This is the third in a series of articles that break down the exact formula you need to smash sales targets… no matter if they’re your own, or your teams goals.

If you’ve been following the series (and you should be!… subscribe here) then you’ll be aware we’re building up an acronym of steps. So far we’ve got G (Great beliefs) and R (Reasons to act).

Read on to find out (and profit from) the next step:

Today we’re all about:

Outcome Clarity

This is a really simple one and you’ve probably heard it before.

In fact, Outcome Clarity is the featured topic of everyone’s favourite personal development movie The Secret.

When you have Outcome Clarity, you know what success looks like.

It’s more than that. You’ll know what it feels, smells and sounds like!

The best sales managers know how to incentivise their teams and themselves… and they know it isn’t always as simple as offering an extra percentage or two of commission.

A real world client of mine wanted to offer a luxury car as a bonus to the top performing sales rep. My advice was simple: Take the team to the car dealership for a test drive.

Once you feel the contours of the leather seats and hear the engine purr (or roar)…. you’ve got Outcome Clarity.

The icing on the cake would be to snap a picture of the sales person in the car while they’re test driving it.

Back in the office, pin the picture right above their workstation so everyday they see where they’re headed.

Another fantastic take on Outcome Clarity is from Jonathan Fields. He wrote an article a while back, about motivating his daughter to study (check it out here). It elegantly explains the principal of Outcome Clarity with the added bonus of Jonathan’s brilliant writing style.

When your goal isn’t a car or a test drive isn’t easy to find, you’ll need a practical tool for creating Outcome Clarity in your mind.

The tool is here, pre-packaged for your convenience:

(answer these questions on paper)

How do you know when you’ve really made the sale?

Where will you be when you get final, total confirmation of your success?

What will you be feeling at that moment?

What would you look like? What expression would you be wearing?

(then visualise)

Step into the vision and see things out of your own eyes. What does the future look like when you’ve succeeded (made the sale)?

Now step out of the image and imagine it as poster of you in that moment.

Hang the poster in your mind.

Make the poster bigger.

Turn up the colours so they’re brighter… just like you can on a TV screen.

If you’re not feeling excited about making sales, it’s because you haven’t found your moment of Outcome Clarity.

It’s less about the actual selling and more about the moment the sale becomes REAL to you (or your team).

For many people, this could be the moment where they spend their earnings… or when they win the bonus incentive (like the car).

For more analytical types, it could be at the end of the month when a report of sales statistics is produced and reviewed.

It differs from person to person, but there is one thing you can be totally sure of:

All sales people need Outcome Clarity

Just like Great Beliefs and Reasons to Act…. if you don’t add Outcome Clarity into the mix, you’re not going to get even halfway decent sales results.

Make the objective clear and be sure everyone on your team knows what success tastes like.

What does sales success look like to you? Let me know in the comment section below…

It doesn’t matter if you’re running a mum & dad startup, an enormous sales team or working for yourself as a basement internet marketer…

Sales Management is critical to your business success.

If you’re one of those people who is passionate about an idea but feeling icky about selling it, then your personal, inner sales management is even more critical.

This article is the 2nd part of a series where I break down a simple psychological formula.

The formula is used by sales and management wizards to lead their teams (and themselves) towards blisteringly hot sales performance… and everything (the reward and impact) that comes with that.

Last time we covered off the 1st step of the formula: “G” (standing for “Great beliefs”)

These were the beliefs that are mandatory for any salesperson dreaming of A-league results.

Today we’re going to look at the second step in the formula:

Reasons to act

It’s 9am, you’ve just arrived at work or your home office. You know, deep in the back of your unconscious, that selling needs to happen today.

We all know that without sales, there is no business.

Nevertheless, you open emails, reorganise your filing system, clean your desk and make a few comfortable calls to friends or suppliers.

You procrastinate.

Why?

Behind every great salesperson is a reason- or five.

These reasons drive the salesperson to get up in the morning early, to make those critical cold calls.

They inspire the salesperson to score another appointment instead of surfing the couch.

Here’s what you need to know:

Every single action we take in our lives is driven by reason.

It’s a simple carrot and stick situation. If we’re contemplating doing something (skydiving, cold calling or asking that pretty girl on a date), we first have to acquire significant reasons why we must do it.

We CAN do a lot of things. We SHOULD do even more things.

How big is your list of things you SHOULD do?

Action only happens when we convince ourselves (via that little voice in our mind) that we MUST do something.

We do this through reasoning… by thinking through all the different carrots and sticks that might motivate us.

Quick tip: It usually takes a bit of stick to get us off the couch and a glimpse of the carrot to keep us going once we’ve started.

