You’re a competent sales consultant, right?

Given current economic circumstances, your results aren’t too bad, right?

Why bother to put a lot of time and effort into self improvement?

If you believe the pundits, the road to wealth is investment.

If you look at it from the perspective of investing in assets to increase your wealth it starts to look a little different.

Other than a house and a car, the only asset anyone has to produce income is their skills, knowledge and ability that they can offer to someone in return for income.

It is common knowledge that the better the asset the more people will pay for it. It is no different when you consider your skills, knowledge and ability. These are the assets you posses, so the higher the level of your skills, knowledge and abilities the higher price you can receive.

Value is relative. That is value can only be measured when you compare it with something. For example, in the case of a sales consultant their value is measured in terms of the finite results they produce. That is compared to the expected outcomes agreed upon, your KPIs.

Take a moment and reflect on how frequently you exceed your KPIs. Do you consistently exceed them? Or have they become the ceiling of your results?

I do not believe there is an individual on the planet who cannot improve in some aspect of their life. I’d be very interested to meet such a person.

If I am correct then it is logical to assume that each and every sales consultant in the company is capable of significant improvement in performance.

That is not to say that our consultants are not trying, or coasting, not at all.

Recently we had a discussion on expectations and how limiting, or liberating they can be.

Let’s go one step further and look at how you can invest in ourselves to produce a better you.

Think back to the time when mobile telephones were built like bricks. All you could do was either take or make a single call. Look at them today. The range of applications is mind boggling.

It is said the shelf life of a new computer model is about three months before an improved model is on the market. The rate of change in life is constantly accelerating and we need to be growing and expanding just to keep up.

So, investment in your skills, knowledge and abilities is vital if you are to realize your potential and live the successful life you want.

How do you do it?

Let’s look at it from the perspective of your professional life, although the same principles apply to your personal universe.

The very best professionals in any activity have a very thorough grasp of the basics of the activity and they continually revise the basics as well as look for the latest developments in their craft.

I recently sent an email to all consultants offering three e-books on selling skills. I am not surprised at the identity of those who responded.

It is no coincidence that those who responded are already producing good results, in spite of the difficult economic times we are facing.

This ties in completely in the level of expectation we have. If your attitude is, “near enough is good enough” then you have already lost the battle. I cannot emphasize enough that your expectations are what you create for your future. It is rare to exceed what you expect.

Even when you exceed your expectations, how strong is the urge to downplay the results and assign the cause to something other than yourself? “I was just lucky,” “Good fortune,” “It just fell into place.” All these statements go to undermine your strength as they deny the fact that any success is usually the result of YOUR effort, creativity, determination and courage.

Accept credit for what you can, and have achieved. Recognise however, that by tomorrow, today’s success will be history. Continuous effort, creation and action are the only paths to continuing success. To be able to do more you must know more and you can’t know more unless you take every opportunity to learn and develop.

It is human nature to want stability and predictability in our lives. But doing the same old things each and every day will never stretch you and bring about development. It is only when you step into the unknown, open your mind to new experiences, knowledge and viewpoints that you develop.

Unless each week, each day, each moment is a journey to continuous improvement, you will fall behind. It is far easier to be in front of the game than forever trying to catch up.

So, how do you start on the road to continuous improvement? You look at the successful people around you. Ask them what they do and how they do it.

It is a fact that if a successful person does something and you do the same thing, you will be successful. You may not do quite as well as the successful person, but that is only because you haven’t yet got the experience of doing the successful action.

You read books, listen to cds, read industry journals, you listen to your peers. It doesn’t mean that everything you read and hear will necessarily be beneficial, or applicable to your particular circumstance. But constant exposure to new information, viewpoints and experiences will have a cumulative effect and you will become far more professional in every way if you seek to learn.

We are unique individuals, and will put our own spin on whatever we try to do. That will produce a variation in the result and you must be prepared to do something new quite badly at first.

With practice, you will improve and, if you persist, learning from every mistake, you will master any skill, knowledge or ability.

