The Executive Sales Coach: Keith Rosen’s Sales Blog and Business Blog On Selling, Leadership, Managing Your Team, Business and Life » Insights in Business

With all the talk about the economy heading towards a recession, I’m busier than ever. And so are my clients. So, what gives? How much of this is fact and how much hype? Either way, I’m certainly not disputing that it’s affecting how some business owners and companies are spending lately.

So, what tips do I offer to companies, salespeople and, more specifically retailers on how to weather the recession? The same coaching I deliver to my clients, which is keeping their recession blues at pay, enabling them to drive and close new sales, and most important keeping their mental edge.

‘Weathering a recession’ sounds like surviving a storm and waiting until it passes. The “wait and see” or “lets hope things get better soon” is putting retailers out of business every day. I see it in my community. Stores that were opened one week are closed the next. Sure, you can ‘batten down the hatches’ when the eye of the storm lands but keep in mind when you open them up, there won’t be any customers sitting there waiting around for you. Instead, here’s what you need to do.

1. First, get out of your own head.
Businesses are closing their doors not due to a lack of effort but because they are still attempting to sell, manage or run their business the way it was, not the way it is today. If your marketplace has changed, then you need to change with it. Friendly reminder, don’t get sucked up into what you’re hearing on the news every day. Turn it off if you have to! What is real for you in your business in your local economy? Get out of the type of mindset that keeps you stuck in obsessing on what you need to do to survive and focus on how you can thrive. Remember all those great business ideas you were going to implement; the training your wanted to take, the marketing you wanted to do, the team building you felt would surely to make a measurable impact on your growth and success but daily business responsibilities always seemed to take precedent? Now is the time to blow the dust of those ideas and start executing on them. This begins with a change of thinking, accompanied by a change of strategy and topped off with a strong dose of reality.

2. Get back to basics.
Do you remember when you first opened your doors and achieved some measurable success? Why were you successful in the first place? What did you do then that you may not be doing now or unwilling to do now? Get on the floor of your store, cold call, prospect, do some grunt work? You need to turn around your business, fast, so time is not a luxury. Therefore, if you think there are any activities which are beneath you, then you already have one leg of your business in the grave.

3. Actually learn how to sell.
No, selling for 30 years is not what I’m suggesting as a training platform. Experience is important but experiences doesn’t equate to engaging in the healthiest of sales techniques. I’d be willing to bet (and I’m not a gambling man) the majority of retailers out there have not been coached and trained to be a sales champion, do not have a defined sales process they consistently engage in and as such, don’t know how to truly sell. And by no means consider this an attack on the retail sector. However, given that the majority of daily purchases we make are at a retail level, this is what I’m experiencing both as an executive coach and as a consumer. The “I’ve been successful in spite of myself” theory would apply here.

4. Work your leads and earn a sale.
Just a short time ago, in many sales driven companies, your salesperson can have a pulse and still get a sale simply by your customers showing up and having the money to spend. We were fooled into thinking that, “Hey, since I’m bringing in the business, I must be a great salesperson.” In today’s business climate, the same people are now struggling to generate the results they were, realizing that the marketplace has duped them into thinking they were better then the really are when it comes to professional selling. It has been the economic climate that made many salespeople seemingly productive, rather than their skill set or the core competencies needed to truly become a high performance sales professional, regardless of economic or market conditions. With today’s ever evolving market, if you are selling, managing or running your business the same way you’ve been running it for the last several years, you’re overdue to reevaluate your philosophy.

If you sell consumer products or services that is a more substantial purchase than going to the supermarket (home electronics, furniture, bridal/wedding venders, travel, boutique stores, computers, home appliances, home furnishings, clothing/shoe stores, etc.) don’t let a potential customer walk out the door without collecting some data points and permission to check in. Learn to position yourself as your customer’s trusted adviser throughout their decision making process. Abandon toxic thinking and get beyond the fact that you can afford to let any potential customer walk away from a conversation, thinking they will actually call you back on their own accord. Earn the right to call each person who buys from you - a customer. It’s during times like these where you literally have to earn their business rather than simply be an order taker.

