Can You Sell Ideas to Others?

No matter what type of business you’re in or what position you hold, you must be able to sell your ideas to others.

If you’re the owner, then you have to sell your ideas to your employees or your board of directors.  If you’re an employee of a business then you must be able to sell your ideas to your boss, your company, or your clients.  It seems that in this life, no matter whether it’s in business, relationships, or parenthood you had better be adept at selling your ideas to others.

It isn’t hard to master this procedure but it takes practice.  The first and most important rule of thumb is to remember that one’s credibility and power to make the desired changes must be earned.  Here are some specific points to remember:

• Be absolutely positive that you understand every aspect related to your proposal.  If there are obstacles within your organization to your idea, find a way around them before you make your suggestions.  Then when they are raised, you can come up with a solution.

Being Busy does not equal Being Productive

How many people do you know who are so busy being busy that they never seem to get anything worthwhile done? Does that describe you, maybe even just a little bit?

Being busy all the time, through necessity, is a curse. Being busy all the time, for the sake of it, is madness.

Continual busy-ness eventually leads to stress, particularly if results are minimal. You see, it will get to a point where something has to give way. It’s like filling a balloon with air. Eventually no more air will fit inside the balloon and it will do the only thing it can. It will burst.

How to Design your Website

You’re A Salesperson in Your Life!

Strange as it may seem, our life is made up of a series of “sales presentations“.  Sales may not be your gig, but if you’re the boss you’re making  presentations everyday.  Be it a pitch to your Board, announcing a policy change to employees, selling an idea to  your spouse, or just trying to win others over to your point of view - you need to punch up your people skills for winning pitches.

Human nature is such that people support solutions that they help create, so involve them by allowing your audience to participate with questions or ideas. It goes without saying that to not involve key people is risky, because messages can be misunderstood.   Your plans may be derailed before they begin if sufficient “buy-in” is lacking.  Use lots of open-ended questions in your presentation to draw out the silent type.

Preparation is a key to success.  Prepare your listeners to what’s coming during or before your presentation.  Try these pre-meeting tactics:

• Assign task-related pre-work. This could be pre-reading or study of a problem, and the preparations of possible solutions.  An example could be, “go and visit three kinds of accounts before the meeting.”

The Toughest Decision Of All

Many of us are influenced by the sports ethic: Never give up! When a basketball team is down by 20 with 30 seconds on the clock, the players never stop working. Spectators might be filing out, and the winning team might be deep into the bench, but the game goes on.

If your game is a business or a job,you won’t hear a whistle to signal the end of the game. If you keep going and win, you may gain a lifelong prize. If you keep throwing good money and energy into a losing cause, the whistle can blow for unemployment or bankruptcy.

Work, Work, Work

Time, time, time. It seems there is never enough of this precious life support. In a previous story about time, I quoted the following aphorism:

TIME IS MY FRIEND,

TIME IS MY ALLY

I HAVE ALL THE TIME I NEED

FOR EVERYTHING I WANT TO DO.

I received a lot of grateful responses and some questions, indicating just how hard it is to balance our time requests these days. I want to respond to a subscriber who said she is “too busy to attend to personal needs vs. work, work, work” and is looking for a way to take care of herself while meeting the requirements of her workplace.

7 Habits Of Ineffective People

For maximum effectiveness in life, love or business, it helps to have the right habits. You knew that, of course, but don’t forget that

it also helps to not have the wrong habits. What are these?

Seven Effectiveness-Killing Habits

1. Short term thinking. I knew a man who paid $700 rent instead of $550 per month for a nicer place. The landlord didn’t require a deposit, so he could move in for $300 less. Now he pays $1,800 more per year in rent. Borrowing from a loanshark to get into the other place would have made more sense, even at 200% annual interest.

Work Life Balance - Work Life A Balancing Act

Australians are loosing their laidback, carefree reputation, as we continue to work longer hours, exercise less and neglect our leisure and family time.

Recent research indicates that 67 per cent of Australian professionals spend at least 20 hours a week thinking about their job when they should be relaxing, and less than half take their entitled annual leave.

Why is juggling work and life priorities an increasingly difficult challenge for many people?

Could it be we are trying to pack more and more into our busy lives?

Positive Attitude Is Not Enough

Contrary to the popular saying “attitude is everything” attittude is not enough. You can have the right attitude and all the motivation in the world and still wind up playing “dead atheist.”

You know, all dressed up and nowhere to go!

The key is that the right attitude must be followed by the right actions. That’s the bottom line of the doing part you mentioned in your question.

Renowned motivational expert Anthony Robbins says that one of the keys to success is to “take action.” In his work with getting people to take action, Robbins speaks often of “massive, intelligent action.”

The Up Side Of Procrastination

If you are like me, you have a tendency to put off until tomorrow what you could do today. In his book, “The Time Trap: How to Get More Done in Less Time”, R. Alec Mackenzie says procrastination is “… a close relative of incompetence and a handmaiden of inefficiency.” Ouch. I hope that got your attention.

Mackenzie defines procrastination as deliberately avoiding an unpleasant task. So, he is not talking about forgetfulness, although I think the forgetful person may sometimes get accused of procrastination.

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