"A goal is a dream with a deadline."
~Napoleon Hill
Hi Jeannette,
Good morning, I noticed you might have a requirement for some of the services we offer.
If there's anything we might be able to assist, we certainly happy to have a chat with you.
Please share a little brief about your requirement and leave us your email-address/phone number. We will review your requirements and get back to you with our past work details, testimonials, samples with best offer.
Looking forward to hear you.Thank you,
Enthusiastic young sales gal
Dear Enthusiast:
I understand and appreciate that you are "cold calling" virtually. However, there is nothing there in your communications that would entice anyone to respond. Sadly. Not even a statement on your service offering or a link to your website.
I suggest you follow my Blog and go to the articles on sales -- I have some nuggets there that may inspire you. I admire your effort and want to encourage you to carry on. I just sense a bit of blindness in your approach. We all have to make a living, but a few of us want to be great at what we do, understanding that the money follows later on.
What is your value proposition to a start up? How would they best benefit from your service?
What's the catch?
Are you tapped into social media? I go by the pseudonym @optioneerJM .. if you are, follow me, follow my blog (if you can find it, lol) and all my platforms. Like a scavenger hunt of a virtual kind. Let me know you've found me by being unique.
How's that for a challenge?
We all have to separate ourselves from being average to one who is remarkable,
Jeannette
Is that mean? Too harsh? Perhaps and most certainly. However, as a young gal starting out in sales, I had nobody take my arm and point me in the right direction other than kick me out the door and say: find customers, cold call!
Lucky for me, and likely for many others, I had a tenacity and goal for success. When I was about 22 I wrote a vision statement about goals that I found about 15 years later, when I had started to be recognized, and was astounded:
* Be successful at doing something I love: I started out in magazine advertising sales, graduated to bleeding edge document management via printing sales at the very infancy of one aspect of the cloud as we know it today.
* Live in a white house with a picket fence: I live in a white house with a chain link fence that backs onto a green pathway.
* Own and drive a Jaguar: I ended up with a silver Mercedes CLK 500 coup that was classic, classy and exuded class. Today I drive a Hyundai Accent (which is a story in itself that anyone with adult kids will relate to).
I understand today that the car or house do not make the person. Setting goals which often are aligned with dreams and writing them down are the glue that sticks everything together, but makes you accountable for what you think or say but more often only confirmed with proof.
I remember as a fledgling sales manager, having a seasoned sales rep under my wing who was firm on following in my footsteps because I had just been promoted to a sales team lead, tasked with creating more of MEs. Gord soaked it up and was a sponge. I never heard him ever accuse me of talking to much or too fast (I often get that when someone is not wanting to be in tune with what I am saying).
One of my first coaching sessions with him, when he said that, I asked: "Why?"
He said because he didn't think he should try to reinvent the wheel by trying untried things via stumbling, but by mirroring someone who had already demonstrated success seemed like the wisest approach. Wise probably. That isn't an ego statement. That is because when I started out in sales, I subconsciously tried to read or grasp on to follow someone else's example who had already proven to do what I was setting out to do. I see that now as beautiful instinct. I achieved acclaim, awards and recognition not because I was so special or gifted, it amounted to a driven desire to REALLY want to pay attention to those that have already paved the way.
Most definitely, I asked questions of the people who worked with the sales people on their advice on what defined sales greatness. More often than once, I was told that I was already on the first step: asking others for advice and their feedback or opinions.
Seriously, the archaic, traditional sales "experts" defined all the tricks and tips that appeared revolutionary were just plain dumb.
Cutting corners is a sport that only schemers and used car salespeople use. Eventually, they blow out so much steam, that they deflate or are fired because they cannot deliver on the over promises they make or the grand tales they tell.
Asking questions is the one key ingredient that only the finest, best, sales professionals discover. They stumble upon the magical formula by accident at first. They are fueled by wanting to actually deliver on the dreams or goals of the person they are selling to. Instinctively, they know in their subconscious that if they could only deliver a small portion of that goal and not only build upon it but execute beyond either their's or your own possibilities, does the money, fame, awards and recognition follow.