5. Get into action. Work with a coach.
Hire a coach. With a coach, it’s not about weathering the storm. You can do that on your own. A great business coach can assist you in developing the strategy and skills you need to not only sail through the storm but actually even profit during it.

Keith on Fox Business News: Commentary on Corporate Training, Starbucks and Pouring the Perfect Cup of Coffee

“Media Opportunity with Fox Business News at 6pm tonight. Call me asap to discuss.” That’s what the email read and what you can expect when working with a publicist; often having to throw best laid plans out the window in return for the exposure they generate for you.

So, I dropped everything, rescheduled some meetings and found myself quickly suited up and on my way to the television station.

The commentary they were looking for had to do with the decision made by the Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks to close up the 7,100 stores for some ‘necessary’ training for all Starbucks employees. Here’s how the story read:

“Starbucks Closing All Stores for 3 Hours Tuesday Afternoon for Barista Re-training
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
SEATTLE — Starbucks is closing the doors at its 7,100 stores across America for a brief barista re-education. CEO Howard Schultz announced the 3-hour closure starting at 5:30 p.m. local time Tuesday to energize 135,000 employees. He wants baristas to share their passion for making espresso, or as he says, “to pull the perfect shot, steam milk to order and customize their favorite beverage.” Schultz says it’s part of his refocusing on the coffee customer experience. Since the chairman returned as CEO in January he has been making changes to revive Starbucks’ growth.”

I was interviewed by Neil Cavuto Senior VP, Anchor & Managing Editor, Business News on FOX Business Network. They wanted to hear a few different commentaries on the story and whether or not this was a good decision. Here’s what I said, and a little more.

At first glance, it could be viewed as a strategically positioned publicity move, given the media attention this attracted. It’s not like this is the only platform a company uses to develop their people. They could have spread this training out over time. They could have done this before or after hours, in smaller teams and one to one with their mangers. It would have certainly been less of a disruption to their business and my coffee consumption.

And sure, this re-education effort portrays Starbucks as a consumer conscientious company driven to maintain the highest of standards regarding their people and their product, as well as the consumer experience they strive to create for their customers, who have grown accustomed to expecting the same experience each time they purchase a cup of coffee at Starbucks. And there’s no question that Starbucks has very much pioneered many of the changes in the way we purchase and enjoy our coffee today.

Conversely, this can also be viewed as a highly reactionary move from Starbucks. This move could be perceived as a hole in their system to maintain certain high performance standards; an inability to continuously train and coach their employees properly and reinforce best practices. After all, if there was ongoing training or coaching to maintain performance and best barista practices, there wouldn’t be a need to close up shop and pull out 135,000 employees for three hours. I can’t imagine this move becoming part of any long term training and development initiative.

Besides, who they really need to bring in for some coach the coach training would be the mangers rather than their staff. At the end of the day, isn’t it manager’s responsibility in each location to ensure the customer experience and maintain the level of performance that’s expected from each employee?

The kicker is, without consistent follow through and ongoing training, coaching and development for the top down, (avalanches roll downhill, it starts with the managers) this training initiative not only hurt their sales but it will simply not be as effective as they had hoped. A three hour, one shot (no pun intended) training event is the same as, in an effort to improve the overall health of your employees, you pull them out for one day to go to the gym and exercise. Just like it takes more than one day to get in great shape, the same rules hold true for getting your employees’ careers in shape. Without continuous reinforcement, it just doesn’t become long lasting.

This is another example as to why so many companies desperately need to transform their corporate culture into a true coaching culture.

Beyond the internal question of how they will now maintain their level of quality without disrupting their customers and their business, the fact is, most customers never had a problem with the quality of the coffee at Starbucks. With the media drawing now drawing attention to the Starbucks experience, are consumers now going to re-think their perception and that this move may now be a cause for concern?

If anything, customers will now have an even higher expectation of their coffee as a result of this training. If the coffee is not measurably better than it was yesterday, will Starbucks lose customers to their competitors?