• Ask questions.
• Read books.
• Observe successful people.
• Be prepared to try.
• Persist and you will succeed.

Have you ever wondered why it is that you find some activities easy to do and you have great skill in that area? Conversely, have you ever been frustrated at being weak at some things. Not seeming to ‘get it’ and failing or not performing well?

Why is it that some people are skillful in some areas and apparently ‘stupid’ in others?

It’s all to do with the fact that we are unique individuals and we all have skills somewhere. What determines our natural ability includes our experiences and the decisions we make about them.

Here’s an interesting observation. Have you noticed you seem to like those activities that you are good at and tend to avoid those you do not like? Those activities you do not like are, co-incidentally those you have less competence at.

Whether you like something because you are good at it or are good at it because you like it is not important. What is important is to recognize that the relationship exists.

If you think of something you are really good at you will find you tend to feel a certain way. Think for a moment and recreate the way you feel. What is the feeling like?

Observe your level of confidence about the activity? Yes, that’s right, you have a high level of certainty. What is that certainty based on? It’s based on previous successful actions.

When you do something successfully what were you thinking at the time? It varies according to the individual and the activity, but be assured, you will find that your were learning or realizing something as you went along.

The main reason we have a low level of ability in any area is that, firstly, we have in place a negative decision regarding the likelihood of success. This negative decision is the result of past negative experience.

The end result of past failure is often confusion and confusion is the result of unknowns. In other words there is something to learn that you did not learn.

Skill in any area of life operates on a gradient scale. The more you know the more you can do, the less you know the greater the difficulty and so your application of the skill suffers.

What is the answer? How can you get over the negatives that face you? The answer is quite simple. If you are having difficulty in an area of your life and you feel negative or unsure of whether you can succeed, recognize that you simply have a learning opportunity.

THERE IS SOMETHING TO KNOW YOU DON’T CURRENTLY KNOW. – THAT’S ALL THAT IS PREVENTING YOU FROM SUCCESS.

So, how do you address this? Whenever you need to learn you must:

ASK QUESTIONS

Go to someone who is successful in the area you are struggling with and ask them how they do it.

So many of us are unwilling to say, “I don’t know.” Please recognize that until you do you cannot progress in improving your skill, knowledge or ability.

The only thing standing in your way of improving your ability is you.

The pathway to increasing your ability in any area is as follows.

OBSERVE

Look realistically at the results of your actions.

BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF

The only one you will fool is yourself.

BE PREPARED TO ADMIT YOU DON’T KNOW

The first step to understanding is this recognition.

ASK QUESTIONS

Be prepared to learn from others.

TRY A DIFFERENT WAY

Try things and be prepared to fail. When you do, try something else until you find what works for you.

RECOGNISE THAT FAILURE IS AN EVENT –
IT IS NOT YOU

Failure is simply the opportunity to do things better next time

ABOVE ALL – PERSIST

The difference between a champion and an also ran is that the champion never gives up.

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GIVE UP

Recession?

Over the last week there have been a number of economic indicators that have flown in the face of all the doom and gloom that has been suffocating us of late.

Unemployment had been expected to soar last month. What happened? It dropped in almost every state of Australia. We have been running at a trade surplus for February and March.

Housing approvals are up. Retail sales are up.
Economists are calling the results “rogue figures.” In English that simply means the outcomes are different to their opinions and so must be wrong in some way.

Last week we looked at perception and reality. In the case above, the estimates of the ‘economists’ are perceptions and the outcomes are reality.

When you have a recession you expect housing demand to drop, unemployment to soar, overseas trade to run at a deficit and retail spending to plunge.

In Forbes magazine, one of the most respected financial publications in the US, there was an article this week with the headline “The Recession is over.”

As in Australia, they pointed to a number of economic indicators that had ‘turned around’ and signs of the beginnings of a return of confidence and economic activity were evident.

That is not to say there will not be difficult times ahead and that we can now relax and we will see a return of the ‘good old days.”

What it does mean is that we are picking ourselves up, in spite of the doomsday predictors and the future is looking more positive than for some time.

