A client has approached you with one of those situations that most people have encountered in their working life at some time or other: “What are the best ways to approach a person in the office I don’t seem to be able to get on with and ‘clear the air’ with them once and for all? Terry Neal, LCI’s Master Coach, answers…
 
This can be a challenging situation for your client who feels that this needs to happen as well as for those other staff members who may be indirectly affected by this as well. As the coach in this situation I would start by checking with your client as to what relationship they would like to have with this person once the “air is cleared”.
 
Does your client want to have a once only meeting with no further thoughts of interaction with their colleague other than what’s necessary for business - or do they want to establish a better long-term working relationship as well?
 
Initially you may detect that this situation could be a case of sexual harassment, bullying or discrimination. If this is the case, then ethically you would need to assist your client by providing information about appropriate government departments which can assist them with these matters. If this isn’t obvious at first, be aware in case your client talks about certain behaviours during the course of their session with you that could lead you to feel that one of the above scenarios is taking place in their work place.
 
However for this example, let’s assume that apart from clearing the air that your client would like to be able to have a better long-term working relationship with their colleague. Therefore to begin with you could ask the client to imagine themselves in the perfect scenario with this colleague.
 
You could ask them something like this: “Let’s imagine that tomorrow morning when you come into the office that the difficulties that you’ve been experiencing with your work colleague aren’t there anymore. How would you know that this has happened? What would you notice that was happening differently with you?
 
This could be a great way to encourage your client to image their ideal office scenario with their colleague. You could then follow this up with more questions that draw out the details of this picture; questions like “What else would be different if this miracle happens?” and as they talk about some of the ways that they’d feel different, encourage them to talk about what they would be doing with or saying to their colleague if they were “less angry” or “not feeling belittled” - or whatever the challenge was that they were having with that particular colleague.
 
It would also be important for you to help your client to see what the contrasts would be from before to after the miracle had occurred particularly if your client starts to rehash the original situation over again and starts to get stuck in that cycle of hopelessness. Keep on bringing them back to the positive where the problem has been solved through a miracle. You could then ask your client to look at how the other person might be in this miracle situation, how they might be different. What would your colleague be saying or doing in this miracle situation - especially towards you?
 
Now at this point you may find that your client may be saying that it’s OK having this miracle picture and it sounds great BUT it’s not happening in this way NOW and that they’re still in a situation of being in conflict right now - and that they have to be back with their colleague tomorrow morning at work.
 
If this scenario is raised by your client through their frustration with the current situation and they’re not able to entertain the possibility of a “miracle” happening, or if they are excited by the prospect of such a “miracle” scenario happening, you could assist them to begin creating a different relationship by asking them to recall if there have been any times in their interactions at work (or elsewhere if this also occurs) when there hasn’t been any conflict or when they thought that there might have been a difficulty but it didn’t happen?
 
Most people can bring to mind some occasion, an exception, when there was no conflict and maybe there was even agreement on a particular issue or topic. Encourage your client to focus on such a situation/s if they have happened more than once over a number of topics.
 
If your client cannot remember a time when there was an exception or an area of common interest was shared by them and their colleague, you could suggest one of two things. First, go back to the miracle question and review the scenario created by your client and ask more questions about this scenario that they would like to have with their colleague.
 
You would do this to see if what your client wants is at all feasible for while a miracle is always possible, there may be another miracle scenario that your client can imagine for which there are some workable exceptions. For example if your client said that in a miracle scenario, their colleague wasn’t at work and/or had been fired, this could be a scenario but maybe not the most appropriate one to work with. Rather than “clearing the air” or possibly creating a better working relationship with them your client has merely removed them from the picture.
 
Second, you could ask your client to observe their colleague and to note any situation where they could be involved with them in a positive way; for example listening to their point of view on a particular issue and stating agreement with them if it’s also your point of view. In other words noting ask your client to note opportunities however small that could help to create some measure of connection between your client and their colleague.
 