But wait, you’ve already got reasons

If you’ve got reasons for making sales but you’re not actually doing it, then you need more reasons. Perhaps you just need reasons that make you feel something.

If you’re in business, you’ve probably got reasons for being there. These are the same reasons for making sales… but if you’ve got a bit of the ol’ cold call reluctance, then you probably need to brainstorm a bunch more.

Here’s what to do:

Ask yourself (or your sales team) the following four questions.

What pain prevents you making sales?

We’re talking emotional or physical pain (or suffering) of any kind. These are the sticks that get in the way of sales… and make the couch look that much more tempting.

Answers would typically include: “Cold calling is scary” and statements like “It’s uncomfortable to ask for an order.”

These are all lame excuses but they’re worth acknowledging all the same.

They are the minor reasons you’re up against as a sales manager – the mental obstacles you must help yourself and others overcome.

The truth is, the discomfort of making a call is enough to stop most people doing it… or at least cause chronic procrastination.

Identify the reasons (the pain) you’re up against and quickly move on to…

What can be gained by making sales?

We’re focusing on the positive stuff with this question. This is the typically easy one that all average sales managers ask… but only the great managers extract super compelling answers.

Have the salesperson focus on their ultimate carrots like financial freedom, tropical holidays, fast cars and rolex watches.

Then, be sure that they have some short term, achievable carrots dangling right in front too.

These could be as simple as a sunday golf game for hitting the week’s target or a five star dinner for winning that big account.

As an entrepreneur, it’s up to you to create your own short and long term carrots.

Many self employed folks make the mistake of skipping short term carrots by waiting for some big payoff in the distant future. While this is exciting, it’s often difficult to maintain consistent motivation and sales activity.

Likewise, most employees require a combination of both carrots – it’s rare to find a sales rep willing to work super hard for a “maybe one-day IPO”.

Vision boards, goal setting and The Secret are all about finding positive reasons (carrots) to take action.

Positivity is seldom all it takes, so move on to the next question…

What will it cost you not to take action?

This is the ultimate stick. This question forces you and your team to look closely at your procrastination habits and think about where they are taking you.

What will procrastination, continued over 5 years, ultimately cost you? Could it cost you your business, your dreams or your self respect?

It’s okay to be negative sometimes (I call it “strategic negativity”) since negative thinking will give you some reasons to get off that couch.

Very often positivity fails… and it’s the fear of failure (or worse; of mediocrity) that causes us to switch from procrastination to action.

So figure it out and make sure all your team know the ultimate mental, physical and financial cost of not taking action.

Go light a fire and then answer question 4…

4. What is to be gained by taking action TODAY?

This final question is very similar to the 2nd one… but with one enormous difference:

It forces you to make today important.

The number one reason behind all sales procrastination is faith in tomorrow. Faith that slacking off today is okay because there is always the day after today.

Sorting out this problem, for you or your team, is as simple as finding a reason why today is more important than tomorrow.

Successful entrepreneurs know that the answer is all about exponential growth. They know that action today creates fantastic results in six months times.

No action for six months creates nothing in six months time – except frustration and regret.

Can you wrap this up?

The four questions you’ve just read provide the starting point for finding all your own reasons. If you want to perform as a sales person, you need reasons why they must.

The second letter in our five step acronym is “R” for “Reasons to Act”

The final question is the most important because all sales happen today (never tomorrow).

Everyone’s reasons are different – since they must be reasons that you personally feel the significance of.

What is your leverage? What can be gained by you taking action today?

As always, your answers are more important than my questions. Let me know what you think in the comment section below.

Ever get frustrated with where you’re at in life or business?

I’m talking about those moments where we turn around, look at our selves with unusual honesty and realise that we’re not living up to our full potential.

Ever feel like you could have done better, tried a little harder or made more of a commitment?

I get these moments all the time – especially on those days where I don’t have meetings or client consultations… Those days, in other words, where I have total freedom over how I spend (or waste) my time.

No one ever plays the game of life at 100% and this article reveals the psychological reasons why.

Additionally, you’ll learn a proven and simple technique that consistently increases your performance – the easy way… even if you’ve never genuinely given anything “your all” before.

The Background…

For the last few years, I’ve run a (offline) coaching programme called “Peak Potential Plus”. It’s a solution for busy entrepreneurs who need a regular (monthly) sounding board and Jedi mind tricks expert to keep ‘em at peak performance.

Fortunately, being “that guy” put me in a position where I could learn from some super successful entrepreneurs – in exchange for tweaking their thinking for maximum effectiveness.

