Among our many cherished verities and assumed assumptions is the widespread belief—nearly universal practice actually—that salespeople are to be paid commissions. It’s the way things are done. Stop signs are red. Salespeople get commissions.

But why?

This is a practice so deeply ingrained that almost everyone assumes that commissions are an unalloyed good, and that salespeople won’t work without them. I’ll return to that notion about work shortly, but it’s somewhat amazing that commissions are so widely lauded when they come laden with so many recurring problems. These issues pop up with distressing regularity.

There are all kinds of problems with commissions, for example, high turnover as salespeople shop jobs to get a slightly more lucrative commission system. Always attempting to maximize personal benefit which results in system gaming like making fake phone calls to hit call numbers, sandbagging deals into the next quarter, sniping new leads, and so on (the list here is actually endless).

The problems include infighting over who gets credit for accounts and sales. They include constantly comparing territories and account value to determine fairness between salespeople. They include an enormous amount of overhead as each salesperson sedulously tracks every transaction no matter how minute to make sure they get paid on it (by the way, they hate having to do this, and it’s a staggering waste of time. It’s also a place where weak salespeople like to hide out).

All of this is organizational dysfunction, and it’s a recipe for resentment and distrust among your team.

Management then tries to correct for these problems. They constantly drop or add ballast. They have to carefully structure the pay plan, the territories, the lead assignments. They have to referee disputes, tweak the various systems, and try to keep everyone happy. It’s like a spinning top and every time it starts to wobble, management has to try to nudge it back. It’s a large amount of effort spent propping up a system that we have all just assumed is necessary.

But it gets even worse, stay tuned for Part 2.

Do you agree or disagree, let your voice be heard and share your thoughts on the subject.

Sales are not often traditionally thought of as a social process. But the behavior of the modern customer is changing. Customers today, can increasingly be described as "social customers," prompting the contemporary sales organization and even the individual salesperson to rethink how they sell. And that can be daunting for many reasons. 

The implications for salespeople are significant. They have to understand that generating leads, managing opportunities and closing deals need fresh approaches and skills in utilizing tools that help enrich customer insights.

Whether it’s a B2B or B2C sale, the customer is expecting you, the sales maven and your company, to know them and what they want. That means that sales intelligence and engaging in the networks the customer participates in are of critical importance.

Here are 5 tips to begin your Social Selling initiative:

EVALUATE WHAT YOU’RE DOING.
Many people on your team probably already use LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, etc. Take stock of how you’re currently connecting with and listening to customers, and see what seems to be working. Where are you successfully engaging and building relationships with prospects and customers?

START BY LISTENING.
Just as you wouldn’t run into a cocktail party and start shoving your business card under everyone’s nose, don’t jump on Twitter and start jabbering about your business. Instead, listen to what your target market is saying. Get a sense for who your customers’ mouthpieces are and their communication and interaction styles.

SHARE INFORMATION.
Create a way for your team members to share information internally. There are a variety of CRM tools to facilitate the tracking and sharing of information company wide. So if at a trade show your marketing manager meets a prospect who loves to ride horses, that information can be entered into a collaborative database and used to strengthen ties during follow-up calls.

COMMIT TO THE PROCESS.
Building relationships online is not something you can do all at once. Realize you may not see the payoff right away, and commit for six months before you evaluate your efforts.

COMMIT TO EVOLUTION.
Your team’s social-selling skills will need to evolve with the Web. Prepare to invest time and effort in updating your social- selling strategy, learning about new tools, and keeping skills sharp.

- The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, an allegorical tale about an Andalusian shepherd boy, written in only two weeks in 1987 because according to the author, “the story was already written in my soul.” It has since become one of the twelve best-selling books of all time.

Whether you offer goods or services, selling is the foundation of your business. Without the generation of sales, your business will fail. Your selling technique and your sales strategy are just a few of the tools used in creating a successful start up business. Whether you are the only salesperson, you have a sales manager or even a sales team, the business must develop an effective sales strategy. 

Pre-Planning the Plan

In order to create a plan for an effective sales strategy, you must first determine what your sales goals and objectives are for your business. Once the objectives are solidified and defined, you will then need to determine a timeline in which you will launch and implement each goal. You also need to use your market research to understand who your customers are, the best way your company can meet the need of the consumer and the best way in which you can reach your target customer in order to develop your sales technique. During the pre-planning stage is the best time to become exhaustively familiar with the products you sell or the service you provide, your sales quotas and your sales territory. You will also need to determine how much of your working capital you will need to devote to developing and implementing your sales strategies. 

