Archive for category Quirky Ideas
Time (soon) To Find And Change How You Shine – The North Node Transits Into Leo, 28 April 2017
Posted by Doctapaul in Astrology, Astronomy, Blog All, Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Mindfulness, Myths, Personal, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Self Help, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tarot, Tip for the Day, Uncategorized on April 28, 2017
The Astro Stuff:
The direction your life takes/ the areas you know least about… The North Node (of the elliptic path travelled by the Moon around Earth) moves into Leo at around 14:28 BST today.
The influence of your childhood and past life experiences… The South Node thus moves into Leo’s opposite sign, Aquarius. They will travel through these respective signs until 6 Nov 2018.
Image from http://www.southastrodel.com
Love, beauty, money and your human values…Today, specifically, the North Node’s transition is influenced by the inconjunct (150°) Venus at 0° Aries. ‘Inconjunct’ can be an uncomfortable or quizzical influence.
Healing, wounding, the healer, the wounded… Chiron, the centaur, who heals all but himself, is also considered inconjunct at 27° Pisces, whereas…
Focus, consolidation, reduction, organisation, boundaries, truth, time and karma… Saturn provides a sympathetic (not a word usually associated with Saturn) perspective as it trines (60 deg) the North Node at 27° Sagittarius, which is also where we find…
Treasures of knowledge in the cosmic mind… The Galactic Centre: the point around which our whole galaxy, The Milky Way, turns. It was discovered in Feb 1974, fittingly with the North Node at 27° Sagittarius and Saturn at the South Node.
Mother Earth, Gaia, nurturing and caring through death, transformation as well as (re)birth The goddess Ceres, at 29deg Taurus, squares (90deg) with the North Node. Lastly…
Untainted feminine energy, dutiful, strong and unyielding to no man… The goddess, Vesta, inconjuncts the South Node at 28 deg Cancer
What Might All This Mean?
- The North Node stepping into Leo heralds the opportunity to change your direction in life; specifically, in how you shine to influence those around you. But to begin with, it won’t be without its challenges. In the next few days, it will be better to account, especially in close relationships: where you are, how you got here before deciding where you want to be. Wait until Venus moves on, around mid-May before taking action. With Mercury in retrograde, this is a time to review, reflect, restart, renegotiate BUT not start anything new!
- Inconjunct Venus asks you to question your values around love and money and adhere to your basic human values. Can you have all? If so how? What might you change?
- The South Node in Aquarius asks you step back, detach yourself, and account for the patterns in your childhood (you attracted) which help and hinder you. Who were the greatest influencers in your childhood? (All influence operates in a bandwidth.) How has each influencer helped you? How has each influence hold you back?
- If you were to know, ask yourself the same of past-life karmic inheritances.
- You’re seeking answers to your future, you’re accounting for where you are, from the past. It may well be quizzical. If so, at least acknowledge that which you don’t know. Knowing you don’t know is a major milestone in finding out.
- This can be a time for healing. But for this to occur, acknowledge how you first attracted the wound to be healed. (I call this “sensitive accounting”.) Account for how you did this without blame to those who wounded you. OR are you the wounder? If so, focus on how you can become the healer.
- Before starting anything new, focus on what needs to end and transform, to enable this.
- Be thorough, organise your ‘personal account’ with yourself: where you are, how you attracted people and events that influenced how you got here and then meditate and contemplate where you want to be. Notice the barriers and step beyond them in your imagination to begin with. Saturn will help you and maybe, just maybe, in doing so you will unearth some cosmic learning on how to move on.
“The Lodges all shall know that I am he
Who searches loins and hearts, to oversee
All works creative, and all works that find
Treasures of knowledge in the cosmic mind;
And I shall give to each his rightful share
Of knowledge, weighing all his works with care.”
From The Message to the Hierarchy of Helios, The Restored New Testament : The Hellenic Fragments…, by James R Bryce
TO SUMMARISE… Spend a week accounting for all the answers you come up with. Reflect on the answers without apportioning blame, neither on others nor yourself. Contemplate how you want to (shine) appear to others. As we move into the latter part of May, take action – one step at a time.
