by | October 24, 2011 · 10:22 am

Stat Counter

by Brian Koscienski and Chris Pisano
https://www.fortresspublishinginc.com/

Okay, so now you have your website up and running, right? You update it once in a while to show new products and events, right? Excellent! Now – how many visitors do you have each week? Each month? Where are they coming from? Which pages are they looking at? If you don’t know the answers to those questions, then you need to find a way to measure these statistics. You need a stat counter.

Stat counters are nice little tools to keep track of … well, you guessed it … stats. Have you been to a website and at the bottom there is a set of numbers that may look like your car’s odometer? That’s a stat counter. You can find free ones with a quick internet search and if you can make your own website, then you can easily add a stat counter to it. Fortress Publishing, Inc. uses www.statcounter.com for our stat counting needs.

Stat counters do more than just keep track of how many hits your website gets. You can get a daily count, so you can see if you’re getting more hits before or after an event that you participate in. In fact, you can see how people are getting to your website. Google? Yahoo? A friend’s website that has your link? A book store that carries your material. You’ll see if people searched your name or your book title.

So, if you feel like you need more data to analyze, then get yourself a stat counter.

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by | October 18, 2011 · 10:00 am

Is Your Authenticity Shining Through?

by Rochelle Togo-Figa
originally published at https://breakthroughstrategist.blogspot.com/2011/09/is-your-authenticity-shining-through.html

Imagine you’re sitting across from the prospect, you’ve just presented your services and you’re unsure what to do next. You end up leaving the meeting not knowing what the next steps are. Sadly, you realize you spent more time during the meeting in your head wondering what to say than learning what’s important to the prospect. You leave discouraged and believe you don’t have what it takes to sell. If this has ever happened to you, you’re not alone.

Many people believe there’s a certain way they have to sell if they’re going to be successful. They’re stopped before they even get started because they believe they’re lacking a special style.

The truth is, we’ve been selling ourselves since we were very young. When you were in school and making new friends, you were selling yourself. When you were looking for a job, you were selling yourself. What helped you make new friends and get that job was your authentic style. It’s the same in business. What helps you close sales are the innate qualities you already have.

None of us was born to sell. Successful people learn sales skills and techniques that help close the sale. Most importantly, successful people work at creating the relationship with the client right from the start by being authentic.

The key to authentic selling is to sell from your heart. When you sell from your heart, you’re not following a canned script. Nor are you trying to copy anyone else’s style. You’re being genuinely interested in the other person by asking the right questions and listening keenly to what’s being said.

Have you ever noticed how much more you enjoy a conversation when you feel heard and listened to? Well, that’s what you’re doing when you’re authentically selling. You’re allowing the prospect to do most of the talking. When you follow these steps you’re creating a long-lasting relationship that leads to getting the business. You’re showing you want to learn as much as you can about him or her to see how you can help.

Most people buy based on the K-L-T Factor. They first want to get to know you, they need to like you, and then trust you. Once you establish the K-L-T Factor with prospects, they’re ready to listen to what you have to say. The business relationship begins when you relax and allow your authenticity to shine through.

I remember early in my career how inauthentic I was with people. I was more concerned about how I was doing than learning about the prospect. I covered up my insecurities well. To everyone I looked as if I had everything handled. The truth is, I didn’t—far from it.

The turning point came when I became seriously ill. My life came to a screeching halt. It was then I slowed down and took an honest look at myself. For the first time in my life, I let my guard down and became real. Instead of listening to myself, I started listening to others. Rather than pushing and forcing things to happen, I began to listen to people with a genuine interest in them.

I let go of being pushy and aggressive. And within a short time I noticed a lot more business started coming to me easily. The sense of urgency and intensity I used to display disappeared and I started having fun.

Start to look for yourself to see where in your life or your business you’re pushing too hard and trying to force things to happen. Write down the areas where you’ve been inauthentic and covering it up. How is this impacting your life and your business? What are you committed to changing? Once you begin to make these changes and apply them in your business and life, you’ll feel more confident and relaxed because you’re being authentic.

All you need is to be genuine. Clients will be attracted to you when you become more interested then interesting. You’re allowing your authenticity to shine through!

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by | October 6, 2011 · 5:00 pm

Good Grief

Sheryl Eldene, MA, MBA

This month is all about transition.  Many transitions need to move through a stage of grief.  What’s the difference between “good grief” and a pity party? As a business decision, I closed my massage practice of 17 years last week. I knew it was the right decision, but I’ve been grieving the loss of my connection to many wonderful people, and my chance to contribute to their lives.

I really wanted to avoid the pity party, but in doing so, I also ignored a very real emotion that was welling up, and I found myself with a lump in my throat that I even tried to imagine was a cold coming on!