Creating the Plan

Once you have your objectives and timeline in place and you understand your market, you can then begin to create your sales strategy plan. You will need to determine your weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly sales goals. From there you can create sales action plans that will help you hit each goal. You will also need to decide if you want one sales strategy for everybody that works for you or if each position has their own unique technique. If you have a small start up business, you can usually get away with having one overall strategy; however, if you have multiple departments or have employers that work off commission, you may want different sales strategies for each position.

Implementing the Plan

Now that you have your sales strategy developed and tailored to meet the specific needs of your business, it is time to put it into action. The first step in implementing your plan for generating sales is knowing your customer and their needs which will allow you to build a rapport with them and lay the foundation for a good business relationship. The cost of your product or service should be explained clearly within your strategy with no hidden costs that are going to surprise the customer later on down the road which is one of the fastest ways to lose return customers. Selling a customer your product or service is always easier when the one doing the selling has confidence in what they are selling. 

Developing an effective sales strategy is crucial for a start up business. This lays the ground work for repeat customers and an on-going and growing generation of sales. Continue satisfying the needs of your customers and they will continue buying from you.

I love it when prospects tell me no, it is the greatest single opportunity to win a life long customer. Think about it for a second, if you have been told no, you now have nothing to lose, you can be bold and outright with your prospect.

I made a living for a few years only working on deals that had told other sales people "no". It was a great learning opportunity for me, imagine calling on someone that has already told your organization no.

What I found is that most of the time the prospects were not saying no to the product or service, they were saying no to the person representing the product or service. I loved it because I was not expected to rescue many of these sales, so I got to be the guy that asked the tough questions to the prospect. 

The point of this post is for you to take a step back and evaluate why you are being told no, it is very easy to blame the product or service you are selling, or your organization as a whole, however it may be you.

The best advice I ever received on being told no was to ask any willing prospect why they said no. Be blunt and ask the hard questions with no emotion attached to the question (i.e."Is the reason you said no based on my product or service, or was it my representation of the product or service?").

You might be surprised what you find out.

Am I crazy or do you agree with me, share with us what tactics you use to overcome "No" in your sales cycles, the comment link is at the top of this post. 

The pinnacle in any person's sales career is when you can confidently say "I know you want me". 

Hold on there all you type "A" personalities, nobody wants you, put the romance novel down and pay attention.

What they want is what you represent. You have built such an awesome relationship with your prospect that you know they want you and better yet they know they want you.

You might be sitting there thinking to yourself, what the hell is he talking about, nobody wants me, they want my product or service.

au contraire mon frere, remember people buy from people.

Here's a short list that I cooked up that will make them want you:

1. The most important of all of them, sell a great product or service that you are passionate about and stand behind.
2. Be yourself, don't try to be what you think your prospect wants you to be. 
3. Have confidence in what you do, you are awesome!
4. Always leave the "terd" on their plate, meaning always leave the next action item with them, make them take action and become invested in the deal.
5. Don't give your power away, never say "let me check with my boss". By saying that your prospect realizes you don't have the authority or power to make a deal happen.
6. Last but certainly not least always remember, "Some Will, Some Won't, So What".

I know I have missed some great ways to make them want you, so chime in and share your thoughts, the comment button is at the top.

Good Selling and God Speed.

Ever find yourself watching a sporting event and getting so enthralled with it that you are on the edge of your seat like nothing else in the world matters at that moment. Your heart is racing, your adrenalin is at its peak and you are fired up. You have become one with the players and the game.

Right now you are having visions of that amazing game and you are noticing that you are reliving that moment just by the memory of it. Now take yourself back and think about when your team was down, what were you doing (other than screaming)? You were hoping for a miraculous play to happen, for your team to score and take the lead.

Hope is a powerful emotion, it gets us through a lot of situations, good and bad. So there is merit is hoping, in certain situations.

Sales is not one of them! I have coached thousands of sales people in my career and the one thing that absolutely drives me crazy is when I ask about a deal and the word "HOPE" becomes part of the conversation.

