The medical process is the same everywhere. Whenever you go to any doctor, of any kind, for any condition, he will follow the three part sequence of examination, diagnosis and prescription. Just as a medical professional would never think of treating you without following these three steps in order, you as a doctor of selling, would never allow a customer to force you to sell without your going through your three stages as well.

This is as applicable to selling magazines door-to-door as it is to selling oil tankers to Exxon. In the examination phase, you ask excellent questions, carefully prepared, in sequence, which are geared to give you a thorough knowledge of the patient’s condition, or the customer’s situation.

The second phase is that of diagnosis. In the diagnosis with a customer, you would repeat back the results of your examination and double check to be sure that the symptoms that you had detected were the real symptoms being experienced by the patient.

You would ask additional questions to confirm and corroborate. You and the patient would mutually agree that this diagnosis seems to be an accurate description of the condition or problem. Once this mutual agreement has been reached, that a treatable condition exists and that you have identified it accurately, you can move on to phase three.

This is the prescription phase, where you show the patient (customer) that your product or service is the best available treatment, taking all the factors of the patient’s situation into consideration for the ailment that you have diagnosed. You show that, on balance, what you are suggesting is the best of all possible solutions.

Professionals who sell in the way that doctors treat patients find that their sales activities proceed far more smoothly and result in better sales in less time. Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, take the time to do a thorough examination by asking excellent questions and by listening carefully to the answers. Second, repeat back and check your diagnosis with the customer so that you both agree on the need or problem — before you recommend a solution.

Charisma is also that special quality of magnetism that each person has and that each person uses to a certain degree. You have a special charisma to the people who look up to you, who respect and admire you¾the members of your family and your friends and coworkers. Whenever and wherever a person feels a positive emotion toward another, he imbues that person with charisma, or attractiveness.

In trying to explain charisma, some people speak of an “aura.” This aura is a light that is invisible to most people, but not to everyone, and that radiates out from a person and affects the people around that person in a positive or negative way. The halo around the heads of saints and mystics in many religious paintings was the artist’s attempt to depict the light that people reported seeing around the heads of these men and women when they were speaking or praying, or in an intense emotional state.

You also have an aura around you that most people cannot see but that is there, nevertheless. This aura affects the way people react and respond to you, either positively or negatively. There is a lot that you can do, and a lot of good reasons for you to do it, to control this aura and make it work in your best interests.

If you’re in sales, this aura, reflecting your level of charisma, can have a major impact on the way your prospects and customers treat you and deal with you. Top salespeople seem to be far more successful than the average salespeople in getting along with their customers. they’re always more welcome, more positively received and more trusted than the others. They sell more, and they sell more easily. They make a better living, and they build better lives. Salespeople with charisma get far more pleasure out of their work and suffer far less from stress and rejection. The charismatic salesperson is almost invariably a top performer in his field and enjoys all the rewards that go with superior sales.

If you’re in business, developing greater charisma can help you tremendously in working with your staff, your suppliers, your bankers, your customers and everyone else upon whom you depend for your success. People seem naturally drawn to those who possess charisma. They want to help them and support them. When you have charisma, people will open doors for you and bring you opportunities that otherwise would not have been available to you.

In your personal relationships, the quality of charisma can make your life more joyous, happier. People will naturally want to be around you. Members of your family and your friends will be far happier in your company, and you will have a greater influence on them, causing them to feel better about themselves and to do better at the important things in their lives.

There is a close association between personal charisma and success in life. Probably 85 percent of your success and happiness will come from your relationships and interactions with others. The more positively others respond to you, the easier it will be for you to get the things you want.

In essence, when we discuss charisma, we are talking about the law of attraction. This law has been stated in many different ways down through the centuries, but it basically says that you inevitably attract into your life the people and circumstances that harmonize with your dominant thoughts.

In a sense, you are a living magnet, and you are constantly radiating thought waves, like a radio station radiates sound waves, that are picked up by other people. Your thoughts, intensified by your emotions, as radio waves are intensified by electric impulses, go out from you and are picked up by anyone who is tuned in to a similar wavelength. You then attract into your life people, ideas, opportunities, resources, circumstances and anything else that is consistent with your dominant frame of mind.

The law of attraction also explains how you can build up your levels of charisma so that you can have a greater and more positive impact on the people whose cooperation, support and affection you desire. The critical thing to remember about charisma is that it is largely based on perception. It is based on what people think about you. It is not so much reality as it is what people perceive you to be. For example, one person can create charisma in another person by speaking in glowing terms about that person to a third party. If you believe that you are about to meet an outstanding and important person, that person will tend to have charisma for you.

One of the most charismatic people in the world today is Mother Teresa of Calcutta. In a physical sense, she is a quiet, elderly, frail woman in poor health, and she wears a modest nun’s habit. She might be ignored by a person passing her on the street, were it not for the tremendous charisma she has developed and for the fact that her appearance is so well-known to so many people as a result. If someone told you that he was going to introduce you to a brilliant, self-made millionaire who was very quiet and unassuming about his success, you would almost naturally imbue that person with charisma, and in his presence, you would not act the same as you would if you had been told nothing at all. Charisma begins largely in the mind of the beholder.

Of course, lasting charisma depends more upon the person you really are than upon just the things you do. Nevertheless, you can build the perception of charisma for yourself by utilizing the 10 great powers of personality that seem to have a major impact on the way that people think and feel about you.

The first of these powers is the power of purpose. Men and women with charisma and personal magnetism almost invariably have a clear vision of who they are, of where they’re going and of what they’re trying to achieve. Leaders in sales and management have a vision of what they’re trying to create and why they’re doing what they’re doing. They’re focused on accomplishing some great purpose. They’re decisive about every aspect of their lives. They know exactly what they want and what they have to do to get it. They plan their work and work their plan.

In more than 3,300 studies of leadership, in every book and article ever written on leadership, the quality of purpose, or vision, was one of the few qualities that was consistently used in describing leaders.

You can increase your charisma and the magnetism of your personality by setting clear goals for yourself, making plans to achieve them, and working on your plans with discipline and determination every day. The whole world seems to move aside for the person who knows exactly where he is going. In fact, the clearer you are about your purposes and goals, the more likely people will be to attribute other positive qualities to you. They will see you, or perceive you, as being a better and more admirable human being. And when you have clear goals, you begin attracting to yourself the people and opportunities necessary to make those goals a reality.