Back to Gord. His answer being defined that he wanted to do well, and he saw the easiest path to doing that was following in someone firmly established on the success train, with the idea that he may be able to progress faster, easier than stumbling around in the dark.
Again, I asked him: "Why?"
Now, some people do think that you're off your noodle when you ask the same question at least two or three times without guiding them or pointing them in the right direction of the answer you are probing for. I've been considered that often and still, almost always lately. That is because if you haven't established the right metrics, results, awards or recognition from peers, subordinates, bosses or leadership ... you won't be heeded. That can be frustrating. Especially if you know you have had a gift in defining the easier path and just want to help others get there faster with less pain.
Finally. Eureka. Gord asked me what I meant - why was I asking why? To me it seemed as elementary as writing that passage of goals as a fledgling college graduate who really had no idea where to go, how to start, or what I really wanted to do with that diploma or degree.
I really wished someone had asked me that before I even left home and headed out to post secondary. Back in those days (now I'm really sounding old), the expectation was you were going to go to school after high school, it was simply up to us on what that career would mean. Blessedly my mom, thought it would be a good idea to be a legal secretary so I would marry a lawyer. Years and years later, and even more recently, she has stated that she regrets not recognizing to tell me to pursue law. I have no regrets. I would have probably made a pretty good lawyer.
A lawyer is paid to orate, research, study character, evidence and sell others on their ability to help them achieve their goals.
Hahahaha ... well, folks. That is EXACTLY what sales people do. Yet, we cannot accomplish anything without asking the right questions.
Back to Gord. "OK, Jeannette. What do you mean by why?"
I am sure I smiled. I recognized that my Padawan (Star Wars trainee term) was ready to absorb my wisdom.
So, again, I asked why but this time, expanded it by asking "why do you want to learn from a successful example so you can climb faster, easier and farther?"
I'm sure I was frustrating. I have a knack of doing that. My brother-in-law told me recently that my family had discussed me stating that sometimes when I talk I am in the clouds and those listening are trying to grasp a morsel of what I am saying. That can come off being perceived as flighty and dumb. Dumb as a fox, some might say.
Realizing that Gord was in the palm of my hands and it was time to expand on the question "Why?"
So I asked him: "what makes you want to be successful?
For a talkative soul like me, taking a pause to allow someone else to absorb the question, formulate their answer, then say it is not something that I am often associated with.
As the note in that 22nd year was proof. I wanted to be successful because at the immature time, success was defined by the house I lived in and the car I drove. The magic was that it fueled my desire and motivated me to accomplishment. Not as a monetary value, simply as a testament to arriving at the end goal. Often it is a status symbol.
Lucky for me that day, Gord said that his goal to be successful meant making enough money so that his new bride could retire from a medical technician career, not work, begin a family and build a strong foundation of life the way he deemed important to him, his values and example from his own upbringing.
How cool! Seriously, how many super stars have such humble goals? Very few I must say. Most of the greats. Simply demonstrating that the ones with the most humblest of goals, stick-to-it-ness to achieve those goals, making good on promises are the ones that achieve it.
The humble ones are really not bragging, writing big stories of accomplishments (that can be broken down easily by anyone with half a brain), and professing wisdom that only the loudness of their voices and exuberant tone gets people to believe they've discovered the holy grail.
My friends. There is no easy, miraculous path to greatness. Ask Steve Jobs, Wayne Gretzky et al. They got up maybe a little earlier, spent a few extra minutes studying, stayed later than anyone else practising. Not because they anticipated super stardom but from the sheer pleasure and passion that doing so gave them.
So. Then. If. You want to be great. Start out being humble and hungry to learn from others. Don't proclaim you have discovered a recipe for success and try to sell that to others. As Nike says: Just do it.