One love, stay cool
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Business/Personal Performance Coach, Author, Public Speaker, Visiting Lecturer, Singer, Actor and Model
Facebook: Beowulf (>14,000 followers)
Pink Moon: Full Moon in Libra, 11 April 2017 – BE WARY!!
Posted by Doctapaul in Astrology, Astronomy, Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Mindfulness, Myths, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Self Help, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tarot, Tip for the Day, Uncategorized, Visions and Dreams on April 11, 2017
The sun activates a powerful full moon today – so beware.
Today at 7.08am BST at its fullest. Not to be confused with with a pink/red/blood moon caused by a lunar eclipse.
According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the April full moon is known as the Pink Moon because it marked the appearance of a flower called the moss pink, or phlox. That’s likely a Native American tradition because phlox is common in North America and Siberia, as opposed to Europe. It is also called the Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon and the Fish Moon.

West Pier, Brighton, UK
The Astro Positions
Sun in Aries – the most assertive and aggressive signs, ruled by Mars, the god of war.
Moon in Libra – the sign of relationships and seeking harmony through balanced judgement.
The Sun conjuncts (less than 2 degrees) Eris, the goddess of discord, who magnifies emotional strife, where it’s needed. (Note: she brings the emotion, not the action or reaction to said strife.)
The Sun also conjuncts Uranus (less than 3 degrees), the Che Guevara planet, the god of revolution and unexpected upheaval.
(Note: The recent tragedies in the Middle East coincided with Sun starting to apply its energies to Eris and Uranus.)
AND…
Pluto, at 19 degrees in Capricorn, squares up (mid-point) with the Sun and Moon. Pluto is the god of the underworld: symbolic of death, transformation and rebirth or resurrection.
AND the Moon conjuncts Jupiter; the god of growth: knowledge, mentally, physically, materially, spiritually and in this instance, EMOTIONALLY.
AND the Venus (the goddess of love, beauty and money) in fiery Aries squares up with Saturn (the god of Karma, organisation, boundaries, focus and consolidation) – a tense angle.
ADDED TO WHICH: Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Saturn and (as of yesterday) Mercury are all in retrograde – giving the illusion of going backwards along their orbital path. All encouraging us to retrace and review past steps in our lives.
Indeed, a full moon is a time to RE-flect.
What might you infer from all this…
This is not a good time to start anything new (e.g. a relationship, contract, project and certainly a war – for which there’s never a good time.) Beware of the fractious energies that can be activated by Mars, Eris, Saturn and Pluto. Not forgetting the Sun is in Aries!
The emotional Moon may well be ‘magnified’ by Jupiter. Emotions may run higher: joy becomes ecstasy, warm becomes hot, becomes scorching AND/OR anger turns into rage.
Libra asks you to consider each significant relationship in your life – especially the one you have with yourself. Where is there balance and harmony? Where is there strife? What results as consequence of this strife?
THIS IS a good time to reflect and bring unhelpful habits, patterns and anything (that decreases the relationship’s life force) to an end. If you’re thus suffering internally, give these unhelpful habits zero energy. Instead – acknowledge you’re feelings of strife for what they are and practice persistent patience to allow your (emotional) body to heal itself.
Quick Tool to Deal with Strife: If you feel strong enough…. Every time you feel this strife, imagine putting in a bubble. Then imagine its opposite, serenity, and put that in the bubble too. Give the bubble a good shake and shine light from the base of your spine, up through your backbone, around the back of the skull and out through your Third Eye (like a shepherd’s crook) into the bubble. Shine this light to the count of four on each outbreath, seventeen times.
Overall, this particular Full Moon advises you reflect, reconsider, review and possibly renegotiate over the strife in your relationships. Practice persistent patience. Avoid allowing anger, shame, hurt or fear to control your actions.
I am personally going to wait until at least Mercury passes through its retrograde phase and gets back to where it is now before I start anything major anew.
On a worldwide (aka mundane) scale, this is a time for Messrs Trump and Putin to retrace their steps and renegotiate a lasting peace in the Middle East, indeed worldwide. It is also a bad time for war to kick off (as said earlier, there’s never a good time) as this would be a particularly devastating war for both humanity and the Earth.