We have all done it at some point in our sales careers, we feel like we have done everything in our power to win the deal, nothing left we can do but sit back and hope it all works out in our favor.

That is crap, if you are hoping a deal will come your way you have lost all control and power with your prospect and you have already lost the deal.

The guy who is going to win knows he has won, he has built a solid relationship and has already been given the verbal, and he is laughing because he knows you are sitting around "Hoping".

Next time you find yourself hoping for a positive resolution on a deal ask yourself why you are hoping and not acting, it probably because your relationship with your prospect sucks.

Action leads to results, results lead to growth, growth leads to prosperity.

Happy Friday, Happy Selling, and God Speed.

–  Unknown

In a previous post I addressed the need for every CEO to see their customers as their number one asset. I also touched on the need to create relationships with outside influencers like analysts and journalists that cover the space you are in.

If you are like most CEO’s you realize this effort is going to take time and it is going to take resources to accomplish. The last thing you want to do is make this a big focus and have it wash out.

You can rest easy there is a way for you to get your referral program up and running quickly without a large cash expenditure and lots of resources involved.

Assuming you have taken my advice and have already started executing on the 6 strategies for launching your referral program, I am going to dive a bit deeper into the steps you need to follow to make this a reality within your company.

Step One – Customer Compensation

After running referral programs for many years one thing I can tell you is, most customers don’t want cash compensation. Your customers are referring additional business to you because they love your product and they know it takes more revenue to make your product offering(s) even better. Therefore they are interested in non monetary compensation that will draw them in closer to your company.

Step Two –Internal Champion

This is where most initiatives die as you know all too well. As the CEO your initial instinct is to look at your customers as a lead generation engine for your organization. Therefore you naturally want to hand this over to Marketing and call it referral marketing.

Guess what, that’s wrong! Why, you don’t need to sell your customers on giving you a referral, your product and your customer service speaks for itself, if your customers love you they will refer you, if they don’t they won’t! Give this to the director that is in charge of customer satisfaction and metric that person as I outlined in Step 4 in my last blog post.

Step Three – Technology

If your customers find it difficult to refer their friends and peers to you, they just won’t do it.

I have done the leg work for you, there is a great technology platform created by zferral that will help you setup your custom referral program in minutes.  Unlike many other affiliate marketing platforms it won’t cost you an arm and a leg to get started, they even offer a free plan. 

Through their unique “Pay as you grow” model your payment only goes up if your referrals (and sales) are increasing. The other unique item about zferral is their ability to setup the non monetary campaigns that I referred to in step one. 

For those who want a deeper integration, utilize zferral's open API.  This will allow you to keep a consistent look and feel of your website while enjoying all the benefits of the software.

Step Four – Measure Success

“Say what you are going to do, then do what you say”. The only way to know if this initiative is working is to measure this on a monthly basis. Put it on a whiteboard outside of your office and track the number of customer complaints, your customer SAT % (I know you have that worthless number, more on that later), and the number of customer referrals.

If after reading my previous blog post and this one, and you are having that “Oh Crap” moment of why am I not doing this, then I have made some progress. However  if you have gotten to this point and had that “Oh Shit” moment of wow this is so much more than customer referrals, then I have done my job.

Remember, long lasting success for your business depends on these two factors: Happy Customers & Happy Employees!

Imagine this, you are the CEO of an organization that has been realizing exponential growth, I mean 200% + growth year over year in both revenue and customer acquisition. Life is good and as the CEO you are ecstatic. You have established a great beach head to work from and have a bunch of successful customers and great partnerships you are leveraging.

Then it happens, the killer of men, the destroyer of businesses, the downfall of many, the emotion of "Pride" and the feeling of invincibility become part of your daily routine. We can do better, our product is amazing, we just need to expand our market and drive harder.

The next step you take becomes the largest stumbling block in your organizations history; you decide to reinvent yourself into a much larger market. The first step, decide a new category that you feel you can own, change your marketing message to fit the market, update the website to reflect your change, and train your sales personnel how to sell in this new market.

You are excited to see the shift happen so quickly, people are excited, the message seems to be resonating with a new market, sales are increasing and you think "man, why didn't we do this sooner". Then it happens, your new target market customers start complaining or even cancelling, you think to yourself what is going on here, our existing customers are happy, why aren't these people?