The second personality power is self-confidence. Men and women with charisma have an intense belief in themselves and in what they are doing. They are usually calm, cool and composed about themselves and their work. Your level of self-confidence is often demonstrated in your courage, your willingness to do whatever is necessary to achieve a purpose that you believe in.

People are naturally attracted to those who exude a sense of self-confidence, those who have an unshakable belief in their ability to rise above circumstances to attain their goals.

One of the ways you demonstrate self-confidence is by assuming that people naturally like you and accept you and want to do business with you. For example, one of the most powerful ways to close a sale is simply to assume that the prospect has decided to purchase the product or service, and then go on to wrap up the details. One of the best ways to achieve success in your relationships is to assume that people naturally enjoy your company and want to be around you, and then proceed on that basis. The very act of behaving in a self-confident manner will generate personal charisma in the eyes of others.

The third power you can develop is enthusiasm. The more excited you are about accomplishing something that is important to you, the more excited others will be about helping you to do it. The fact is that emotions are contagious. The more passion you have for your life and your activities, the more charisma you will possess, and the more cooperation you will gain from others. Every great man or woman has been totally committed to a noble cause and, as a result, has attracted the support and encouragement of others, in many cases, thousands or millions of others.

The fourth personality power that you can develop is expertise, or competence. The more knowledgeable you are perceived to be in your field, the more charisma you will have among those who respect and admire that knowledge because of the impact it can have on their lives. This is also the power of excellence, of being recognized by others as an outstanding performer in your field. Men and women who do their jobs extremely well and who are recognized for the quality of their work are those who naturally attract the help and support of others. They have charisma.

The fifth power of personality that gives you charisma in the eyes of others is thorough preparation, detailed preparation, prior to undertaking any significant task. Whether you are calling on a prospect, meeting with your boss, giving a public talk or making any other kind of presentation, when you are well-prepared, it becomes clear to everyone. The careers of many young people are put onto the fast track as a result of their coming to an important meeting after having done all their homework.

Whether it takes you hours or even days, if an upcoming meeting or interaction is important, take the time to get on top of your subject. Be so thoroughly prepared that nothing can faze you. Think through and consider every possibility and every ramification. Often, this effort to be fully prepared will do more to generate the respect of others than anything else you can do.

Remember that the power is always on the side of the person who has done the most preparation and has the best notes. Everything counts. Leave nothing to chance. When you do something related to your work or career, take the time to do it right in advance.

The sixth power that gives you charisma is self-reliance, or self-responsibility. The most successful men and women in America are intensely self-reliant. They look to themselves for the answers to their questions and problems. They never complain, and they never explain. They take complete ownership of projects. They volunteer for duties and step forward and accept accountability when things go wrong.

An amazing facet of human nature is that when you behave in a completely self-reliant manner, others will often be eager to help you achieve your goals. But if you seem to need the help and support of others, people will avoid you or do everything possible not to get involved with you.

One of the most admirable qualities of leaders, which lends a person charisma in the perception of others, is the capacity to step forward and take charge. The leader accepts complete responsibility for getting the job done, without making excuses and blaming anyone. When you become completely self-reliant, you experience a tremendous sense of control and power that enhances your feeling of well-being and that generates the charisma that is so important to you in attracting the help of others.

The seventh personality power is image. There is both interpersonal image and intrapersonal image. Intrapersonal image, or self-image, is the way you see yourself and think about yourself in any situation. This self-image has an inordinate impact on the way you perform and on the way others see you and think about you. Your self-image plays an important part in your charisma.

The other type of image is interpersonal. This is the image or appearance that you convey to others. The way you look on the outside has an inordinate impact on the way people treat you and respond to you. Successful men and women are very aware of how they are coming across to others. They take a good deal of time to think through every aspect of their external appearance to assure that it is helping them rather than hurting them.

Remember that everything counts. If an element of your image is not building your charisma and your respect in the eyes of another person, it is lowering your charisma and your respect. Nothing is neutral. Everything is taken into the equation. Everything counts. The three primary factors in personal appearance are clothes, grooming and accessories. Select your clothes with care. Before you go to an important meeting, stand in front of the mirror and ask yourself, “Do I look like one of the best people in my field?” If you don’t feel that you look like one of the best people in your business, go back to the closet and change.

Look at the most successful people in your area of endeavor. What do they wear? How do they dress? How do they wear their hair? What kind of accessories do they use? Pattern yourself after the winners in your field, the people who already have personal magnetism and charisma. If you do what they do, over and over, you will eventually get the same results that they get.

The eighth form of personal power is character, or integrity. Men and women who possess the kind of charisma that arouses the enthusiastic support of others are invariably men and women with high values and principles. They are extremely realistic and honest with themselves and others. They have very clear ideals, and they continually aspire to live up to the highest that is in them. They speak well of people, and they guard their conversation, knowing that everything that they say is being remembered and recorded. They are aware that everything they do is contributing to the formation of their perception by others. Everything about their character is adding to or detracting from their level of charisma.

When you think of the most important men and women of any time, you think of men and women who aspired to greatness and who had high values for themselves and high expectations of others. When you make the decision to act consistent with the highest principles that you know, you begin to develop charisma. You begin to become the kind of person others admire and respect and want to emulate. You begin to attract into your life the help and support and encouragement of the kind of people you admire. You activate the law of attraction in the very best way.

The ninth power of personality is self-discipline, or self-mastery. Men and women of charisma are highly controlled. They have a tremendous sense of inner calm and outer resolve. They are well-organized, and they demonstrate willpower and determination in everything they do.

The very act of being well-organized, of having clear objectives and of having set clear priorities on your activities before beginning, gives you a sense of discipline and control. It causes people to respect and admire you. When you then exert your self-discipline by persisting in the face of difficulties, your charisma rating goes up. Men and women who achieve leadership positions, who develop the perception of charisma in others, are invariably those who possess indomitable willpower and the ability to persist in a good cause until success is achieved. The more you persist when the going gets rough, the more self-discipline and resolve you develop, and the more charisma you tend to have.

The tenth power that you can develop, which underlies all of the other powers that lead to charisma, is result-orientation. In the final analysis, people ascribe charisma to those men and women who they feel can most enable them to achieve important goals or objectives.

