Do you understand the difference between selling and marketing? Do you market yourself? Are you what people want? Are you brilliant at the basics? Do you prospect every single day? Do you close sales every single day? Do you listen? Do you never forget to ask for the order? Do you always ask for referrals? Are you a terrific story teller? Are you enthusiastic? Do you have a mentor? Are you a mentor? Are you proud of what you do? Do you always stress benefits to people? Do you not talk about products, but what products can do for people? Do you know your products cold? Are you both efficient and effective? How are you at overcoming objections? Do you filter out the white noise? Do you never lose sight of your clients’ goals? Are you always trying to go to the next level? Are you always trying to succeed and get better? Are you good at working on relationships? How are you at explaining fees and commissions? How are you at giving a presentation? Do you probe well? Do you close well? Do you make a great opening statement before you begin your presentation? Do you have an abundance of common sense? Do you control your behavior? Do you control your clients’ behavior? Do you gather all the assets?

I spoke with a friend of mine yesterday and he told me he opened sixty new accounts in April. He said that while prospecting he thinks only of success and he constantly reminds himself of the valuable role he plays in the lives of his clients. I thought of the old story of three men in a ditch wielding pickaxes. The first man said he was breaking up rocks. The second man said he was earning his paycheck. The third man said he was helping to build a cathedral. When you get rebuffed by someone, dwell on how important you are to your client’s child who can go to college and not borrow money because of you.

The Augusta National chairman is Billy Payne. He had this to say about Tiger Woods: “He is a very, very special person, a man who decides the outcome and then undertakes a strategy, where the rest of us, we all adopt strategies hoping to get an outcome. He does it just the other way.”
If you recall, I mentioned on this website a response Thomas Watson gave when he was asked how he nearly singlehandedly built IBM. “I imagined what I wanted and I worked backwards.”

Isn’t it interesting that your wealthiest clients don’t live where they are supposed to? They are supposed to live in the richest part of town. Warren Buffett is not supposed to live in Omaha. He’s supposed to live in a 30,000 square foot home in Montecito overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Somebody better tell him. In forty years of prospecting, I have found an absolute truth. When people are in a poor financial situation, they are not going to tell anybody. They’ll struggle to pay that big mortgage rather than admit an adjustment is necessary. Don’t be misled when you are prospecting. There is often no money where you think there should be.

Here’s something nice you can do for your clients who are planning a trip. Direct them to www.seatguru.com. This website will allow you to look at the seating diagrams for every airplane flown by every airline. It will tell you if a seat is a good seat or a bad seat. It will list all the in-flight amenities on that particular plane, as well as a ton of other information. You can follow the website on Twitter. It’s a very cool website.