Persistence and the Value of It “The master has failed more than the beginner has tried” We’ve all been there, hesitant to start something new for fear of failing. But the individuals who are masters at their craft have encountered far more setbacks, obstacles, and failures than we have as beginners. Learning from those mistakes and being persistent in overcoming those setbacks is what enabled them to become experts in their fields. That’s why the value of persistence cannot be underestimated. What Does It Mean to Be Persistent? Goals, dreams, milestones. You can’t get there without persistence. If you are a persistent person, you have the determination and drive to work towards your goals and eventually, achieve them. That means tackling challenges along the way and finding solutions, even when you feel like giving up. To be successfully persistent requires motivation, resilience, patience, adaptability and a positive mindset. How to Be Persistent Being consistent comes at a price - your time. You can’t expect to become an expert overnight. You have to invest your time, whether it’s a professional endeavour, such as developing a business project or pursuing personal passions like becoming a whiz in the kitchen, or a knitting guru. ‘The more I practice, the luckier I get,’ is something professional golfer, Gary Player often says. Gary Player didn’t turn up one day to the golf course and suddenly become a professional. He spent years and years practising, training and refining his skills so that he could become the best at what he does. Without that dedication and hard work, he wouldn’t be so ‘lucky’. If you’re prepared to pay for expertise, then it’s worth putting in your time. Persistence and Sales Now you’re probably wondering how persistence is connected to sales. On a personal level, I have opened numerous accounts and have rarely been successful on the first attempt. Instead, some successes came to fruition two years later, and I eventually got the result I wanted, which wouldn’t have happened if I’d given up on the first hurdle. Nurturing leads and building those relationships over time will get you to your goal, but it takes practice and time to be successful at it. Did you know it takes on average 7 calls to get in front of a decision maker? Most salespeople will give up after just 1 phone call, simply assuming they can’t get any further, instead of being persistent and working to dedicate time to those leads. Persistence is a part of every step in the sales process, from overcoming rejection (which is inevitable) to nurturing leads and closing deals (which often takes time if a client isn’t ready to commit immediately) to maintaining a client relationship after the initial deal is completed (this is an important way to gain repeat business and referrals.) Need Assistance? Persistence is a skill that should be honed in our everyday lives because there’s so much to learn from it. If you want to apply this to your business and sales team, I can guide you from novice to professional. Book a call with me through the contact page to find out more and let’s have a chat.

Why AI and technology is not advancing us as a species While technology has many advantages - I wouldn’t be typing right now if it wasn’t for the technology age - it’s apparent to me that there’s only so far we can push it, before it stops advancing us as a species. AI has obvious benefits, such as accuracy (there’s no room for human error), continuous productivity (it doesn’t need to rest) and it can make unbiased decisions or help in dangerous situations. But every coin has two sides, and for all the positive benefits, there seem to be negative ones that will impact us as a species if we continue to pursue technology and AI as quickly as we are doing now. There’s no way that humans are able to keep up with the progression of robots. And that’s a scary thought. Here are some ways I think AI and technology are regressing us as a species. We Lose Creativity Humans are naturally creative and curious creatures, but that’s a skill that AI does not possess. Everything it can do is based on data that it’s been given (by humans). A world without creativity isn’t personally one I’d like to live in. Manufactured art, music, films, and words are unimaginative and sterile. They lack the human element, which is the part that we all connect to and that helps us to think outside of the box. Increased Unemployment Whilst this hasn’t gotten out of hand (yet), there’s a possibility that artificial intelligence could replace employees from their jobs. Manufacturing companies in particular will probably choose robots over humans for 24/7 productivity and a quicker turnaround, but to me that promotes greed rather than providing work and community for human employees. Perhaps there’s a world where robots and humans can work together (computers are a good example) but I think it’s still a bit of a grey area right now. Promotes Laziness If used correctly, AI has the ability to free up our time and allow us to focus on other areas of our life. But if used incorrectly, then we’ve got a lazy species on our hands. AI can manage tasks that are repetitive and mind-numbing, but if we don’t keep our brains active in other ways, then how will this affect us and future generations? An example of this is the consequences of living our lives through a screen, whether that’s no longer needing to learn or memorise things because the answer is just a click away, or we mindlessly scroll through social media because it’s addictive and convenient. Understanding Emotions To be human is to have emotions. It’s how we communicate with each other, have empathy, and offer support, help, love, and kindness. And of course, emotion has its darker sides too. But AI has zero emotions. They cannot experience feelings. While they may have better functionality, they don’t have the ability to connect and that’s something that can’t be replaced, whether it’s in the workplace or at home. If we become so used to a planet with little emotion, where does that leave us? Final Thoughts There’s no doubt that if used correctly, then technology can certainly enhance what we do. The irony is that AI and technology aren’t really the problem, it’s us. It’s humans who created robots in the first place. We feed them information; we look for ways to make our life easier and more convenient, but sometimes our human-ness makes us forget to look at the long-term consequences of relying on technology. The things that make us humans could be the very thing that stops us from advancing. I would love to hear your thoughts on this! Let me know in the comments.