We develop great perceptions of those men and women we can count on to help us achieve what is important to us. Men and women who make great sales, or who establish admirable sales records, develop charisma in the minds and hearts of their coworkers and superiors. They are spoken about in the most positive way. Men and women who are responsible for companies or departments that achieve high levels of profitability also develop charisma. They develop what is called the “halo effect.” They are perceived by others to be extraordinary men and women who are capable of great things. Their shortcomings are often overlooked, while their strong points are overemphasized. They become charismatic.

Charisma actually comes from working on yourself. It comes from liking and accepting yourself unconditionally as you do and say the specific things that develop within you a powerful, charismatic personality.

When you set clear goals and become determined and purposeful, backing those goals with unshakable self-confidence, you develop charisma. When you are enthusiastic and excited about what you are doing, when you are totally committed to achieving something worthwhile, you radiate charisma. When you take the time to study and become an expert at what you do, and then prepare thoroughly for any opportunity to use your knowledge, skill or experience, the perception that others have of you goes straight up. When you take complete responsibility and accept ownership, without making excuses or blaming others, you experience a sense of control that leads to the personal power that is the foundation of charisma. When you look like a winner in every respect, when you have the kind of external image that others admire, you build your charisma. When you develop your character by setting high standards and then disciplining yourself to live consistent with the highest principles you know, you become the kind of person who is admired and respected everywhere. You become the kind of person who radiates charisma to others.

Finally, when you concentrate your energies on achieving the results that you have been hired to accomplish, the results that others expect of you, you develop the reputation for performance and achievement that inevitably leads to the perception of charisma.

You can develop the kind of charisma that opens doors for you by going to work on yourself, consistently and persistently, and becoming the kind of person everyone can admire and look up to. That’s what charisma is all about.

The Law of Compensation is another restatement of the Law of Sowing and Reaping. It says that you will always be compensated for your efforts and for your contribution, whatever it is, however much or however little.

This Law of Compensation also says that you can never be compensated in the long term for more than you put in. Your income today is your compensation for what you have done in the past.

If you want to increase your compensation, you must increase the value of your contribution. Your mental attitude, your feelings of happiness and satisfaction, are also the result of the things that you have put into your own mind.

If you fill your own mind with thoughts, visions and ideas of success, happiness and optimism, you will be compensated by those positive experiences in your daily activities.

Another corollary of the Law of Sowing and Reaping is what is sometimes called the, “Law of Overcompensation.” This law says that great success comes from those who always make it a habit to put in more than they take out.

They do more than they are paid for. They are always looking for opportunities to exceed expectations. And because they are always overcompensating, they are always being over rewarded with the esteem of their employers and customers and with the financial rewards that go along with their personal success.

One of your main responsibilities in life is to align yourself and your activities with Law of Cause and Effect (and its corollaries), accepting that it is an inexorable law that always works, whether anyone is looking or not.

Your job is to institute the causes that are consistent with the effects that you want to enjoy in your life. When you do, you will realize and enjoy the rewards you desire.

Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, remind yourself regularly that your rewards will always be in direct proportion to your service to others. How could you increase the value of your services to your customers today?

Second, look for ways to go the extra mile, to use the Law of Overcompensation in everything you do.

This is the great secret of success.

The issue, then, is not whether or not you take risks. The issue is how skillful you are and, therefore, how confident you are in taking the right risks for the right reasons in pursuit of the right goals or objectives.

It is a fact that every great leap forward in human life begins with a giant step of faith into the unknown. Men and women who accomplish wonderful things are invariably men and women of great faith and confidence in themselves and their abilities. The better you become at analyzing and assessing risk, and then avoiding as much of the risk as possible, the more competent and more capable you will become, and the more successful you will be.

There are basically five types of risk for you to consider. The first type is the simplest. It is the risk that is not yours to take. It is the decision that you do not have to make or the gamble that you do not have to engage in. Every action has a consequence and often creates the need for further actions, either to follow up on or to remedy what happened. Whenever you can delegate an act entailing uncertainty, you can reduce your risk of losing time and money and can increase your likelihood of long-term success.

The second type of risk is the risk that is unnecessary. You engage in an unnecessary risk when you act precipitously, without sufficient information or without taking time to think it through carefully in advance. Peter Drucker said, “Action without thinking is the cause of every failure.” Many of the mistakes that you have made have occurred because you acted without thinking-that is, you acted without taking the time to minimize the risks involved.

The third type of risk is the risk that you can afford to take. Calling on a new prospect, following up on a lead, and exploring a new opportunity all are risks that you can afford to take. In these cases, the cost of failure is very low, while the rewards of success can be very great. Buying an inexpensive product or service, trying a new restaurant, and going out with a new person all are risks entailing uncertainty that you can afford to take because the down side is limited. Perhaps the worst that could happen is that you would experience a little bruise to your ego.

The fourth type of risk is the risk that you cannot afford to take. The consequences of making a mistake would be too enormous. You cannot afford to bet your whole company or your whole bankroll on a speculation of any kind. You cannot afford to commit all your resources to a single project and have your entire success or failure hinge on the outcome of that project.

Many salespeople make the mistake of working on one very large prospect and gradually curtailing their efforts to develop a series of smaller prospects. From everything that I’ve heard and seen, whenever a salesperson does that, the large prospect always fails to materialize, and the salesperson is left with empty hands and an empty pocketbook.

People in the world of investing talk about the importance of spreading one’s risks. No individual and no company should be dependent upon one or two people for their financial well-being. One of the best ways to minimize risks is to develop alternatives to what you are currently doing. The more alternatives you have, the lower your risk, and the higher your likelihood of success.

The fifth type of risk is the risk that you can’t afford not to take. The down side may be costly, but the up side is so exciting that it is very much worth taking a chance to go after it. If you are working on a big prospect whose headquarters are a long way from your main office, it’s certainly a risk to travel all the way there and back several times, but it’s a risk that you can’t afford not to take. If the prospect materializes, it can make a major difference to both you and your company.

