Brian Tracy

How to Trigger Great Ideas

How to Trigger Great Ideas

By: Brian Tracy

A major stimulant to creative thinking is focused questions. There is something about a well-worded question that often penetrates to the heart of the matter and triggers new ideas and insights.

Questions Stimulate Creative Thinking

Some of the best questions I've found for business problem solving are the following:

Create Your Personal Brand

Create Your Personal Brand

By Brian Tracy

Just as surely as building a powerful brand is the key to differentiating a product in the marketplace and thus building a successful business, so creating a strong personal brand is the key to differentiating yourself from your competitors, thereby ensuring your own success as well as that of your business. Your personal brand determines how people respond to you, whether they listen to you, buy from you, how much they buy, what they are willing to pay, and so on.

Promises You Make

The Power of Personal Charisma

The Power of Personal Charisma

By: Brian Tracy

Become An Irresistible Person

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines charisma as "a personal magic of leadership arousing special popular loyalty or enthusiasm for a public figure."

Develop Personal Magnetism

Charisma is also that special quality of magnetism that each person has and that each person uses to a certain degree. You have a special charisma to the people who look up to you, who respect and admire you, the members of your family and your friends and coworkers. Whenever and wherever a person feels a positive emotion toward another, he imbues that person with charisma, or attractiveness.

Project Yourself Positively

In trying to explain charisma, some people speak of an "aura." This aura is a light that is invisible to most people, but not to everyone, and that radiates out from a person and affects the people around that person in a positive or negative way. The halo around the heads of saints and mystics in many religious paintings was the artist's attempt to depict the light that people reported seeing around the heads of these men and women when they were speaking or praying, or in an intense emotional state.
 
Control the Impression You Make

You also have an aura around you that most people cannot see but that is there, nevertheless. This aura affects the way people react and respond to you, either positively or negatively. There is a lot that you can do, and a lot of good reasons for you to do it, to control this aura and make it work in your best interests.

Sell Your Way to the Top

If you're in sales, this aura, reflecting your level of charisma, can have a major impact on the way your prospects and customers treat you and deal with you. Top salespeople seem to be far more successful than the average salespeople in getting along with their customers. They're always more welcome, more positively received and more trusted than the others. They sell more, and they sell more easily. They make a better living, and they build better lives. Salespeople with charisma get far more pleasure out of their work and suffer far less from stress and rejection. The charismatic salesperson is almost invariably a top performer in his field and enjoys all the rewards that go with superior sales.

Influence People Around You

If you're in business, developing greater charisma can help you tremendously in working with your staff, your suppliers, your bankers, your customers and everyone else upon whom you depend for your success. People seem naturally drawn to those who possess charisma.

They want to help them and support them. When you have charisma, people will open doors for you and bring you opportunities that otherwise would not have been available to you.

Enhance Your Personal Relationships

In your personal relationships, the quality of charisma can make your life more joyous, happier. People will naturally want to be around you. Members of your family and your friends will be far happier in your company, and you will have a greater influence on them, causing them to feel better about themselves and to do better at the important things in their lives.

Action Exercises

First, identify the people with whom you seem to have a lot of charisma - the people who know you, like you, respect you the most. How could you increase your charisma with these people?

Second, identify the people who have charisma to you, the people you most like and respect and admire. What is there about them that you could copy or emulate? If you think charisma, you'll have more of it.

Brian Tracy Resources

The Power Of Charm

The Power Of Branding

These programs are available from the Brian Tracy University - affiliate income  

Partnering For Profit

Partnering For Profit

By: Brian Tracy

The way you can stand out from your competitors is for you to position your self as a business partner, always looking for ways to improve your customer's business.

Help Your Customer's Business

When you deal with a business person, you can be sure of one thing: that person thinks about his business day and night. It is very close to him. It is dear to his heart. And if you come in and talk to him and ask him questions about his business, looking for ways to help him run his business better, the customer is going to warm up to you and want to be associated with you and your company.