One love, stay cool
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Business/Personal Performance Coach, Author, Public Speaker, Visiting Lecturer, Singer, Actor and Model
Facebook: Beowulf (>14,000 followers)
Full Blood Super Moon(Lunar Eclipse) in Aries, starts 3.11am and completes 4.24am BST, 28 Sept 2015
Posted by Doctapaul in Astrology, Astronomy, Blog All, Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Mindfulness, Myths, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Self Help, Visions and Dreams on September 27, 2015
Aries, the hot head of the signs ruled by Mars, hosts the moon goddess, Selena, in her full glory, in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. Not only that, Selena is at her most powerful, bestowing influence from her closest proximity in her eliptic path around the earth.
Passions may well run high tonight, especially if you have your natal sun, moon or rising sign in Aries. The lust-re of Selena will reach its zenith. Tonight is a night for hot love, hot lust but beware you avoid making it a night for blood-lust, metaphorically and literally speaking.
Those of you who have Mars in a prominent position in your birth chart, may well experience his power. Those around you will be subject to this power. Be careful that you avoid falling foul of your false-ego’s lust for martian power. Over exertion will go beyond the outcome you seek – and cause harm.
Reflect over the last six months, since March. Which situations or relationships have arisen to make you angry, resentful, hurt or wounded. Whom do you blame or still carry a grudge toward? Now, at the time of the harvest moon, is time to let these feelings fall to earth. Cast them aside and reap the harvest within.
The Blood Moon specifically facilitates the opportunity to look within and seek the nature of the fear that attracted these situations and relationships. For that is their purpose, to awaken you to the fear (not-love) within.
This is the nature of duality. We know something is wet because its not dry. We know something is oblong because its not curved. We know love by knowing not-love.
And when we see through the murkiness of our fear, we see the light, the love, within. We see more of our true nature. We take a step closer to our purpose in life.
Selena’s gift, from her Blood Super Moon’s station, awaits.
Shine on…!
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Paul C Burr
Business/Personal Performance Coach, Author, Public Speaker, Visiting Lecturer, Singer, Film Extra and Model
Facebook: Beowulf (>15,000 followers)
Blue Moon in Aquarius, 31 July 2015….
Posted by Doctapaul in Affirmations, Astrology, Astronomy, Blog All, Coaching, Fun and Laughs, Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Mindfulness, Myths, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Self Help, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tip for the Day, Training & Development, Visions and Dreams on July 31, 2015
…..opposing the generous and regal Leo in you, whose pride is easily hurt.
Take a big step back a look at the structure of, and emotions in, your life.
How have you developed over the last two weeks?
How have you developed over since January, this year?
Include yourself, in mind, body and spirit….
Emotionally, where or with whom have you received (a balance with) what you give?
Where are you giving too much? Do you do so out of duty, fear or love?
Where are you receiving more than you give? Do you do so out of pleasure or fear?
Take another step back. Look at the big picture in your life. Consider the consequences of your fears. This is a good time (When is it not?) to switch out all the decisions you are making in life out of fear.
Ask Billie Holiday! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LOB_I7sgoI
Shine on…!
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Paul C Burr
Business/Personal Performance Coach, Author, Public Speaker, Visiting Lecturer, Singer, Film Extra and Model
Facebook: Beowulf (>15,000 followers)
Druid Science – The Death or Rebirth of Incompletions
Posted by Doctapaul in Blog All, book, Coaching, Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Mindfulness, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Self Help, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tarot, Tip for the Day, Training & Development on July 4, 2015
An extract from my forthcoming booklet (working title), The Threefold Death: the changes you make to approach inner wakefulness.
Of Spirit Force…
I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume, behind this force, the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.
Max Planck, 1917
Image courtesy of Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestial Science
The future ‘dies’ when it meets the present – which ‘dies’ instantaneously into the past. There is plenty of evidence to prove what has happened in the past. Statisticians, economists and scientists gather evidence to project what will happen in the future. Despite all the evidence, the past no longer ‘is’ and future ‘is not’ yet present.