Sometimes you will be given a job opportunity that you can’t afford not to take. Although there is always a potential loss involved, the up side may be tremendous. One of the best of all exercises, in every situation involving uncertainty, is to assess and evaluate the worst possible outcome. Ask yourself, “What could possibly go wrong in this situation?” Remember Murphy’s Law: “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.” There are several secondary laws to Murphy’s Law, such as “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong at the worst possible time” and “Of all the things that can go wrong, the most expensive thing will go wrong at the worst possible time.”

Another sublaw is “Everything takes longer than your best calculation.” In advising businesspeople, I suggest that they take their very best estimate of break-even for any business venture and then triple it to arrive at a more realistic number. Whenever businesspeople follow this advice, they are amazed to find that, in spite of their best initial calculations, it indeed takes about three times longer than they thought it would to start making money.

Another sublaw is “Everything costs more than you can possible anticipate in advance.” In minimizing risk in any venture, always add a “fudge factor” to account for the degree of uncertainty. Whenever I do a business plan, I always add 20 percent to the total of all costs that I can identify, to come up with the probably cost. Anything less than this, whether in business or your personal life, is likely to be an exercise in self-delusion.

Once you have identified the worst possible things that could go wrong, make a list of everything that you could do to offset these negative factors. Engage in what is called “crisis anticipation.” Look down the road, into the future, and imagine every possible crisis that could arise as the result of changing external circumstances.

Men and women who have achieved a high level of success are intensely realistic. They do not put their trust in luck. They carefully calculate every possible risk, and then think about what they would do should it occur. They always have a backup plan in case things do not go as they wish them to. They have a “Plan B” and options to that plan that take all kinds of variables into consideration.

Successful individuals engage in strategic thinking. They minimize risk by continually questioning their assumptions and asking themselves what they would do in the case of unanticipated delays, cost overruns or unexpected actions by their competitors. They are seldom caught unprepared because they have thought through the kind of uncertainties that create unacceptable risks-risks they cannot afford to take.

In dealing with risk, a mild degree of fear or anticipation is often very helpful because it keeps you alert and aware of what might go wrong. The problem with fear is that most people have it to an excess and are, therefore, paralyzed by their fears rather than motivated by their opportunities.

There is an old saying, “Faint heart ne’er won fair maid.” And there is another, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Giving in to fear makes you fearful, while acting boldly makes you courageous. Your actions create your beliefs, and your beliefs create your realities. Each time you feel afraid or nervous for any reason, the only solution is to “Do the thing you fear.” An old man once advised his grandson with these wonderful words: “Act boldly, and unseen forces will come to your aid.” Truer words were never spoken.

Most salespeople are selling far less and earning far less than they are capable of because they have an exaggerated fear of rejection. Even though they have never met the prospective client or customer, they have an inordinate fear of that person, and worry whether that person will like them or approve of them. When you actually dissect the fear of rejection by prospects or strangers, it seems kind of silly. But for salespeople faced with the need to develop new prospects, it can, and often does, paralyze them in their activities and hold them back.

One of the very best ways to develop your ability to take intelligent risks is to consciously and deliberately do the things you fear, one step at a time. You don’t have to leap out of an airplane without a parachute. That is not risk taking. That is simply being foolish. What you do have to do is to resist your natural tendency to slip into a comfort zone of complacency and low performance. Take any fear that you may be experiencing and treat it as a challenge and as an opportunity to grow and to become a better person. Face the fear, control the fear, master the fear, and continue to move forward regardless of the fear. This is the mark of the superior person. Many of our fears of taking risks are unfounded. They have no basis in reality. When you test them, you find that they don’t even exist.

Often we are afraid to take the risk of approaching a stranger because we fear that this person will not like us, be interested in us, or be impressed enough to want to have anything to do with us. However, the simple solution is to get out of yourself and focus all of your attention on the other individual. When you concentrate your attention on the other person and find reasons to like him or her, to be interested in him or her, or to be impressed by him or her, a remarkable thing happens: The other person, in turn, finds that you are likable, interesting and impressive. And the secret is to ask questions about the other person and then to listen attentively to the answers. Men and women who are popular with others practice this all the time. They eventually find that they have nothing to fear in introducing themselves to people, either on a personal or on a business level.

If you are in sales and you are thoroughly conversant with the benefits that your product or service can bring to people, you can approach them with calmness and confidence, seeing yourself as a helper rather than a salesperson. The very best salespeople, in all fields, see themselves as friends and advisers to their customers and prospective clients. They feel that they are in a position to do a favor for a person who can benefit from what they have to offer. Instead of seeing risks in approaching someone they haven’t met, they see opportunities and possibilities. Their attitudes are positive and expectant rather than negative and reluctant. They overcome the fear of rejection by thinking and talking about ways in which their product or service can help the other person and can enrich the other person’s life or work.

A very good way to overcome the fear of risk taking is to set clear, written, measurable goals for yourself, and then to review those goals regularly.

When you have clear goals and plans, and you continually work on them and evaluate your progress each day, you will see what you’re doing right and how you could improve your performance. You’ll feel more competent and capable and better about yourself. You’ll become more thoughtful and reflective and willing to take on even greater challenges. You’ll feel like the “master of your fate and the captain of your soul.” And your fears of taking risks will become smaller and smaller.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle said that all virtues are located on what he called the “golden mean” between two vices. The virtue of courage, or the willingness to take risks, is located between these two vices: cowardice on one end and impetuousness on the other. Your job is to straddle this golden mean and to strike a happy balance between acting impetuously, without thought, and not acting at all, allowing fear to govern your emotions and actions.

You learn how to take intelligent risks without fear by taking intelligent risks, and then by analyzing what happened. When you have clearly identified the risk involved, you can plan and prepare to maximize your opportunities while minimizing those risks. The more positive you feel about yourself, the more effective you will be in everything you undertake. Your ability to confidently take calculated risks in the direction of your goals will ultimately lead you toward success.

Successful people are not necessarily those who make the right decisions all the time. No one can do that, no matter how smart he is. But once successful people have made a decision, they begin moving toward their objectives step-by-step, and they begin to get feedback or signals to tell them where they’re off course and when course corrections are necessary. As they take action and move toward their goals, they continually get new information that enables them to adjust their plans in large and small ways.

It’s important to understand that life is a series of approximations and course adjustments. Let me explain. When an airplane leaves Chicago for Los Angeles, it is off course 99 percent of the time. This is normal and natural and to be expected. The pilot makes continual course corrections, a little to the north, a little to the south. The pilot continually adjusts altitude and throttle. And sure enough, several hours later, the plane touches down at exactly the time predicted when it first became airborne upon leaving Chicago. The entire journey has been a process of approximations and course adjustments.

