Want to Jump Start Your Sales? STOP Marketing! Part V of V

Achieving dramatically higher sales and profits is really very simple – that has been the message of this series of five articles. We learned that you could multiply your sales results, without having to change your selling style or your marketing activities. All we have to do is get clear about three things: 1) what business we are in, 2) what our prospects and customers get by doing business with us in specific, direct terms that they can relate with and 3) what makes us unique and is impossible to duplicate for anyone else in the world.

“Why don't we do it?” - you must have wondered. All this seems like such common sense, why isn't *everyone* doing it? Why isn't everyone building a profitable, enduring business? Why isn't everyone succeeding in sales? Good questions!

For a simple reason: we subordinate our "gut feeling," our “common sense” to the opinions of "experts" (read: anyone who has a half-assed opinion about anything). We are really scared out of our wits to go to the most powerful source of wisdom we have: ourselves.

There's another problem. Common sense is really not that common. Not that we don't have it. It's just that we don’t use it enough. And like everything else that does not get used, common sense, when not used, gets rusted. In the end, we don't trust our gut feeling. So for direction, we keep looking outside of ourselves. Of course, the answer is never out there. The answer is within us. But we are really scared to go there for answers.

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Some of the best advice I’ve ever had was from a very successful president of an IT services firm. He built his company from scratch to $60 million in revenues in the matter of a few years.

His advice to me was: “Never listen to anyone’s advice.” “Follow your heart,” he elaborated to me, who was somewhat shocked to hear the revelation.

So my advice to you is the same. Don’t listen to any one.

If you don’t follow anything else in this series of articles, I hope you will take away one thing: Learn to subordinate anyone else’s opinion to your own gut feeling, your own opinion.

Do what *you* feel is right. After all, it’s your business. With any decision you are facing in your business, just look at all your alternatives. Listen to all the experts, if you have to. And then look to yourself for an answer. Listen to a very faint “voice” within you. And follow that.

It might be very difficult to follow it. It may be even scary. In may be “uncommon wisdom” because you have to go against the mainstream. You may not even be sure if it’s really your own voice or the voice of an expert. Do it anyway.

Because if you want to build a dramatically more profitable, long-lasting business, you will have to do some uncomfortable things. And one of those uncomfortable things is to follow your gut, your common sense. Even if it means doing things that the rest of the world does not agree with.

Study the lives of “successful” people you respect. Bill Gates, Michael Dell. Henry Ford. Winston Churchill. Whoever.

You will find that one thing they all share is the fact that they muster more confidence and trust in their own common sense than anyone else.

If your gut is telling you to reject everything that’s been said in this series of articles, go ahead and do it! I’m okay with it. In fact, if you do that, I would have achieved what I wanted to achieve in this article series. Which is to convince you that it’s you who has the answers to all your challenges and the power to achieve all your goals and dreams.

All you have to do is look within.

Happy Success!
Bhavesh Naik.

P.S. Visit http://www.ambica.net/jump_start_your_business_brain.html for a hands-on workshop on this suject.