Perception is a powerful force and we can put it to work for us all. How do we do that?

Let me tell you something interesting. The more agreement there is in terms of perception the greater chance it will become reality.

Therefore, what we can do is see all the positives in the services we offer and gain client’s agreement on those positives.

Did you know that every dollar that is spent in the economy can mean up to twenty dollars of wealth creation?

It’s called the accelerator effect. Here’s how it works.
You buy something for ten dollars
The seller makes one dollar profit
The nine dollars goes into wages, inventory costs etc
The worker buys food with his share of the nine dollars, say five dollars
The company buys more stock, say three dollars
The government gets one dollar in tax

Each of the recipients of money then spends it with similar outcomes. In our restricted example ten dollars becomes twenty dollars and that’s just the start of the process.

So, the confidence to spend one dollar is where it all starts. How a recession comes about is simply the unwillingness to spend, which shrinks the level of economic activity and so it goes.

The single most important driver of economic activity is CONFIDENCE.

Another way of saying confidence is certainty. Certainty comes from what you perceive; in other words, PERCEPTION.

Get enough people agreeing on something and it becomes REALITY.

Reality is a solid, concrete outcome.

So,

BE POSITIVE

GAIN AGREEMENT ON POSITIVES

INCREASE YOU CLIENT’S CERTAINTY BY BEING CERTAIN YOURSELF.

Remember, you get what you focus on.

Focus on avoiding failure and you will create failure.

Focus on finding ways to increase the positives in your life and you will prosper.

Also you will see no ‘call to action’ so favoured by the marketers as a means of making the item scarce, therefore valuable. No showy testimonials, no money back guarantee in 90 days. In fact, no marketing effort whatsoever.

As a result I have not sold anywhere near as many of my DVDs as I would have liked. Now, whenever you wish to learn about something you must ask questions. So, my first question is why?

It could be because I haven’t done all the whizz bang marketing actions I am told is necessary to be a successful e-entrepreneur.

Perhaps my products don’t work.

Both of those may be true, particularly as I haven’t broadcast testimonials. If you look in the section marked “What People are Saying.” you will see testimonials. I have decided not to keep them to myself anymore.

As to the material not being effective, read the testimonials.

I will never tell you lies as to ‘this is the last opportunity at this cost,’ ‘expires at midnight,’ or any of the other fanciful tales we see everywhere.

I will tell you the reason why I set up HOWCANI.

Over many years I read, researched, trained hundreds of people in many of the soft skills. I have sold successfully and have worked as a transport executive in one of the largest transport conglomerates in the country. My experience is varied, but has always had a common theme. The realization that the most valuable asset any company has is its people.

I have devoted my life to searching for answers and delivering these answers so that people can realize their very considerable potential. I created the DVDs do that I could reach a broader audience and so do more good. I do not offer huge discounts or specials. My costs are steady and so are my prices.

I simply want you to share in what I have learnt. Every datum on the DVDs is true and works.

Please have a look. I will guarantee your money back if you don’t improve your skills knowledge or ability as a result of what you learn.

Live Well

Ollie Lind

This next five days I am running a boot camp for new salespeople. This I am really looking forward to. I have a couple of people from Queensland and some Sydney people attending here in Sydney. They are young, bright eyed and full of hope and anticipation for the careers they are about to embark upon.

Why am I looking forward to five gruelling days of a boot camp where they will stumble, fall, make mistakes and go through more confusion than they have ever experienced? There are many reasons, but the most pressing one is that I know that, at the end of the week, thay will be certain of what they know, they will appreciate that they are now at the start of a brilliant new adventure and that their future is limited only by their own considerations.

What will I get out of it? I believe my Dharma, or purpose, in life is to assist people to become greater than they believe possible. I know they will all progress down the road to understanding. Some will travel further than others, but they will all be better for the experience. Sometimes people have come to the realization that Sales is not their path. Better they discover that at the beginning than after perhaps years of frustration and disappointment.

