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Tried, true and potentially tired

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  Everyone suffers from fatigue on occasion. Membership presentations can suffer from the same problem: repeated too often - word for word, thought for thought - their edge can dull. Moreover, circumstances and the business environment are not the same as they were just 12 months ago, providing even more cause for you to continually update and improve your membership presentation to reflect these changes. When was the last time you reviewed your presentation's key points and assessed their effectiveness? What about your opening 30 seconds, which is so crucial to a presentation's success? By reviewing these elements on a regular basis, you can rejuvenate a tired presentation and breathe new life into your sales. -Jim SuccessCo.com

Between the gaps

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  As an avid mountain biker, I have learned the importance of focusing on where you want the bike to go, rather than on where you don't want to end up. This lesson has never hit home so well as it did when I approached a tiny gap between two rocks and, instead of focusing on where I wanted to go - the space between them - I concentrated on what I didn't want to hit - the rocks. Of course, I ended up crashing and burning. The same lesson can be applied to a successful sales professional. It is important to begin each day focusing on exactly where you want to be by the end of the day, week or month, and not on the obstacles that may prevent you from getting there. This positive approach is a common technique possessed by top development professionals, and using it regularly will help you achieve your goals. Jim SuccessCo.com

A tough audience

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  Obviously, most sales professionals would rather talk to a friendly prospect than a tough or obnoxious one, but the payoff can be big for those confident enough to pursue the latter. By not taking a prospect's gruff style personally and by maintaining a consultative approach, even the toughest prospects can open up once you break through their initial, oftentimes superficial defenses. Another way of looking at this is that the competition for their business is so much less, because the average salesperson doesn't have the skill or fortitude to stand toe-to-toe with them.

Perfect practice

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  Several years ago, I had the great pleasure of inviting an Olympic athlete to speak at one of my advanced membership development and retention workshops. A parallel we discussed between professional new member sales and athletics is the fact that " practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. " As an athlete, he shared that he spent more than 1,000 hours in pre-competition practice for every one minute of competition. I encourage everyone to think about their "perfect practice time." If the 1,000-to-1 ratio sounds like a bit much, at least consider the words of Abraham Lincoln: "Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

Drawing Inspiration from Newton's Third Law for Life's Ups and Downs

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In the midst of life's tumultuous journey, there are moments when we find solace in the most unexpected places. Take, for instance, Sir Isaac Newton's third law of physics, a principle that transcends the realms of science and extends its wisdom into the fabric of our daily lives. Newton's third law succinctly states, "To every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Although initially formulated to describe the fundamental nature of forces in the physical world, this law's application is far-reaching, touching the very essence of our human experiences. Consider those days when everything seems to be going awry—when the challenges outnumber the victories, and the road ahead appears daunting. It is during these moments of adversity that Newton's third law can serve as a beacon of hope. Just as every action begets an equal and opposite reaction in the world of physics, so too does life offer the promise of a brighter day after the darkness. The wis

Food for thought: Give yourself a raise!

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  If you are ready to be more aggressive with your time management, you can increase your productivity and income by more efficiently using only forty minutes a day - twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the afternoon. By focusing on just these two small chunks of time, you can . . . Add 200 minutes per week ( 3.33   hours per week); Add 860 minutes per month (14.33 hours =   1.79 days per month ); and Add 10,320 minutes per year (172 hours =   21.5 days per year   - a full working month)!

Habit Creep

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Like two sides of a sharp blade, habit creep can work for you or against you; it can cut to make your position easier and nourish you - or make you bleed, with either happening so gradually that the effects are often overlooked and unrecognized, hence, habit creep.  One of the ways I demonstrate this natural phenomenon is by having folks watch a short video that beautifully exhibits the gradual effects of habit creep.