Dunkin’ Donuts already leveraged the opportunity with the Starbucks closing, countering with a brilliant move to compete and seize more market share by offering specialty coffee drinks at a fraction of their normal price; 99 cent coffee until 10pm. This is certainly an opportunity for Dunkin’ Donuts to win over a new population’s customer loyalty and the business of many of the Starbucks customers.

Sure, training is important. Sure, this move can demonstrate good will and the commitment Starbucks has to maintaining the highest quality control. However, any PR effort can also backfire and generating some publicity at the expense of disrupting the lives of your customers is not the best way to go. “Yes, we’re going to improve the experience you have with us, but first you must experience being inconvenienced by our closing.”

Back in the 80s I wanted my MTV. Now I want my coffee. Don’t get me wrong, I love Starbucks. I drink it every day of my life. However, if I can’t get it when I want it, then I’m going to go somewhere else. Bottom line; if there’s a problem that needs fixing or an issue that needs to be addressed, do so, but not at the expense of your customers.

While how much this move has negatively impacted their customers and their sales may still be uncertain, one thing’s for sure; with the collateral damage we’ve discussed, this training initiative may be the most expensive training ever known.

Here’s the link to the video news segment. Please note, for some reason, you might have to click on ‘low’ on the player for this segment to play after the commercial is done. So, when you click on the link below and the commercial starts playing, under the screen where it says ‘high’ - ‘low’ click on ‘low.’ The commercial will start again but it should then continue into the segment.

Watch news segment here.

Note: When the video player loads, under the screen where it says ‘high’ - ‘low’ click on ‘low’ to avoid loading problems.

Positive reviews are appreciated

If you ever wonder how much technology to integrate into your business that promises greater efficiency, more productivity or that you’ll make/save more money, Gene Marks, has succinctly pointed out some candid truths about what works and what doesn’t in his article that appeared in Business Week, “Tech ‘Solutions’ Your Small Biz Can’t Use.”

Gene states that many of the software or web solutions that claim to help drive the growth of your company are simply not suited for a small business environment.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

“My life as a small business owner has been littered with stuff that doesn’t work as billed, particularly technology. We business owners are subjected to an endless array of tools that never fail to disappoint. We’re promised. We pay. And we’re let down. The list of overhyped and underwhelming technology changes constantly. So here’s a quick snapshot of 10, in no particular order, that don’t work. At least this week.

1. RSS Feeds

Bob, an electrical contractor, knows what RSS stands for, and I feel sorry for him. He had the misfortune of signing up for an RSS feed. This misnomer is designed to make us feel like we’re getting a “feed” of data just like all the really, really important media people do. When he first tried RSS, he thought, “Wow, I can get immediate updates on product and industry developments, important news from Yahoo! (YHOO), and even get a new joke from The Onion, all as soon as they’re published!” Instead, he was “fed” an endless stream of meaningless items displayed in an overly large browser window that winds up distracting more than informing. Like Bob, most of the business owners I know have abandoned RSS and gone back to controlling when they get their information. Still don’t know what RSS stands for? Trust me, it’s just not that important.

2. Spam Filters

I get this question at just about every presentation I give to business owners: “What spam filters do you recommend?” My answer: “None.” They all suck. Let’s face it: You’re not going to eliminate spam in your business. Instead you’re going to waste money on the latest filtering technology, which does nothing more than block that key e-mail you were awaiting from a prospective customer. Or you’ll require a sender to complete a Sudoku puzzle before “allowing” their e-mail to reach your in-box. In the end, it’s cheaper for your employees to just sort and delete spam as it comes in.

3. Antivirus Software

Betsy was looking for just the right technology to slow down her employees’ computers and significantly degrade the performance of her business applications. Well, she found it, and it’s called antivirus software. As an added bonus, this software prevents her from installing or upgrading applications without a team of NASA-trained IT consultants. Betsy’s spent more money with her IT firm trying to work around antivirus software than she probably would’ve spent if she received an actual virus. What should a business owner do to avoid viruses, worms, and other evil applications that can wreak havoc in our systems? Our tools are still too limited. Even telling your employees, for the 900th time, not to open up suspicious files doesn’t seem to work. I don’t have a very good answer for Betsy’s dilemma. But I do know the current group of antivirus software applications don’t do the job for small businesses.