The only moment that truly ‘is’, is the present. Yet there is no evidence that the present tense exists – by this I mean, as close as scientists get to it, the present tense cannot be experienced through our five senses; it thus cannot be measured. What scientists measure instead is the before and after effects of ultra-micro interactions in time and space: for example, proton collisions, using the Hadron Collider in Switzerland. The Present Tense – which cannot be measured directly – is termed by scientists as a singularity point.
According to The Big Bang Theory, the universe started with such a singularity point. We can measure to within a zillionth of a second what happened after its inception, but we are not sure what banged – and the question of ‘why’, what-banged banged, transcends philosophical, religious, mystical, spiritual, and metaphysical domains.
The same holds true for black holes and dark matter. Scientists know of their existence because of the effect they have on things that can be observed and measured. Mathematical theory suggests that time and space collapse into nothing, a singularity point, at the centre of a black hole.
Time and space emanate from singularity points and ultimately return. And what fills that time and space (according to Planck and the ancients) is but a projection of the universal mind – of which you are an essential part. Through your mind you project thoughts, speak words and commit actions. And…
You are governed by The Laws of the Light and The Law of Consequences which, collectively, invoke dharma (Divine will) and karma (consequences).
The Laws of the Light:
When you commit to a journey, in line with your and others’ consciousness needs, at the right time and place, what you need will come your way.
The Law of Consequences:
What you project (do, say and think) out to the universe, returns to you amplified.
You attract, in/from the future, everything that is complete as well as incomplete in your approach to achieving your goals in life.
- Completion: When something within is complete; you do, say, think, and feel things borne of the heart – love, light, compassion, patience, enthusiasm, and curiosity. You will have The Laws of the Light with you.
- Incompletion: Unchecked, will invoke things you do, say and think not borne of the heart but instead borne of anger, shame, hurt, or fear.
I shall focus primarily on incompletions.
Should you learn and act appropriately from future’s gift (‘present’), you ‘complete your incompletion’. The incompletion unifies with its duality and thus is no longer perceivable by the mind. Zero projection by the mind means ‘it’ no longer exists in time and space. ‘It’, your completed incompletion, dies into the Present Tense, your true nature.
Should you ignore (or remain ignorant of) your incompletion, it travels unacknowledged into the past only to resurface again in (or back to) the future. Why? Because your mind is still projecting this incompletion through your thoughts, words and deeds.
The most common example, I know of, is the troublesome relationships that we invoke, time and time again. Relationships that keep repeating until we learn what we need to learn about ourselves and then ‘do’ something different in our approach. I have fallen foul of this as much as anyone I know.
Incompletions (recap: the inner things in me that attract the outer things I allow to make me feel angry, ashamed, hurt or fearful) keep being reborn in my life until I transcend to become my true nature – the love, light, truth and gnosis: the chokmah or wisdom of the I-am, the Je-suis, the Je-su(i)s within – as one of the standing stones in a circle at Stonehenge. This is my purpose in life.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Business/Personal Performance Coach, Author, Public Speaker, Visiting Lecturer, Singer, Film Extra and Model
Facebook: Beowulf (>15,000 followers)
How to Be at your Peak in Every Key Meeting
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Leadership, Marketing, Mindfulness, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Selling, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tip for the Day, Training & Development, Uncategorized on July 15, 2013
Extract from Quick Guide IV – A Scorecard that Accounts for Mindfulness in Business
Top performers do three essential things to be at their peak.
1. Clarify your outcomes for the meeting in hand and how you want the relationship with the person to develop, meeting by meeting, one step at a time. Moderate performers focus less on the latter dimension.
2. Be mindful of the frame of the mind you want to be in and that any meeting (is hopefully a meeting of minds) is ultimately about helping everyone present to frame a congruent viewpoint of what needs to be done.