The proof IS by doing it, not talking about it. While it starts with asking questions. There is no better path or plan than to start out with a goal, define your path and then plan on how you will execute on it. More often than not, the best ones have goals aligned with love, family, health and happiness and NOT power, fame, money, possessions (I'm not an expert but I have a very strong hunch).
"Never lose your inquisitiveness." ~Jeannette Marshall
I profess to have this inside scoop on social media. Yet how can I be? Especially, since I work full time and was launched among the sweat and tears of looking for work, five years ago. (Yawn, you've heard it before: it all started on Linked In where I met Sandy who guided me into Twitter, graciously introduced me to people on the clicking edge of social media. The rest of us were soon to be groupies, drooling at the incredible talent this world we live in together is so talented!!
Aren't we all so lucky that we don't have to rely on our TVs, newspapers, magazines, radio any more. Well, certainly, we are an information consumption oriented folk who may eventually be considered the early adopters. Long long after the visionaries sat around a library table, having a few beers together, deciding to join forces to prove a point to the rest of the world. Passing notes is not disruptive, bad behavior is rarely found among day dreamers,
Yet, what is this world it has become? You can't get into trouble for passing notes (unless you are Donald Trump, or a raging has been star), because there is this BIG THING called social media. Where you can speak your mind, share what you know, share what you love, share what you consume, want to consume, whether anyone is listening really. Well, at the start anyhow.
That is at its core: it thumbs its nose at conventional discipline for doing what others perhaps expect you to do or be. Good things happen to great people is its mantra. Why there are people that become overnight sensational storytellers, photographers, authors, writers, historians, foodies, models, lonely hearts clubbers retired from the frump frumping of the you should be out doing something beat.
Embarrassingly, there others that take to airing dirty laundry, opinionated beyond reason because they aren't being held to question .... often. There are some that may have some fame, notoriety who won't settle to being a small number .... they want to have a very BIG ..... numbers represented by followers.
Heavens, a young lad in the middle of nowhere to most people (until the world finances crumble remembered its name) Canada, to get young tweens (pre-teen 9-12 year old) girls hearts to tremble with love and adoration, who could go off and actually achieve fame and fortune, if not always good.
It is a place where so many can share one shadey association by saying or doing some stupid things that can get you minimally laughed at, smirked about, quoted, replayed, rewritten, if not quietened to the hummmm and tsk tsk of a once adoring audience or group.
Social media has created a revolution of expression, artistry, music, events, global proximity that has never been seen before. Imagine ... in just a few years, our kids will site library visits as a mandatory curriculum field trip, like we used to visit museums in our time.
The most notable are honorees immersed and embraced by every form of traditional medias who are feeling overwhelmed driven into survival mode, clambering for funnel of advertising revenues that are being distracted elsewhere.
As a study on millinial short attention spanners dropping their parents methods of obtaining news. Where anything called Daily news, Daily mirror, Daily anything falls into the background of THE NOISE. The noise is created by individual people of all ages, all cultures, all races, all types of family dynamics, domestic arrangements, from the learning to the learned are the ones who matter now. They can decide what is important by creating #hashtags that catch on like fire, drowning out some of the noise we need to hear on health, economy, poverty, bullying, violence.
Are we creating a world that we are creating our own robotic existence? Do we only pay attention to those that think the way we do. Where the heck did guru come from? Do we open our empathy or does it increase our apathy. The scientists, not typically known for gregarious characteristics, may be drowned out by dishonesty, falsehood, scams, SPAM, and the loudest of all: PICK me, SELL me.
Like children with a gift packaged in a gigantic box, we are only playing with the box: the computer, and rapidly being overtaken by smart phones. The complicated and cumbersome are being tossed for the aesthetic more pleasing, better working, customized, following partner that goes everything, asking for so little: just read, like, share, write, communicate, post, blog that it has to give you. So portable, easy to access, quick, painful, joyful or hopeful these little instruments allow us to read, look, watch, admire, visualize whatever we love.