One of the most useful discoveries from this collaboration was a breakthrough in the psychology of “potential”.

“You should stay away from your potential, you know. It’s a lot like your bank balance – you always have a lot less than you think.”

- Irish Comedian Dylan Moran

Working with my entrepreneur clients and pals meant being a sideline spectator to many exciting business ventures.

I provided pearls of psychological wisdom while my clients did things like:

• Launch a new national television service
• Dealing with a 120 million dollar corporate takeover
• Starting a micro niche therapy practice
• Sharing the secrets of ancient Indian medical wisdom online
• Open a new flagship retail store

Massive diversity between clients, in other words, but also identical in one critical area:

Effort

Each person heading these revolutionary projects was forced to harness every scrap of their potential. They had to attempt to play a 110% game – all the time.

And guess what…

They failed.

Not a single one of these folks (including serial entrepreneurs with a track record of massive success) was able to consistently kick ass, day in, day out.

Any attempt resulted in the following:

An initial 12 – 48(max) hours of total, extreme performance

Followed by :

3 – 5 days of half-baked effort

OR

On going, overwhelming action but zero productivity

OR

Total “emergency vacation” burnout

It seemed that playing a “110% game” was not a long term option. The most common result was the 2nd one – loads of work hours (16+ per day) but very little useful action or productivity.

Why do we do this to ourselves

When we get fed up with our current performance or we decide we really want something, many people make a decision to go nuts… they invest enormous action and energy in a very short space of time.

They believe this will turn their life (or business) around.

They keep it up for a day or two, before going back to their old habits of procrastination… or worse, they burn themselves out and have to take a complete break.

The solution

The folks I was working with figured out that their new projects were doomed to failure if they kept up their old patterns of thinking and behaviour.

So we set out to create a smarter, sustainable approach to “getting stuff done” and “changing your life” that my clients field tested each day for six months.

The “Daily 1%” principal

Instead of “maximum performance” we committed to minimum performance!

Each day for the six month period, each client (and me too) would identify one area of our lives where we could take a tiny action to improve things.

The rules were simple: The proposed action must be SO tiny that it was effortlessly easy to accomplish – almost without noticing.

The only catch was this: Once we made the tiny change, we had to keep it…. Each and every day, forever.

This made everyone be very, very careful about each day’s new commitment.

“You don’t want to find out that the most you could possibly achieve, if you gave it your all, if you harvested every screed of energy within you, and devoted yourself to improving yourself, that all you would get to, would be maybe eating less cheesy snacks.”

- Dylan Moran

The trick to it was exactly that – committing to eating less cheesy snacks. We can all make a tiny change and keep it for ever.

In fact, we can all make a tiny, tiny change… every single day (and keep them for ever).

In the real world, this resulted in:

The TV entrepreneur broke his to-do list into teeny, tiny micro steps and started off only achieving one (a single email written) the first day. On the second day, he did two tasks and three on the third. Rinse and repeat.

The therapist committing to jogging either 1 minute longer (or 100 metres more, but in the same time) than the previous day. Every, single day.

The Indian life-science internet entrepreneur committed to things like posting a comment each day (for SEO value).

One client made one cold call on day 1… then two the next day, three calls on the 3rd day and so on. By the time he got to 100 days, he had enough cash flow in his business to hire a full time telemarketer!

Slow and steady incremental success

The real value of the Daily 1% strategy is the mathematics of “exponential” performance.

Instead of jumping to the top of the 110% game and burning out, we can slowly, incrementally work our way up to serious levels of performance… proving ourselves and practicing consistency along each step of the way.

The possibilities are endless here. Imagine working your way up (over 75 days) to 75% performance in some area… like your fitness, or cold calling for your business.

Imagine how easy it would then be to go to 76% (make just one more call…. run just one more minute).

Suddenly 80% isn’t so far away.

The real magic

The big point here is that the Daily 1% continues every day of your life – or at a minimum, 5 days per week.

The value of consistency (in cold calling, exercise or simply checking off the “to-do” list) is absolutely enormous.

Business empires are not built on 355 days of half-baked effort interspersed with 10 days of random, manic enthusiasm.

My clients and I personally discovered that true value of consistency.

The Daily 1% principal forces you to systematically increase your true potential.This opens up a whole new capacity for extraordinarily powerful stamina.

By committing to Daily 1%, you’ll be able to comfortably play a bigger and better game.

Imagine what that will feel like – when you look back 6 months, to the day when you committed to just trying a tiny bit harder and doing 1% more.

What are the areas in your life where you’re frustrated with your efforts?

For me (at time of writing), it has to be exercise and promoting my online business (I need to think less and do more).