It would now be a good idea to assist your client to review where they are in relation to the whole office situation after imagining a miracle and noting possible exceptions. You could ask your client: On a scale of zero to 10 where 10 is where the office situation is exactly how you’d like it to be while zero is where it’s as bad as it could possibly be, where are you right now? You could then follow up with a question like: What would need to happen for you to notice a small improvement so that you could say that things have moved up a little bit on the scale?
 
If your client seems confident and has expressed a desire for change you could also check out how confident and motivated they are by asking once again using a scale of zero to 10 with zero being “not at all” and 10 being “totally confident and willing”, how willing they would be to make things better and how confident they are that things are going to get better.
 
So the final step in this process using solution focused therapy would be to set your client some tasks that are either active (e.g. pick a day between now and next time we meet and on that day pretend that you miracle has happened and note how the day goes) and/or observational (e.g. observe your colleague and those around him or her and note the colleague’s actions and what they talk about to those around them). This could assist your client to find a point of common interest which they were not aware of before.
 
It would be important once again to mention to your client that this unobtrusive observational action may assist them in finding a common point of interest that could act as a starting point for communication with their colleague

Many business people, particularly in the early stages of their business, are so intent on getting a customer that they accept anyone. But not all customers are created equal. Generally only a small percentage of your target niche are customers that are beneficial to your business.
 
It’s most often the case that your optimal customers, which may represent only 20% or less of your customers, actually subsidize the service you provide for non-optimal customers. In other words, if you didn’t have your optimal customers, you would lose money. Or conversely, if you only had optimal customers, your profit would skyrocket.
 
Here are some attributes of optimal and non-optimal customers. Maybe when you look at these certain customers will come to mind!
 
Optimal customers: 

• Pay on time;
• Pay a higher price;
• Spread word of your good service;
• Stay a customer for a long time;
• Purchase frequently;
• Are easy to deal with.

Non-optimal customers:

• Demand a lot of your (non-billable) time;
• Are delinquent payers;
• Don’t appreciate your service;
• Shop around based on price;
• Are unpredictable and difficult to service.

The challenge then becomes how to attract more optimal customers and less (none!) non-optimal customers. Here’s a 6-Step Plan to maximize the number of optimal customers you have.
 
STEP 1: Clearly DEFINE the characteristics and attributes of your optimal customer.
 
Firstly you must know who your optimal customers are. You need to know as much as possible about them. Only by defining their unique characteristics can you then a/ explore ways to get more like customers; and b/ exclude customers not exuding these characteristics.
 
STEP 2: TARGET your optimal customers.
 
Your optimal customers may only comprise a small sub-section of your niche. Generally though, they’re harder to convert, but much more loyal and lucrative when you do.
 
Now that you know their characteristics, you need to target them. You need to know information such as: 

1. Where they physically reside/work;
2. What journals, papers, websites, etc they read in common;
3. What their common problems, challenges, motivations are;

STEP 3: Structure a unique sales process to CONVERT them.
 
Your optimal clients often require: more information; more credibility; more time; more trust to convert.
 
To land the big fish, you need special equipment. The sales process you use to attract and convert your non-optimal customers most often will not work to convert your optimal customers. That’s why your optimal customers only comprise a small percentage of your customers.
 
It’s most likely you’ll find optimal customers slow to convert, particularly early on. You’ll need to dedicate 80% of your marketing time and effort to converting them. And your follow up process may extend across numerous contacts over several months.
 
STEP 4: OVERDELIVER.
 
You need to be an expert in your niche to convert and retain optimal customers. This means becoming an expert; espousing that you’re an expert; and delivering as an expert. And to augment this process you should strive to constantly DELIVER MORE than your prospect is EXPECTING.
 
You can do that by providing an extra service at no cost; giving away a voucher for a free session with another professional that you might have a JV agreement with; or providing valuable information that will assist them tackle common obstacles that relate to their lives.
 
STEP 5: Create impetus through ENDORSEMENT.
 
The point here is that if you want to light a rocket under your sales, you’ve got to go beyond selling products and services. You’ve got to sell a social identity.
 
Use your existing optimal customers to attract others. People of similar stature, trait and status gain credibility amongst their peer group. Use testimony and endorsement from existing optimal customers to build your credibility and trust with prospective optimal customers.
 
