There is no giant step that does it; it takes a lot of little steps. Every big and successful business starts from a lot of little steps. And there is no magically difficult step that requires brilliance to solve.

There are three things to consider in creating a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible.

Most startups that fail to do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed. And that’s kind of exciting, because all three are doable. Hard, but doable. And since a startup that succeeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies getting rich is doable too. Hard, but doable.

It all started with an “idea”. And the way to get a startup idea is not to try to think of startup ideas. It’s to look for problems, preferably problems we have ourselves. The very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they’re something the founders themselves want, that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing. Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all began this way.

Ideas don’t need to be brilliant to startup a business. The way a startup makes money is to offer people better technology than they have now. But what people have now is often so bad that it doesn’t take brilliance to do better.

Google’s plan, for example, was simply to create a search site that didn’t suck. They had three new ideas: index more of the Web, use links to rank search results, and have clean, simple web pages with unintrusive keyword-based ads. Above all, they were determined to make a site that was good to use. No doubt there are great technical tricks within Google, but the overall plan was straightforward. And while they probably have bigger ambitions now, this alone brings them a billion dollars a year.

An idea for a startup, however, is only a beginning. A lot of would-be startup founders think the key to the whole process is the initial idea, and from that point all you have to do is execute. Another sign of how little the initial idea is worth is the number of startups that change their plan en route. Microsoft’s original plan was to make money by selling programming languages, of all things. Their current business model didn’t occur to them until IBM dropped it in their lap five years later.

Ideas for startups are worth something, certainly, but the trouble is, they’re not transferrable. They’re not something you could hand to someone else to execute. Their value is mainly as starting points: as questions for the people who had them to continue thinking about.

What matters are not ideas, but the people who have them. Good people can fix bad ideas, but good ideas can’t save bad people.

Good people means someone who takes their work a little too seriously; someone who does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive.

Ideally in starting a business we want between two and four founders. It would be hard to start with just one. One person would find the moral weight of starting a company hard to bear. Even Bill Gates, who seems to be able to bear a good deal of moral weight, had to have a co-founder. But you don’t want so many founders that the company starts to look like a group photo. Partly because you don’t need a lot of people at first, but mainly because the more founders you have, the worse disagreements you’ll have. When there are just two or three founders, you know you have to resolve disputes immediately or perish. If there are seven or eight, disagreements can linger and harden into factions. You don’t want mere voting; you need unanimity. Don’t force things; just work on stuff you like with people you like.

Founders for the startup don’t mean to always include business people. Business was no great mystery. It’s not something like physics or medicine that requires extensive study. You just try to get people to pay you for stuff. There are esoteric areas of business that are quite hard, like tax law or the pricing of derivatives, but you don’t need to know about those in a startup.

There is one reason you might want to include business people in a startup, though: because you have to have at least one person willing and able to focus on what customers want. There’s nothing about knowing how to program that prevents hackers from understanding users, or about not knowing how to program that magically enables business people to understand them.

If you can’t understand users, however, you should either learn how or find a co-founder who can. That is the single most important issue for technology startups, and the rock that sinks more of them than anything else.

Next is to understand what the customers want. It’s not just startups that have to worry about this. Most businesses that fail to do it because they don’t give customers what they want. Look at restaurants. A large percentage fails, about a quarter in the first year. Restaurants with great food seem to prosper no matter what. A restaurant with great food can be expensive, crowded, noisy, dingy, out of the way, and even have bad service, and people will keep coming. It’s true that a restaurant with mediocre food can sometimes attract customers through gimmicks. But that approach is very risky. It’s more straightforward just to make the food good.

In nearly every failed startup, the real problem was that customers didn’t want the product. For most, the cause of death is listed as “ran out of funding,” but that’s only the immediate cause. The only way to make something customers want is to get a prototype in front of them and refine it based on their reactions.

To figure out what customers want, you need to watch them. One of the best places to do this was at trade shows. Trade shows didn’t pay as a way of getting new customers, but they were worth it as market research. No matter what kind of startup you start, it will probably be a stretch for you, the founders, to understand what users want.

When most people think of startups, they think of companies like Apple or Google. Everyone knows these, because they’re big consumer brands. But for every startup like that, there are twenty more that operate in niche markets or live quietly down in the infrastructure. So if you start a successful startup, odds are you’ll start one of those. And if you try to start the kind of startup that has to be a big consumer brand, the odds against succeeding are steeper. The best odds are in niche markets. Since startups make money by offering people something better than they had before, the best opportunities are where things suck most. This imbalance equals opportunity.