Next step you start doing is throwing people at the problem, hire more people to help our new customers, they just don't get it, and we need to help them understand. You start to see adoption rise a bit so you throw more people at the problem thinking that is the cure. However as time goes on your cancellation rate levels out at levels that are 8 times as high as they used to be, however sales are only 1.5 times higher.

Now you are losing lots of sleep at night thinking what is it these people want? Why is this new market so difficult? They need what we have, why aren't they adopting it? 

By embarking in on this new market you have introduced a product that was built for a different subset of buyers, you changed your marketing message and go to market strategy, and your sales personnel are selling what your new market wants, but does your product live up to the what is being messaged and sold?

Think back when you created your original product, it wasn't created with an inside out point of view, it was created by talking to your perspective buyers and you found out what they needed. You created a product they would use and be proud to tell others about.

The answer to this lies in the "Market Divide", and it has escaped you. The "Market Divide" is delivering a product to a market that the expectations in the market are different from the product you deliver.

The critical mistake too many software CEO's make is missing the Market Divide, the key to not falling into the divide is the understanding that embarking in on a new market starts with market research, then evolving your product to deliver on the new market expectations, market testing for true adoption, then marketing message and positioning along with sales training.

Don’t lose sight of what made you successful in the first place, go ahead and embark into new markets, just mind the “Divide” and don’t let your aspirations get ahead of what your organization or product can deliver.



Listening is a Key to Sales Success
April 21, 2010

This is faith. That is, the undying belief that you can succeed given any level of adversity you may be facing. I am reminded of this by the Stockdale Paradox, written by Jim Collins, found in one of the greatest books ever written,  Good to Great. (It is a great read and well worth your time.)

The overwhelming theme of the Stockdale Paradox is best said by Admiral Jim Stockdale, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end-which you can never afford to lose-with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Every business owner should read Good to Great. If you have read this amazing book, you need to go back and review the Stockdale Paradox, now more than ever. During this economy it is imperative for business owners to confront the brutal reality of where their business may be at, but never lose the undying faith in realizing the dream they set out to achieve.

What brutal realities are you facing? How are you keeping faith alive within your organization?

A product developed in today’s environment must be “social” in itself, allowing the people who sign up for the product or service to easily tell their universe of people around them how cool it is and the product must be designed so that your users will need other people (their friends) to participate with them in order to have a “killer” experience with the product (think Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare).

If you can pull that off, then you have made your product “social”, when this happens the users become your “viral” marketing department and what they say about the product and how it works becomes your brand.

This theory can simply be summed up as your organizations Viral Quotient and it has become one of the top 3 measures used by firms when evaluating your company for investment.

Here are the 5 steps your organization can follow to determine your Viral Quotient:

1. Think consumers connecting to consumers, users connecting to users
2. Find out what your customers say about your product, do you have a killer product they want to tell other people about?
3. Determine if your customers need other people to interact with your product to make it useful.
4. Make it easy for your customers to promote your product by giving them an easy way to tell their friends about it (think "Like" button)
   
5. Viral does not mean that everyone on the internet should use your product, viral is achieved within specific demographics your are targeting.

Here are some examples of products that have taken Viral Quotient to heart and their products are being talked about within their respective markets:

Kiva – They connect small business owners with people who have money and want to lend it out, they need each other for this to work.

PayPal – They grew very rapidly in a space dominated by big players like MasterCard, why, because you can’t use their product without having someone else involved, you say I have money and I want to buy that, the other person will usually pick up the money.

The Telephone – It’s no fun to talk to yourself on the telephone, you need a participant.

What other products have taken this new approach and are riding the Viral wave?

I share my insights here to help companies explore extraordinary opportunities, manage and sustain growth, and maximize revenue.

It is my goal to help you unlock the potential of your organization.

Seth Godin pointed out a couple of years ago that viral marketing does not equal word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth is an unsolicited consumer action, positive or negative, which usually fades quickly, like a good or bad restaurant review.

Viral marketing is a combination of many events in a well executed marketing plan, designed to grow attention at a compound rate, without further stimulus, by word-of-mouth. It usually implies an opportunity to win big, like a lottery, or experience something sensational, like an incredible video or free product.

