1. Believe you can and stay positive!

Having a winning belief system does not mean that you need to be deluded however! In the middle of the darkest recession you don’t want to have your eyes shut! But you have to understand that in a downturn clients want to partner with the best companies. Suppliers that they can rely on. Suppliers that support them. Suppliers who are going to be around tomorrow. And if your competitors struggle, that means more sales and more business for you.

2. Get proactive

You need to be more proactive. Much more proactive. You need to do more marketing and more selling. You need to attend more events and do more networking. You need to do more promotion and more canvassing. You need to increase your sales activities, maybe dramatically.

In a recession many companies cut their sales activites. They figure, “If we’re not going to sell anything, what’s the point?” Many individual salespeople do this too.

Talk about killing your own market! If you see less business then you need to do more sales and marketing, not less. That’s common sense.

3. Sharpen your sales skills

If a workman needs a spade and a farmer needs a horse; a boxer needs a defence and a chef needs a recipe; what do salespeople need? The answer’s obvious - it’s sales skills.

Most salespeople do not spend enough time working on improving their sales skills and techniques. Sales training and development is not something that many salespeople spend their time on out of choice. Perhaps they can get away with this in a booming marrket when sales are easy. Perhaps not. But things will always change if the market tightens.

4. Improve your service and focus on relationships

As I write this many companies will be working out how to cut corners. They will try to save money by tinkering with their business offerings. They will try and eek extra profits out of their clients by cutting the bells and whistles from their offerings. This is not a good idea. A Swiss cow with no bells is just a cow and no-one would send postcards of them home!

If business is tight you want to be wowing your clients with the best service that they have ever had, from you or from any of your competitors. You need to be going the extra mile.
Spend time with your clients. Build stronger relationships with your clients. Make sure you truly understand them, their concerns and their businesses. Find ways to help them and add value over and above what they could have ever expected.

5. Leverage your efforts

In a soft market many salespeople only chase the easy stuff. They don’t chase the tough stuff. They’re doing ok, they don’t have to. They’re making sales right?

Wrong.

Most salespeople have all sorts of opportunities which they squander every day and every month because there are seemingly easier things that they can be doing.

In a tough market you must leverage all of your efforts. This is basic sales 101 and should be stuff that you do every day anyway… Here are just a few ideas.

Always ask for referrals. Referrals are great business but most salespeople do not ask for them because clients often say no. Learn how to ask for a referral properly and then build asking for a referral into your sales process and ask for one every time.

So there we are, 5 tips to help you to sell in a recssion. This year may well prove to be an interesting year for some businesses and individuals. Some of this will be down to the market itself. Much of it will be down to you and how you react and respond to what might be a challenging year.

Here’s my prediction for the year…

There will be winners and there will be losers. Which are you going to be?

If you were to suddenly find yourself without an income, due to losing your job or being unable to work for health reasons, your lifestyle could change drastically. If you have monthly mortgage repayments to make you would still have to continue meet the costs or risk losing your home to repossession. Loan or credit card repayments would also have to be made too, and you could struggle when it comes to finding the money needed. Income protection could give you the financial security needed each month for a small monthly premium.

A protection policy would replace your lost income up to a certain amount each month. The exact sum you would receive is decided when you take out the cover. A specialist provider will offer the cheapest premiums, which will be based on how much of your income you wish to protect and how old you are when applying for the cover.

Not explaining to the consumer that there are terms and conditions attached to these insurance policies is the main failure that providers have been guilty of in the past, and this is deemed mis-selling. There are some exclusions that are general to all policies and it is essential to check them against your circumstances to be absolutely sure that the policy you are considering would benefit you. Individuals who are self-employed, suffer from an ongoing illness, only work a few hours each week or who are retired might not benefit from taking out cover. However, those who do suffer from an illness should still give some thought to cover if the illness has not been present within the past two years. In addition, a self-employed individual could benefit if they have to cease trading through no fault of their own.

Just as the premiums for income cover varies from provider to provider then so do the exclusions, so it is absolutely imperative that you compare the exclusions along with comparing the cost. Providers can add in their own exclusions too and these can vary considerably. The best independent providers add in very few exclusions and this is what you should check for.

An income protection insurance policy could kick in anywhere between day 30 to 90 of being continually unable to work. Cover is then backdated to the first day of being unable to work, whether that’s due to redundancy or suffering an illness or accident.

We have talked about internet and their function in the previous article. Now we are discussing more detail about one of internet function, internet as entertainment media. Entertainment media in here mean is a place when we could find some fun inside of.

For example now, there are a lot of game online like warcraft, etc. where we could find a lot of new friend from every side of the earth. Beside game online there are also entertainment tools like online casino or online gambling where we could get a lot of fun and try our luck to get some profit without wasting so much time and transportation ticket to go there. I think is much simple than we go to the real casino, because we also need to spend some money for accomodation. What we need is just Internet link and you could play everywhere everytime when we want to play.  Also internet could help us to create new social network, meet with our old friends which we never imagine before because we already lost contact each other.