What’s the big problem? The big problem is that there are no guarantees in life. Everything you do, even crossing the street, is filled with uncertainty. You can never be completely sure that any action or behavior is going to bring about the desired result. There is always a risk. And where there is risk, there is fear. And whatever you think about grows in your mind and heart. People who think continually about the risks involved in any undertaking soon become preoccupied with fears and doubts and anxieties that conspire to hold them back from trying in the first place.

At Babson College, in a 12-year study into the reasons for success, researchers concluded that virtually all success was based on what they called the “corridor principle.” They likened achieving success to proceeding down a corridor in life. Each of us stands at the entrance to this corridor, looking into the darkness, and we see the corridor disappear into the distance. The researchers said that the difference between the successes and the failures in their study could be summarized by the one word launch! Successful people were willing to launch themselves down the corridor of opportunity without any guarantee of what would occur. They were willing to risk uncertainty and overcome the normal fears and doubts that hold the great majority in place.

And the remarkable thing is that as you move down the corridor of life, new doors of opportunity open up on both sides of you. However, you would not have seen those doors if you had not moved down the corridor. They would not have opened up for you if you had waited for some assurance before stepping out in faith and taking action. The Confucian saying “A journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step” simply means that great accomplishments begin with your willingness to face the inevitable uncertainty of any new enterprise and step out boldly in the direction of your goal.

Not long ago, a couple came to me with a problem. He was working for a company owned by his family in which he was bitterly unhappy. It was full of politics and backbiting and negativity, and he was stressed out and hated his job. He wanted to do something else but had no job offers or potential alternatives to his current position. He asked me for my advice on what to do.

I explained to him that there is a “vacuum theory of prosperity,” which says that when you create a vacuum of any kind, nature rushes to fill it. In his case, this meant that as long as he stayed at his current job, there was no way that he could recognize other possibilities, and there was no way that other opportunities could find him. I told him to take a giant leap of faith and just walk away from his current job with no lifeline or safety net. I assured him that if he did, all kinds of things would open up for him that he simply couldn’t see while he was locked up in his current situation. He took my advice. He quit his job. The members of his family became very angry and told him that he would be unemployable outside of their business. But he stuck to his guns. He went home, took a few days off and began to think about his experience and his skills and how they could best be applied to other jobs in other companies.

Within two weeks, without raising a finger, he had two job offers from other companies, both paying substantially more than he was getting before, and both offering all kinds of opportunities that were vastly superior to the job he had walked away from. As soon as the word had gotten out in the marketplace that he was available, other company owners, having worked with him and his company in the past, were eager to open doors for him. As he moved down the corridor of life, he began to see possibilities that he had been missing completely by limiting himself to where he was.

If you want to be more successful faster, just do or try more things. Take more action; get busier. Start a little earlier; work a little harder; stay a little later. Put the odds in your favor. According to the Law of Probability, the more things you try, the more likely it is that you will try the one thing that will make all the difference. I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.

Tom Peters, the best-selling author of In Search of Excellence and other business books, found that a key quality of the top executives in his study was a “bias for action.” Their motto seemed to be, “Ready, aim, fire.” Their attitude toward business was summarized in the words, “Do it, fix it, try it.” They realized that the future belongs to the action-oriented, to the risk taker.

Top people know, as General Douglas MacArthur once said, “There is no security in life, only opportunity.” And the interesting thing is this: If you seek for opportunity, you’ll end up with all the security you need. However, if you seek for security, you’ll end up with neither opportunity nor security. The proof of this is all around us, in the downsizing and reconstructing of corporations, where thousands of men and women who sought security are finding themselves unemployed for long periods of time.

There is a “momentum principle of success,” which is very important to you. it’s derived from two physical laws, the Law of Momentum and the Law of Inertia, and it applies equally well to everything that you accomplish and fail to accomplish.

In physics, the Law of Momentum says that a body in motion tends to remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. The Law of Inertia, on the other hand, says that a body at rest tends to remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force.

In their simplest terms, as they apply to you and your life, those laws say that if you stay in motion toward something that is important to you, it’s much easier to continue making progress than it is if you stop somewhere along the way and have to start again. When you look at successful people, you find that they are very much like the plate spinners in the circus. They get things started; they get the plates spinning. They continually keep them spinning, knowing that if a plate falls off, or something comes to a halt, it’s much harder to get it restarted than it is to keep it going in the first place.

Once you have a goal and a plan, get going! And once you start moving toward your goal, don’t stop. Do something every day to move you closer toward your goal. Don’t let the size of the goal or the amount of time required to accomplish it phase you or hold you back. During your planning process, break down the goal into small tasks and activities that you can engage in every day. You Don’t have to do a lot, but every day, every week, every month you should be making progress, by completing your predetermined tasks and activities, in the direction of your clearly defined objectives.

And here’s where the rubber meets the road. The most important single quality for success is self-discipline. it’s the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.

Let me break down that definition of self-discipline. First, it’s the ability to make yourself. This means that you have to use strength and willpower to force yourself into motion, to break the power of inertia that holds you back. Second, do what you should do, when you should do it. This means that you make a plan, set a schedule, and then do what you say you’ll do. You do it when you say you’ll do it. You keep your promises to yourself and to others. The third part of this definition is whether you feel like it or not. You see, anyone can do anything if he feels like it, if he wants to do it because it makes him happy, if he is well-rested and has lots of time. However, the true test of character is when you do something that you know you must do whether you feel like it or not, especially when you don’t like it at all.

In fact, you can tell how badly you really want something, and what you’re really made of as a person, by how capable you are of taking action in the direction of your goals and dreams even when you feel tired and discouraged and disappointed and you don’t seem to be making any progress. And very often, this is the exact time when you will break through to great achievement.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “When the night is darkest, the stars come out.” Your ability to endure, to continue taking action, step-by-step, in the direction of your dreams, is what will ultimately assure your success. If you keep on keeping on, nothing can stop you.

