. Talk to people who have already been where you want to go.
* Do. Fail. Learn. Do. Knowledge from external sources is great. But the best way to really understand is by doing things. And by learning from your own failures. And then doing again with your new understanding in your mind.
* Manage your energy levels. You don’t just have increase your knowledge and understanding of things. You also have to have the physical energy to get things done when you find your opportunity. Otherwise you may just fall into a procrastinating pattern or back down. So workout. Eat enough. Sleep enough. Basic stuff of course. But if you do it consistently then you’ll increase you chances of succeeding when it’s time to start chopping down your trees. With a high energy level it will be easier to persist until you are done.
* Remind yourself where you are going. A lot of not so important busy work can dull your ax. You need to regularly review your plans and remind yourself of your goals and what you really want. If you don’t keep your eyes on where you want to go you might wind up somewhere completely different.

8. Take a responsibility for your own life.

“You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.”

“You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”

When we are kids people take care of us. They take responsibility. But to become an adult – and not just a kid in a grown up’s body – one has to take responsibility for oneself. There is no other way. Sure, letting someone else take the responsibility may be easier on you.

But without taking responsibility for yourself how can you be free?
How can you really live up you own potential and dreams?

It can be hard to break out of the comfort zone of having other people taking responsibility for us. But if you don’t then you will be trapped by other people’s standards, expectations and limitations. You have to set your own rules for your life. And not fall back into old patterns. A bit scary. But also liberating.

9. Happiness is optional.

“Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.

One big upside of taking responsibility for yourself is that it lets you decide where the standards and limits are set. When you take responsibility for what you do you will also feel an entitlement to do what you feel is right for you, in your life.

And as you delve into the field of personal development you may start to realize that your control and responsibility not only goes for what you do out in the world. But also for your thoughts and emotions. You are to a large extent in charge here too.

When you realize this then you realize that you don’t have to play along with your old patterns of thinking and feeling anymore. You don’t have to play along with is “normal” or common thinking. You don’t have to take your thoughts so seriously. You can choose to not feel insulted when someone says something. You can choose to not to be angry whilst stuck in traffic. You can choose to see the positive in people. And you can choose how happy you will be.

Pain is inevitable in life. But how you choose to process or think about things – and if you let them get stuck in your mind or not – is up to you. Suffering is therefore to a large extent optional. And so is happiness.

10. Live your life fully.

“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

To your success,
Herb Hunter, 734-285-6792, hunter645@aol.com