Like masters, our behavior lends the devices our respect, finances, images, opinions, hearts, needs, and lessening humility.
The real geniuses of social media are the ones that use it as a tool to communicate, teach, share, inspire, motivate others to want to be better. Not just hope to be better. We only get better when we interact with others. The fact that we have such a great opportunity to gravitate towards those that tend to share our own ideals, visions, outlook, positions on important matters, or less important matters.
Has an elementary child ever heard of the term of PEN PAL?
Does anyone really have to wait for a music CD to hit a retail store anymore? With iTunes, Spotify and the whole she-bang, their kids will never have heard of half of the things we have now? How about a wallet (there's an APP for that), an album (you download a song, not an album, you silly), or wondering when their favorite author will publish their next novel (oh dear, um, sorry if you don't read from your smartphone or tablet).
How many of us have the anti-social in our lives? The ones who have discovered a text message (sms) is far quicker than an email, haven't quite caught on to an all persons in persons meeting without having to spring for flights, or hotels, or airport parking to join with their colleagues for an immediate and important conversation virtually personal appearances by all with 100% attendance. The ones on a teleconference call are the cousins to the emailers.
In all of this midst, it is confounding the advertising gurus and disgruntling the brands who want to be captured, not optionally, viewed or read.
Well, one thing is certain and obvious to me. We're all adapting together and trying to draw in the outsiders and refusers to get on board. A key board that is.
Doing this was quite awkward. Writing, being, expressiveness has been cloaked by the persona. Creating a perception of someone between a fairy godmother and a twenty-something. Full of charge-de-vive and anything is possible exhuberance. At this quiet ponsive self-reflection. Behind the mask of the sparkled green eyes, contently knowing that she is her own person.
Gently casting aside any of the doubt, uncertainties she swallowed whole. There grazed tiny bursts of wrinkles were like minute soft brushes of an artist's touch. A rarity to see any pretty face to have light shadows in the precise right place at her cheek bone, eye brow, ski slope nose, with ski jump cut off to glide down to the lips. The lips were neither unnaturally full or meanness thin.
Businesses want unique and vibrant new approaches to win in the competitive environment. It was not what anyone would have imagined. Someone who could have been voted in as "least likely" could write without limitations. Calm over reception, and patient on a growing following, she started to write for her heart. Knowing that to glide gracefully into middle age, with a kinship of followers. Those so many brilliant contributors to our world: you deserve the #bestofeverything . I have sprinkled #bestofeverything around the web and social media world.
Without any doctorate, she was insightful and could burst forward and upward such incredible tales, art, photography bounced over into social media integrity.
Support good causes. Promote the good things that the citizen's of the world who are kind, creative,, inspiring, knowledgeable and tuned in. Landing firmly on instinctively what they craved. To create a means to which the online or social media could decide for themselves what is popular, good, motivational, spiritual, inspirational so that readership grew.
People everywhere turned their Twitter, their favorite bloggers, InstaGram to take the temperature of the world. Breaths of fear on all opposing factions were felt in unison.
UTOPIA. Whether by history of occurrence, they forgot what it felt like to be able to ignore the mere harmless to hideous events.
IRONIC. As they paid less and less attention to the likes of violence, blood bursting cuts, civil unrest, boastfulness. The immunity great to no longer watching anything violent. It was no longer in their instincts. Ideals to be violent or hate widdled away and became less and less. If the world's brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers, security settled softly on what could ever have been anything but an optimistic world, where hate was suffocated out by soulfull humanity, caring for health or those less healthy.
Education was a social gathering, embraced by the majority. Families had fun, hugged neighbours, and heros were scattered around. They embraced, financed, secured, flew up the pinnacle of learning and expanding knowledge. In its dust lay particles of what was considered high IQs a decade past.