STEP 6: Be PERSISTENT.
 
Many businesses chase the big fish, but only a very small percentage actually work with them. One of the main reasons is lack of persistence. If you want to be successful you have to be more persistent than your colleagues chasing the same target.
 
IMPORTANT…
 
Everything you do reflects on your service and brand. To attract, convert and work with optimal customers, you need commitment and consistency. Remember how to apply the Rule of Commitment and Consistency: 

Once someone has made a decision they stubbornly defend it. You can use this self-validating process to up-sell and cross-sell additional products and services.
 
Soon after a sale, ask for referrals. Have a structured, automated system to ask clients for referrals within a short timeframe of them buying.
 
Carefully structure your selling strategies and scripts to invoke incremental “yeses” to taking up your service.
 
Act consistently. Everything you say, do, deliver and imply must be consistent. The moment you deviate in consistency you’ll lose credibility.
 
Once you finish running a session with a client or group of clients, be sure to reset a date and time for the next session before you finish. Clients will be far more committed to your services at time of delivery, and this is the best time to ask for future commitments.

Finally, every single piece of communication you have with them needs to be of the highest quality, consistently exuding your high quality service and brand.

People prefer to say yes to individuals they know and like. This simple rule helps to understand how Liking can create influence and how compliance professionals may emphasize certain factors and/or attributes to increase their overall attractiveness and subsequent effectiveness. Compliance practitioners may regularly use several factors.
 
Physical attractiveness is one feature of a person that often may help to create influence. Although it has long been suspected that physical beauty provides an advantage in social interaction, research indicates that this advantage may be greater than once supposed. Physical attractiveness seems to engender a “halo” effect that extends to favourable impressions of other traits such as talent, kindness, and intelligence. As a result, attractive people are more persuasive both in terms of getting what they request and in changing others’ attitudes.
 
Similarity is a second factor that influences both Liking and compliance. That is, we like people who are like us and are more willing to say yes to their requests, often without much critical consideration.
 
Praise is another factor that produces Liking, although this can sometimes backfire when it is too transparent. But generally compliments most often enhance liking and can be used as a means to gain compliance.
 
Increased familiarity through repeated contact with a person or thing is yet another factor that facilitates Liking. But this holds true principally when that contact takes place under positive rather than negative circumstances. One positive circumstance that may works well is mutual and successful cooperation.
 
A final factor linked to Liking is often association. By associating with products or positive things, those who seek influence frequently share in a halo effect by association. Other individuals as well appear to recognize the positive effect of simply associating themselves with favourable events and distancing themselves from unfavourable ones.
 
A potentially effective response that reduces vulnerability to the undue influence of Liking upon decision-making requires a recognition of how Liking and its attending factors may impact our impression of someone making requests and soliciting important decisions. That is, recognizing how someone making requests may do inordinately well under certain circumstances should cause us to step back from some social interaction and objectively separate the requester from his or her offer or request.
 
We should make decisions, commitments and offer compliance based upon the actual merits of the offer or request.
 
How to Apply the Rule of Liking in Your Coaching Business

1. Use strategies to be liked by your prospects and clients. (Read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie for some powerful tips).
2. Always be positive and genuinely interested in the concerns of prospects.
3. Always be fully present when communicating with clients and prospects. Never talk to a prospect on the phone while you’re on the internet or reading emails.
4. Listen to your client when they tell you about their interests, their family and friends. Get in the habit of remembering names, events, favourite teams or pastimes and use this information to show a genuine interest and desire to get to know your clients. This shows that you care and people naturally like those that care

Source: www.coachingclub.com.au

For the past few months, I’ve been sharing some of my personal productivity secrets in a series of articles to help you “Master Plan” your life so you can finally accomplish all your goals. Ultimately, it all boils down to how you spend your time. What you do and what you fail to do.
 
Setting goals is easy. Establishing priorities is pretty simple too. The tough part is following through. Fortunately, there are a few easy steps you can take to coach yourself through the process.
 