They’re the more strategically valuable part of the market anyway. In technology, the low end always eats the high end. It’s easier to make an inexpensive product more powerful than to make a powerful product cheaper. So the products that start as cheap, simple options tend to gradually grow more powerful till, like water rising in a room, they squash the “high-end” products against the ceiling. Sun did this to mainframes, and Intel is doing it to Sun. Microsoft Word did it to desktop publishing software like Interleaf and Frame maker. Mass-market digital cameras are doing it to the expensive models made for professionals. Avid did it to the manufacturers of specialized video editing systems, and now Apple is doing it to Avid. Henry Ford did it to the car makers that preceded him. If you build the simple, inexpensive option, you’ll not only find it easier to sell at first, but you’ll also be in the best position to conquer the rest of the market.

It’s very dangerous to let anyone fly under you. If you have the cheapest, easiest product, you’ll own the low end. And if you don’t, you’re in the crosshairs of whoever does.

Another thing to consider for starting up a business is to raise funds. To make all this happen, you’re going to need money. Some startups have been self-funding– Microsoft for example– but most aren’t. It’s wise to take money from investors. To be self-funding, you have to start as a consulting company, and it’s hard to switch from that to a product company.

Financially, a startup is like a pass/fail course. The way to get rich from a startup is to maximize the company’s chances of succeeding, not to maximize the amount of stock you retain. So if you can trade stock for something that improves your odds, it’s probably a smart move.

The first thing you’ll need is a few tens of thousands of dollars to pay your expenses while you develop a prototype. This is called seed capital. Because so little money is involved, raising seed capital is comparatively easy– at least in the sense of getting a quick yes or no.

When you’re going to have some kind of company, incorporating yourselves isn’t hard. The problem is, for the company to exist, you have to decide who the founders are, and how much stock they each have. If there are two founders with the same qualifications who are both equally committed to the business, that’s easy. But if you have a number of people who are expected to contribute in varying degrees, arranging the proportions of stock can be hard. And once you’ve done it, it tends to be set in stone.

There are no tricks for dealing with this problem. You all have to try hard to do it right. But there is a rule of thumb for recognizing when you have, though. When everyone feels they’re getting a slightly bad deal, that they’re doing more than they should for the amount of stock they have, the stock is optimally apportioned.

There is more to setting up a company than incorporating it, of course: insurance, business license, unemployment compensation, etc. It turns out that no one comes and arrests you if you don’t do everything you’re supposed to when starting a company. And a good thing too, or a lot of startups would never get started.

It can be dangerous to delay turning yourself into a company, because one or more of the founders might decide to split off and start another company doing the same thing. This does happen. So when you set up the company, as well as apportioning the stock, you should get all the founders to sign something agreeing that everyone’s ideas belong to this company and that this company is going to be everyone’s only job. While you’re at it, you should ask what else they’ve signed. One of the worst things that can happen to a startup is to run into intellectual property problems.

There is no rational way as to how do you decide what the value of the company should be. At this stage the company is just a bet. The next round of funding is the one in which you might deal with actual. But don’t wait till you’ve burned through your last round of funding to start approaching them.

Getting money from an actual financing firm is a bigger deal than getting money from investors. The amounts of money involved are larger, millions usually. So the deals take longer, dilute you more, and impose more onerous conditions.

When and if you get an infusion of real money from investors, do not spend it. In nearly every startup that fails, the proximate cause is running out of money. Usually there is something deeper wrong. But even a proximate cause of death is worth trying hard to avoid.

Of the two versions, the one where you get a lot of customers fast is of course preferable. But even that may be overrated. The idea is to get there first and get all the users, leaving none for competitors.

But I think in most businesses the advantages of being first to market are not so overwhelmingly great. Google is again a case in point. When they appeared it seemed as if search was a mature market, dominated by big players who’d spent millions to build their brands: Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Infoseek, Altavista, Inktomi. But as the founders of Google knew, brand is worth next to nothing in the search business. You can come along at any point and make something better, and users will gradually seep over to you. As if to emphasize the point, Google never did any advertising. They’re like dealers; they sell the stuff, but they know better than to use it themselves.

The competitors Google buried would have done better to spend those millions improving their software. Future startups should learn from that mistake. Unless you’re in a market where products are as undifferentiated as cigarettes or vodka or laundry detergent, spending a lot on brand advertising is a sign of breakage. And few if any Web businesses are so undifferentiated.

We were compelled by circumstances to grow slowly, and in retrospect it was a good thing. The founders all learned to do every job in the company.

That’s the key to success as a startup. There is nothing more important than understanding your business. You might think that anyone in a business must, ex officio, understand it. Far from it.

