When I talked about my favorite doughnut shop, the one my grandparents lived above while I was growing up, other people wrote or talked to me about their favorite doughnut shops too. Thinking back about all I heard or read, I can’t remember anyone loving a doughnut just because it looked good. People mostly rave about how good a doughnut tastes. Long after they forget the color of the sprinkles or the icing, or the price, they remember how good it was. That’s true with anything really — from books to people to food. What matters to us all is the substance inside. We like a good-looking doughnut, one that’s put together well of course because it hints at the care and craftsmanship that goes into the doughnut. But what hooks us is the taste.

Don’t spend too much time worrying about if you’re handsome enough, pretty enough, skinny enough, too fat, too bald, too anything. Worry about whether your character, your values, your goals and who you are is solid and tasty. If you want loyal customers then people who walk away from you should remember how they felt about you and how you made them feel. Long after they forget your name or how you look or what you drive or what you wore they should remember you – like you remember the best doughnut you ever had — with warm longing and appreciation.

Quote:

“So many women just don’t know how great they really are. They come to us all vogue outside and vague on the inside.” ~Mary Kay Ash

 

You probably don’t realize it, but the same dough that makes up that wonderful, light, fluffy glazed doughnut you love so much is the same dough that makes up that heavy, fruit laden pastry or bear claw. As a matter of fact, if you look at food in general, as I love to do, you’ll find that the basic ingredients are the same — ground beef, fish and vegetables. It’s what we do with them that makes one hamburger and another meatloaf.

Life is the same way. It consists of people, problems and possibilities. It’s how we arrange them, look at them and serve or enjoy them that makes some see a situation as an opportunity and another see it as a failure. Change the way you look at things and see how both you and the situation change.

Quote:

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” - Wayne Dyer

 

James Bond is unlike any other character in the history of film. Seriously, no one has had as many actors play the role of one man as the famous 007. Even so, have you ever noticed that no matter who plays the famous spy they’re always calmly confident? Women love him, men admire him. Even if he’s not sure what he’s doing, he’s still confident. Not arrogant, but confident. Confidence is the ability to put people at ease, to make them feel like they can trust you even if they don’t know a thing about you. They just sense that you know what you’re doing or will figure it out somehow. James Bond just has a way of making us believe he can do anything, even if he has to make it up on the spot. We trust him, even the parts of him we don’t know about. It’s that kind of confidence that inspires a belief in people that you’ve got their back and their best interests in mind as strongly as you do your own.

There aren’t many people who will buy from you if you don’t have that intangible ability to put people at ease quickly. You don’t need any special gadgets to inspire that trust. You need humility along with a sense of just what you’re capable, or not capable of. It’s that confidence in the knowledge of your abilities that communicates to clients that things are going to work out, that you know your limits and that you stay within them. Confidence becomes arrogance when you overstretch, over promise, and presume to know more and promise more than you can deliver.

Quote:

“If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.” — Abraham Lincoln

 

Tim Brownson is our guest writer with today’s Sunday Doughnut. Tim is a Life Coach, NLP Master Practitioner, Blogger and published author. You can read more by checking out ADaringAdventure.com/blog

One of the cool things with Life Coaching is I get to use all the best bits of sales such as rapport building, creating win/win situations, asking questions and listening, without the need to file sales reports or explain my actions to anybody else.

Very few Life Coaches understand sales and marketing and because of that many are struggling to generate clients. The set off with all the enthusiasm in the world and with the best of intentions to help their future clients.

Then nothing happens and they cannot understand why people aren’t beating a path to their door.

I recently ran a blog post offering to mentor a new Life Coach for the remainder of 2012 for free. I have no idea what the value of that is, but it certainly would run into several thousand dollars if you wanted to hire me because I’m giving unfettered access.

At the time of writing I’ve had 150 comments on my blog of which about 50 are from people wanting to take me up on the offer. Of that 50 guess how many have stepped outside the box ?

By that I mean haven’t just blindly follow my rules of leaving a comment stating their case, but did something extra to separate themselves from the competition?

Not one.

Not one person has picked up the phone to me. Not one person has e-mailed me making a stronger case. Not one person rallied their supporters to help their cause or did anything remotely creative to inspire me to want to work with them.

Sometimes rules are there to be broken.

Quote:

If I’d observed all the rules, I’d never have got anywhere. ~Marilyn Monroe

 

There’s a little doughnut shop near Cleveland, Ohio called “Spudnuts” that I got to visit a while on a golf outing a few years ago. I had been told that Spudnuts makes the best doughnuts south of heaven so I couldn’t miss stopping to find out for myself. The doughnuts are made from potato flour and are the sweetest doughnuts you’ll probably ever taste.

It turns out that it was part of a chain that started in Salt Lake City in 1946 that morphed into a chain of shops that stretched across the country. The parent company eventually went out of business but there are still plenty of independent shops left and their customers are extremely loyal.

They’re usually sold out before noon; sometimes before 10 a.m. Come after 9 a.m. and your selection may be severely limited. They’re successful for many reasons, but mostly because they don’t make promises they can’t keep. It hasn’t hurt them either. And it won’t hurt you.

People don’t remember what you promised. They remember what you delivered. The only time they don’t forget what you promised is when you can’t deliver. If you can’t deliver it, don’t promise it.