1. You must recognize that good intentions are not enough.
 
Writing up a list of yearly goals or New Year’s resolutions might make you feel great. It may even make you feel like you are on your way. But you can’t claim to be making any progress toward accomplishing anything until you start acting on your Master Plan.
 
2. Don’t spend too much time thinking about your future success.
 
Imagining what you want out of life – the big house, the luxury cars, the yacht – may give you pleasure. But despite what the think-and-be-rich gurus says, it won’t make you successful. You must spend most of your time taking action, not daydreaming about all the toys you will have “some day.”
 
Most of the most accomplished people I know – and in that group I include some success coaches who preach the think-and-get-rich philosophy – don’t waste their time thinking about success. What they think about is how to do a certain task or solve a specific problem. They know that wealth and success will come to them if they have a good plan and follow it.
 
3. Break up your busy day.
 
Once you begin to implement your Master Plan, you will find that you will want to keep working for hours and hours at a time. Because you will be making progress toward your goals, you will be energized by the work itself. (If this has not been your experience with work before, be prepared to start enjoying your days a whole lot more!)
 
The extra surge of motivation will be very useful in getting lots more important work done. You’ll be working more intensely, more intelligently, and just plain longer and harder than ever. But because you’ll be working longer and harder, you’ll need to force yourself to take little breaks – three- to five-minute breaks to reduce stress, recharge your batteries, and ensure that your body is not stuck in the same position too long.
 
It’s not easy to take breaks once you are in a groove. In fact, you may be amazed at how difficult it can be. Most of the successful businesspeople I know think nothing of sitting at a computer or being on the telephone for four to six hours at a stretch. This is a testament to the motivational power of having a Master Plan, but it still puts a lot of pressure on your body and brain.
 
To make sure you take the breaks you need, I recommend a very simple device: an old-fashioned egg timer. Gene Schwartz, the legendary copywriter who was instrumental in the success of Boardroom Reports and Rodale Publishing, never sat down to work without setting an egg timer for 33 minutes. When the buzzer went off, he walked away from his computer and did something else for five minutes. He said the habit made him more productive. He said it was an important part of the process that made him a success.
 
When I’m writing, I set my timer according to the writing objective I’ve set for myself. Since I’m currently working on many writing projects at once, my daily goal is usually between 300 and 1,200 words. It takes me, on average, about 10 minutes to write 100 words. Therefore, I can knock off 300 words in a half-hour, 600 words in an hour, and a full, 1,200-word ETR article in two hours.
 
That’s how I break up my time – in half-hour or hourly segments with an occasional two-hour sprint. Between segments, I usually stretch backward and forward over a Pilates barrel I keep outside my office. Sometimes I’ll go outside and just breathe in the fresh air.
 
My afternoons consist of meetings and phone calls, which have natural breaks so I don’t need my egg timer. (I schedule most of my meetings for 15 or 30 minutes. It is seldom necessary to have a meeting any longer than that.)
 
Like Gene Schwartz, I have found my mini-breaks to be very refreshing.
 
Sometimes, if I had a short night of sleep and an intense midday workout, I get very tired in the middle of the afternoon. When I feel that way, I lie down and try to nap for 15 minutes. I will do that anywhere and under any circumstances. I’m not embarrassed by it. I think people who don’t understand it should be embarrassed, not me.
 
Once, suffering from jet lag in London, I lay down on the floor underneath the conference table before a board meeting. Fifteen minutes before the meeting was to start, NR, a board member and multimillionaire German publisher, came in. Our eyes met. I thought he might say something. Instead, he took off his shoes, lay down next to me, and we both enjoyed a power nap.
 
To help alleviate the boredom of working in one place all day, I split my time between my home office above my garage (where I do my writing in the morning) and my office at ETR headquarters. I have outfitted both offices with efficient workstations and comfortable chairs. And I have pillows handy in case I need a nap.
 
In the late afternoon, after a good day’s work, I often reward myself by walking over to a cigar shop two blocks from ETR. I can do some additional writing there while enjoying an espresso and a fine Nicaraguan cigar.
 