4. Blogs

Jamie! You started a blog for your business? That’s dope! Now go out and get some accessories, like a pair of black-rimmed rectangular glasses and a Starbucks card. And oh, by the way, you’ll need to set aside about 17 hours each day to keep it fresh. Dude, it’ll be so viral. What’s that, Jamie? You’re not in the media business? You don’t work for a software company? You just own a hardware store? Dude, that’s a drag! If you don’t have something new to say each day, no one’s going to bother to stop by and check out your blog. It’ll be, like, so lame.

You can read the full article here.

Excerpt from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing the Sale by Keith Rosen. Reprinted with permission by Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Release Date, January, 2007. Visit www.guidetoclosingthesale.com.

“It’s ironic,” I began. Denise and I were half way through our weekly coaching call when the topic of controlling the sales process came up.

“Salespeople echo all the time how they create solutions for their clients. Yet what they really are attempting to do is control the sales process through the end, thinking this would move the sale forward.

“Said another way, we try to control as many things as possible to reduce risk. And by definition, risk is synonymous with “danger, hazard or threat.” What is fear; a sense of apprehension or panic. So by default, if we reduce risk, we reduce our fear.

“As such, we believe that the more we attempt to control our risks in any situation, whether is the risk of losing a sale or the risk of having our children grow up without the right guidance, ethics or values, we would be able to then keep that which we fear happening most at bay.

“Consider the paradox of control. The myth is, the more we attempt to control things, the more we can eliminate our greatest fears from coming to fruition.

“Unfortunately, this paradigm and philosophy comes at a cost. You see, if you are trying to control, for example, a sales call and the outcome you desire, there is one thing that you cannot be doing. And that is, you cannot be creating. And the ability to be creative is one of the most important attributes of a sales professional. After all, it is your job to create new and better solutions for your prospects!

“Said another way, control and creation are polar opposites. Here’s why:

• Control is an attempt to generate predictable, expected results. Creation is open to new possibilities and generating unpredictable results.
• Control is rigid. Creation is fluid and evolving.
• Control is based on achieving a certain outcome in the future. Creation can only happen in the present moment.
• Control is focusing on a known outcome. Creation has no agenda to the final outcome.

As you can see, if you are attempting to control the outcome or the sales call, then you cannot be creating new possibilities in the moment. As such, if you are focused on what you want to control, then you will miss out on uncovering or recognizing a new and better opportunity to turn a prospect into a client. Conversely, if you are in a constant state of creation, then you are going to allow new possibilities and solutions to surface naturally.
Tip From Your Executive Sales Coach:
Selling is the art of creating new possibilities and solutions. Salespeople are responsible for the creation rather than the controlling of solutions for their prospects. As such if you are a highly creative salesperson, then there is no need for you to attempt to control the outcome.
“But Keith,” Denise responded, “If I’m in a constant state of creativity, don’t I need some structure to support it? I mean, should I toss out my entire sales process, routine and goals?”

“Not at all,” I stated. “However, I can see where the confusion is. Remember, just like any belief or process, the proverbial pendulum can swing to either side as an extreme, rather than a balance. You certainly want to honor your daily routine, your sales process as well as your goals. However, you are not going to do so to the point where they have your gripped and are controlling you. Said a different way, when things change (whether it’s the market, your career, your prospects, your product or service and so on), that’s when you want to be flexible and adaptable to this change so that you can adjust your processes and strategies accordingly.

“After all, if you were working for a company that sold pagers, and you had a great presentation that allowed you to continually attain your sales goals, would you still be using the same approach when selling mobile phones? In essence, your marketplace has changed along with the needs of your clients.”

At this point, Denise was evolving at light speed. I could here her getting it.

“Well this has certainly been a productive and enlightening call!” She exclaimed. “Thanks a million, coach! I feel better already.”