Is screentime taking away our life skills Convenient at the best of times, and frustrating at the worst, in this day and age, we’ve come to constantly rely on technology. Our whole lives exist on a screen that we hold in our hands. While it has many amazing benefits, I can’t help but wonder if we are becoming out of touch with the real world because of it. Younger generations don’t know what life was like before screens. They have never experienced a world without a screen, when you had to seek out the answers that weren’t just at the click of the button, and I really think there are negative consequences to that. Virtual vs Reality Recently, whilst walking my dog I noticed so many dog walkers distracted by their phones. They took no notice of their surroundings, of nature, of their dogs playing or of people passing by. This made me think about what I would have done when I was young if I’d been walking through the park and saw a butterfly, for example. I’d have been curious to learn more, but it wouldn’t have been as simple as whipping my phone out of my pocket and asking trusty-old Google what kind of species it was. I reflected on this and realised that if I had wanted to learn more, I’d have waited for a free afternoon and taken myself to the library. Getting information wasn’t as easily accessible as it is now, but I think there are many advantages to that. The process would have looked something like this: Walk to the library Look at things on the way Talk to the librarian Find the section Look at the books on butterflies Make a selection Go to the desk and communicate with someone Walk home Read the book Remember to take it back Real World Interactions In this small, nothing-out-of-the-ordinary encounter, I would have actually gained a lot. Walking to the library in the fresh air would have been mentally and physically beneficial, exercising my body and clearing my head. On arrival, I would have chatted with the librarian, who would have guided me to the right place, recommending butterfly books and no doubt other insects that might have been of interest. In the present day, if I just google the answers from the comfort of my armchair, it takes away that social interaction, potentially missing out on interesting conversations. At the library, I’d have spent some time perusing the shelves and looking for a book that matched what I was looking for. Maybe while I was there, something else would have caught my eye, giving me the chance to learn something new. Arms full of butterfly books, I’d have headed back to the counter and communicated with another person in the library as they stamped my books before walking home, thinking about this little adventure. Back home, I’d have put the kettle on, made a cup of tea and spent some time reading the book, paying attention to the images and making notes so that the next time I was out on a walk, I could identify the butterfly. Some days later, I would return the book to the library and the cycle would start again. Finding Balance While technology makes everything seem more convenient, I’m concerned we’re missing out on elements of life that make us human, and that give us time and space to nurture our well-being. Whether it’s social media, TV streaming, emails or Google, the internet can be distracting from real life. While it certainly opens doors to worlds beyond just butterflies, the endless amount of information that fills the internet is overwhelming, and we don’t know if what we read is true or false, or if we even really need to know it. With that being said, I think there’s a balance to be had where we integrate screen time without it being completely all-consuming. What are your thoughts on this?

The World Is Waking Up The world is finally waking up. We’re rubbing our eyes, stretching our arms, giving a great big yawn and crawling out of the hibernation that’s lingered over us for the past couple of years. It’s strange to think that three years ago, the world was put into sleep mode while we recovered from the awful events of the pandemic that ground our lives to a halt. We adjusted to spending our days indoors, working from home (or not working at all), taking daily walks 2 metres apart, home schooling, and communicating with loved ones through a screen. But now, it really feels like we’ve overcome that devastating hurdle, and we’re remembering what it’s like to connect with each other again. If the pandemic taught us anything, it was that humans really do need each other. Without connection and communication, things don’t work the same, the world as we know it comes to a stop. One thing has been made clear: face-to-face is better, whether it’s giving your family and friends a hug, sitting next to each other for a catch-up in the pub, meeting with colleagues at work, or attending networking events in person. It’s a more effective way of communicating with each other and nurturing our relationships through body language, expression, and emotion. Without the lag of a delayed Zoom call or a dodgy internet connection on FaceTime, our experiences are completely different when we’re together in real life. They’re more human. In the external world, holiday bookings are up, coffee shops are busy, towns and cities are bustling again, online meetings are less frequent, people have reassessed their lives and their careers, and hope and optimism fill the air once again. With Spring just around the corner, the sun peeking its head out and the trees tentatively beginning to blossom, it’s a reminder that all of us are reawakening. The world might seem a little different now, and none of us are the same as we were, but like the dawn of a new day, we wake up and start again.