At any rate, “viral” is a marketing illusion that can cost big money to create. In a business plan these are called marketing campaigns, which continue to rise in cost. Here are three elements of most viral marketing campaigns:

• Brand evangelists. Think of a brand evangelist team online as people blogging about your product, or posting links to it in every forum. Brand evangelists offline talk up your product lines at cocktail parties or recommend your services to friends while watching their kids' soccer game.

• Develop viral content. Someone has to design and create those entertaining or informative messages that are designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion, often electronically or by e-mail. It’s harder than it looks to exploit people’s propensity to share humorous, enjoyable or useful information - jokes, special offers, and games.

• Seed viral activity. People are more demanding and have more choices than ever before. This means spending more money on search marketing (SEM) to make it look like the buzz is working. It also means making the content appear omnipresent on the web and in the marketplace, including dedicated video sites and blogs. In addition, special offers and competition prizes may be required.

As a result of the rising popularity of viral campaigns, the cost of developing one has increased significantly, and the increased ‘viral clutter’ has made it more difficult to stand out from the crowd. However, despite this, viral marketing can indeed be more cost effective than traditional marketing when done well.

Seeding is the most expensive aspect of a viral marketing campaign, with some video sites charging in excess of $10,000 to be featured on their home page for one week. Only a few years ago a humorous video or unique toy could be seeded into a couple of relevant online communities, and it would be hugely popular. However, the cost of entre has gone up as the concept of viral marketing has become pervasive.

In general a well-executed viral marketing campaign can cost anywhere from $100K to many millions. There is a reason that sites like Priceline.com Europe and Facebook, which everyone believes were made popular by viral marketing, have spent nearly $50 million each becoming a household name.

In summary, the objective of viral marketing is that hopefully it will “spread through the Internet like a cold in a kindergarten.” The intent is for it to continue to expand and pick up momentum as time goes on. These are all good things, but it still costs real money up front. Plan for it.



Forget about the goals you have set, throw them out the window and say goodbye. Goals mean nothing, they are those friends who won't tell you the truth about yourself and always enable you to convince yourself you are doing the right things.

Pretty harsh isn't it, it was for me to hear that. I mean everything I have been taught about personal life goals, career goals, family goals is all a bunch of nonsense, or at least that is what I felt when I heard that statement.

Now why would someone ever say that, well because it is true if you are not living in the moment that you are currently residing in! Let me say that another way, if you spend all of your time living between the achievements and failures of the past and planning for your future goals, what are you doing to own the present?

By not owning your present each and every day, you miss the point of having goals all together? It is in the present that we find our happiness, our companionship, our dreams, and our life.

Now I am not saying that you shouldn't have dreams of what your future holds, in fact I encourage you to dream, use the one thing that god gave us that is so amazing that it can never be taken away, your imagination. What I am saying is stop living your life trying to reach these future goals, live in the now, understand how the now impacts who you are and the person you want to be. By living in the present and owning each day as it comes you will see the people around you and realize the one thing that makes you the happiest, giving of yourself to others.

If you live for tomorrow, you will miss today, too many today's that are missed and you will find yourself wondering aimlessly around asking where everything and everyone went.

So how do you live in the moment? What are some techniques you use everyday to be present?

I had a great conversation with my kids the other day around responsibility, we were discussing something that had happened at school and I asked them if the person took responsibility for their actions and told the truth. To my surprise the child they were talking about did take full responsibility and tell the truth, even though it led to them getting punished.

That topic got me to thinking about a favorite leadership principle I have always carried very close and one that I share with the people I have led throughout the years “A great leader always takes the blame when things go wrong and always passes the credit for success to the people who made it possible”.

Too often I have seen in managers the inability to take the blame and pass the credit; typically they are passing the blame and taking all the credit. Unfortunately this make the manager look like an uncaring, self absorbed non-leader, and leads to people working for this manager instead of working with this manager.

Take a moment to think about your management style; are you a leader or a manager?

Share with us some of the amazing ways you lead your teams.

   Churchill, Winston

I was recently having a discussion with a long time friend and mentor of mine when the topic of board relations came up. My friend and mentor has been a very successful CEO and is a board member for many companies. Based upon our conversation I have outlined the 6 key things an executive should do in order to lead their board correctly, along with 3 Key areas to stay away from.

Let me start by saying I believe it is the CEO's job to set the pace and cadence with the board. It is the CEO’s job to set the proper expectations for the board and draw them into the business. In other words the CEO should be leading the board.

