Business and Money Tips

We all have kind hearts, and when we see someone that we care about, we cannot help but help them.  Such compassion is a virtuous quality for having the intention to help people, even though we know that there may not be any rewards for us, direct or indirect. But we know that sometimes our help end up harming people. This is because we make them become over-dependent on us and lose their innate ability to solve their own problems.  Other than that, we often treat the symptoms of their problems and not the root cause, and this may worsen the problem.  So to really help others, we need to show them how to recognize and overcome the root cause of their problem , which is their self-centred ignorance .  This requires us to overcome our own self-centred ignorance.   Then, to inspire people to abandon their habitual self-destructive behaviour, we must be able to communicate with them. And to communicate with them, we must meet them at their own level .  As long as we retain awarenes

As a Trainer Coach specialising in sales, management and executive skills targeting audience from China to Singapore, people often asked us what business are we in.   We are in the Show Business. You see, as a Trainer Coach, we are there not to talk or deliver a program, but to put on a show.  What do we show?  Other than showing our body and learned mind, we also show them our heart and most importantly, our  spirit or passion .   Trainers are there to show people the proven paths, strategies, stratagems and methods to get more done with less. Experts called this Productivity and Work Effectiveness.  We are also there to show the leaders and managers that they too can transform their organizations if they lead and manage effectively. For people in sales, customer service and marketing, we show them the winning ways - how to win over the most difficult customers, crack the sales code and even sell ice to the Eskimos!   For people that just want to make their lives les

"Search Inside Yourself" is the most rewarding training program Google has ever created for its employees.  Now you too can share in this discovery for this Search Inside Yourself method is now available to all in the form of cheap e-books (only S$5 at Google Playstore).  Search Inside Yourself works in 3 easy steps: Attention Training Self-Knowledge and Self-Mastery Creating Useful Mental Habits Attention Training Attention training is the basis of all abilities.  You train your attention so that you can relax and yet be alert at the same time: relaxed so that your mind is calm and clear and alert so that you are alert to that attention .   Self-Knowledge and Self-Mastery Using your trained attention you can observe your thought stream and your emotions with high clarity and from a third-party objectivity.  With this you will not be attached to your own feelings, you will develop a sense of equanimity and with that you will develop self-mastery and self-

Part 1: You and Your Winning Sales System (for course details click here ) Blogger: Today we have on our site a Sales Trainer who has been conducting in-house training for over 343 companies including AIA, SingTel, NTU and Tanzanian Government, let's welcome Andy Ng! Andy: Thanks Blogger, today I'm going to talk about Winning Sales System. What is a Winning Sales System?  Most salespeople have one common problem: they are too dependent on their seniors and sales managers to guide them on how to sell.  But what happens if you are the only salesperson around?  You need a sales system to guide you. Blogger: Can you tell us what are the essential elements of a sales system? Andy: Sure. There are 4 elements of a winning sales system: How to Get Prospects Without Spending a Huge Sum of Money How to Convert Prospects into Clients without having to drop your price How to Get Repeat Business from clients without having to resort to price discounts How to Get Higher S

Talk about Productivity and many equate it to be 'better, faster and cheaper'.  Some think of getting new and advanced machines to replace manpower, others say productivity is about getting the government's Productivity and Innovation Credit (PIC) money to improve productivity.  (To read more on the latest curbs and abuse of PIC, click here ). Many trainers advocate training your staff while at Asia Trainers we opined that training bosses and managers are more important than training staff.  To the businessman, productivity is about E ver More with Ever Less.  This means getting more output with ever lesser input.  This must be the most apt definition and I shall use this in this article.  To have more output is easy, just lower your selling price and your sales would increase and you will have a quantum leap in productivity.  But without profit margins there is no productivity.  Thus the element of profit or residual value is important.   But how we distribute thi

Your mind has no form or shape, it is not anywhere but it is everywhere.  Your mind is not your brain, nor is it your thinking brain or your feeling brain.  Your mind is actually your perception or your consciousness. Your consciousness has no form or shape but it can perceive a sense object (e.g. a car) and take in sense objects in various forms and shapes.  The mind travels afar, it can go back time (even to your past lives if you can remember) or the future (we call it dreams).  Your mind wanders alone and has no physical form. But your consciousness appears and vanishes very quickly.  Early in the morning, you wake up and read something negative in the newspaper.  This affects your mind.  In time to come your physical attributes (e.g .your temper, character etc) would also be affected.  Imagine if you were to be born and brought up in a war torn country where killing and all kinds of sin are common.  Your mind would be trained this way and in time to come your physical appe

A wise manager learns from his mistakes.  He know that management has more leverage than others, and a wise manager will produce much more results than 100 hardworking staff.   As covered in our courses How to Be a Better Manager (details at here ) and other courses , the following are the 5 most common mistakes made by managers: 1. Too Close and Cannot See Things from a Distance.   As a manager, you need to be close on the ground, but you have to see things from a distance to get the right perspective.  This skill is called equanimity , which is an equalness of mind not affected by experience and feelings. Like if you need to discipline your staff, you need to be tough and not soft-hearted.  Also, getting too close to the staff may encourage some of them to climb over your head 2.  No Clear Targets for Your People.   People do not work towards grand visions, goals and mission but clear targets that they can relate to everyday.  The best way to do this is to have a KPI (Key

