The following contains excepts from the book, The Power of Focus (Jack Canfield)
At our music school in Midland, Texas, we believe that music is more than sound, it is relationships. When studying the value of relationships, the subjects of leadership, self-leadership, and personal accountability come into play.
In this book Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Les Hewitt explain that three of the biggest challenges facing people today are time pressures, financial pressures and the struggle to maintain a healthy balance between work and home. Their advice is geared toward finding solutions to these challenges, and the strategies they offer are practical. The authors also explain that the main reason most people struggle professionally and personally is simply due to a lack of focus caused by procrastination, distractions and interruptions.
Here’s what’s important: Life doesn’t just happen to you. It’s all about choices and how you respond to every situation. If you are in the habit of continually making bad choices, disaster often occurs. Your everyday choices ultimately determine whether you end up living with abundance or living in poverty. Consistent choices lay the foundation for your habits. Your habits play a major role in how your future unfolds. This includes the habits you display to the business world every day, as well as the variety of behaviors that show up in your personal life. These strategies are not gender specific. One of the most exciting developments in the marketplace today is the rapid growth of women entrepreneurs. Successful people have successful habits; unsuccessful people don’t!
Onen of the most powerful life-skills we can help students at our music school in Midland, Texas develop is the ability to focus, through long-range goals, personal practice, and patient consistency.
Ask for What You Want
Success is difficult if you don’t ask. Here’s seven ways you can improve your business by asking.
1. Ask for information. Ask potential customers what their needs are before you try to tell them why your product is for them. Ask questions that begin with who, why, what, where, when and how. Be genuinely interested, you can’t fake it. Here are two good opening questions: a) What’s your single biggest challenge at this time? b) What are some of your most important goals? Follow up with more questions that will get to the heart of what your client is feeling. Don’t interrogate- comment occasionally, pause and show that you are listening. Finally, when you have developed a rapport, hopefully even trust, you can talk about your product or service.
2. Ask for business. Many don’t. Once you’ve given a presentation, ask for business. Be confident. The closing question should always be one that requires a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ response. A good ‘no pressure’ question is: ‘Would you like to give it a try?’ And really, who wouldn’t? There’s no obligation, what do they have to lose.
3. Ask for written endorsements. Testimonials are powerful and will generate more business. They should be well written and focused on results. Ask for testimonials directly after you’ve provided excellent service. Ask the client what benefits they’ve received from your product or service. Take down their comments and write up a brief, powerful testimonial. Hire a professional if you’re not a good writer. Send it back to the client for their approval and signature. Collect as many as you can and display them in your office and promotional material.
4. Ask for top quality referrals. This is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to expand your customer base. Only one in ten businesses actually have a referral system! Always ask, and remember your core clients, they are usually more than happy to offer a couple of names. If someone says no to your business, ask them too. However, you also need to define what a good prospect is before you ask, otherwise it wastes everybody’s time.
5. Ask for more business. Offer more than your basic product. Find out what your clients want and when they want it. Always up sell. It’s generally easier to sell more to existing customers than constantly trying to drum up new business.
6. Ask to renegotiate. When your mortgage is up and it’s time to renew ask for a lower interest rate. Competition is tough, so there’s a good chance your lender will agree. Most agreements have more flexibility than you think. If you need to, ask for a change in the terms.
7. Ask for feedback. Form monthly focus groups where all your clients can meet; offer feedback; talk to each other about common challenges they’re facing and give you input on future directions. If you own a business or lead a group of people, ask them what you can do to be a better boss- if you dare.
One of the benefits to studying at our music school in Midland, Texas is gaining instant feedback as to performance results, along with how to improve and plan for a successful growth process.
Consistent Persistence
“The miracle power that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application and perseverance, under the promptings of a brave determined spirit.” (Mark Twain)
If you take a close look at people who are truly successful in life, you will find one character trait in abundance.
We call it Consistent Persistence. At first glance, the words consistent and persistence may seem similar. That’s true, they are. We have double-barreled them to emphasize the importance of this habit. In case you feel like skipping over this without due thought and consideration, here’s an important statement to digest and store forever in the deepest recesses of your brain: You will never achieve big results in your life without consistent and persistent action.
One of the most important life-lessons that can be learned at our music school in Midland, Texas is consistent persistence. It is an intrinsic part of studying music and the arts and develops this character like few other things.
Many organizations struggle because their leaders put up with a high level of inconsistency. Well, we have news for you. The business world today is a lot different than it was ten years ago. The performance bar has been raised to a new level. Ineptitude will not be tolerated.
For example: You call a team meeting for 9 a.m. Monday. Each one of your twenty sales representatives is asked to attend. At 9:15 a.m. only fourteen people have shown up. Two more eventually stroll in at 9:25 a.m. and the rest never appear. And it’s like that almost every week.
This lack of consistency will wreck your team unity. Usually a few prima-donnas are the root cause. Sometimes they show up, sometimes they don’t. It’s really frustrating. In today’s world the answer is simple- lock them out! That’s right, at 9:00 a.m. sharp, lock the doors of the meeting room. The message will soon be understood: “If you want to play on our team, be consistent.”
The Benefits of Consistency– We have discovered that when you have consistent persistence and a proactive game plan, you build momentum that becomes unstoppable; you develop a winning streak. Now put yourself under the microscope for a moment. What sort of a streak do you have going right now? Does your consistency show up in real terms every day? Or are you bouncing around all over the place, dabbling here and there with the opportunities of life? If you are doing pretty well, we applaud you. But let’s move your abilities to another level, that rarefied atmosphere where the challenges are greater and the rewards are even more lucrative.
We teach students in our music school in Midland, Texas that it is not the big event that makes the difference, but rather the incremental daily wins that are gained. Over time, this produces exponential results that are undeniably positive – but it takes a willingness to play the long game.
Embrace Your Greatest Power
We want you to stop right now and make a list of six things you absolutely have to get done in the next three months. These are activities that must be completed, for whatever reason. They may include some of the short-term goals you established earlier. Keep your statements brief. Opposite each activity that you have to do, write one word that describes your feelings about it.
Think of how you honestly feel when you visualize each task. To help you, here are a few examples of “feeling” words: angry, sad, happy, excited, upset, worried, frustrated, joyful, loving, thankful. These are all words that directly relate to emotions. Choose your own word to describe how you feel about each item on your Have-To list.
At our music school in Midland, Texas we value each student’s unique individual strengths and seek to add value to these strengths in ways that propel them to success. When they gain a glimpse of this success, it leads to greater success and more confidence. The overall result is that they gain a positive outlook on life, not only in music and the arts but for every area of their lives.