“If the people lead, the leaders will follow.” Paraphrased for the Web, this becomes “get all the users, and the advertisers will follow.” More generally, design your product to please users first, and then think about how to make money from it. If you don’t put users first, you leave a gap for competitors who do.

To make something users love, you have to understand them. And the bigger you are, the harder that is. So it is advice to say “get big slow.” The slower you burn through your funding, the more time you have to learn.

The other reason to spend money slowly is to encourage a culture of cheapness. When you get a couple million dollars from a financing firm, you tend to feel rich. It’s important to realize you’re not. A rich company is one with large revenues. This money isn’t revenue. Its money investors have given you in the hope you’ll be able to generate revenues. So despite those millions in the bank, you’re still poor.

When you’re looking for space for a startup, don’t feel that it has to look professional. Professional means doing good work, not elevators and glass walls. It is advice that most startups to avoid corporate space at first and just rent an apartment. You want to live at the office in a startup, so why not have a place designed to be lived in as your office?

Besides being cheaper and better to work in, apartments tend to be in better locations than office buildings. And for a startup location is very important. The key to productivity is for people to come back to work after dinner. Those hours after the phone stops ringing are by far the best for getting work done. Great things happen when a group of employees go out to dinner together, talk over ideas, and then come back to their offices to implement them. So you want to be in a place where there are a lot of restaurants around, not some dreary office park that’s a wasteland after 6:00 PM. Once a company shifts over into the model where everyone drives home to the suburbs for dinner, however late, you’ve lost something extraordinarily valuable. God help you if you actually start in that mode.

The most important way to not spend money is by not hiring people. This may be an extremist, but hiring people is the worst thing a company can do. To start with, people are a recurring expense, which is the worst kind. They also tend to cause you to grow out of your space, and perhaps even move to the sort of uncool office building that will make your productivity worse. But worst of all, they slow you down: instead of sticking your head in someone’s office and checking out an idea with them, eight people have to have a meeting about it. So the fewer people you can hire, the better. Don’t hire people to fill the gaps in some a priori org chart. The only reason to hire someone is to do something you’d like to do but can’t.

If hiring unnecessary people is expensive and slows you down, why do nearly all companies do it? The main reason is that people like the idea of having a lot of people working for them. This weakness often extends right up to the CEO. If you ever end up running a company, you’ll find the most common question people ask is how many employees you have. This is their way of weighing you. It’s not just random people who ask this; even reporters do. And they’re going to be a lot more impressed if the answer is a thousand than if it’s ten. If two companies have the same revenues, it’s the one with fewer employees that’s more impressive.

As with office space, the number of your employees is a choice between seeming impressive, and being impressive. Any of you who were nerds in high school know about this choice. Keep doing it when you start a company.

More people are the right sort of person to start a startup than realize it. There could be ten times more startups than there are, and that would probably be a good thing.

It’s hard to tell whether you’re good, especially when you’re young. Fortunately the process of starting startups tends to select them automatically. What drives people to start startups is (or should be) looking at existing technology and thinking, don’t these guys realize they should be doing x, y, and z? And that’s also a sign that one is good.

Some people could probably start a company at 18 if they wanted to. Bill Gates was 19 when he and Paul Allen started Microsoft. (Paul Allen was 22, though, and that probably made a difference.) So if you’re thinking, we don’t care what he says, we’re going to start a company now, you may be the sort of person who could get away with it.

The final test may be the most restrictive. Do you actually want to start a startup? What it amounts to, economically, is compressing your working life into the smallest possible space. Instead of working at an ordinary rate for 40 years, you work like hell for four. And maybe end up with nothing– though in that case it probably won’t take four years.

So mainly what a startup buys you is time. That’s the way to think about it if you’re trying to decide whether to start one. If you’re the sort of person who would like to solve the money problem once and for all instead of working for a salary for 40 years, then a startup makes sense.

If you want to do it, do it. Starting a startup is not the great mystery it seems from outside. It’s not something you have to know about “business” to do. Build something users love, and spend less than you make. How hard is that?

And now that we’re about to open for business, here are five tips for starting out on the right foot:

1. Search for suppliers and subcontractors you can count on. Use these sources:

* Yellow Pages

* Research organizations

* Trade organizations/industry groups

* Specialty magazines in your industry

* Chambers of Commerce

* Connections and networks

2. Carefully evaluate each supplier’s quality, price, and service by checking references and using trial orders.

3. Establish good credit by paying your bills as quickly as possible.

4. Negotiate the best terms you can, using your start-up situation as leverage

5. Seek to build long4erm relationships with your best suppliers.

The following are the basic start-up principles, here are eight dos and don’ts:

1. Do create a written business plan. Don’t worry about its length (10 to 40 pages, depending on the type of presentation) as much as its strength (include 8 or 9 basic components; see page 10).