Differentiate Yourself from Your Competitors

As a partner, you should always be looking to help your customer to cut costs and improve results in his or her area of responsibility. You should look for ways to help your customer in non-business areas as well. You should position your self as someone who cares more about the success of your customer than anything else, even more than you care about selling your product or service. This approach to partnering in profit with your customer is a key way to differentiate your self and to keep your customer for the indefinite future.
 
Practice the Reciprocity Principle

There is a principle of reciprocity in business that is very powerful. It is simply this: If you do something nice for someone else, they will feel obligated to do something nice for you. You should be looking for opportunities to go the extra mile, to do more than you are p aid for, to put in more than you take out. By extending your self, you improve your positioning in the customer's mind and increasingly differentiate your self and your company from your competitors who are after the same business. If you do this long enough and strong enough, you will eventually develop the partnership to the point where your competitors don't have a chance against you.

Action Exercises

Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, think about how you can help your customer's customer with your product or service. Take time to understand how your customer uses your product to do his business better.

Second, focus on increasing your customer's profits and financial results. Show your customer that doing business with you is both satisfying and profit able in the long run.

Brian Tracy Resources

Selling Higher-Priced Products Against Lower-Priced Competition

The Power Of Branding

These are available from the Brian Tracy University - affiliate link

Six Ways to Find a New Product

Six Ways to Find a New Product

By: Brian Tracy

There are many different sources of new product ideas for your business. Here are six of them.

Read Everything You Can

The first way to find a new product or service is to read newspaper stories, read articles, read advertisements, read the classified ads. Very often when people have new products or services available in a market or they're looking for someone to sell it or distribute it, they advertise in the classifieds under business opportunities. Read all US publications that are written for businesspeople. Look for potential in new products or services everywhere.

Study Trade Magazines

The second way to find new products or services is to read trade magazines, especially in your field of knowledge or expertise. Libraries usually have them all. Go down to the library, take a look at all the magazines and then subscribe to the very best ones.

Visit Trade Shows

The third way to find a new product or service is to go to trade shows. You need only a business card to get into a trade show and they hold trade shows everywhere all the time. You can have business cards made up for you in 24 hours.

Talk to the Key People

Present yourself as a retail buyer. Sign up at the beginning, pay the entrance fee, and present yourself as a buyer looking to buy the products offered in the trade show. Then go in and talk to the key people there. Find out what they're doing. What they're selling. Where the market is going. What the industry trends are. What is successful and what is unsuccessful and so on.

Tap Into Your Network

The fourth way to find a new product or service is your friends. Tell them that you're looking for new product ideas. Tell them you're looking for something to sell, something to distribute. Have them keep an eye out for you. Sometimes your friends will see things that you won't see, or they'll see things when they're traveling and so on.

Keep Your Eyes Open

The fifth way to find new products or services is to read Entrepreneur Magazine. Read Success Magazine. Read Inc. Magazine. Read magazines where people advertise new products or services or business opportunities. Read The Wall Street Journal. Read Money Magazine. Read Fortune. Read Business Week. Read everything that you possibly can.

Look Overseas For New Products

The sixth source of new products is foreign publications. There are three foreign publications that you can get if you look around for them. One is called Made In Europe, which has hundreds and hundreds of products that are made by European corporations who are seeking US distributors. Sometimes the distribution rights for those products are available for the asking. There's also a book called Made In Hong Kong, which has hundreds and hundreds of products made by Hong Kong corporations. And then there's another catalog from the Taiwanese Trade Consulate that's available that lists hundreds of manufacturers of thousands of products who are looking for US distributors.

Remember, 95 percent of all products are never sold outside of the country that they're manufactured in. Sometimes all you have to do is find a product that is selling well somewhere else and bring it into your market area and that can be the start of your successful business.

