Monthly Archives: January 2019

Persevere! Success is just round the corner!

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On Saturday, a customer of mine called me.

I was a little surprised! I thought, ‘I must be in trouble! I haven’t been able to get hold of her for 4 months and now she’s calling on a Saturday 7pm?!’

I used to see her every 1-2 months.

I gave her a quotation to respond to a massive request five months ago, after she went away for a business trip. Heard nothing from her ever since.

Came mid autumn festival. I said texted on Whatsapp. She replied!

I asked her whether she’s tried durian moon cake.

She sent me a picture of a Malaysian durian mooncake.

Good sign right? But nothing else after..

I consistently sent her emails of interesting news and updates. Still, nothing back.

After 2 months I decided to up my game.

I started calling her. Can’t get hold of her.

After the first few times, she picked up. She’d say, ‘I have an urgent call on the other end’. This happened 3 times for 3 weeks. Every time I called, I’d get ‘I’m in an urgent meeting, I will call you back.’ Of course, she never would.

What do we usually say to ourselves after rejections?

‘She’s not interested.’ Or worse, ‘she’s avoiding me’.

But my rational mind thought ‘if she wanted to avoid me, she wouldn’t have picked up, right? She would have blocked my Whatsapp, right?’

I let it die for a a month.

Then, I upped my game again. I apologised without knowing what for. Just in case. I might have

offended her somehow.

Nothing.

Then, I saw a post on Facebook about something that’d be interesting for her son.

I sent it to her.

3 hours later, she called! On a Saturday!

‘So sorry I’ve been snowed under!…’. She started babbling on about her other projects. She told me more than she needed to. She explained how she had to evaluate the prices of suppliers. I got a lot of intel from her without even needing to ask.

This experience shows me that we shouldn’t give up, even after we think we have tried enough.

Don’t give up after 3 times.

Don’t give up based on some imaginary reasons.

It also shows that we need to celebrate every success.

The ultimate goal may be to ‘cut a deal’.

But before any deal can be cut, a series of actions need to be carried out!

We need to build a good relationship, make the proposal, handle objections, maintain the relationship.

I saw this was a success, a client calling me on a Saturday! I was very happy to hear from her!

Celebrate every success.

Break down your goal into small bite-size actionable steps to track progress and keep motivation high!

How to instantly turn everybody around you into nice people I

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Was at the pharmacy to order meds. They told me it’d take long, maybe 20 minutes, as I didn’t pre-order.
I sat down, getting ready to work, expecting to wait for 40 minutes (not unusual).
Only 10 minutes later, they called my name.
I was delighted. I must have shown my emotions. I walked up (most likely with a happy smiley face and bright wide eyes, ‘That was fast!’
The pharmacist immediately smiled. The smile seems to be the kind that shows her happiness at knowing that they are doing a good job. She advised, ‘next time you know you can pre-order to minimise the waiting time.’ She was being extra nice.
Emotions are contagious. If you smile, the other person would find it difficult to hold a stern face! You get better customer service! You get people who treat you better! 😀

How to get people to listen and remember

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If you want your audience to be able to instantly connect with you, especially if you talk in numbers, don’t worry about telling them the huge numbers, like $100,000,000, because to any ordinary individual, that’s as if you hadn’t spoken at all! Instead, we’re just wasting everyone’s time, because they won’t remember the numbers!
Instead, try using metaphors to show the numbers in a way that’s meaningful to the audience. E.g. when Steve Jobs presented the iPod for the first time, he didn’t say ‘it has 1 GB of memory’, which probably means nothing to many of us. Instead, he said ‘1000 songs in your pocket’.
Just like this poster I saw at the Design Society Centre in ShenZhen, it has more impact than if we’d been saying the ‘hyperinflation was 79,600,000,000 % at its peak’.
Or for Venezuela’s situation now, it would hit the listeners’ hearts if we say ‘the bread you bought today will have cost doubled the next day’, rather than saying inflation was 1,000,000%’.