2. Don’t shortchange yourself in terms of staff, equipment, and space-but do think “lean.” During your early stages of growth, do strive to keep your business as simple as possible.

3. Do apply for credit in your start-up period, even if you don’t need it. It’s important to start building a credit rating and credit history as soon as possible so evidence of your creditworthiness grows as your financial needs grow.

4. Do establish a working relationship with more than one banker. Not only will this help keep your bankers competitive and protect you against unexpected changes in the banking community, but it will give you more options as your financial needs grow.

5. Don’t use short-term debt to finance long-term needs. Match loans and terms to your need and payment base. Since you are building equity in equipment and real estate from profits over a number of years, you should finance it the same way.

6. During your start-up period, do give your suppliers proof that there’s demand for your product or service. They want you to succeed. If you show them why you can, chances are they will not only extend credit, but also give you the attention you deserve.

7. Do ask customers for feedback regularly. Invite them to be candid and to tell you about your weaknesses as well as your strengths, and how you can serve them better.

8. Don’t rely solely on long-term goals (e.g., annual or quarterly). Do set daily and weekly objectives that will help you measure performance day-to-day and week to week.

Sales is a natural part of life. Everything you do involves selling. Whether that’s selling your professional brand to an employer, selling yourself to a spouse, or more likely selling a product, you are always selling.

When pitching your statup’s product or service to a potential client, there could be any number of things that can hold up the sale. Is the price right? What about the timing? Have you done everything 100 percent right?

But there’s really only one factor that can make or break a big sale: certainty. If the client is uncertain, you have to do whatever it takes to push the client off the fence and lock up the sale. You have to gain the confidence, enthusiasm and top-producer ability of a sales-professional.

More than ever before, people today are more protective of their time and their money. And they have mastered how to dodge sales people, resist standard sales techniques, and essentially control the sales process from start to finish. And people decide when you’re finished.

It is important to truly read and connect with your prospects because only then you will be able to satisfy their needs and change your future. The following are persuasion tips and success principles on how to become a successful sales professional

 Learn how to get a response – and RESULT – from every email you send.

 Easily slip past gatekeepers and dodge voicemail to maximize your calling – and closing – efficiency.  Start asking critical qualifying and essential questions.

 Discover how to anticipate, identify and quickly overcome objections.

 Set up an automated referral-generating system that continuously provides leads.

The second you abandon traditional closing techniques, the usual qualifying questions, and a typical sales formula – that is when you start partnering with your prospects and customers. And that’s when you start to become a high-commissioned sales professional.

So why is it so difficult for sales manager to recruit and retain highly productive, professional salespeople is sales is such an attractive proposition. Improving sales force effectiveness and high turnover rates among the sales force are invariably rampant. The high turnover amongst less productive salespeople is accepted as a necessary burden for managing the sales force. This is not so.

Research has shown that 55 percent of people engaged in selling are in the wrong profession. Another 20-25% have the essential attributes to sell, but they should be selling something other than what they are currently selling. This last group has the potential to be highly successful in some cases, but they are only marginal performers in their present sales positions.

So, what does it take to be a successful salesperson? Some experts believe that a person’s attitudes, personality, and work methods (together classified as their “approach to work”) are virtually the entire basis for professional success. Common sense dictates that a person’s approach to work plays an important role in their performance on the job.

By the very nature of the work itself, successful salespeople possess a unique set of personality attributes that enable them to succeed. Mediocre sales performance cannot be disguised as a salesperson’s success or failure is revealed immediately by the bottom line results. It takes a special kind of individual to succeed in sales. In analyzing people who are most successful at persuading, convincing or selling others on their ideas, products or services, there are characteristics that appear to be common among them.

1. A Burning Desire to Prove Something to Someone A professional in any type of business has a strong reason for wanting to succeed. Some reason was to prove yourself to someone. What are you trying to prove? And to whom? You must know why you’ve chosen your particular business.

2. An Interest in Others You must truly be interested in other people and in making those people’s lives better if you are to succeed in business. You must learn how to draw others out, making them feel important and getting to know them well enough to determine how you can help.

3. Confidence and Strength Professionals radiate confidence and strength in the way they walk and talk and in their overall presence. They have good posture. They wear their clothing well. They use positive body language. If you’re not sure this is you, ask someone you trust to evaluate you and provide some suggestions for improvement.