What Daily 1% could you commit to, to improve things?

Let me know by leaving a comment below.

I was recently invited to give a talk on the basics of leadership – at a closed door corporate event which one of my clients hosted for their retail management staff.

It was out in the mountains – I got to fly back to the city while the managers face three days of leadership/team metaphor… a.k.a. Gruelling physical challenge.

The very cool, diverse group of people helped me figure out (and apply real world examples to) the following psychological criteria for exceptional leadership.

Best of all, it’s a acronym (who needs another numbered list anyway?):

G – for “Great Beliefs”

Before you lead any group of people to do something extraordinary, it pays to equip them with a set of awesome, empowering beliefs that allow them to get the job done.

Inspiration and motivation are irrelevant here – before we start playing with those Jedi mind tricks, you must first instil the beliefs that make the job possible.

Great, useful beliefs include:

“It’s possible to change things”

“My actions can and will make a difference”

“I already have or can find the resources (resourcefulness) I need”

R – “Reasons to Act”

Basic rule of behaviour psychology: No one, not even someone already on salary, will take any action unless they have a sufficient “reason why” providing psychological leverage.

Equip your team with multiple “reasons” why they can, must and want… to take action. Scary asshole bosses traditionally go nuts with threats when it comes to “Reasons to act”… and they may even get results! However, the best (most consistent) results happen when there is healthy balance of carrot (cos positivity is cool) and stick (cos we live in “reality”).

Ask yourself and your team questions like:

“What is the cost of not doing this?” … and…

“What is to be gained by taking action now… as opposed to next month?”

O – Outcome Clarity

This gets included simply because most folks forget the important parts of goal setting. Tangible measurements of success… plus, total certainty of when, where and with whom (more important than you think) are what well-formed “outcomes” are all about.

This is the stuff that makes “The Secret” work.

Practical approaches to turning a lame “goal” into a laser-precise “outcome” include asking:

“What will it look like when I have this?”

“Where will I be/What will I be doing the moment I realise I’ve achieved my goal?”

The more vivid and emotionally compelling the better.

W – Wilful Action

Simultaneously the simplest and the most regularly overlooked “essential ingredient” in the recipe for leadership success. Wilful action is getting up and doing it – once you’ve got all the other stuff.

Many times, people with the right beliefs, reasons, outcomes and even skills (see below) will still sit around waiting for someone to go first!

This is where you, the one who doth utter “Simon says”, stands up and leads! It isn’t called leadership for nothing.

S – Skills

This is where the technical training and real life “school-of-hard-knocks” stuff comes into play. Don’t bother leading folks who are incompetent. Invest time (and money) in first giving your people all the know-how required.

They don’t need to be masters – that comes with the actual “doing” part.

The best leaders are always already masters – they lead with so much more integrity by being able to say:

“Come, follow me down this road… I know the way.”

Got a question? Think something is missing? Want to know how this could apply to your specific leadership situation? Reply in the comment section (just scroll down) and we’ll figure out the answers together…

Yesterday’s article was a short and sweet burst of negativity into your otherwise comfortable day.

Why would I set such a horrible and negative exercise? The answer is simple: There’s a bunch of benefits to being “constructively negative” – including increased productivity, creativity and effectiveness.

Read on to find out why…

The problem with purely positive thinking is two-fold:

1. You run into problems by constructing a mental universe where everything is perfect (when it isn’t)

2. You create a nasty in congruence with your inner self (which always knows the truth) that leads to the most insidious form of self-sabotage

Getting negative can be wonderfully empowering because it drives you to respect the reality of your situation and limitations.

The exciting part is where you look at your “worst case scenario” list… or your measly list of resources… and decide to go ahead and take action anyway.

Tough times, crunches and bad days are the best time to launch a new project, idea or business. If your initiative can survive the initial challenges it’s far more likely to be ultimately successful.

Without negativity you can never even begin to plan your strategy for getting around problems and limitations. Positive thinking produces amazing dreams, visions and goals. Negative thinking produces powerful business plans and strategies.

Embrace it – use planned bursts of negative, constructing thinking to flesh out your positive visions and goals. This is, after all, a strategy of top entrepreneurs.

Speak up in the comment section: What positive dreams of yours could benefit from some negativity?

Sometimes even the best laid plans go awry. It’s important not to get too hung up over goals and/or time frames.

If you think back to previous successes or times in life when you’ve really enjoyed yourself, more often than not it’s because the plan, the map and/or schedule gets chucked out the window.

Outcomes are important – knowing where you’re headed is critical.

Detours, diversions and delays are often the spice of life.