In the lead-up to Christmas, I ordered my daughter a gift that I knew she’d love. However, it never arrived. With the postal services being out of action, the gift was supposed to come through a courier, but the delivery date came and went, and still, nothing arrived. I reached out to the company I’d ordered from and they seemed just as confused as I was. After some half-hearted back-and-forth phone calls, they eventually came to the conclusion that the problem lay in the courier’s hands, and the company I’d ordered from could do nothing about it. I asked for a refund and they lost a customer. My overall takeaway from this? Customer service is dead. While my gift wasn’t urgent or life-changing, I was disappointed that the service didn’t reach the standards I’d hoped for. There was very little information regarding the parcel's whereabouts, and no explanation about the lack of communication between the company and the courier, and it got me thinking about customer service as a whole. Having spent the last 30 years of my life working in sales, customer service is a crucial part of the job, so I’m baffled to find that over the years, the relationship between the customer and customer service has become less than satisfying. What Is Customer Service? Customer service has always been a kind of commercial lifeline for people requiring assistance or needing questions to be answered. In some ways, the experience has never been personal, instead offering standard responses and meeting the customers’ expectations, before moving on to the next enquiry. The thing that sets good customer service apart, though, is the ability to be friendly, helpful, resourceful and knowledgeable, and just being a good human. It’s this approach that makes customers feel confident when they invest in a company. So, What Should Customer Service Really Be Like? Think about the customer service in a coffee shop or a restaurant. While you visit because of the tasty food or delicious coffee, part of the reason you return is the friendly staff who make sure you have everything you need, care for you during your visit and take an interest in you as a person. Over time, you build a relationship with the people who work there and are more inclined to keep visiting and recommending to other people. The same concept works for your business. Without customers, you have no business, so if you only offer poor customer service, who’s realistically going to continue buying from you? When you nurture and establish a relationship with your customers, you build a loyal connection that guarantees your customers will not only come back for more but also make an effort to recommend you. The long-term results of this are increased sales growth and voilà: a successful business. Improve Your Customer Service While customer service has one foot in the grave, I’m optimistic there’s a way to resurrect it, making both customers and businesses happy. Want to improve your customer service? Get in touch with me and let’s chat!

Our values are part of our identity. They determine how we live, how we work, and what we prioritise. Often, they are subconscious attributes, but when we take the time to reflect, we can identify what our core values are and how they impact the way we live and the way we work. Conflicting values can cause unhappiness and unease, so recognising the values that make us true to ourselves is important. Knowing your values has a never-ending list of benefits, from encouraging decision-making to boosting self-confidence. It brings stability and safety into our lives, and it guides our behaviours, including career choices, especially if you’re a business owner like me. I’ve put together this list of my core values that tell me who I am. While they are a significant part of my personal life, I use them in business too, because I think it’s important to be our true selves at all times. Trust Trust is essential in all parts of life, but especially in business. Trust brings cooperation, reliability, and organisation. It keeps the cogs turning, and it helps people reach their full potential by fuelling innovation, imagination, productivity and creativity. This means we, myself included, have to lead by example. If clients don’t trust me, then why should they work with me? In the workplace, we have to illustrate trust with our clients, team members and employees. Curiosity I pride myself on being curious about everything. Being inquisitive in all aspects of life inspires collaboration and engagement. It’s human nature to seek new experiences, ask more questions, and learn from those around us. Curiosity allows us to think more deeply and find more creative solutions and ideas. This can lead us anywhere - the sky’s the limit! Self- Reliance I don’t like depending on others. I much prefer to do things myself where I can and not have to rely on others. Losing my father at a relatively early age taught me that. As children, we rely on our parents and guardians, but as we get older, we develop the skills to become self-reliant. We are more prepared, financially and emotionally, in our careers and even our beliefs, because we don’t have to rely on others. It gives us the opportunity to push our own boundaries. Self-reliance is a valuable asset because it’s motivating and inspiring and it boosts