Here are 6 Key actions you can take to manage your board:

1. Do not shelter the board from what is going on in the business and only allow them to see the good things happening, always be honest and straight forward with them.
2. Give them access to your exec team and encourage both the board and the exec team to get to know each other.
3. Set the expectation for the board that you see them as a partner to success, you are all trying to achieve the same thing right?
4. Over communicate with your board on all things, the more information they have the better equipped they are to work with you as opposed to against you.
5. Develop personal relationships with each board member individually (this is especially important for the VP of Sales and VP of Marketing).
6. Leverage your board for introductions to key people, whether they are in deals you are trying to sell, media or analyst relations, or local tech communities. Too often boards go unutilized.

Here are 3 key areas that you want to steer clear of when leading the board:

1. Using the board as your sounding board, taking issues and concerns to them without a solution. The board expects you to work through these issues and bring a plan to the table.
2. Letting the board run the company, weak executives allow themselves to be managed by the board, they allow the board to make hiring and firing decisions, they allow the board to make product direction decisions. This happens when there is not a solid vision and plan in place the board is in line with.
3. Emotions have no place in the board room, keep your facts straight and speak from the facts, when emotions get involved you look weak and unprepared.

Whether you are hired into a company as an executive with a pre-established board, or you are in the process of putting your board together does not matter. Having a board should be fun, productive, enlightening and most of all should feel like a partnership.

What are some tactics you have used to create an amazing relationship with your board?

Thomas Jefferson first used the phrase "All men are created equal"in the Declaration of Independence as a rebuttal to the going political theory of the day: the Divine Right of Kings.

Now I am not going to get into political theory here, but what I am going to do is talk about the concept that each of us are created equal and how creating that thought process can be powerful in your everyday life.

While this isn't a revolutionary idea it does seem to be one that does not resonate with many of us as we go about our daily lives. Many of us, myself included sometimes feel like we are not as good as other people while others feel they are better than everyone else.

I want to share with you a personal revelation that I have had, I was an insecure person. I never felt like a good husband, a good father or a really a man. I always wondered what it would feel like to be a man and be seen by others as a strong person. I did not feel as though I measured up and that everyone around me was better than me. I strived so hard in life to excel and prove myself to others for that slight glimpse of acceptance and praise.

How I came to have this revelation was through a conversation with a very dear friend of mine. During our talk he shared with me a key principle engrained into him by his mother. The principle he shared with me was "he is no better than any other human being and no other human being is better than him". By living his life this way he finds utter happiness and acceptance in all of his relationships. For him, knowing and living this principle means that he accepts everyone in his life for who they are, an equal to him.

When I heard him tell me this I thought to myself "that is amazing, if only I could think and feel that way".

Well I have transformed my way of thinking and I am happy to say that I now truly understand this concept and practice this everyday. I have done that through understanding these basic principles:

1. Every person that I meet has a personal story (good, bad or tragic)
2. We all feel that our stories are unique and that nobody will understand or care
3. Many of the people I come into contact with are feeling inadequate in some way, just like I used to
4. Each of us are just trying to make it through each day
5. By realizing these things I am able to interact and see people as equals
6. By sharing I create a sense of openness and comfort that people want to be around

Now I am not sure how some people clearly live this concept their entire lives, I have a feeling that it has something to do with the way they were raised, like my dear friend. For those of us not lucky enough to have this concept engrained in our lives we need to remember that each of us has the power to transform the way we think. Here is a link to a great blog and a great coach that speaks directly to transforming the way you think.

I would love to hear your points of view on this, how do you view others?

Success in life, starts by first developing and maintaining an expectant attitude of success. Simply put, all successful people expect that they are going to succeed, and because of this they consistently take the actions that lead them to achieve their goals and become successful.

It is their mental attitudes that allow them to meet obstacles, setbacks and temporary failures with a new resolve to keep trying, or to try something different, until they succeed.

Individuals that don't practice an expectant attitude of success expect things to be difficult, have already accepted that they might not succeed, and they are easily discouraged when things don't go their way. This attitude allows them to justify and accept the results they get.

If you are serious about changing your life, then get in the practice of working on your mental attitude first. Adopt these 5 mental attitudes to powerfully change your ways of thinking and to permanently change your results.