Action Exercises

First, take action immediately on at least one of these ideas. Buy and read magazines, visit trade shows or subscribe to foreign publications. The more information you have, the better decisions you will be able to make.

Second, ask for what you want. If you see a product or service for sale somewhere, write to the company and ask for the right to distribute it in your market area. You may be surprised.

Brian Tracy Resources

The Power Of Branding

This and many more training programs are available from the Brian Tracy University - affiliate link    

Marketing vs. Selling

Marketing vs. Selling

By Brian Tracy

Marketing and selling are two separate activities. Marketing is the process of lead generation. Marketing embraces everything you do up to the point of sale. The design, development, and determination of the exact product or service that you are going to sell are the first part of marketing. The second is to think through every element of the marketing mix before you begin. These elements are product, price, promotion, packaging, positions, and people.

Product/Service

What exactly is your product or service? What does it do for your customer? How does it improve his or her life or work? What products or services are you going to offer? Any changes in the product or service offered can dramatically change the entire nature of your business.

Price

How much are you going to charge for your product? Will you sell wholesale or retail? How do your prices compare with those of your competitors? Are they higher or lower? How do you justify your prices, whatever they are?

Place

Where exactly are you going to locate your business? Where are you customers? Do you sell from a retail storefront or by telephone and Internet from your offices?

Promotion

How do you advertise and attract customers? Once you have attracted potential customers, what is the specific sales process that you use to convert those prospects into customers? What systems do you use for developing and maintaining successful sales process to get customers to buy from you?

Packaging

What do your product or service, place of business, and every other visual element of your company look like to your customers? Customers are extremely visual. They form their first impression about you and your company within four seconds of seeing you for the first time. Looking from the outside, is every part of the customers visual experience with regard to your company excellent in every way?

Positioning

How are you positioned in the minds and hearts of your customer? What words to your customers use when they talk about you and describe you to others? If your name were mentioned in a customer survey, how could customers and non customers refer to you and your business?

People

Who exactly are the people who interact with your customers? What do they look like? How do they dress? What do they say? Prospective customers are largely emotional. They make most of their decisions based on the way they are treated by the people in your organization. What kind of "people experience" do customers have when they deal with you? How could it be improved?

Action Exercise

Determine what you will have to do to get your customers to give you a nine or ten score on the question, "Based on your experience with us, would you recommend us to your friends and family?"

Brian Tracy Resources

Selling High Priced Products Against Low Priced Competition - "Increase Your Sales and Income Immediately!"

Do you ever wonder how luxury cars and designer handbags continue to fly off the shelves…even when the economy is bad? It's because price isn't the only reason why people buy.

Learn how to separate your product from the competition and give your clients great reasons to buy—that have nothing to do with how much it costs!

The Power of Branding

Your company's brand or even your own personal brand is what separates you from your competition. And it's what will get your customers to buy from you over and over again.

Get more sales, be promoted quickly and earn MORE money than ever before when you spread the word about the best brand in town—YOURS!
 

These Brian Tracy programs (and many more) are available from BrianTracy.com.
(affiliate link)

Profit From Happy Long Term Customers

A business has two main stakeholders that dominate the agenda - the shareholders and customers and a business must be designed to create value for both.

Customers gain by the extent the business creates value in excess of the price they pay.

Share holders gain by the amount the total of all thee prices paid by customers exceed total costs.

Increasing prices therefore helps shift the balance from customer to shareholder - but the customers may take their business elsewhere if they get better offers which promise better value.

So the key to business success is to balance the needs of the customer with the desire of the shareholders to get the best profit over the long term.

In this article from Brian Tracy, he explains that it is customers who create the profit and the business must focus on the customers. It was written to promote his Customers For Life program.

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Customers for Life
By: Brian Tracy

Never Worry About Money Again

What is the purpose of a business?

Every time I ask this question during a business seminar, the immediate answer that I get back is, "To make a profit."

The Real Purpose of A Business