4. Empathy You must balance your own personal ego and need for success with warmth and sincerity. Your sincere interest in the happiness of the people you come in contact with creates bonds of trust that allow you to serve not only your prospects, but their friends, relatives and acquaintances that’ll be referred to you.

5. A Focus on Goals If you’re serious about your business, you’ve set your goals and put them in writing. You know exactly what you’re striving for and when you expect to accomplish it. Knowing how your future will look helps keep you focused on doing what’s productive each day.

6. Persistence Professionals plan their time most effectively to take steps toward achieving their goals. They rely on proven systems for planning their time and have learned effective time-management strategies.

7. Enthusiasm Through Difficult Situations The past can’t be changed and the future can’t be controlled, so you must live for today, doing the best you can to make each day a day of accomplishment and fulfillment. When you encounter a difficult situation that’s draining your enthusiasm, lay it out clearly in your mind or on paper. Then step back from it and let your emotions shift to normal. Then take another look at the situation with a clear head. You’ll be pleasantly surprised in most cases that it really isn’t as bad as you thought.

8. A Positive Attitude Keep yourself in a positive shell and avoid jealousy, gossip, anger and negative thinking. Don’t allow negativity to steal your energy or tempt you to stray from your chosen course.

9. An Understanding that People Come Before Money Successful businesspeople love others and use money instead of loving money and using people. They understand the old adage that you have to spend money to make money, and that persuasion is a people business. They invest wisely in things for the good of the people they serve.

10. An Investment in Their Minds Business professionals are lifelong learners. Set a goal to be a lifelong learner, and you’ll never have a dull moment. Plus, you’ll achieve tremendous success in whatever you set your mind to studying!

Let’s assume you know the main elements of what it takes to sell your product. You understand the core qualities that go into being a great sales leader but need to touch up on some of the basics. The following are the tips and tricks as it relates to selling. It’s easy to get away from the basics because they seem so simple. Here are tried and tested sales tips:

 Ask for Warm Introductions & Referrals

One of the hardest things for a sales professional is getting the right people to listen to you. Cold-calling is difficult and according to our recent study, it shows no signs of getting better moving forward. Instead of wasting your time focusing on irrelevant leads, focus on quality by encouraging referrals and warm introductions.

 Use Social Media for Prospecting

We all know the most popular channels for prospecting on social media but a few channels that are often overlooked are things like Quora and Slideshare. Both of these networks are filled with industry expertise sharing their thoughts and ideas on topics where your prospects could be spending their time.

 Build Expertise through Association

For years, sales professionals built their reputation by joining different associations and groups as if they were a badge of honour. Today, memberships aren’t enough to stand out as an industry expert and professionals must take their efforts a step further. One approach is to associate yourself with people who are experts and building relationships with them.

 Show Expertise by Sharing Relevant Content

We live in the information age. Make an effort to ensure that the information you share on social media is relevant to your target audience and relevant to your industry. If you’re working in healthcare, you want your clients to believe that you’re not only a trustworthy sales professional but also someone who understands the healthcare industry.

 Ask the Right Questions

It’s not an interrogation if you do it right. Asking the right questions can be the difference between delivering a solution that the client wants and completely missing the mark and your lead going to the competition. You need to have a sincere desire to understand your prospects problems and have an itch to try and fix them.

 Create Quality Sales Kits

A sales kit is just as valuable today as it was ten years ago if not more important recognizing that content can be forwarded and shared with an entire office in the matter of seconds. You want to ensure that the PDFs you send to your potential leads are well designed and effectively communicate your value proposition. The fact that these documents could make their way around an office should be enough to value putting in an effort to make them sharp.

 ADRE: Make an Effort to Connect

The concept of ADRE is simple: Acts of Deliberate Relationship Enhancement. Make deliberate acts that improve and enhance your ongoing relationships with everyone from clients, past employers and current partners. Relationships are the foundation in which business is built on so developing these relationships will help you in the long-term.

 Cut Back on the “Professionalism”

Instead of trying to be “professional” – Try to be respectful and true to yourself. A true leader embraces their own style of leadership and allows their skills in business do the talking for them. Instead of trying to be professional all the time, focus on the people you work with and building a relationship with them. In doing so, you will understand them better and be more likely to deliver the value they are looking for.

 Keep Track of Connections

One of the easiest ways to “feel” productive is to go through the motions of sending around a handful of emails into the dark hole of a leads inbox. Instead of shooting emails into the dark, keep track of your connections and use social media and platforms like Introhive to better understand who can provide you with a warm introduction. People trust people. If you keep track of your connections along with their connections, it’s easier to be introduced.