self-esteem and personal growth. Fairness Fairness is an essential tool to have in your toolkit. We can all agree that much of life is unfair, and it makes us frustrated and angry. But as people, I think it’s important to be fair in the areas of life that we can control. Good judgement can go a long way, so it’s important to be fair in a way that has positive influence. For example, in the workplace, fairness supports equality, responsibility and safety, which in the long term encourages productivity, respect, trust and honesty. Making A Difference Little things can make a big difference, so going above and beyond for clients, colleagues, and for the people around me is a crucial value for me to uphold. When you make a difference for someone, they believe that their effort too can have an influential impact. This feeling of empowerment becomes widespread across other areas of their life. It gives us purpose so that everything we do is done to the best of our ability, whether that’s in the workplace or in our personal lives. Competitiveness Competitiveness isn’t just about competing with others but competing with ourselves. Using competition in the right way can be motivational, resulting in higher quality performances, products or services. It ignites originality, creativity and imagination so that we work to our full potential. While it’s important to be inspired by competition, we also need to find balance. So use competition to fuel the fire, but pause and reflect on this value and how you can use it to make positive progress. What Are Your Core Values? Think about the people you admire, whether it’s close friends and relatives or your celebrity role models. What values do they have that you admire? Are they values that you can honour too? Your beliefs and opinions shape your values, and how you respond to key moments in your life. It helps you identify your goals and aspirations, and find your purpose. Take the time to consider your values. What makes you, you?

How ‘Chunking’ Can Make Life More Manageable Chunks. Segments. Pieces. Slices. Portions. Whatever you want to call it, breaking things down into smaller chunks is a skill anyone can incorporate into their life. Whether it’s studying for an exam, working on long-neglected house renovations, running a business or planning a wedding, everyone wants life to be more manageable. I personally like to call this technique chunking. It means splitting your day or long-term goals into chunks that feel achievable, by breaking down those big daunting tasks into small, attainable ones. Each small task brings you one step closer to your end goal. Piecing Together the Puzzle I like to imagine chunking as a big jigsaw puzzle. There are 5000 pieces spread across the table in front of you - where on earth do you begin? All the colours look the same, the shapes seem identical; how will you ever piece the puzzle together? The answer to that is to break it down. Set yourself the goal of piecing together 50 segments a day. Start with the corners and the borders to create the frame of the puzzle: 50 down, 4950 to go. The next day you piece together another 50. This time you’re going to work with all the pieces that are coloured blue tomorrow you’ll work on the pieces that are yellow, and so on and so on. Suddenly, this overwhelming 5000-piece puzzle becomes manageable and much easier to accomplish. The same idea applies to cleaning your house, for example. The thought of cleaning the entire house in one day feels exhausting, but focusing on one room a day seems much more realistic. And how about the 10-minute presentation you have to make for an important meeting in two weeks? Break it down. Work on one slide a day, dedicating time and research in to each one. Setting Goals Sometimes our career ambitions, financial targets, personal goals, and health aspirations are too general. we know where we want to end up, but don’t know how to get there. Dividing these goals into actionable steps can be a valuable tool, living your life with intention and development, leading you down a road of success. Depending on which area of your life you want to focus on, you can mix up these chunks with short-term, mid-term and long-term steps, such as yearly, monthly, weekly or daily objectives that will help you reach the finish line. What do you want to accomplish in a year’s time? This is your long-term goal. When you’ve set your objective, break this down into monthly goals. This is your mid-term goal. Then weekly and finally daily activities act as your short-term goals. Each task is a stepping stone, taking you from one side of the river to the next. Staying Motivated When we break our life up into chunks, it helps us to stay motivated, as we measure and notice the progress we make along the way. It’s easier to lose motivation and inspiration when we tackle a project head-on without thinking about the value of steadying our pace and approaching it in milestones. Chunking, therefore, is a productive way to complete each project. Whatever your plans for the future, be it a year from now or tomorrow afternoon, try out this chunking method and see how it can benefit different areas of your life. Crossing something off your list as you take one step nearer to the life you desire is a fulfilling, rewarding, and productive feeling.