Quote:

“An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises.” Mae West

 

You probably didn’t know this, but cake doughnuts are fried for about 90 seconds at approximately 278 °F to 374 °F, and are turned only once. Yeast-raised doughnuts are turned only once too, but because they absorb more oil they take longer to fry, about 150 seconds, at 360 °F to 278 °F.  That, of course, is presuming that the oil maintains a constant temperature throughout the process. Move too many doughnuts through the oil and the cool dough will lower the oil’s temperature, changing the process and the taste! It’s not a process you can rush or delay. If you don’t leave doughnuts in the oil long enough you have raw dough. Leave them in too long and you have burned, greasy gut bombs.

Jobs, projects and sales are like that too. They require the time they require. A baker wouldn’t promise someone 1,000 doughnuts in half the time it takes to cook them! You should know how long a task truly takes you. Don’t guess. Know. If you can’t accomplish something in a certain amount of time, don’t say you can. If you know it will take you a few days to do something (as long as nothing goes wrong), then factor in 20 to 50 percent more time to ensure that you can have it done even if everything does go wrong.  No one ever complains if you deliver a quality product in less time than you estimated.  However, you’ll quickly learn that customers aren’t nearly as patient if you say it will take a week and it takes you two.

 Quote:

 

A reader writes, “I have some great testimonials, now what do I do with them.”

I think every salesperson should have their own website and I’d put the testimonials there. In fact, I’d take it a step further and start collecting video testimonials that I’d post on my personal site. Even if you work for a large company, you are still in business for yourself if you’re in sales.

Your website can contain a blog where you post information that will be of interest to your customers and prospects. You can put product and service news on it as well as special offers. Get creative.

Once you have your site up and running, make sure all your customers know about it. Again, get creative. Have T-shirts made with a cool image and your URL. Or, something else that you know your customers will appreciate and not throw away. Make sure you ask them for permission to send them your blog.

If you say you have no experience or don’t know how to do it then you can either read and learn or hire someone to do it for you. Here are some resources for you:

• Make a Simple Website
• How to build a simple website using free services
• Website Tonight from GoDaddy
• The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating a Web Page & Blog
• Or, contact the guy who I turn to when I want a website for myself or my clients. He’s really good, honest, and will make sure you get a ton of value. Tim Gary

When you’ve got your site up send me an email with the URL and we’ll feature you on a Sunday Doughnut! And, just a reminder, you can be featured on a Sunday coming up. Just let me know you’d like to do it and I’ll take it from there.

Quote:

Blow your own horn loud. If you succeed, people will forgive your noise; if you fail, they’ll forget it. ~William Feather

 

Some people who see my book or read the Daily Doughnut say, “Well that’s very interesting, but I’m not a salesperson. It’s not relevant to me.” I disagree. Whether sales is part of your day job or not, all of us are always selling and marketing all the time. Anytime you try to persuade someone to your point of view you’re selling. Anytime you need to get your message across to others, you’re a marketer.

The quality of your life depends not only on your ability to sell yourself to others (job interviews, co-workers, your teenagers) but also on your ability to interact in a positive, productive way with others.

My Daily Doughnuts are more than just skills for salespeople. They’re skills for life.

Quote:

I am not judged by the number of times I fail, but by the number of times I succeed; and the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep on trying. ~Tom Hopkins

 

The most successful salespeople are independent thinkers. They make their own decisions and heed their own insights more than most. They trust themselves. They’re wary of people who tell them how to succeed, especially if the person with all the great advice hasn’t taken their own advice. They’re positive and upbeat, open to constructive criticism, but skeptical. The strength in making your own decisions rests on one thing — knowing and being willing to accept the consequences of your decisions. Because when you know what could go wrong and you’re willing to deal with it if you fail, fear suddenly leaves the equation. You may not like the consequences of failure, but when you stop fearing them, you suddenly become not only incredibly free to move about the world, but to succeed in it.

Quote:

“The price of greatness is responsibility.” — Winston Churchill

 

Okay, maybe I’m showing my age, but if you’ve never seen the old Saturday Night Live episodes of “Ernestine Tomlin,” the telephone operator, look them up on YouTube. They’re classics. Ernestine is confident, not afraid to ask for or occasionally demand things from her telephone customers. Whether she’s talking to J. Edgar Hoover, or a housewife who hasn’t offered a phone repairman a sandwich while he’s working on her phone, Tomlin knows what she wants and goes after it in an oddly calm, professional, although hysterically inappropriate manner.

While most of us would be out of business if we adopted her scripts, there are a lot of things we can learn from Tomlin about conducting business on the phone. One is that confidence and self-assuredness go a long way even if you have no idea what you’re talking about. Tomlin also gets immediately to the reason for her call, and she doesn’t waste or mince words. She manages to make her calls friendly and yet keeps a sense of humor throughout the call. She’s authentic, relaxed and honest. She asks questions until she understands the situation or the problem. Even when customers are rude she doesn’t lose her temper but stands up for herself. She stays upbeat and professional. Take a light lesson from Tomlin and do the same!

Quote:

An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator… these are NOT three separate devices! And we are calling it iPhone! Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is. ~Steve Jobs