“Good Grief” for me this week is self-care:

  1. Crying when I need to
  2. Sleeping when I want to
  3. Staying in meditation as long as I can
  4. Allowing a wound to heal

It made me think, that if I were cut, I’d take care of the wound, keep it clean, keep it safe from any further tearing, and spend very little time in a pity party. I’m learning a lot about good grief.

What resources do you use to give space for grief while honoring your own integrity and intention toward your future?

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by | September 15, 2011 · 10:48 am

Got Your Big Girl Panties Game On?

Sheryl Eldene, MA, MBA

Put on your Big Girl panties and go for the gold. Women often do business “politics” with pull-up diapers and wonder why they aren’t achieving the goals they set out.
I’ve been wondering what the difference is between how men operate in the workplace and how women operate. In my corporate career, the most challenging job I had was managing a group of data entry employees, which were all women. [Of course, they were all women, it was one of the lowest paying jobs at the company!! – but that’s entirely an different discussion.]  The cat fighting for status was brutal and for years I’ve been trying to perceive what makes a team of men different than a team of women. Yes, it can be partly that we’re from Venus and we’ve been trained to listen to our emotions more than those Martians.

One thing I’ve understood from Games your Mother never Taught You, a book I read in the ‘70’s is that men, more often than women have been able to play team sports – football, basketball, soccer, although that that is gradually changing. They learn from that experience to rely on team-mates, that the team wins or the whole team loses and there is praise for the individual that made a game point for the team. They also learn that a single skirmish is just a single skirmish. It is an opportunity to learn more about how this specific game is played – about the opponents strengths and weaknesses. Without that bedrock perspective, a skirmish takes on an entirely new meaning.

For many women, losing a skirmish is devastating, shameful and cause for revenge or escape. When you lose a bid for a position, especially to another woman, or lose a contract to another firm, even one that played “dirty”, or are assigned to work under an incompetent, annoying boss, what do you do? It seems to be a girl’s response to attempt to sabotage the person who got the job you wanted, post nasty stories about the dirty company on your facebook page or blog, and mean gossip talk your new boss. All those responses are responses of a victim acting from a place of powerlessness. Yes, we live in a male dominated society where the male way of doing things and being in the world is the standard, but what is the female standard that we want to create – that acknowledges our access to feelings and visions and proceeds from knowing that we are powerful business women?

What skirmishes in your life have you allowed to derail you and take you out of the game? If those skirmishes were a long time ago, you might be able to see a bigger picture by now. That’s what those Martian boys have that helps them get a different perspective on each skirmish – they are in the game to win, and losing a skirmish can, if you let it, teach you how to play with more skill, more resources, and more power —if we can remember not to sweat the small stuff, and on the journey to our vision, it’s all small stuff, just minor course corrections as we stay on track toward our life passion to those Big Dreams of yours.  (Check out www.onpurposeliving.com for more ideas on how women do and can play the business game.)

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by | September 8, 2011 · 8:32 am

Never Compromise your Dream

by Sheryl Eldene, MA, MBA

“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all is left is a compromise.” (Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance).

 In working with the Sweet Spot material, after the background check to determine your strengths, your beliefs, and your life purpose, the next big step is to determine what goal you will work with as you move through the process.

When we allow the “How” to be part of the “What” discussion, we open ourselves to a compromise between what we really want, and what we understand how to create. What if Mother Teresa, as a child was asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?” She might have responded, “I want to be the pope”.

Let’s imagine that her mother, well schooled in the principles of the law of attraction. said, “Great, honey – what is the first step you’d like to take in that direction?” Little Teresa might have asked to attend a Catholic grade school, supported by nuns where she could share the vision of the life dedicated to the church. As she grew, with her eye on serving the Church as Pope, she joined an order that allowed her to serve globally and learn all that would be needed to become Pope. Along the way, she would have learned that the Pope job is reserved for men only, and, she could take on changing the gender attitudes, or she could chose to serve the Catholic Church in a way that pleased her and used her keen talents of working in the church structure and caring for children.

In a difference scenario, her mother might have said “Oh, I’m sorry, dear, you can’t ever be Pope, that’s only for men”. Then little Teresa might have decided to work in a day care, with little kids, since that seems like a compromise between serving God in a global way and being a woman in today’s world.

Yes, this is a highly unlikely scenario, but I ask you, what goals are setting for yourself, simply because you can see the “how” and you are allowing yourself to dumb-down your dreams to meet your current skills, resources, experience, or expectation? If you actually could do, be, or have anything your mind can imagine, what might that be. Chapters on how will come much later. If you try to mix how with what, the result usually is a stalemate, a stuck in what is, and all that is left is a disappointing compromise. Dream Big, it’s your soul’s birthright.

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