Some people starting to using Internet as their earning money’s media. Internet was improving from just information source become many kind of function which we never imagine before. Many people using their internet as their earning money tools, some people use it to search information which we know that internet is the number one most updated information source.

For earning money media some people could use interenet as promotion media to promote their product, or making online shop because internet has very big market inside of. Recently Internet also become a new tools to show someone and their opinion. Using Blog, we could use internet as a place to share idea, online diaries, etc. Also to get some fun inside of internet world. Get some fun with doing game online, online casino or something. Why someone like to playing online game like online casinos? because we no need to spend our time and wasting much transportation money to go to some place for play.

So now we know that internet now not just for information source, but inside of it there are a lot of internet function.

1. Customer discounts/incentives

When people fall upon hard times it is important we justify the cost of any purchase, offering special incentives or discounts can really help customers choose to purchase.

If a customer is undecided between two different products it might just be the discount you give them which could swing them one way or another.

2. Push the price benefits over other options

One of the biggest concerns will be the price of the product, it is important that you show why choosing your recommendation will be a cost effective solution.

Compare against other products in the market place or other options.

3. Increasing perceived value

It is even more important than ever that you push the extra value services; ideally you really want to promoted time based bonuses, order today and get $50 off. You should also really market the bonuses like “free shipping”. These could make a real difference when people come to order.

4. Selling everyday items

It is very important that your surfers do not look at the item as a luxury, often in difficult times people will stop purchasing more luxury items and stick to the necessities.

It is very important that you pass the message across that this is an everyday item which they cannot do without; this is not the purchase of a lifetime but just something else to add to their basket.

5. It’s quality and will not need replacing / Will last the test of time

Finally it is important that customers feel they are purchasing something of quality, after all this needs to last longer than before as we all have less disposable income. It is important you portray the message that this product is better value for money as it will last twice as long as other products in the market.

While the world is fighting to go “green” and reduce paper usage and computers are now considered a safe and competent alternative I just cannot make that leap of faith to changing over again. Why is it that this is the case?

While the concept of going paperless was nice, as pointed out above it wasn’t really paperless, it was just different paper. When a bill came in we had to print a copy of it to place in our files should it be necessary for an audit or to dispute an error. The piece of printer paper was usually larger than the paper the bill would have come on to start with which defeated the purpose of switching from a conservation standpoint. We then realized that most businesses charged a fee to get an original copy of a bill over three months old which meant more paper- the folding kind of paper money going out of our pocket, to acquire a bill that would have otherwise been in our possession free of charge each month. In fact almost all businesses only offer a three month billing history on line free of charge.

A second is that there are times when the computer is down and you need information regarding billing right away to conduct daily business. You have two choices, either wait for the server to come back on line or put your business on hold. Perhaps you can try to handle matters by phone, but that can be cumbersome and aggravating especially if you do not have a hard copy of a bill or invoice to refer to.

The third bone of contention is how much personal and business information do you want out in the electronic world? Granted not everyone is hacked or has to deal with identity theft but when transactions are made on line they are floating around out there for anyone with the proper knowledge of how to do so to gain access to that information.

After our experience of going paperless we decided that for us it just wasn’t realistic or viable. We had to have official hard copies available at all times and on record to insure the ability to conduct business efficiently and accurately and insure that should a problem arise more than three months old we didn’t have to jump through hoops wasting time and money to prove our side of the billing story. It is true we do pay some bills electronically, but we always without fail demand we be mailed our paper copy of monthly statements for everything. This seems to be the only mix that works for us.

In summary the move to electronic transactions may be fine for those whom are paying a household bill or two per month, and far easier than writing checks and mailing them in, but in business the old paper way is still the best way. It provides a legally acceptable record of bills and payments as well as a good on hand backup reference immediately available whenever necessary.

Asset allocation is probably the most important factor in achieving long term success as an investor.The proper asset allocation has many factors which go into it such as a person’s age,risk tolerance,and the goals the person has set to achieve with the money.This is one reason people use financial advisors and planners to invest the money for them.Yet many people still do not have a proper balance between all the asset classes.

Why is this so? Obviously,an individual investor just may not have the knowledge to do it properly themselves.That is why many people turn to financial advisors and planners.Yet,many clients of these advisors are still not properly diversified among the various asset categories.Why is this so? It seems that old habits die hard.Many of these advisors and managers began their careers during the 80s and 90s,the heyday of the US stock market.It became ingrained in their thinking that only US stocks rise and particularly hot sectors such as tech and financials always go up.So what do many of these money managers do?They load up their clients with stocks and mutual funds that are mainly US based and then leave just a portion of the portfolio for bonds and money market funds.This is not a proper allocation!