“Wonderful!” I declared. “I’m looking forward to our call next week and the success that follow from today. Good bye Denise.”
 

Excerpt from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing the Sale by Keith Rosen. Reprinted with permission by Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Release Date, January, 2007. Visit www.guidetoclosingthesale.com.

Your sales mojo is the energy or presence you show up with during every meeting with a prospect. It’s that allure, charisma, or vibe you radiate that every one of your prospect’s feel from you.

Your sales mojo encapsulates the inner game of selling, which is who you are and how you come across when speaking with others. Developing your sales mojo goes beyond the basics of learning a presentation, selling strategy or pitch, which is what superficial sales training is only capable of teaching you.

While an experienced, certified sales coach can assist you in uncovering and developing your authentic sales mojo, the consequences of not doing so can be severe. Just take a look at some of these limiting beliefs that prevent the natural flow of your mojo.

• “You can’t close someone in our business. They have to be ready to buy. And when they’re ready, they’ll call me.”
• “I’m not good at closing. I hate putting pressure on people.”
•  “I’ve tried some closing tools before and they didn’t work for me.”
•  “I had a horrible experience when I attempted to get the prospect to make a decision.”
 “I hate when people try to close me.”

Whatever the reason, whatever the story, every salesperson, manager and business owner has their own opinion on what it means to close a sale and why they can or cannot do so successfully.

A little personal history about your author. It was shortly after I decided to become a coach. Now, at this point, I’ve been coaching for about 16 years now. Yup, I was one of the first sales and business coaches to hang my shingle, a true pioneer in the coaching profession, if you will and one of the first Master Certified Coaches to get credentialized. (Okay, enough shameless plugs; for now.)

As you can imagine, I was certainly ahead of the curve. Being an innovator and a leader in this now rapidly growing profession of life and business coaching, I had to create my own road to achieve success, as there was no other proven path to follow. Being a leader in such a young industry certainly had its advantages. However, it also came with some tall challenges that needed to be eliminated.

At this point, I had sold my business (of course, with the unwavering support of my wife, as nervous as she may have been.) So, here I was, with no income stream coming in as I launched full steam into an unproven and unknown profession with only my experience in managing and owning several other businesses to help guide me.

One thing was for certain. I had a very strong sales and marketing background. After all, when I owned my other businesses, I was the one responsible for the recruiting, hiring, training, managing and coaching of all our employees.

In an attempt to apply my wisdom, I came up with some best practices and developed what was to be my first of several attempts to put my new selling strategy together.

I started doing what I knew how to do, that was to pick up the phone and start making cold calls. And to my surprise, I was very successful at getting through the door and into an appointment with the decision maker. Without minimizing my efforts and results, what I had encountered when meeting with these prospects was that most of the time they wanted to meet with me out of sheer curiosity. After all, at this point, no one had ever heard of coaching outside athletic or sport coaching. So, I had the advantage of positioning business and life coaching as something new and unique.

A month later, I wasn’t even making enough money to stay broke. Pitch after pitch, presentation after presentation, I kept hearing the same thing. “It sounds really interesting Keith but I just can’t see how we can apply this to what we’re doing right now. Lets stay in touch and maybe some time in the future we can look at this again. But hey, it sounds real cool what you’re doing now. Good luck!”

Give Value

With all of the prospects that I had generated over the last month and the results I’ve experienced from my lackluster selling efforts, it was time to re-evaluate. So, I did what any new, intelligent, humble and highly evolved coach would do. I called my coach for help.

And after I shared with her what I’ve gone through, do you know what she told me in all of her years of wisdom? “Keith, you have to stop presenting and just give value.”

“What the heck does that mean?” I thought. I had no clue what she was talking about. Give value? Well, I took her coaching and put forth my best effort in deciphering what I thought she meant. I started thinking about how I could, as my omnipotent coach said, “give value.”