 Quality over Quantity in Business Cards

I couldn’t count how many times I’ve been given a business card before even telling someone what I do for a living. For some reason, sales professionals feel the need to shove business cards down the throats of everyone and anyone they meet at an event. Instead of taking this approach to networking you should get to know the people you meet and determine whether or not it’s worth exchanging information. Sometimes it’s just not worth the paper your info is printed on.

Furthermore, sales prospecting is the lifeblood of a sales team. Knowing how, when, and who to prospect too will ensure that your sales funnel is always full and you’re always hitting your quota. Finding new clients takes time, skills, and guts. Work hard so that you can play hard when all the other sales reps are trying to play catch up during the slow times.

For some people sales comes naturally to them. They are social, intuitive, and persistent. But for most, a standardized sales training program can mean the difference between success and failure. Although there are many sales training programs out there you should always choose one that is right for your team and your company.

Sales negotiation is one of the most important skills any person can have. Being able to negotiate for what you want will serve you well in life. It’s not always about winning and it’s definitely not about losing, but creating a win-win scenario is what you should be looking for. Whether it’s where to go to dinner or a multi-million dollar deal, your negotiation skills always need to be top notch.

Relationship building and networking are one of the best ways to grow your account base. Referrals and introductions will be the best client leads you will ever get. Whether that’s online or offline, meeting others in your industry is the single most important thing you can to do be successful in your business and your sales. Remember that sales networking is a process not an event.

Most professionals do not stay in the same career or with the same company their entire working life. The job market has changed and whether you are established or an out of college new hire, career management is required to stay ahead of the game.

Managing your career doesn’t have to be a full time job (pun intended) but knowing the basics and understanding the game will keep you relevant and employed.

Branding yourself as an expert in your field is vital to being a successful salesperson. Knowing how to harness the power of the internet and social media for your benefit will serve you for years to come. Professional branding is not just about your image, it’s about your story as well. The emotions you elicit from your future clients and employers is all part of selling.

Saying the right thing at the right time is as essential to sales as it is to comedy. Whether you’re negotiating a deal or digging into pain, having the right techniques in your toolkit will make you the best professional you can be. Sales is not always about technique, delivery matters too. Understanding the skills that are necessary and sometimes required will help you stand out from the crowd.

For many, sales management is the logical next step after being a top producing sales person. However there are many skills a sales manager requires that a top producer doesn’t. And there are many skills a top sales rep will have that a manager should not.

Knowing how to morph your skills as an individual producer to a team leader is essential if you want to be successful. The following are six rules for selling that are particularly useful:

1. If you’re feeling pressure, you’re doing something wrong.

If you’re constantly ending a quarter or fiscal year with a flurry of selling activity, trying desperately to make your numbers, you haven’t managed your time or you’re not thinking your sales process through. Selling is not supposed to be a struggle against time and fate. Plan ahead and it will seem more natural.

2. Never answer an unasked question.

It’s easy to scuttle a sale by raising issues that haven’t yet entered a prospect’s head. Such behavior usually occurs when you’re so afraid of losing the sale that you begin surfacing (and answering) objections that exist only in your own paranoid imagination. Remember, you can’t read minds, so don’t try.

3. One opinion does not make a consensus.

It’s human nature to take the last opinion that you just heard and turn it into a final judgment. For example, when a sale goes sour, it’s easy to conclude that there’s something wrong with you, your firm or your product. However, just because one person or one company didn’t buy, it doesn’t mean the next won’t.

4. Always protect the customer’s self-esteem.

It’s your job to help even the most clueless customers make a good decision. The only way to do this is to be persuasive rather than abrasive. Such behavior only raises hackles.

5. Remain professionally involved but emotionally detached.

Selling entails building professional relationships with prospects and customers. However, while you can care about a customer, about your career and about your firm and its offerings, you should detach yourself emotionally from the outcome of any selling situation. In other words, don’t take things personally. It’s just business.

6. When in doubt, do the opposite of what a salesperson would do.

Most folk view salespeople with suspicion. As a result, doing anything that smacks of professional selling (e.g. slick patter, glad-handing, constantly trying to close) creates distrust and distance. Paradoxical as it seems, the most effective way to sell is to stop “selling” and instead figure out how to add value to the other person’s life.

In conclusion the Golden Rule of Sales states that – “The more customers you talk to, the more sales you will make”. For instance, if you have been consistently selling 50% of all potential customers you work with and you have 4 opportunities each day, you will sell approximately two products each day.