I am pleased to say that almost all who have been through one of my boot camps has gone on to success in sales. More importantly, they have become more capable of handling the human experience; connection with others. Another reason I am excited at the prospect of this boot camp is that I will learn a great deal from these students. I will learn about them personally, I will see them try and succeed at the skills they are learning and I will know that they have become effective learners due to the Philosophy of Learning I teach to all my students.

Don’t you find it ironic that the most important and fundamental skill of all is not formally taught? I refer to the skill of learning. People I train are always exposed the Socratic principles that give them the tools of inquiry and the pathway to understanding.

So, I really have a heightened sense of anticipation about tomorrow and the coming days. I commend you to try and cultivate a sense of delicious anticipation for each day you occupy on this beautiful planet of ours.

Live well,

Ollie Lind

Anybody who says he has never failed either has never attempted to do anything, or is very careless with the truth. We are all “work in progress.”

I was at the gym this morning doing my Sunday morning workout. I was puffing and sweating as usual when a thought crept into my head. I have been playing competition squash for many years and have had a real problem with my forehand.

My trainer, who is an expert squash player (the guy can do anything!) Gave me a lesson the other day, so I thought I’d jump on the court and hit a few balls. I know a great deal about learning and you’d think I’d be pretty expert and taking on a skill.

Well, I kept in mind the instruction he had given me and started hitting up and down the wall. After about fifteen minutes I was hitting the ball pretty well and began to congratulate myself at licking the problem. I took a break for a couple of minutes and started again.

I was right back where I had been. My muscle memory had taken over and I had to go back to conscious effort to correct it.

It just reminded me that the journey is never ending and it is on the journey that life happens. All life is “work in progress.” The living part is where we make the effort to do it better and actually experience the ups and downs.

We really are a “Work in Progress.”

Live well,

Ollie

He was certainly trying hard, he was always on the telephone or on the road. He was seeing as many people as he could, but nothing seemed to be going right for him. The prospects were interested, yes, “I’ll call you soon” etc. Nothing seemed to work.

I had a one on one interview with him and quietly asked him when the trouble started. He had great difficulty pinning it down. At first he said it was just bad luck and he was just having a bad run. He felt all he had to do was keep going and it would turn out okay in the end.

I said to him, “If you keep on doing what you are doing you will keep getting the result you are currently getting. We have to isolate what the outness is.”

In my experience, if a consultant has been sucessful and then goes into a trough (assuming others are still being successful) then, logically, the consultant has stopped doing something that was working.

We humans have a penchant for gaining a level of knowledge and understanding of a skill, knowledge or ability and automatically assume we know it all. We then, for some obscure reason (I actually know the reason, but that is for another discussion) alter our successful set of actions to “do it better.” On most occasions we crash.

It’s not that we necessarily do something wrong, we simply LEAVE SOMETHING OUT. WE OMIT A SUCCESSFUL ACTION.

I found out (eventually) that he had changed his way of sourcing sales leads. He shifted to a ‘more efficient’ method. He stopped cold calling and simply drove around his area and recorded company details so that he could telephone later for an appointment.

He stopped ‘presenting the body’ and so missed an opportunity to more exactly qualify the possible lead and develop rapport with the receptionist.

As soon as I identified what he had omitted his eyes widened and he said. “You know, it was two weeks after that that the slump started. He grinned and looked across at me. “I won’t have that problem again.”

We did many more things in the two days and, overall, much progress was made. We looked at the DVD on managing fear and applied it to the sales situation and, to my delight, a couple of the guys realised the application of managing fear in personal situations.

But it was the discovery of what the consultant discovered about what he was NOT doing that stuck in my mind.

He told me he had the best time.

Guess what, so did I.

Live well,

Ollie Lind

They arrived here in Sydney, bright eyes and full of anticipation. Oh, quite a bit of fear too. I smiled inwardly as I introduced myself. We had a lot to do and not enough time to get them where they needed to go. To give you an idea of the task in front of them, their reference note books had ninety pages, there were fourteen dvds on technical aspects of sales and a number of practical drills that had to be done.