3. Prepare your strategy, primarily so that you allow yourself to get in the frame of mind you want to be.
Research I’ve come across and my own experience shows that the most important thing you take into a meeting is your frame of mind followed by being clear about the outcomes you seek. Having a strategy is important but, once the meeting has started, it’s factors ‘2’ and ‘1’ above (and in that order) that will determine most how you ‘handle any curve balls thrown your way’.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Business/Personal Performance Coach & Author
Follow @paulburr
Effectiveness = Motivation x Confidence x Competence x Curiosity (Mindfulness in Business Meetings)
Posted by Doctapaul in book, Business, Coaching, Leadership, Marketing, Mindfulness, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Selling, Tip for the Day, Training & Development on June 20, 2013
Extract from Quick Guide II: How to Spot, Mimic and Become a Top Salesperson
Most sales training I’ve come across focuses primarily on developing a salesperson’s skills or competencies, for example: opening, qualifying, questioning, advocating, presenting, negotiating and closing. The intention is that, over time with experience, the salesperson will get better and better at demonstrating these skills. It follows logically that they’ll become more confident in their sales approach and thus hopefully more motivated.
I haven’t seen much in the way of material that focuses on engendering an ongoing sense of curiosity, for example, how can I be the best, if not better, at what I sell?
The E=MC3 equation implies that an individual’s effectiveness is three parts mental and emotional (motivation, competence and curiosity) to one part intellectual (competence).
Let’s take a first pass at each of the qualities: motivation, confidence, competence and curiosity.
Motivation
Most salespeople are motivated to win, especially when the selling is relatively easy. Likewise, most are motivated by earnings and win bonuses. Some are motivated by advancing their career.
What motivates top salespeople? The answers from my research fall into three categories:
1. “To be the best I can be” or “…recognised as the best salesperson there is” – not only the best in terms of results but the best at selling too (outcomes + journey).
2. “To deliver customer value above and beyond that expected.”
3. “To create a legacy so that I am renowned for the value I bring to customers and my organisation’s business.”
In all three categories, the top performers are motivated by being (and being seen as) excellent. ‘Moderates’ talk of winning and earnings but talk less of personal excellence.
Confidence
I worked with a 26 year old CEO of a recruitment firm who had a good reputation for hiring confident as opposed to arrogant people. I was asked to model how he went about the task. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: “How do you differentiate between a confident person and an arrogant one?”
CEO: “Well, I’m not sure; I just get a ‘feeling’.”
Me: “Describe that ‘feeling’.”
CEO: “Well you just sort of know, don’t you? It’s something you sense….. a gut feeling.”
Me: “Okay, imagine you have an arrogant person to your left and a confident to your right. What’s the difference between them?”
CEO: “The confident person asks questions; the arrogant person doesn’t. The confident person probes for where they feel they’ll bring value to the organisation. They look to find out if they will enjoy the role. They seek opportunities for themselves to grow in the role. The arrogant person takes a position that they have the knowledge and wisdom suitable for the job and makes no effort to see how well they’ll fit in.”
Top salespeople exude confidence by the quality of questions they ask as well as the articulacy by which they convey reassurance. (For a framework with which to construct quality sales questions, refer to the INCREASETM model in Number 1 of this series of business guides, Quick Guide – How Top Salespeople Sell.)
Competence
If you stacked all the sales training and development materials in the world on top of one another, you’d probably build a mountain higher than Mount Everest. So I’ll attempt to put a different slant on competence by giving you a customer’s perspective. (For completeness, Appendix 1 lists the skills and knowledge demonstrated by top salespeople at, and away from, the customer interface.)
A corporate salesperson spends, on average, 15% of their time speaking directly to a customer. Ergo, 85% of the time, they apply their skills and knowledge to researching, developing and planning; how to be more effective during the ‘15%’ customer interface window when the occasion arises.
Top performers prepare themselves, intellectually and psychologically, to be at their peak when speaking to the customer. They develop appropriate skills and knowledge (the intellectual exchange) and they also prepare themselves to be in the right frame of mind and body (the mental and emotional exchange) with the customer.