More opportunities means more sales – it’s imperative that you work hard to meet new clients. Instead of hanging out in the break room on your next shift, ask yourself what you could do to create new leads. You could call some of the referrals you have hopefully collected during the sales process, you could call a client that wasn’t ready to make a purchase decision last time or any other number of activities designed to bring sales to you.

It’s impossible for anyone to sell every customer, every time. By increasing the number of opportunities you have, you greatly increase your profit potential and your network of satisfied customers.

The process is always the same no matter what product you are selling and the tips work equally as well in any industry. By developing good sales tactics now, you will be in a position to transform into a sales professional with a respectable income much sooner than you think.

Human knowledge can be both natural and gain through nurture. Each one of us has our own innate characters that differ from others. These characters make us unique and form our own personality. This innate character is referred to as our tacit knowledge; it is natural and unique knowledge within us. On the other hand, there is knowledge that we gain through nurture. These are the knowledge we learn and know as we grow old. These are learning from our parents, from school and from the different experiences in the different facet of our lives.

Knowledge is power and knowledge sharing is empowerment.  As we face the different endeavours of life, we are always put into situations to make appropriate and necessary decisions in respond to these events. We often consult these decisions in the principles of our knowledge and wisdom. We weigh things and make necessary solutions to problems based on our own personal knowledge and judgement.

Knowledge management is a practice concerned with increasing awareness, fostering learning, speeding collaboration and innovation and exchanging of insights. The goal of knowledge management is to improve the creation, retention and reuse of knowledge. Organizations benefits from knowledge management. Organization that practices exchanging of ideas or brainstorming can respond and provide solutions when problems arise. Knowledge of key individuals within the organization can be a source of competitive advantage in making strategic decisions

In business, knowledge management is used to make strategic decisions in realizing the company’s goals and objectives. Thus, having knowledgeable human resource is essential. Knowledge sharing within the organization is empowerment. When a person in the company possess the knowledge and know something useful that would benefit the company, he/she should share his/her knowledge to encourage and motivate other employees to improve productivity. On the other hand, person sharing their knowledge must be given incentive by the company as a way of showing appreciation and gratitude for the knowledge he/she have shared.

Business Intelligence is defined as the set of theories, methodologies, architectures and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information for business purposes. Business Intelligence tools are type of application software designed to retrieved, analyze and report data for business purposes.

Business Intelligence is synonymous to competitive intelligence. Organizations using BI possesses competitive advantage. Organizations encourage more effective use of BI tools by explaining the advantages of using BI in achieving the organizational goals and objectives.

Business Intelligence technologies provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations. Its common functions includes reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, complex event processing, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics. These functions provide reports used by the management in making critical and strategic decisions in achieving the company’s overall objectives.

Organization plans to use BI can make proper and appropriate introduction on the use, functions, implementation and advantages of BI applications to its employees. Although there are issues that accompany a certain change in an organization such as adaptability to the use of new software, the occurrence of errors and additional cost in setting up the new system, these could not be avoided in the start and is true in the short run. However, the use of BI will benefit the company in the long run.

When employees are oriented, the organization may use reward approach to encourage employees’ to use BI. Using this approach or offering higher pay would be a good incentive to motivate employees to adapt to changes in the organization and the use of BI applications. Because, employees as human resource and as the vital aspects of any organization must understand and put in mind that their function in the organization is essential to produce the appropriate output and that organizations must continue to innovate, adapt to change and must be competitive enough to survive in the world of business.

Online shopping is like an infectious disease that is so viral all over the World Wide Web. This disease then eventually develops into a trend. Who would say “no” for the convenience of online shopping? Consumers don’t have to go to malls, experience stressful traffics and fall in line to pay their bills. You just have to type or tap the items you need, its specifications or service you want and all of your choices will be flash in front of you in a split of a second. It’s fast, convenient, efficient and time saving.

The products I have no hesitation of buying through the internet is more on “a working girl needs”. First would be foot wears, an office girl always needs shoes for the office, flats for some occasions, sandals for Sundays, and slippers for everyday. Next would be bags, a bag is always a part of a woman’s everyday life that eventually develops into fashion, whether it’s a shoulder bag, a sling bag or even a handy pouch. Bags online were displayed in various designs, colors and styles to suit your taste. Another thing would be blouses and dresses, we oftentimes need a dress for an event and surfing the internet is the best opt. It’s always stressful and time consuming to go window shopping to malls and stores downtown to find the perfect pair of foot wear, bag and dress that would makes you feel complete. This tragedy was then over when a friend of mine referred me to a link. Surfing through the internet is more convenient, you could choose the perfect pair of foot wear, bag and dress that would suit your style and need.