A funny thing happened. I stopped talking and started listening more. I stopped pitching and presenting and started asking better questions. Since my coach didn’t share with me a strategy to give value, by default, I had to figure out and uncover what value meant to each prospect I spoke with. And the only way to uncover each prospect’s perception and definition of value, I needed to ask more questions.

Talk about one of those “Aha!” moments! My coach knew exactly what she was doing. Rather than deliver the same presentation or a revised presentation to every prospect, she opened up a new possibility for me to find out what value looked like from the eyes of every prospect rather than from my own. What evolved was a process of inquiry and a defined set of questions I used when meeting with each prospect.
 
You see, the gem I discovered very quickly when it came to selling my training and coaching services was totally counterintuitive. That is, you can’t sell coaching. Or at least not in the traditional sense of selling. Talk about your paradoxes.

Let me say this another way. Because coaching is about the investment in yourself and your own personal or professional development, the client has to be ready and willing to be coached.

Either you are ready to generate substantial unprecedented results both in your life and your career and are willing to be accountable, honest and do what is necessary (in your integrity of course) to achieve your goals or you are not.

Luckily, none of my early closing techniques worked on any of the prospects I saw thus far. Because if they did, then you can bet I would not only be working with less clients but clients that I would probably be much better off without. (If I didn’t ask questions, then how would I know if there’s a good fit?) Discovering this inspired me to develop an entirely different model that went against traditional selling.

I stopped trying to close and I started opening. The point I want to drive home is this; I’ve never had to close another sale again.
 

Excerpt from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing the Sale by Keith Rosen. Reprinted with permission by Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Release Date, January, 2007. Visit www.guidetoclosingthesale.com.

When asking a prospect questions, be sure that your questions succeed in achieving the following objectives.

1. Be direct and candid with your questioning and communication. Do not be vague or tiptoe around the subject or question. Make the question clear, focused, direct and concise.

2. Make sure that your questions open up new possibilities, ideas and opportunities in the mind of the prospect that they never considered. Do they enable the prospect to see a new and better solution and envision more measurable worthwhile results, based on the information that you have provided?

3. Have the prospect draw from previous purchasing experiences to determine their buying habits, wants, priorities, and needs.

4. Learn to question what is said and what is not said. Never prejudge a prospect until you have the evidence to support your assumptions. Utilize questions until you are satisfied with the response.

5. Use questions to achieve mindshare and agreement as well as to gracefully uncover and correct the inaccuracies and misperceptions which they my have about your product or service.

Excerpt from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing the Sale by Keith Rosen. Reprinted with permission by Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Release Date, January, 2007. Visit www.guidetoclosingthesale.com. 

To permanently eliminate any confusion, lets draw a distinction between what it means to pre-qualify and pre-judge someone such as a prospect. If you read my cold calling book, you know that I’m a strong advocate of pre-qualifying anyone before you invest your very limited and precious time in meeting with or speaking with them. Conversely, pre-judging someone is something you do that shows up in the filter or barrier you have in your listening.

Here’s another way to distinguish between the two. When you are pre-qualifying someone you are arriving at a conclusion that determines whether or not there’s a fit worth pursuing based on a defined set of criteria you uncover through the use of well crafted questions.

Pre-judging said simply, is all about you. Here, you are relying on your faulty and costly assumptions, thoughts and beliefs to determine their needs and whether or not this prospect will potentially buy from you.

When you pre-judge someone you’re making assumptions about them before you ask any questions or uncover any facts.

When you pre-qualify someone, you’re asking questions to uncover their unique and specific needs without making any assumptions so that you can determine very quickly if there is in fact, an authentic fit worth pursuing.

People Do What Makes Them Comfortable 

Just put the final touches on the site for my next book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing the Sale.

www.GuidetoClosingtheSale.com

Talk about taking one subject many people struggle with and levitating it with what always seems to be a controvertial title (the “Idiot’s” portion of the title, at least). Lighten up. Your customers and prospects are.

I hope you enjoy Chapter One as well as the Introduction, which I’ve currently posted on this site  and will be available only for a limited time. Wait until you get your hands on some of the techniques in this book. It doesn’t matter if you’re a sales veteran, top producer, new salesperson, manager or business owner, this book is packed with step by step and line by line Permission Based Selling and Presentation Strategies which I guarantee will bring in more sales for you.