Being perceived as ‘competent’ by the customer requires you to be:
1. Prepared: with insightful questions to ask and have answers to potential customer questions, including facts, data and logic so that your proposals are visionary, ‘grounded in reality’ and hopefully compelling
2. Clear about the outcomes: What do you want to achieve in the meeting both in terms of the task-in-hand and your relationship with the customer (e.g. engender trust). It’s also being very clear about the outcomes the customer might want to achieve, in terms of their task-in-hand and from their relationship with a supplier like you.
Illustration: 4 Outcomes to a Meeting
Most of us prepare ‘box 1’ before a meeting. Many ‘moderates’ omit boxes 2 and 3 above from their preparatory work. Most salespeople miss out box 4 altogether – often because of a lack of self-belief and sometimes unconsciously. They don’t visualise themselves in a picture working closely with the customer.
3. In the right frame of mind: If you were to prioritise the three factors: Prepared, Clear Outcomes and Frame of Mind – which order would you place them?
Exercise: Allocate three weighting percentages (that add up to 100%) against Prepared, Clear Outcomes and Frame of Mind respectively – in terms of how important they are to being successful during (not before) a meeting.
Research shows…
The most important thing you take into a meeting is your frame of mind.
Be Mindful!
This statement often raises a few queries. It doesn’t say that you shouldn’t prepare diligently for a meeting. What it says instead is – the moment the meeting starts, the single most important factor that will determine your success is your frame of mind. You may well feel you have to do a significant amount of preparation to get yourself ‘centred’, for example. BUT it’s not the process the meeting follows that determines success the most; it’s you, your frame of mind and the thoughts that engender that frame of mind.
Specifically, whatever thought you process in your conscious mind passes straight into your unconscious mind and merges with any ‘subconscious programmes’ running there. The aggregate information is then passed directly to your DNA which vibrates at different rates in accord with your temperament. That is:
The vibe you put out determines your success.
I coached a very successful salesperson who never felt at her best in front of a CEO customer. It took a wee while for us to discover a subconscious programme she’d developed from her authoritarian parents, created by a ‘single significant emotional event’ when she was three years old. Once she ‘released’ this programme, her faith-in-self in front of CEO’s increased significantly. Her sales soared.
Research by scientists (e.g. The Biology of Belief, by Dr Bruce Lipton and The Genie in your Genes, by Dr Matthew Dawson) demonstrates the subliminal communicative functioning power of DNA between human beings which can be harmonious (I prefer the term, ‘resonant’) or out of tune (dissonant) – and at its extreme, disruptive.
Allow me to define ‘being competent’ as not only having the capability to demonstrate requisite skills and knowledge at the customer interface, it’s also about being competent at preparing yourself to be at your peak, to achieve the gravitas (sometimes called ‘traction’) you seek.
Author’s note: gravitas is something we can all achieve; it’s a result not a gift privy to a chosen few. Only 15% or so of salespeople achieve the ‘customer gravitas’ they seek, hence this book!
Let me add, the competence that customers attribute to you will also include an element of the perceived competence of the solutions you bring to the table, i.e. an acknowledgement of the potential of your solution’s value proposition. Put another way, if the customer has little faith in what you’re selling, even though they value your personal contribution, to what degree will you be invited to participate in the decision making process?
We’ve covered two of the three ‘Cs’ in the E=MC3 equation. A salesperson not only has to be competent in following ‘top sales processes’ (and have potentially ‘competent’ solutions); they need to be confident in their ability and motivated to follow those sales processes too. And still there’s one further factor that determines how effective you are (by seeing what’s really going on), a heightened sense of…
Curiosity
Top salespeople are unstintingly curious. For example, they love to be coached. They are very willing to learn how to become more effective at selling.
Top performers focus on working smarter, not harder, than ‘moderates’
You might ask, “Curious about what?” Answer: “Everything!”
Top salespeople probe below the surface of what’s going on – especially when forging business relationships. Like a metaphorical iceberg, they acknowledge that you only see about 15% above the surface; the obvious facts and logic by which a customer makes a decision. But they don’t stop there, they’re proactive to find the real passions and fears which will motivate or deter key stakeholders in the decision making process.