The things I would think about before buying in the internet would be beauty creams, lotions, soaps, make-ups and other beauty products or even meds because we can’t be sure of the quality of these products. The risk is high and we could not put our body, skin and face at stakes using these products. These could have side effects that could harm the body. Although there are excellent testimonials on these products, but these could sometimes be deceiving. Sellers would always create a way to promote their products. Next thing I would think about before buy online is food. Food is a basic need of the body; our body’s overall performance is affected by the food we take. Foods and desserts displayed online looks so tasty and sweet to eat. But we could not be sure that these would taste great. There’s this news on TV Patrol that a person ordered lechon online and when the product was delivered, there were worms inside. We could not stake our health with these foods.

The things I will never buy in the internet would be cellphones, tabs, laptops and other gadgets. With the fast growing innovations, and as new products continue to emerged, everyone wants to be on the trend. But we should be careful, along with these products were the news of being a “GSM” (Galing Sa Magnanakaw) that making deals with the sellers would a great risk. We should really know who are we making deals with. There are sellers that sell these items for affordable prices, convince you of the different products’ features and would gain your trust. At the end, you’ll realize that it’s not worth your money. Trust is an important factor in every business.

Online shopping offers convenience for the consumers. Along with these is always the issue on price, quality, and trust. Before we seal a deal we should make sure that the price is right, the product or service is of quality and last but the most essential thing is we could trust the person were having business with.

In the past, military commanders understood that it was essential to provide some means to protect the confidentiality of communications through letters, messages, phone calls contacts and associations. Sensitive information was marked up to indicate that it should be protected, and transported by trusted persons, guarded and stored in a secured environment.

In the twentieth century, Information Technology Security plays a vital role in every organization. Along with this, emerged numerous professional organizations, which offer information technology securities, all have the common goal of ensuring the security and reliability of information systems. This then creates a need for companies to outsource IT security.

Most companies outsource IT Security so as to upgrade capabilities and services or the access to new technologies thus improving the companies’ information systems, to cut and stabilize cost, and to improve focus on their company’s core competencies. Along with this advantages are the critical issues accompanied by IT security outsourcing. Company’s strategic and sensitive information were disclose thus, poses a high risk, threat and an advantage for its competitors.

To address these issues, it should be include in the service level agreement with the IT security outsourcer that information disclose should be keep confidential. Outsourcing IT security is not only a matter of cost and benefit, risk is also an essential factor because strategic and sensitive information were disclosed to the outsourcing professionals thus poses a threat for the company. Protecting confidential information is a business requirement and in many cases also an ethical and legal requirement, thus IT security has a crucial and significant effect in privacy.

“Change”, the constant thing in this world. All things are temporary except change. Our life is affected by the fast growing changes that happening around us. These changes happen because new ideas emerged, new discoveries are found and new innovations are made. All these results to the advancing technologies that made our life living in convenience.

As a kid fifteen years ago, playing games with my playmates is the most fulfilling and happy days of my life. We would play dolls, play house, play different roles, slipper games, skipping rope and all those games that comes to our mind without getting bored with each other. We sometimes quarrel and fight for some toys and I even go home crying to my mom because a friend of mine cut off the head of my doll.

Today all kinds of entertainment vary in different forms and different kinds that would suit our needs and wants. From the games we played in the streets in the past, comes video games, online games and different applications that entertain us. (Recently, I am a zombie tsunami addict). Also, movies that were watched in cinema house or beta-max before, can now be downloaded and enjoyed by the family at home.

I also remember those old school days -my elementary days, where doing research in the library takes days because you need to scan over those old books in piles of the cabinets to get the data you need. Today, all you have to do is type the subject of your research in the screen of your laptop, google it and all the data you need will be flash in front of you in a matter of a click. Those long days of scanning will now be in a split of a second. Information is fast, real time and convenient.

I also remember that in the past, mails to our love ones were to be given to the post office for delivery and mails from our love ones takes days, even weeks before the postman fills the mail box in front of our house. I would see the joy in my mom’s smiling face when she opens the letters from her siblings, invitations for gatherings and letters from her friends. She would then go over these letters and reread these again during her past times.

Today, we have electronic mails that transfer of information happens in a click. Conversation with our families and friends happens through video calls, people meet, talk, know each other and develop relationships through social media sites, that distance does not matter anymore. Even love develops in the internet. You can find a person that matches you, create ideals for your soul mate and some gets married. All of these are because information is fast, efficient and convenient.

Thanks thee to Technology.