A proper allocation should be broadly based and included large and small cap US stocks,bonds, real estate,international stocks and bonds,and commodities or commodity related stocks and ETFs.Yet,many people have almost nil in international stocks and bonds or commodities.Many advisors say that only 5% should be international as it’s too risky.Yet most of the economic growth and stock market returns in the last decade has occurred in the rest of the world and most Americans have missed it.And commodities? Most advisors after they are done laughing,mouth the word bubble and allocate 0% to commodities.Yet the highly prestigious study from the Yale School of Management’s Center for International Finance study of financial markets from 1959 to 2004 showed that commodities produced comparable annual returns to stocks and better return than bonds while exhibiting less volatility than the S&P 500 index over the same period.Perhaps this is why the Yale endowment fund has since 1985 had average annual returns of nearly 18%.Yet many ordinary investors have had such poor returns this decade.Long term investors should definitely keep a keen eye on what their advisors are telling them and make sure they are truly diversified.

There may be a much better and / or better paying job but its way across town, or in an area not served by the bus transit system. Or it may be the case that there is bus service - but if devours a good two to three hours a day of travel time. Good bye to your personal social life. You may have all the money in the world – the wealth of Bill Gates Himself and yet no time or energy to enjoy it. So much for all that pay of that new wonderful job.

A real step foreword as they say. It is always a case of reward versus cost or cost versus benefit. It is a case by case analysis.

In addition you should think of additional or add on costs. Do not stretch yourself too thin – financially. A course at university may not be offered in your calendar year – you will have to complete your schooling fully at a later date than expected. A course may be full – ditto for time delay. Or you may even have to repeat a course or change plans along the way necessitating longer time duration of studies. Leave a buffer of funding both for yourself and as well with the agency that provided the loan – be at bank, savings and loan, credit union or even parents or relatives. Don’t break the bank so to speak at the first step. The same analysis of benefit versus costs prevails in the car / transport / job scenario situation. Many people will drive across town for a bargain to save a dollar and spend $ 10 on gas costs in the process. Incorporate the price of gas into your final net salary not as an aside.

Lastly and most importantly – always pay your bills. Never take on more than you can chew, or in this case afford. Before making that commitment for a loan or undertaking always evaluate carefully before signing on the bottom line. It’s not only a matter of convenience. Your credibility itself is on the line, in addition to your personal honor and integrity and reputation. Pay your bills on time – even earlier than required. This applies to all loans – whether they are for rent, mortgage, utility bills, bank loans, charge card payments or student loans. If you cannot pay in full, then at least pay a bit above the minimum payment. If you are really stuck then contact the lender. Explain the situation honestly. Make a commitment and follow through. Remember the whole point of the exercise was your self improvement – an investment in yourself. To not take the exercise seriously is to shortchange yourself and your future opportunities as well as income stream in the future. To borrow for yourself and personal gain make prudent sense.

Here are 3 steps to begin SEEING success in those that you serve.

1)Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.
In Dr. Wayne Dyer’s book, The Power of Intention, he sites that, “It turns out that at the tiniest subatomic level, the actual act of observing a particle changes the particle.” This is a clear example of energy affecting energy. If I look at you and see your success, then you begin to create more of and be success! How great is that?

2)Be constantly giving.
The energy of success is constantly giving and the supply is limitless. When you can come from this place in your own business, you begin to attract more into your life.

When I shifted my attention to giving for the sake of the success of those that I was serving and simultaneously confidently took care of what I needed for myself and my business (instead of waiting for someone else to do just do it), there was more success ALL around.

3)Detach from the outcome.

When you are able to SEE success, you don’t need to be attached to the outcome because you KNOW that it’s going to be successful. Whenever you are caught up in accumulating (I have to get this client; I have to sell to this customer), then you lose sight of what your main goal is–to see the success of those that you serve.

Find out exactly what’s going on for the person that you’re speaking to. Ask them and ask yourself, what do they need? The answer to this question is usually multi-layered. (For example, prospects that come to me may need more income from their businesses, but they also need to move through the blocks they’ve unconsciously set up for themselves that’s keeping them from getting more money).

Call To Action:

1) Ask yourself, how do I see my prospects, clients, or customers? Be honest. Just let the answer come. No judgment. It will give you a lot of information.

2) With whatever answer you get now, ask yourself, “How can I improve?” How can I see this situation differently?

3) For one day focus only on those you serve and their success. Write down the difference in how you feel, the results that your clients get, and anything else that pops up.

Our world has many kind of beautiful scenic where we must visit. There a lot of beach, mountain, lake and another kind of natural resource which we could called it world’s heritage. Before visit natural resource of course we need to doing some exploration to explore what we need, where we could get it, when is the best time to visit, how to go there, etc.

Our world’s population always growing, which mean Tourist population also growing. in this article we explore their potential.

For example when we want to visit beach, of course we need different tools than when we want to visit mountain. They have different activity. When we want to go to beach what we could have strong relation with water and sunbathing. The main tools are swimming suit and some lotion to protect our skin, or we also could doing some diving activity to explore underwater world.

Now we explore what about if we go to mountain? First we should explore what we want? just doing some relaxation, enjoy fresh air? or doing something more extreme like hiking, living outside with tent? If just for enjoy fresh what we need are only good hotel and some of jacket. But if we want to have outside camp, what we need is more complicated like sleeping bags, cooking tools, etc.

So it’s interesting business, isn’t it?