If I can make you feel the same way that I feel about myproduct or service we’ll have a meaningful conversation about itand how it can help. The trouble is that most sales people don’t feelanything. Nothing at all

You have your whole life to become what you wish to become. As long as we know where we are going, we can prepare ourselves for the journey. That which is currently beyond your capabilities now, does not have to be so forever.

Success would be a fairly boring and uninspiring dish if anybody could create it with a single ingredient, however difficult that ingredient was to find. No, success has several layers to its pallet. This is just the beginning

You must have realised by now that when one really cares, really tries to help, the other party recognises the fact and, therefore, easily sees the logic in working together for the greater good, for the mutual benefit of both.

Successful selling begins with listening. Your job when you are in front of the prospect is to ask questions and then listen to the answers. Take copious notes about what they tell you; what they say and what they don't say.

No one can mock your meagre achievements or inability to accomplish the simplest of tasks, if they remain figments of your imagination. You can revel, again and again, in the glory of a fairy tale doomed never to appear in reality.

Trust me. If you do not decide where you are heading, and refuse to take the appropriate action, you will end up being shaped into what others would have you become. Then any change will not be made for your benefit but for theirs.

If you woke before dawn one morning with the formula for a vaccine, which would cure the most ghastly disease currently known to man, releasing millions from an agonising death, would you roll over and resume sleeping until daylight?

Trust me. In a very short time, you will become sought out by those in your network. Initially for your sound advice, but soon after as a provider of service. Few people seek advice about a subject that doesn’t require a solution.

Most people haven’t set themselves any course with regards to their life. They have no idea whether or not they are being blown in any useful direction whatsoever. They are just at the whim of wherever the winds of life take them.

One of the biggest problems with your average sales call is that the salesman doesn’t know what he is trying to achieve. He hasn’t worked out the end of the journey. So he sets off and just hopes he walks out with…something.

This is how you must be. You must become as evangelical about your promised outcome as he is about his. You must believe that you, and you alone, have the solution to your prospects problems. Even if they do not recognise those problems themselves.

You will never change a prospective customer’s mind, my boy. There is a chance that he might make a new decision if enough reliable evidence comes his way, but to do that he has to want to listen - to hear it - and that requires trust and respect.

I have discovered fallen trees across my path and have possessed neither the strength to move them nor the patience or tenacity to find an alternative way round. I have simply returned to where I came from, and told myself there had been no other choice.

No longer will I measure myself against competitors, who don’t even know that a race is being run. From now on, I will measure myself against the man in front of me. I will measure myself against a new personal best, achieving my next ambitious goal.