It looked like mission impossible, but that’s the fun of the challenge. I opened the boot camp by demonstrating to them how difficult learning can be. Then we covered my favourite topic, the philospohy of learning. Now, when you mention philosophy most people think of sage old people speaking about abstract ideas that few understand.

Well, nothing could be further from the truth. The philosophy of learning I, along with a close collegue, developed some years ago, is an interactive, practical application of Soctraic thinking applied to the Twenty First Century. We focus on not only giving effective learning strategies, but imparting understanding about what happens as we are exposed to new information. This brings about a rapid escalation of the learning rate, but more importantly, the learner really begins to understand what he has to do to effectively master any subject.

We spent the first morning teaching them how to learn. When you stop and think about it, it is the one subject that is not formally taught at school, yet it is the single most vital skill necessary for personal development.

We finished up late today. Everyone was exhausted, but exhilarated at the same time. I get a real buzz seeing ‘the lights go on’ when students really understand the concepts presented.

Everyone passed the course. I am confident they will all be successful in their new careers. They haven’t reached their destination of becoming professional sales consultants yet. They have all made a solid start and know what they know.

More importantly, they understand that every day of their professional lives must be a learning experience and, now that they know how to learn, they are certain that the future will be bright.

I am sitting here, thinking about these young people and the exciting future they have in front of them. I am happy to have made a contribution to their future. It reminds me constantly why I set up this website and the purpose of howcani.

The single most important fundamental skill anyone can possess is the skill to learn. The learning philosophy works because it allows people to understand not only the correct strategies to learn, but gives an understanding of how we make sense of our environment and life in general.

I have included some quotes from the students on the “What People are Saying” heading elsewhere on the site.

Have a look at the introduction to the learning philosophy on the products page. It’s worth a look.

Live well,

Ollie Lind

As I said, I was saddened, but would not resile from what I believed to be true. I thought a great deal about the situation as we will be running into each other at least weekly and quite possibly sooner. In spite of the abuse he hurled at me I decided that he must have felt justified in his universe.

So, I didn’t hold any ill feelings, just decided to allow him to be as he was. Well, we crossed paths today and I just sat to one side and concentrated on what I was doing.

He called to me and I acknowledged him.  He said, “You can smile, can you.” I grinned and nodded. We started talking, in a guarded fashion about things that were ‘safe,’ that is, we were unlikely to disagree on.

We’re not back where we were, but there is some communication going on. I think he feels better about it now. I hope so.

When he made the reach to me I had a decision to make. I could have brought about an unpleasant situation or I could have responded positively. I did the latter.

He, like me, is a proud man and It took some courage on his part to make the move.

Hell, good friends are hard to find and there is enough angst in the world without creating more. I am positive the situation eased because I decided in my universe to hold nothing negative from the experience.

I’m pleased I was right.

Ollie 

Yep, the final round before the finals. I watched as the families walked down the street towards the Sydney Football ground. Mums and dads, kids tagging along. All wearing their red and white beanies, or guernseys with the red ‘V’ on white.

They looked like a tribe of warriors going to battle. In a way, I suppose they were. It struck me how the wearing of the team insignia cemented the families, and the group in general. They belonged to something bigger than themselves and it enhanced their sense of community.

What a great thing, particularly for the kids. They were learning one of life’s most important lessons in the guise of a good day out with Mum and Dad. It is an integral element of life that we connect with others and BELONG.

Well, it’s spring and it is the season for new beginnings. I am often saddened by the number of people who feel they do not belong and so begin their journey of isolation that eventually leads to a wasted life.

It’s also Father’s Day in this country and my thoughts go out to those fathers who, for one reason or another cannot at least communicate with their children.

I don’t intend to be maudlin, but I can’t help but wonder how much better life would be if we took that little extra effort and let those we care about know how we feel. Be vulnerable and exposed. That way you indicate you are willing to experience life honestly and without prejudice. Simply being honest with others and, most importantly, ourselves.
Make a new beginning, no matter how small, and let someone know you care.

Regards,

Ollie Lind