Curiosity is the sonar signal you emit to track changes on your ‘sales radar screen’. You track political, economic, sociological, technological and organisational developments as well as your competitors’ manoeuvres. At the deepest level, you’re tuning into changes in customers’ feelings, e.g. inspiration, motivation, confidence, sense of security, anger and most of all – trust and fear.
There’s more. You also need to be proactively curious about what might happen. I return to this later.
To summarise: selling is three parts mental/emotional to one part intellectual.
E=MC3, it’s not rocket science!
Shine on…!
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Paul C Burr
Quick Guides to Business – new page created
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Leadership, Marketing, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Selling, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Training & Development on June 20, 2013
I’ve released a new page in this website devoted to the Quick Guides to Business I’m writing. It will contain links to extracts that you will hopefully find interesting and helpful.
Your feedback about Quick Guides to Business or any aspect of this site would be most welcome.
Shine on…!
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Paul C Burr
Business/Personal Performance Coach & Author
Follow @paulburr
Successful Business Relationships: The Logic, Premium and Legacy
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Leadership, Marketing, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Selling, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tip for the Day, Training & Development, Visions and Dreams on May 30, 2013
My latest booklet, Quick Guide III – How to Bridge the Pillars of Successful Relationships (QG3), focuses on complex, inter- and intra- corporate, many-people-to-many-people, business relationships.
There are sound, logical, rewarding, tangible and emotional reasons for building healthy relationships. These very same reasons apply equally to personal relationships.
Here’s an extract from QG3…
Logic – less cost
Research shows that once you’ve established a customer relationship based on mutual trust and value, it takes five times the effort to build the same relationship with a new customer as it does to maintain it with your current customer.
When the cost of new prospect sales is five times that of existing satisfied customer sales, you don’t need a certificate in mathematics to appreciate the importance of satisfying, if not exceeding, the expectations of existing customers irrespective of the premium you earn from brand loyalty.
Premium – higher earnings
A reputable brand image makes selling a lot easier. I had no problem whatsoever getting to see new clients when I worked for IBM. Cold-calling for an organisation that isn’t a ‘household’ name, however, was a real ‘eye-opener’ for me after I made the switch.
The value of your reputation is the premium that customers will pay to do business with you over and above what they will pay your competitors, all else being equal, plus the cost reduction in sales your brand reputation affords you.
A simple example: ‘Household-name’, supplier A, renowned for its high quality products and services, sells a PC. ‘Relatively-unknown’ supplier, B, clones A’s PC with the exact same components, guarantees and terms of service. Intrinsically there’s no difference between PCs from either supplier. The cost of production and distribution of each product is the same.
Look at the buying/selling process from a customer perspective. All else being equal…
- What price difference will a customer pay (for the increased: reassurance, sense of status or another emotional, differential source of value they feel) for a PC from supplier A over supplier B?
- Reduction in sales cycle time and resourcing: how quicker and easier is it for a seller to convince a customer of the quality of a PC from supplier A compared with supplier B?
Brand value = [(what customers pay you) – (what customers pay for the exact same product/service from your competitors)] + (increase in productivity/cost-reduction in sales afforded by your brand)
Legacy – higher contribution
How do you want to look back on your time in sales and management at the end of your career? How do you want to be remembered? As a seller, buyer or leader: do you want to feel you’ve kept (or at least strived to keep) the agreements you made?
Maybe a business world forged with 100% truthful relationships is somewhat of a pipe dream, but as you look at the world’s economy and the ‘wars’ for limited resources right now, what choice do we have? And we have to imagine something before necessity will mother its invention – do we not?
‘You’ can either contribute to a world where wealth and power are shared through equitable negotiation – or not, truth or illusion/deception, abundance or scarcity, oneness or separateness, love or fear. ‘You’ choose! (But this is the topic contained in another book of mine, Defrag your Soul.)
Shine on…!
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Paul C Burr
TftD: The Paradox of Joy and Hurt
Posted by Doctapaul in Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tip for the Day on March 20, 2013
“The person who hurts you is often the person you run to, in order to feel better.”
Image sourced from Moments Count
Shine on…!
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Paul C Burr
Author of Learn to Love and Be Loved in Return, 2012: a twist in the tail and Defrag your Soul