Science was the most distinguished occupation to aspire to which was sometimes, very few, could accomplish both science and computing. Curiosity was boosted in the children's schools, Gliding in harmony with sports as the best adrenaline rush.
Ignorance of the past worlds, or so shortly ago, was the way to go. To get better, stay positive, set goals you find reaching within your sight. The goals of tarnished pasts, were left aside, like sanitation fields in our lives.
The governments did not create controversies and were respected and revered when honored with high office based on their unified vote. The positive examples sliced carefully throughout their lives jolting us to chase corruption, dishonesty, self-serving power, violence or war. Which found to be settling as such a fine dust, the family's dog brushes the minuet slivers out into the air, with a push of the wind, onto the lapping waters, the sunset orangely casting a glow to scent the fish to jump out of the waters, disarmed by the cleansing that catch and the water did.
The best leaders were innovators, genuine geniuses, information, puritists, void of gossip, sensationalism, horror, or violence. Honor among thieves were only known by the tales of braveness, courage, patience, and love overcame the lost souls.
The network and telephony towers were dismantled only leaving one clear link: the internet, world wide web. The steel from the structures of the television stations, radio celebrity mics, and leftover wire donated to the creators of sculptures and statues that were never defaced, driven into, jumped on or marked in the slightest.
As unlike any global change, some rebelled to the sudden outlook shift. They had once been loved, idolized and up on top at almost anything they could do on the backs of the disadvantaged, single parents, poor, uneducated, sick outcasts. They, unwisely, thought that shananigans and soap operas would win their dwaining audience followers back to play. Not once not ever. They faded and dwindled to a backdrop as brick, stones, wood -- surfaces that are never once the same, the same color throughout, a roughness to the touch so that one would remove their hand.
The glory began to be celebrated not by any specific date by occurrence ... the freedom to create anything magical was the straw that catapulted meodicracy to the sublime. They soon became known to be the gifted.
Writers, bloggers, journalists on the world wide web, internet, softphone, communication wire were tuned into and drifting unconsciously towards Utopia where the #bestofeverything would reside. The want of choice floated away as the wanted to keep the feeling of happiness, peace and never a cause for forgiveness. New children, born into the world did experience punishment, discipline, authority because they were surrounded by encouragement, love, gentle pushes to the always possible fulfillment of their dreams.
An interesting world indeed. A prima ballerina would surprisingly chose to be harvesters of orchards of fruit, seeds into nuts, with livestock that were free of any hormones or growth expeditors.
Like most of humanity by then, cows and horses, herds of sheep, goats or flocks of eagles, chickens or budgies were peaceful. They lived in harmony, sharing their eggs, milk without having to once donate any meat. The fields of abundantly overflowing vegetables were there to nibble on, never encountering fences, no need for toxic pesticides that left with the rest of rejectful and harmful former occupants. The balance of survival had been tipped so far on the scale beaming with life.
One of the first known rebelious cult found were carnivores. Rejecting any sense of smell, they purposely overfed themselves with the many animals, birds, organic beings to find, experiment or test with dishes where a trickle of blood on a brilliantly white plate, is the highest honor and defining chef celebrity. They were called the Gorgers.
There was this most incredibly beautiful place on earth. Selled by an organic group, surrounded by fortresses and family homes, with afield of flowers skipping across the meadows as the backdrop ..........
________________________ you, the reader, can contribute the next sentence or paragraph in your comment. Forming the authority on what truly is what we, the people, not the media, corrupt, lying, cheaters would want us to believe what they say, instead it is our testimony of what we believe is #thebestofeverything
Would you like to read more? Tweet, post, share, pin, search for #bestofeverything_story to be continued soon .... depending on you: I need 1000 subscribers to get that going again.
How cool! Seriously, how many super stars have such humble goals? Very few I must say. Most of the greats. Simply demonstrating that the ones with the most humblest of goals, stick-to-it-ness to achieve those goals, making good on promises are the ones that achieve it. 