Preparing for the Future

Earl Nightingale once said that if a person does not prepare for his success, when his opportunity comes, it will only make him look foolish. You’ve probably heard it said repeatedly that luck is what happens when preparedness meets opportunity. Only when you’ve paid the price to be ready for your success are you in a position to take advantage of your opportunities when they arise. And the most remarkable thing is this: The very act of preparation attracts to you, like iron filings to a magnet, opportunities to use that preparation to advance in your life. You’ll seldom learn anything of value, or prepare yourself in any area, without soon having a chance to use your new knowledge and your new skills to move ahead more rapidly.

There is a series of things that you can do to become ready for success. All of these activities require self-discipline and a good deal of faith. They require self-discipline because the most normal and natural thing for people to do is to try to get by without preparation. Instead of taking the time and making the effort to be ready for their chance when it comes, they fool around, listen to the radio, watch television, and then they try to wing it and dupe others into thinking that they are more prepared than they really are. And since we’re all transparent, since just about everyone can see through just about everyone else, the unprepared person simply looks incompetent and foolish.

Preparation also requires a lot of faith because you have no proof in advance to demonstrate that the preparation will pay off. You simply have to believe, deep within yourself, that everything you do of a constructive nature will come back to you in some way. You have to know that no good effort is ever wasted. You have to be willing to sow for a long time before you reap, knowing that if you do sow in quality and quantity, the reaping will come about inevitably with the force of a law of nature.

Look at your work. Be honest and objective about your strengths and weaknesses. What are you good at? What are you poor at? What is your major area of weakness? What must you absolutely, positively be excellent at in order to move to the top of your field? What one skill do you have that, because of its weakness, may be holding you back from using all your other skills?

Norman Augustine, CEO of Martin Marietta Corporation, recently said that the most important thing he learned in the last 10 years of business was that your weakest important skill determines the extent to which you can use all of your other talents and abilities. In looking at the hundreds of people who worked below him in his corporation, he had found that people’s careers were largely determined not only by their strengths but also by their weaknesses. The very act of overcoming a particular weakness, through preparation and practice, was enough to propel a person into the front ranks in his or her career.

In preparing for success, one of the very best questions that you can ask yourself, continually, is: “What can I’and only I’do that, if done well, will make a real difference in my career?” Usually, there is only one or perhaps two answers to that question. Your ability to honestly appraise yourself and to identify the particular skill area that may be holding you back is critical.

Remember when I said that preparation requires both self-discipline and faith. It requires self-discipline because your natural tendency is to do more and more of those things that come most easily to you, and to avoid those areas that you don’t enjoy because you’re not particularly good at them yet. It requires faith and character for you to admit your weaknesses in a particular area and then resolve to go to work to develop yourself so those weaknesses don’t hold you back.

The greatest change that has taken place in our society in the last 20 years is that it’s become an information-based society. More than 50 percent of the working population is in the business of processing information in some way. This means that we now have a knowledge-based society and that you’re a knowledge worker. You work with your mind, your brain, your mental talents and abilities. You no longer “load that bale and tote that hay.” You work by thinking, and the more effectively you think and the better prepared you are mentally, the more productive and positive you’ll be.

One thing that has helped me enormously over the years is the habit of getting up early in the morning and spending the first 30 to 60 minutes reading something uplifting. You can read material that is educational or motivational or even inspirational. Many people read spiritual literature. Henry Ward Beecher once said, “The first hour is the rudder of the day.” This is often called the “golden hour.” It’s the hour during which you program your mind and set your emotional tone for the rest of the day. If you get up in the morning at least two hours before you have to be at work, or before your first appointment, and spend the first hour investing in your mind, taking in “mental protein” rather than “mental candy,” reading good books rather than the newspaper or magazines, your whole day will flow more smoothly. You’ll be more positive and optimistic. You’ll be calmer, more confident and relaxed. You’ll have a greater sense of control and well-being by the very act of reading healthy material for the first hour of each day.

After just three days of reading for 30 to 60 minutes in the morning, you’ll notice a profound difference. you’ll begin to develop what Dr. William Glasser called a “positive addiction.” As a result of your early-morning reading, you’ll feel so good about yourself and your life that you’ll develop a desire and motivation to get up earlier, even though your tendency in the past was to sleep in later. Try it and see. it’s a wonderful experience, and it can have a profound impact on the rest of your life.

In the period of time before work, another thing that highly successful people do is plan and prepare for their entire day. They review all of the tasks and responsibilities that they have for the coming hours. They carefully make a list of all their activities, and they set clear priorities on the activities. They decide which things are most important to do, which are secondary in importance, and which things should not be done at all unless all the other things are finished. They then discipline themselves to start working on their most important tasks and stay with them during the day until they’re complete.

Again, the natural tendency of the low performer is to do what is fun and easy before he does what is hard and necessary. Underachievers always like to do the little things first. They are drawn to the tasks that contribute very little to their careers or future possibilities. But high achievers are not like that! High achievers discipline themselves to start at the top of their list and to work on the activities in order of importance, without diversion or distraction.

If you’re in sales, you should spend fully 80 percent of your time prospecting until you’re so busy with presentations and proposals that you’ve no time left to prospect at all. In fact, whenever you have money problems of any kind, you should look upon them as a signal telling you that you need to reorder your priorities and to prepare more thoroughly to accomplish more of the things that contribute the greatest value to your life.

Another way to prepare for success is to eat right. Energy and dynamism are essential to your success, and they’re possible only when you’re sharp and alert. There are foods that are highly nutritious and that give you high energy and vitality on through the day. Also, there are foods, which you eat usually by habit, that are hard for your system to digest and that tire you out and make you slow and drowsy in the morning and the afternoon.

The chief culprits in diets are foods containing fats of any kind. More and more nutritional research suggests that fatty foods, which require the greatest effort on the part of the body to break down and digest, are the real enemies of human performance. Fats are becoming closely linked to many illnesses and ailments. One reason why people drink so much coffee is to counteract the drowsiness that occurs naturally in the morning because their stomachs are so loaded down with fatty foods.

You see, the process of digestion is the activity of your body that consumes the most energy. When you eat foods that are hard to digest, your body rushes blood from everywhere to the digestive system to work to break them down. In this process, the digestive system draws away blood from the brain and the muscles. The reason you feel drowsy after a large meal is because the blood has gone from your brain to your stomach. The reason you get cramps when you engage in vigorous physical exercise immediately after eating is because a substantial amount of blood has been drawn from your muscles to aid in the process of digestion.