Buying Motives: How to Get Customers Excited About Your Products Thanks to Your Own Buying Habits What was the last thing of value that you bought for yourself that you didn’t actually need? Why did you buy it? Maybe it was cheap, maybe there was a sale on and it seemed like a good bargain, or maybe you got excited in the spur of the moment and imagined how much better your life would be with the product. The reason I’m asking you to think about why you bought something and how you felt when you bought it is because as salespeople, we can flip the notion on its head. Reflecting on those feelings can help us determine how these buying motives can be used in selling our own products or services. The goal is to get your customers excited about what you sell, in the same way you felt excited about buying something. We can replicate those feelings and values into our own products, because a customer’s buying motivations are the same, whether it’s business or pleasure. As salespeople, it’s important to know the reasons why customers buy products. 1. Impulse buying Customers who impulse buy are fuelled by excitement, and could even be buying for the sake of buying. It might be because of the latest trend, a recommendation, an enticing advertisement, or maybe there’s just a really good deal on. Promotional tactics are often used for impulse buying, advertising sale prices become a great catalyst for grabbing people’s attention and persuading them to invest in your product or service. 2. Fear and urgency Have you ever bought something to solve a problem, or because you’ve been afraid of the consequences if you don’t? Many customers buy products as a solution to a problem, or to avoid dangerous situations, such as the safety systems in a car, wearing safety gear around risky equipment, or protecting their health and wellbeing with health products. Clever marketing can generate a sense of urgency that convinces customers to buy, preventing unwanted repercussions. 3. For enjoyment People like to treat themselves, so this type of buying focuses on wanting something rather than needing it. If your product is a ‘want’ item, then it’s likely to be a luxury product or service. You need to think about why the customer wants a luxury product. Is it for aesthetic purposes, lifestyle choices, or for exclusivity? This is something to consider when identifying your target market. What Is Your Brand’s Motive? People tend to buy emotionally or rationally, and sometimes those motives cross over. You should consider both and learn how to integrate them into selling your own products and services. When you are able to identify the way your product can influence customers behaviours and why they might buy it, you can then establish a marketing strategy that accentuates those motives and will eventually increase your sales.

Pitch-ure this. You step into an elevator with another person, and they ask you about your business. You have 10 seconds to tell them what you do before the doors open and you both go your separate ways. If in that 10 seconds what you’ve said is so impactful they want to carry on the conversation, then you know you’ve got a good elevator pitch on your hands. Working in sales for many years, I’ve come to know the best way to create a captivating and insightful sales pitch that leaves a long-lasting impression. Obviously, you don’t need to pitch your business in an elevator (in fact, this would probably be a strange place to pitch to someone), but it’s a great tool to learn how to pitch to potential clients or introduce yourself at networking and conference events to capture someone’s attention quickly and effectively. I’ve also found that creating a 10-second pitch helps you better understand yourself, refining who you are and what you do, because how can you sell your product or service if you don’t truly know yourself? What Exactly Is an Elevator Pitch? An elevator pitch - sometimes called an elevator speech - is a concise and effective summary of what you do and what you sell. It’s important to remember, however, that you’re not selling to the person. Instead, an elevator pitch opens up the door to start a second conversation so they can learn more about what you do, which might eventually lead to sales. How To Make a 10 Second Elevator Pitch So now you know what an elevator pitch is, let’s look at how to make one. We know it needs to be short and memorable, so it needs a good hook and a purpose, showing value to what you do. The aim is to leave people wanting more, so we need to reel them in, like a fish on a hook. First things first, let people know who you are. Start with something snappy like ‘I’m Al, and I own Blitz Sales Solutions.’ From here, you want to tell them what your business does, but remember, keep it short and sweet. Try something like this; ‘Blitz Sales Solutions supports business growth by helping them generate sales.’ The next step is to let people know what makes you valuable and stand out from the crowd. Something like ‘We deliver measurable and sustainable growth strategies for progressive organisations’ is a good example. But you want to go out with a bang, so you need a hard-hitting hook to end on. This could be a story, an impressive statistic or a fact that entices them. I personally would say, ‘I have met many small business owners who have a great idea but struggle to effectively communicate it - and that’s exactly where I can help.’ The final result: I’m Al, and I own Blitz Sales Solutions. Blitz Sales Solutions supports business growth by helping them generate sales. We deliver measurable and sustainable growth strategies for progressive organisations. I have met many small business owners who have a great idea but struggle to effectively communicate it - and that’s exactly where I can help. Get In That Elevator Now you have all the components, practise the pitch out loud to make sure it flows naturally and sticks in your mind the next time you step into an elevator and someone asks what you do. Or alternatively, just use it at your next networking conference. The sky’s the limit.