The slogan of any sales training should be "More business with better clients". More business is not necessarily good business. You've probably heard it before.

			When sales people desperately want to succeed they tend to welcome any client into their sales funnel. Consequently, the pipeline is filled with an excess of bad business. What's bad business? Well, not only does this uncritical sales activity lead to a waste of time on business that will never be closed. It also means wasting time on customers that will waste your time even when you do get the business. That's bad business!

When I was a young boy, I asked my father why he kept cutting down the different trees in our garden. In my mind, a big tree was a good tree. My father explained to me how a trimmed tree always lives longer and remains much more productive or fruitful. The same goes for sales and business!

Sales training is about getting back to basic. It's about focus. If training doesn't help you find which clients you want and HOW to do it, then training will only make you more busy doing what doesn't lead to profitable customers. Believe me, more business with poor clients, is not want you want.

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To no other person is free enterprise so free as to the individual with sales skills coupled with a network of quality people.

					There's is nothing like a business professional! A lot of people know how to sell. Also, a lot of people have experience with business development. But a combination of both is what really makes the difference. A true professional is skilled at both sales and business development - the hallmark of free enterprise. That unique confidence found in long-time professionals comes from the ability to create opportunities from almost anything. And what skills typically make up the difference?

The essence of business development is creating win-win solutions. The only way to visualize and clarify win-win solutions effectively is by sharpening your sales skills. Why? Because sales skills is the WHAT, WHO and HOW to draw mental pictures of value in the mind of another person.

You may have great ideas about value creation (i.e. business), but your business plan comes alive only when you know how to execute it. Execution is helping people believe and work that plan. In other words: Selling!

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Life will bring you dark moments. It hurts to go through them, but when you're proactive bright times will dominate your life and can in fact jumpstart your path to success. To a person in sales, with a lot of regular setbacks, this is an important lesson to be learned and can become a lifestyle that will make all the difference.

Yesterday was an awful day for me. Just terrible! In addition, I lost a major contract I expected to close. Everything I had scheduled was headed toward success.

However, not only did I fail miserably, but people and circumstances gave me clear feedback about mistakes I had made. If you're like me; I can live with failure because it's what success is all about, but making mistakes is ten times worse. It's personal and hurts more than failure.

	So I was feeling low! When I came home I worked hard to get deeply involved in the life of my family members, replacing my concern for self with that of others. I decided I wouldn't even try to "get over it" until I'd had a good night's rest. Why? Because I know how it works. Here's how:

Did you ever find that when you look back on life, memories are mostly the happy ones. For some reason, most people tend to forget the dark moments, but savour the bright one's. In sum, all the happy moments appear to the mind as long and enduring bright times. (That's why we sometimes are inclined to think: "I used to be so happy, but now everything's so hard...")

So what can we learn from our ability to filter out the dark moments? How can this help us improve our lives on a daily basis?

Maintain Energy and Momentum

When you're experiencing a dark moment, accept it. Don't fight it. Strong and bad emotions are necessary opposites in a happy life. Let it pass by not making any serious or rash decisions. Close your mouth if you're tempted to take it out on the people around you. Listen more. Get involved in the lives of others and most importantly, retire early and let the body and mind rest it out.

Remember, late night moments are literally in the dark. If you retire early they will not last long. (During the night, your mind will be searching for answers and often find them, sometimes without you knowing it. Let the mind do the work for you.) In stead of extending the day - and the pain - by burning the midnight oil, rather choose to arise early and spend as much of your waking hours in the (day)light. It's a lifestyle that maintains your energy level and increases your momentum. The people around you will be surprised by your ability to get back up so soon after having taken such a serious beating, believe me!

Inevitably, dark moments will occur, however brief they might be, but bright times and feelings of happiness can and will dominate your life, now, not only in the past, if you want it to.

p.s. I'm well aware of chronic illnesses and serious depression, for which there certainly is no quick fix. What we're talking about here, though, is the tendency of any "healthy" person to sink into depression over matters that will evaporate if only you apply the principles outlined above.

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Do you ever feel you're not in control? Let's put it this way: "You're not the only one". How do we know we've lost it and what can we do to regain control of our lives?

Not being in control really hurts. Here are some examples to help you discover when you've lost control:

		When you're constantly running behind schedule. When your life and surroundings are cluttered or messy. When you find yourself breaking promises and commitments. When your relationship with the people you really care about is slowly deteriorating (...and maybe you won't even admit that you do care about them..?).

• When bills are hard(er) to pay (on time).
• When you sense that your mental, social emotional or physical health is declining faster than it should.
• When you know you're not doing what's most important and you just can't seem to get your head around to making that change.
• ...or when you're feeling poor and depressed and you just can't really tell why you sometimes feel that way.

Of course, there's no simple formula. If there was, we wouldn't be hurting in the first place. However, there's are a few principles that have greatly helped many people. You should know these principles. You deserve to know!

There's something else you might like to know about these principles, too: They're currently applied by the most balanced people you encounter in your life. On a sidenote, in the world of business these principles are literally worth millions of dollars, even though that's maybe not why you'd like to know, right now.

That Little Extra

Just for once, let me dive straight into HOW you could gain control, and then I'll just leave it to you to find out WHY you should. (After all, your WHY is ultimately something only you can answer.) On the first day of every week, revisit the following process:

		(1) Define your different roles (e.g. husband, father, employee...). (2) List the key people relating to each of those roles. (3) Write one sentence for each person: "WHAT would you like that person to say about you a year from now". (4) Identify your areas of frustration - the small but important things in which you currently fail (both in relation to the people you've listed as well as your own private life). (5) Decide on what you will do to correct it, when you will do it and how you will do it. Stay focused on only 1-3 goals. (6) Produce reminders so you will remain focused throughout the week and recommit daily. (7) Plan to repeat the process next week.

Are you able to extract the principles behind why this is a process that really produces long term results? You'll find that these regular steps lead to one very important result: It's what I like to call "that little extra". Here's a real life example to illustrate.

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