The key is to eat lightly and healthily. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Eat more whole-grain products. In his book Eat to Win, Robert Haas says that your diet should be comprised of 75 percent carbohydrates, 15 percent fats and only 10 percent proteins. Since the average diet in America contains as much as 50 percent fats and proteins, there is ample room to improve. And every move that you make toward a high-carbohydrate diet will give you more energy and make you sharper in everything you do.

In preparing for success throughout the day, you should also talk to yourself in a positive way. The work by Dr. Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania has demonstrated that the way you talk to yourself largely determines your emotions, how you feel about yourself on a minute-to-minute basis.

If you don’t deliberately and consciously think about what you want, and talk to yourself in a positive way, your mind will tend to slip toward your worries and your concerns. And negative thinking takes the edge off your personality and your enthusiasm, which is so important to your success with people.

A few years ago, Dr. Abraham Zaleznik of Harvard University did an interesting study on disappointment. He found that successful people bounce back from disappointments far faster than unsuccessful people do.

And what I’ve learned is that the key to your keeping yourself positive and optimistic is preparation in advance of the ups and downs that You’ll experience each day. For example, if You’re in sales, change the way you talk to yourself by viewing yourself as a “rejection specialist” rather than a “sales specialist.” If you define yourself as a sales specialist, you’ll be setting yourself up for failure, disappointment and lowered self-esteem with every rejection you get. But, on the other hand, if you look upon yourself as a rejection specialist, you’ll be setting yourself up to feel like a winner every time someone turns you down for any reason. You can look upon every rejection as a percentage of a sale. If it takes you 20 calls to make a sale, you can look upon a rejection as 5 percent of the commission that you receive for making that sale. In this way, every person you speak to actually pays you money. You simply collect it when you make the sale that is inevitable when you speak to enough people. Every time someone turns you down, you’re a winner. You’re just that much farther ahead. You’re just a little bit closer to the sale that must come if you keep on keeping on.

Use every setback or disappointment as a spur to greater effort. Decide that nothing will ever get you down. Decide that you will bounce back instead of break. Develop a resilient or hardy personality. Become the kind of person who is always cheerful, no matter what happens on the outside. Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation. In this way, you become a far more resourceful and effective person. Preparing mentally, you become almost unstoppable.

If You’re making sales calls, resist the “parking-lot mentality” of the average salesperson. The average salesperson doesn’t think about the client until he drives onto the parking lot, and he stops thinking about the client when he drives off. Instead, prepare thoroughly for each call. Review your file of notes on the customer, and establish a clear set of call objectives before you go in. Know what you’re doing and why. Be very clear on what you want to accomplish with this call. If a person were to ask you how you would judge whether or not this upcoming call was successful, you should be able to tell that person exactly what you want to accomplish, and after the call, you should be able to tell that person exactly what you achieved. Most salespeople never do this. When you ask them if a call was successful, they don’t know how to answer you or how to base it. But this is not for you.

In everything you do, preparation is the key. If you want to be ready for success, you have to plant the seeds well in advance of the harvest that you expect. Do what the winners do: Think on paper. Memorize the winner’s creed: “Everything counts.” Everything you do is either moving you toward your goals or moving you away. Everything is either helping you or hurting you. Nothing is neutral. Everything counts.

A successful businessman was once asked for advice by a young person on how he could be more successful faster. The businessman told him that the key to his success had been to “get good” at his job.

The young man said, “I’m already good at what I do.”

The businessman then said, “Well, get better!”

The young man, somewhat self-satisfied, said, “Well, I’m already better than most people.”

To that, the businessman replied, “Then be the best.”

Those are three of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard: Get good. Get better. Be the best!

Remember, we live in a knowledge-based society, and knowledge in every field is doubling approximately every seven years. This means that you must double your knowledge in your field every seven years just to stay even. You’re already “maxxed out” at your current level of knowledge and skill. You’ve reached the ceiling in your career with your current talents and abilities. If you want to go faster and farther, you must get back to work and begin to prepare yourself for greater heights. You must put aside the newspaper, turn off the television, politely excuse yourself from aimless socializing and get back to working on yourself.

A quotation by Abraham Lincoln had a great influence on my life when I was 15. It was a statement he made when he was a young lawyer in Springfield, Illinois. He said, “I will study and prepare myself, and someday my chance will come.”

If you study and prepare yourself, your chance will come as well. There is nothing that you cannot accomplish if you’ll invest the effort to get yourself ready for the success that you desire. And there is nothing that can stop you but your own lack of preparation. Let me end with this beautiful poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “Those heights by great men won and kept; / Were not achieved by sudden flight; / But they, while their companions slept, / Were toiling upward in the night”

Your possibilities are endless, your potential is unlimited, and your future opens up before you when you prepare yourself for the success that must inevitably be yours.

Our market society is based on the principles of freedom and mutual benefit. Each party to a transaction only enters into it when he feels that he will be better off as a result of the transaction than he would be without it.

In a free market, the customer always has three options with any purchase decision.

First, the customer can buy your product or service. Second, the customer can buy the product or service from someone else. Third, the customer can decide to buy nothing at all.

For the customer to buy your particular product or service, he or she must be convinced that it is not only the best choice available but he must also be persuaded that there is no better way for him to spend the equivalent amount of money.

Your job as a salesperson is to convince the customer that all these conditions exist and then to elicit a commitment from him to take action on your offer.

The field of professional selling has changed dramatically since World War II. In a way, selling methodologies are merely responses to customer requirements. At one time, customers were relatively unsophisticated and poorly informed about their choices.

Salespeople catered to this customer with carefully planned and memorized sales presentations, loads of enthusiasm and a bag full of techniques designed to crush resistance and get the order at virtually any cost.

But the customer of the 1950s has matured into the customer of the 21st century. Customers are now more intelligent and knowledgeable than ever before. They are experienced buyers and they have interacted with hundreds of salespeople.

They are extremely sophisticated and aware of the incredible variety of products and services that are available to them, as well as their relative strengths and weaknesses of those products.

Many of them are smarter and better educated than most salespeople and they are far more careful about making a buying decision of any kind. In addition, they are overwhelmed with work and under-supplied with time.