So, feel free to visit the site. I’d also love to hear your comments as well! And if you haven’t already make sure you get my monthly ezine which will also keep you posted on other resources available only to those who know.

Be Creative
    
It is three p.m. in the afternoon on a lovely fall day. You are on your way to work. As you walk by a school, you notice all of the children playing outside. You pause and watch them for a second. A flood of emotions and memories intoxicate your mind, as you  remember yourself as a child. You admire their youthful exuberance, their unlimited supply of energy, their fervor for freedom, their passion for knowledge, their desire to learn and their boundless creativity.
 

Become a create freak rather than a control freak.
 

You listen to their conversations as they play. Some are talking about the planets they are visiting. Others are envisioning the castle in which they are playing in. They see this vividly, down to every detail, including the moat around the castle. Some pretend to be presidents, firemen, astronauts even doctors.
    
How creative children are! How powerful their minds are. Full of ideas with no inhibitions or limitations to restrain them. Children have the ability to visualize or imagine their true dreams. They bring their dreams into their reality and making them real.
 

The most creative time in a person’s life is from birth to the age of around eleven years old. This is the time when they are not constrained by rules or regulations. Children are not concerned with what is supposedly acceptable in thought or behavior and what is not, what is practically right or wrong, proper or improper, fact or fiction.
    
In a child’s eyes, there exists no boundaries. There is nothing to regulate them or inhibit their level of creativity. Everything that children see is new and exiting. They are constantly absorbing information and expanding on their ideas. The more they learn, the more children want to express themselves. They want to share what they have learned. They have no fear of rejection, of being wrong or of the unknown. Why? Because they have not experienced it yet!
    
The years begin to pass. The people in a child’s life, such as teachers and parents, begin to instill their values and ideals in the minds of their children.
 

• “No, that is not appropriate for a child of twelve years old (or fifteen or seventeen, and so on).” 
•  ”No, you can’t act like that anymore.” 
• “No, you can’t spend all of your time playing. It is time to start thinking about your future and get serious.”
• “You can’t do that (wear that, say that).” 
• “That is wrong.” 
• “Doing that is unacceptable.”
• “No, Santa and the Tooth Fairy really don’t exist.”
   

As a child gets older, they begin to experience embarrassment, being wrong, having people put down their ideas and dreams and punishment for doing the, “wrong thing.”
    
The creative boy now becomes a man. His eyes no longer see the dreams and visions he had as a boy. He becomes serious; more focused on the perceived role to play in society and the pressures from his family. He concentrates on what he thinks he wants and needs. His thoughts and desires that he had as a child become clouded with every passing day, only to be replaced with more and more responsibilities. A mortgage, a job, a family.
    
He begins to lose sight of what was especially important in his life. The simple things. Freedom of expression, having fun, peace of mind, living simply, appreciating his surroundings, treating every day as a new adventure and not getting caught up in the manutia that blinds us from appreciating the beauty around us. All of the visions and dreams are put on a shelf where they begin to collect dust.
 

The man begins to forget what it was like to be creative, to dream and to imagine. Lack of creativity breeds complacency. He now becomes just like everyone else; another face, another number.
    
Imagine if we never lost our creative edge. Imagine what would be possible if we didn’t feel compelled to have to change, due to other people’s beliefs, perceptions or rules.  Now imagine if you had the ability to share your visions and dreams with those around you.
      
Before you assist a customer in opening up their mind, you must first open up your own. Know what it is like to sit on a cloud. Can you see yourself sitting way up in the sky? Do you smell the crisp air?  As you look down, do you see the whole world? Imagine there is nothing to restrain you. Look at the root of the word creative. Create. Take action to create your own destiny. Now, take the customer with you.
    
Anyone can study and memorize a presentation. Ask someone why they actually purchased from you. Will they say it was because you had the most beneficial package? They might. However, most of the time they will say it was because of you.