Daily Closer

Show me the person who doesn't believe better clarity could dramatically affect their business, finances and personal life and I'll show you a fool. A "freedom from indistinctness or ambiguity" is a pretty sweet deal on all fronts. The clearer you get with what you currently have; such as motivations, current situations, desires, fears, and aspirations the better off you'll be to deal with how you approach life. The people who achieve greatness in this world get very clear about what they're here to do. They've made several big decisions, sometimes very early on, about what they want in life. What they can bring to the world, what kind of experiences they want to participate in, who they want to become and why they want to become that person. Not only do they make these decisions but they possess...

The definition of closer is a person or thing that closes "Always Be Closing" is a notorious phrase, probably uttered from the lips of every decent sales manager the world over at some point or another. The concept is clear: at all times, you should be fully aware of the fact that you're selling and constantly looking for a way in. For a way to close the deal. A fabulous example of a slick and rich executive preaching this philosophy as he absolutely rips into a sales force can be found in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, and I've always found this single performance performed by Alec Baldwin amazing. I've heard people scoff at the character he portrays, balking about how he represents everything wrong with America. It baffles the hell out of me, frankly, because his no-nonsense get'r...

Rejection is a deadly disease. It ruins lives, inhibits potential, and scars people time and time again throughout the remainder of their fleeting life on Earth if left to its own devices. Children who grow up in dysfunctional homes are crippled by it, their vision of humanity tainted. The girl whose father ran out on his family feels rejected as a human being, or the boy who was severely beaten and harassed by his drunken mother understand the concept very clearly, and become defined by the notion. Horrific yet ordinary stories that have become ingrained in our culture to the point of expectancy. We expect our youth to learn and feel rejection, hell 68% of our youth as of 2010 are now growing up in non-traditional families due to one reason or another. It's literally the epitome of modern day living. The...

According to Malcolm Gladwell's acclaimed novel, Outliers, the formula for expertise is a matter of time invested honing the skill. 10,000 hours to be exact. Allegedly, the only difference between a virtuoso of the violin and a non-violinist can be attributed to a mere 10 year, 3 hour per day investment repeatedly practicing the craft. I believe this to be an improper analysis of a complex issue converted into a wrong unit of measurement - numbers. There are late bloomers, explosively quick learners, early birds and mid-life yet thorough innovators and they all have stories behind them that cannot simply be equated to a matter of time invested. What if there were a way to predict gainful expertise in an area, though, and you could do it by looking at three key things in the developmental...

There are people out there with intentions that don't have your best interest at heart, people who are going to try to influence you in negative ways that will be far from productive for your life. They'll pop up constantly and the longer you let them stick around the harder it will be to get rid of them and their influence. They're not always bad people but for you they're parasites. They'll try convincing you to stray from your path or just plain pushing you out of the way of opportunity, and because during every social encounter someone is either  selling or being sold you must be absolutely sold on yourself and your values. No matter what happens or what mistakes you make, you must always close yourself on you and never allow anyone to close you on anything that contradicts that. Close...

There's a statistic buzzing around out there that states employers have made their decision on whether or not to hire you within the first 120 seconds of the interview. Now, I'm not one to call bullshit too quickly but I'll go ahead and say it, as someone who's been on the interviewing side of the equation: you probably have a 180 - 360 second time frame to get a solid impression in before your interviewer's decided to offer you that lucrative position or not. Those had better be some golden seconds. The initial and consistent impressions you make upon people are the first bricks of the foundation to a potentially beautiful or disastrous relationship. In business and sales, the end game is the same: to always be building solid relationships that will benefit both parties involved. No one walks away...

If there's one thing to remember, whether you're maneuvering the landmines of your current boss' personality or functioning as a team member in an assembly line, it's a simple one - you're in the people business. We're just an advanced form of bacteria, aren't we? Sell cars? Nope. People make decisions based upon outer and inward circumstantial information to own vehicles. That Kia Optima you just sold this morning isn't so drastically superior from the Hyundai Sonata sitting across the street, or really any other similar classed vehicle for that matter. We're living in a world of over-saturated information - gone are the days where the salesperson is needed to point out and explicitly explain the features included in the LX versus the SX model. It's all available online and chances are your...