What do you think makes a person successful in sales? Most people I speak to will say, it is the person’s ability to engage with customers and bring them on the journey of exploring their needs and then delivering to those needs. Admittedly, this is a very important factor. No argument there.  What many of us forget, is the step before all of this.  We forget that planning, once the goal is established, is the most crucial step. No matter which sales sector you are in, having a clear sales plan for execution is vital.

If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail, as the old adage would say. I recently was listening to an incredible presentation that likened the lack of planning to that of a ship in the harbour with no clear destination.  A ship with no clear destination will continue to circle around the harbour in a figure 8. And that’s what most salespeople do without the right strategy plan as well as call/territory plan.

 A sales plan allows you to draw out the future and all activ...

 Now this is one of those topics that can be controversial. There is no right or wrong answer, but certainly everyone has an opinion.  To succeed you must work hard and do whatever it takes, is one school of thought. While the other school of thought encourages us to always maintain a work life balance, to focus on the quality of personal life and to do only what we need to do to get by at work.

How many hours per week do you work? If you run a business or climbing the career ladder, there is a good chance you are putting in more than 40 hours. My guess is you are working 50 hours per week — maybe even more.

Working overtime is inevitable, especially when you are approaching an important deadline/have a deal to close, when your colleagues are on holiday, and you are responsible for covering their roles, or if it’s just a busy season and you need to offer a helping hand for your team to meet targets.

But, when it becomes something of a norm, you need to question whether the extra hou...

Emotions play a significant role in our day to day working environment.  It’s where we spend most of our time and it’s what consumes much of our thoughts. Our thoughts trigger our feelings and feelings trigger the emotions.

In the modern workplace we all experience information overload, constant change, and scarce resources— so it should not come as a surprise that this environment is an emotionally charged and complex one. What we also forget, in the middle of our hectic days, is that the way we react to emotions at work will add to that complexity. Emotional intelligence in the workplace, particularly in our Leaders, is precisely what all organisations need.

We all know that at a management level, emotional intelligence and self-awareness skills are more valuable than technical skills. A typical manager spends as much as 40% of his or her time dealing with conflict between team members (Washington Business Journal, May 2005). This statistic is staggering. 

While conflict itself ca...

People in recent times have not been taking vacations. 40% of people worldwide don’t plan on using all of their paid time off this year. And you may be one of those people. Are you hoarding up your precious vacation days and do you keep saying you’ll use them, but something always seems to get in the way? Maybe it’s your workload, or, maybe you’re worried about your job security.

The most common reason why people are not taking vacation is because they suffer from what researchers call a “martyr” complex, in which they believe that no one else can do their job as well as they can. Another 20% of people who don’t take vacations say they skip out because they are afraid and feel they are easily replaceable.

If you too have relegated vacations down your list of priorities, it is time to recognize that it is as important as good food and exercise. 

And more importantly: Taking a vacation could make you even better at your job. Yes, it’s true. Read on, and start booking your next flight ...

A healthy working environment is essential for fostering increased productivity, happier employees, lower absenteeism and all-round wellbeing of the business. The good news is that it’s neither hard nor expensive to make some small changes that will have a great and immediate impact.

Here are some simple steps to help guide you:

1. Promote a work-life fit.

The term more commonly known as work-life balance may be a myth.  Work-life balance implies that you divide personal and work related tasks equally.  Calling it work-life fit allows people to “see the possibilities, instead of focusing on what they can’t have.” –  According to work culture strategist Cali Yost.

Regardless of how you view it, praising those who arrive early and work late, or expecting them to work from home in the evenings, hurts your company in the long run. Without a healthy work-life fit, productivity is likely to decline, and employees may end up suffering from burn out.

Research also suggests that there is a...

We often hear about some incredible stories and success of people starting their own businesses and the things they achieve. Why is it we always think that other people can do things better than ourselves or can do more than ourselves? I find this to be a very interesting idiosyncrasy in the way we think.

In its simplicity, if someone else can do it, then so can you. What you should be asking yourself every day is, “Why not me?”

And here’s the truth in its purest form. If you really, really want it, and you can see it in your mind, you can have it in reality. You just have to really want it, make a committed decision and progress towards your object of desire. It does not matter what type of business it is.

Here are 6 very simple yet really powerful steps to help you in your endeavours:

1. Step In

And jump in full force. Don’t look back. Be ready to unleash the real you. Dream big.

2. Step Up

There’s always a blue print. Follow the process as someone else has been successful in ...

The 100% Foolproof 6 Step Formula to help you make a shift to achieve what you really want.

People often ask me, “How do you do it? How do you stay so disciplined and how do you always seem to have a solution to everything?” They ask me, “Does anything seem too much for you? Do you ever feel stuck? How do you deal with being stuck?” The truth is, I don’t always know everything and in fact, there is so much that I don’t know.

But this I do know 100%, I will never let a goal go because I do not know how to do it, or the results don’t seem to be coming to me.  If I look at my results and I am not happy with them, then I know it’s something to do with how I am looking at it, how I am feeling and how I am reacting to my own internal feelings.

And…I have a foolproof formula that works every time that I’d love to share with you.  So, let’s keep it all very simple.  Ask yourself this, “Am I getting the results that I want?” If the answer is “no”, then follow these simple steps to help you ‘...

We read so much about goals and the purpose of goals but it’s estimated that up to 97% of us don’t have real goals set for ourselves in our personal life. So, let’s explore this a little bit…

Firstly, what is the difference between a scary, audacious goal and just your every day run of the mill goal? How can you tell if a goal is one or the other and which one is better to set? What is the real purpose of a goal and what happens if we don’t have any goals set?

There are three types of goals:

1. Goals that we can achieve with our eyes closed.
2. Goals we think we can achieve with a bit of work.
3. Goals that we only dream about and have no idea how to achieve them.

The third type of goal is those that dreams and fantasies are made of. Most of us, when we think of those big dream goals, tend to quickly push them aside

As kids we are so good at imagining, dreaming and picturing the impossible. Then, for whatever reason, as we grow up we start to put rigid filters on what we think and ho...