Latest from Gallup: Only about 30% of US employees are engaged in their jobs.  Such employees have managers who encourage their development and focus on their strengths. The remaining 70% of employees are either not engaged at work (50% of all employees) or actively disengaged (20%). Worldwide, only 13% of employees are engaged. Who engages employees? People with the talent to manage teams. Gallup scientists have found that managers account for 70% of variance in employee engagement scores across business units.  The problem is, every day, thousands of employees are named “manager” or “supervisor” who have little to no capacity to perform that task. Gallup has uncovered that companies fail to choose the candidate with the right person talent for the job of manager 82% of the time. Those companies are wasting time and resources attempting to train bad managers to be who they’re not. There’s a reason for this: Authentic management talent is very rare. It takes Moneyball—rigorous

It is not easy being a manager because you're always being squeezed in between. First you have to take care of your subordinates and yet take care of the company's bottom-line. As a Manager, you are assumed to have the know-how and you're expected to know everything. Unlike your subordinates, it is not easy to measure a manager's performance because much of what he does is of long term in nature and cannot see short term results. Like training and development of staff. Often it is during special situations that you will know whether your manager can perform or not. Like in solving difficult problems, getting new business and responding to crisis. But you know it's worth it to be a manager because at the end of the day, it is the manager that get things done and provide answers to the bosses. So the question is how can we be a more effective manager?  Effectiveness means not just doing things right but doing the right things.  There are 10 things that a

"The secret of happiness is freedom, freedom is freedom from stress"  A. Ferrari Norman Your mind can be your prison or your mind can be your sky.  Many people are unhappy and stressed because their mind is not free.  They are like prisoners of their own mind because they are always attached to something: their ego, thoughts, emotions and material wants.   As a coach and manager of training, I come across many people saying things like: "I can only be happy when I earn more money" "If I let myself to be happy, I'll be disappointed most of the time" "Happiness cannot be eaten, so we need to be practical and do the right things and then we can be happy" Such thinking reflects the mistaken belief that happiness is an end by itself and not a means to an end. We know that happiness is a state of mind that can be experienced right now , regardless of what state you are in.  There is nothing wrong to wanting to have nice things, to

Before we can talk about motivating people, let's know how to Not Demotivate People in 5 Ways: Ignoring People , giving people the cold shoulder and seeing people as transparent.  When you ignore people, you are telling them they are not important, and what you say would be overshadowed by this Over Promise . Nothing beats under promise over deliver and over promise under deliver is the most de-motivating Favouritism . Everyone wants to feel important, and making people feel unimportant must be the biggest insult of all Negativity , like being so pessimistic and make everything seem impossible Ask for Opinion and Then Discard that Opinion .  We know when you ask for opinion you make people feel important. But when you discard that opinion you are making them feel really unimportant!  So my friend, before you open your mouth and post another comment on the internet, ask yourself this question: am I de-motivating people?  If so, don't do it. For we know de-motivat

Yes, they say Singaporeans are not hungry and that is why they lost jobs to the foreigners.  The truth is that Singaporeans are hard-working, but not as driven as compared to our neighbours. Many do not take much initiative and always wait for things to happen. They also dare not take risk and consider job security more important than doing a good job. On top of that, they want good pay and desire to go home punctually. No wonder many employers prefer to hire foreigners! Whether you are highly educated, highly skilled or inexperienced, you know that unless your employees are driven, your company will NOT achieve much and your company will lose out to competitors in due course.  This course will inspire your team to do more, teach them the 5 Ways to Be Hungry without Going Hungry, and most importantly, get them to work hard as a team. If you do not send your staff to this course, you are helping your competitors to be better than you.  This course qualifies for PIC (Productiv

In our Sales Power (more at here ) and other sales and marketing courses, we teach people not to sell their product, its advantages and even the benefits it will accrue to the user.  For all these things are measurable, but in life it is the immeasurable that will get heads nodding. The 4 Immeasurable are: Hidden Potential .  Everyone has some hidden potential inside them, and the goal of the salesperson is to harness this potential.  It could like in the prospect's production capability, and by investing in the machine that you are promoting, they can reach their potential faster and easier. Achieve Dreams .  If you can dream it, you can make it.  A good salesperson talks about his prospect's aspirations and dreams and let them know that they too can realize their dreams.  Note that this may have nothing to do with what you are selling, but it surely touches their hearts.  When you can touch somebody's hearts, it is limitless what you can do. Love and Concern .  A

Since doing training part time from 1996, and full time from 2001 (under ActionCOACH) and from 2007 under Asia Coaching Training , our company, together with 3 associate trainers have developed over 428 programs.  Many people asked us what are these programs and we only have 3 words: Sales, Management and Employee Skills. But recently from our How to Be a Better Manager course (click here for details) with one trainee (a Managing Director from an European MNC), I realize that we only teach 2 things: Challenges and Solutions. Our courses deal with real-life challenges facing people in business, government and the private sector RIGHT NOW, not some text-book cases.  We get our participants to share their current work challenges, and we group them into 3 categories: Self, Others and the World.   Note that the challenges are built into the courses, like in the How to Close Every Sale course , we talked about sales objections as a main challenge.   But we don't stop there at t