5 MENTAL ATTITUDES

1. Laws of Nature - There are many absolute laws in the universe – the law of gravity, the laws of mathematics, etc. The most powerful law in terms of your success is the law of attraction. In short, whatever you hold in your consciousness you will manifest in your life. So if you don't like your results, then look at their source (your thoughts, expectations and beliefs), and work on changing those first. Once you do, your results will automatically change.
2. No Excuses - So many people blame the economy, their boss, their employees, their family, etc., for their failure. But the truth is this: You are 100% responsible for your life and your results. Winners accept this and that's where their power comes from. When you accept 100% responsibility you then gain access to 100% of the solutions.
3. Stop Worrying - Success is easy because all results are simply a physical manifestation of what we hold in our consciousness (our beliefs). The reason some people struggle (and fail) is because they try to achieve something without first changing their mental attitudes. Successful people recognize and work on changing their attitudes and beliefs and expectations first, and then they easily and naturally take the actions that lead to the achievement of their goals.
4. Fake it before you make it -  The real formula for success is to first "BE"– act, feel and live in your mind as if you have already achieved your goal – and then you will naturally DO the things (take the actions) that will enable you to be successful.
5. Stop Sabotaging Yourself -  All thoughts turn into words, words turn into actions and actions turn into beliefs.

Carefully monitor your thoughts right before you fall asleep at night and first thing in the morning. Then ask yourself, "Am I focusing on the positive things in my life, or am I dwelling on the negatives" Chances are, what you are dwelling on has already shown up in your life, and since there is nothing you can do about it then why not start focusing your thoughts on something more positive and constructive to help you achieve your goals.

Like gravity, these 5 metal attitudes work in and on your life whether you consciously practice them or not. The key is to understand and use them purposefully to achieve the results you want. Once you do, you will manifest all the success you can dream of.

Share with us, how do you instill an attitude of success within yourself?

Ever heard the term "You reap what you sow", or the Golden Rule "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", or a more spiritual concept of Karma "you get back what you put out there"?

All of these principles have one underlying piece of truth to them which is the more you interact with people, positively or negatively you will receive something back in return. Remember Newton Law of Motion "To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction", meaning if you help or hurt someone they are going to respond in kind!

Now take a moment and think about these principles, in essence what I am saying is you get back what you put out there. If you are a introvert that does not like to interact with people, what you get back is a life devoid of people. If you are an extrovert and you interact with lots of people what you get back is lot's of people wanting to speak with you and be around you. Neither is positive or negative, they are what they are.

What I have learned is that life simply does not exist out of co-existing with other human beings, whether you are an introvert or extrovert co-existence happens. What I mean by co-existence is the ability to interact with another human being and not ever truly knowing who that person is or what their life is about.

In life I have found that we as human beings normally only have a handful of people that we allow to truly gain our confidence and trust, and we let them in and tell them all of our secrets, inhibitions, thoughts and dreams. For the rest of the people we come in contact with we are simply co-existing even if we call them friends.

I have figured out how to break this pattern, and the great thing about it is we have full control of the process to break the pattern. We have control because it starts with our mindset and how we view the world. I shared with you in a previous blog post our ability to create the mindset we truly want, and this principle falls directly into that realm.

So I am going to outline for you the 5 steps it takes to Putting Yourself Out There:

1. Stop thinking and reinforcing that you are unique and that nobody would ever understand who you are or what you have been through. Guess what there are a lot of people out there who have gone through what you have gone through.
2. Focus on what is important to the people around you instead of what is important to you.
3. Ask the people around you that you are co-existing with what is important to them in life, ask them about their childhood, ask them about major events in their life.
4. Stop acting like a theorist, and start acting like an expert. You have amazing thoughts and abilities all that have come from your past experiences. Use those to relate to others.
5. The most important step of all is to put yourself out there by opening up to others about your past experiences, both positive and negative. What you will find is that your story will resonate with a lot of them and it will set them at ease to open themselves up to you.

Human beings created language out of a need to connect with one another, don't let it go to waste. Open your mind, your mouth and your world to letting others in, and focus on putting other people's interests before your own.

While this concept may seem very personal to you, by employing this in your life you will better serve the organization and your customers. Whether we are an employee, a prospect, a customer or a vendor we all want to feel like our interests come first when we work with an outside organization.

Share with us, how you are putting yourself out there and better serving your organization, family, friends?