Because of the rapidly increasing pace of change, down-sizing, restructuring and the competitive pressures surrounding them, customers today are harried and hassled. They are swamped with responsibilities, impatient, suspicious, critical, demanding, and spoiled.

To sell to today’s customer requires a higher caliber of sales professional than has ever before been required. And it is only going to become tougher and more complicated in the months and years ahead.

Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, think continually about how you can convince your customer that your product or service is the very best available. Why does he buy, or refuse to buy?

Second, upgrade your knowledge and skills every day so you can sell more effectively.

Remember, your customers only get better when you get better.

Your mission statement is always written in the present tense, as though you have already become the person that you have described. It is always positive rather than negative. And it is always personal.

Your subconscious mind can only accept your mission statement as a set of commands when you phrase it in the present, positive and personal tenses. “I am an exceptional salesperson,” is a perfect example. After every sales call, you should quickly reread your mission statement and ask yourself if your recent behavior was more like the person you want to be, or less?As a top sales performer, you are always comparing your sales activities against a high standard and adjusting your activities upward. You’re continually striving to be better. Every day in every way, you are deliberately working to become more like the ideal person you have envisioned.

Your goal is that, a year from today, when one of your customers has lunch with one of your prospects, and your prospect asks your customer to describe you in detail as a salesperson, your customer will recite your business mission statement voluntarily. The way you have treated your customer will have been so exemplary that your customer will describe you in the most glowing of terms.

Once you have developed a mission statement like this, you can read it, review it, edit it, and upgrade it regularly. You can add additional qualities to it and more clearly define the qualities you’ve already listed. It becomes your personal credo, your philosophy of life, your statement of beliefs and a guide to your behavior in all your interactions with others. Each day, you can evaluate your behaviors and compare them against the standard that you have set in this statement.

Over time, a remarkable thing will happen. As you read and review your personal mission statement, you will find yourself, almost unconsciously, shaping your words and conforming your behaviors so that you are more and more like the ideal person you have defined. People will notice the change in you almost immediately. Over time, you will find that you are actually creating within yourself the kind of character and personality that you most admire in others. You will have become the molder and the shaper of your own personal destiny.

Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, imagine that one of your customers was going to meet with one of your prospects. What would you want him to say about you? How could you behave with your customer to assure that he says these things?

Second, talk to yourself positively all the time. Feed your mind with positive messages that describe your goals and the person you want to be.

The Golden Rule says to, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It also says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

The Golden Rule mentality in sales, says simply, “Sell unto others as you would have them sell unto you.”

What does this mean? Aren’t there all kinds of different personalities that require different approaches and techniques? Well, yes and no. Practicing the golden rule in selling simply means that you sell to other people the way you would like to be sold to.

You sell with the same honesty, integrity, understanding, empathy and thoughtfulness that you would like someone else to use in selling to you.

If you would like a salesperson to take the time to thoroughly understand you and your situation before making a recommendation, you practice the same thing with your customers.

If you would like a salesperson to give you honest information and to help you make an intelligent buying decision, you practice the same with your customer.

If you would like a salesperson to be thoroughly knowledgeable about the strengths or weaknesses of his or her product or service, and that of his or her competitors, then you do the same with your product or service and your competitors.

Perhaps the most important part of golden rule selling is the emotional component embraced in the word, “caring.” Top sales professionals care about their customers.

They care about themselves, their companies, their products and services, and they really care about helping their customers to make good buying decisions. If you think about the very best salespeople you know, you will recognize that they are caring individuals.

If you think about your very best customers, you will recall that these are invariably people you care about, and who care about you.

When you think about the people you buy from, you will recall that they seem to care about you more than the average. In every part of your business life, you will find that the significant people all have the denominator of caring as part of their character and their personalities.

Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, resolve today to sell to your customers with the same honesty, empathy and understanding that you would like them to use in selling to you.

Second, take time to genuinely care about your customers, their individual needs and their unique situations. Make people feel important and they will make you feel important.

Often it is vague or unclear, even to the prospect. Your basic operating principle should be that, if there is any doubt at all as to what the prospect needs, then you didn’t really understand.

When you question for clarification, you not only get an opportunity to listen more while the prospect is answering the question, you always assure that what the prospect says and what you heard are the same.

Again, questioning for clarification slows the conversation down, increases the clarity of the communication and builds greater trust. My favorite question in selling is, “How do you mean?” Or, “How do you mean, exactly?” You can use this question after almost any statement by the prospect.

It is an irresistible question and it is virtually impossible for a person to hear it without expanding on what they are thinking or what they previously said. Whenever you have any doubts at all, or whenever the prospect objects to any facet of your offering, simply pause, smile and ask, “How do you mean, exactly?”

Never assume that you know or understand before you have questioned and gotten accurate clarification of exactly what the prospect meant when he or she asked a question or offered an objection.

Always ask, “How do you mean?” Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, never assume that you fully understand what the customer said or meant when he objects or asks questions.

Second, use the power of questions to learn more about what the customer really needs, wants and is concerned about. Telling is not selling; only asking questions is selling.

There are audio/video learning programs that include hours of instruction and a variety of exercises. They are all valuable and helpful, but what they teach can be distilled down into a key skill.

Your mastery of these skills, through discipline and practice, is all you need to become an excellent listener, with all that that entails. The best listening skill is to listen attentively. Lean forward, face the prospect directly rather than at an angle.

Focus your attention on the prospects face, on his or her mouth and eyes. Listen without interruption. Listen as though you were hanging on every word the prospect was saying. Listen as if the prospect were about to give you the winning Lottery number and you would only hear it once.

Listen as if this were a million dollar prospect who was just on the verge of giving you a major order. Listen as if there were no one else in the world to whom you would rather listen at this moment than this prospect, and to what this prospect is saying.

The ability to pay close, uninterrupted attention to a person when he is speaking is the primary listening skill.

It is the hardest facility to develop and is simultaneously the most important of all. It requires continuous practice and discipline.

And it’s not easy. It is hard to keep your thoughts from wandering, but the payoff is tremendous. Now, here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, imagine that your customer is the most fascinating person in the world. Hang on every word as if he was about to place a million dollar order.

Second, lean forward when your customer speaks. Nod, smile, agree and be both active and involved. Listening builds sales relationships.