I get home at 7:30, open a bottle of wine, and head to a favorite spot in the backyard where I do some light reading and/or solve a crossword puzzle. It gives me a chance to unwind and, if necessary, blow off a little steam. Sometimes, I’ll jump in the hot tub. The idea is to get into a good mood for dinner, which starts promptly at 8:00.
 
All these little breaks and naps and rewards enhance the pleasure of my day. No matter how much work I have on my task sheet, I’m never more than two hours away from some pleasurable experience.
 
If you find that your workday is one long trek down a dull road, try breaking it up the way I do and see if it doesn’t make you happier and more productive.
 
Author: Michael Masterson
 
This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit www.earlytorise.com.

Your business coaching client, who is thinking about starting their own business but is unsure about whether they should become partners with someone they know, asks your the following question: “A friend and I want to go into business together but I’m not sure if we can work together. How do I find out before we start?”
 
Here’s a response from LCI’s Master Coach Terry Neal…
 
This statement reflects an increasing occurrence in today’s work environment where more and more people want to start their own business so that they can be their own boss. This in itself requires great planning and organisation even for a sole operator of a proposed new business. However a far greater challenge can occur when two people who may not have worked together before or who may have been in the same industry and even in the same workplace, decide that they want to go into business together.
 
Your client has raised an important question which probably is underlined by concerns about how it will be to work together away from either their individual or collective current workplace situation (that possibly does provide stability for your client financially and socially), as well as how will it be to work closely with their friend.
 
Initially as the coach you would need to gather information about your client, the business that they are proposing to create with their friend, what their goal is for the business and what they see as their strengths and challenges in the proposed business.
 
From this investigation you and they will have a clearer picture of in relation to the intended business as well as their vision for the business. You could then ask questions to help them to start finding out how much they know about their friend and if they could feel comfortable about working with them.
 
Questions like: How long have you known your friend? How long have you worked together and/or worked in the same industry? What qualities do you like about them? What challenges do you have with them? Do you two mix socially? How did the idea of working together come about? Who approached who? Do you know why your friend wants to go into the proposed business in general and specifically with you?
 
There could be more questions that flow from this but the point is to assist your client to become more aware of aspects of how well they know their friend as well as becoming more aware about themselves in areas that they hadn’t realised or weren’t sure about before in relation to their friend as well as their proposed venture.
 
Your client needs to be made aware that the more honestly they look at how well they know both themselves and their friend, the more likely that the proposed business venture will start on a solid footing (if indeed it starts at all).
 
Following on from this information gathering exercise, you could set your client a task to be done between this and a subsequent session. In this case the task would be to set up a meeting with their friend to talk about some basic issues that have come to light as a result of the questions you asked of your client that may have changed some of your client’s perspectives around both working with their friend as well as the whole business proposal.
 
Remind your client that this could assist both them and their friend to obtain as clear a picture as possible of how each one of you sees both the working together and the business itself. All of this assists your client to acknowledge as far as it’s possible to do so about what it could be like to work together.
 
You could provide a list of questions for your client to assist the process with their friend. Questions that you might suggest could include:

1. If our proposed business were to have exactly the impact that you wanted it to have, what would this look like?
2. What’s your vision for the business?
3. Where do you see our individual and collective challenges being?
4. What do you think are our individual and collective strengths?
5. What do you think we’ll need to do to get started in our own business?

Your client needs to be encouraged to assist with the best possible outcome when asking these questions by reminding them to pick an appropriate time and place to talk over these questions; a situation where there will not be any interruptions or where the meeting could be overheard by anyone else; so not in the work place but in a relaxed “away from work” situation.
 
Encourage them also to model open and honest communication and answers with their friend in the same way that they have done with you.
 
Finally, your client needs to be reminded that the information gained for themselves from both your session with them and those with their friend will assist them to say what is true for them about starting a new business venture and to go with what they feel is right for them no matter how persuasive their friend may be.
 
You could also suggest another session with your client to allow for any other issues that may have arisen from their meeting with their friend and/or to deal with the result of that meeting which may or may not have gone according to plan.