Business and Money Tips

Throughout the world serving 69 million customers every day, the world's largest and most profitable restaurant group earns net profits as high as 20% of its sales.  From New Delhi to China, from Tanzania to Singapore, every time when you order something at McDonald's counter, their staff will inevitably ask you one question: Do You Want to Up size? In fact this single question made McDonald's rich.  Notice that McDonald's did not ask you other questions that most salespeople ask, including, "Can you give us some referrals?", "Do you want to become our member to enjoy discounts?" or "Can you please come back next week?" etc. If you answer no to the above 'Up size' question, McDonald's staff will next ask you, "Do you want an apple pie to go with your meal?"  If you still answer no to this question, the staff will ask you "Do you want to add $1 to get the limited edition Minion toy?" All the questions

We know that most customers don't and can't comprehend all the sales information that they hear from us.   In fact most people cannot even remember what they had for lunch yesterday.  Yet I know that as a master salesperson I need to make my customer remember what I present, not just for now but for life.  That's why I do the 3-Prong Approach: Repeat-Touch-Repeat. Repeat: During the sales presentation, we have to repeat what we previously said.  This repeat is like giving people a second helping and people will thank you for that.  It's like what happens when we first hear a new song.  We hear mostly the beat and tune and say, "This is a nice song."  Then, after hearing the same song for a second or third time, we start to pay attention to the lyrics, and start to appreciate that the song is quite meaningful.  Well, it's the same as in sales presentation.   Repetition is the mother of liking. Touch: After we repeat our Presentation, we have to let

Following yesterday's blog on  7 Shocking Truths , people asked me if I could elaborate further from there.  If you were, like my friend, read all the management and business books out there, you will get nothing but confusion.  That's why I like to once and for all cement the following truths: 1.  Suppliers Are More Important than Customers We often said that customers is king, but if you do not have the right type of goods and services to sell, you have no business to sell to that king!  Unfortunately, most schools do not teach people how to treat suppliers well.  There are 3 things that every supplier look for: fast payment, business referrals and advance order informatio n.  Do not give your suppliers nasty surprises, or treat them like a beggar.  Give them the respect that they deserve: fast payment. 2. Employees Want to Do More than What You Told Them It's shocking to hear this: many employees don't mind to do more than what they were told as long as they

Gone are the days where people will buy what you sell if you sell well.  Also, a long established brand may not bring in sales.  Look at the dismal sales of Windows Phone and you'll realize that what customers want is nothing but increase in profits.  (see here for winning sales strategies) Profits to an individual could mean more convenience, faster productivity and reduction in cost.  If you are selling to a business, there are 36 ways a salesperson can increase his customer's profits: Increase in sales.  Like our sales training can help our clients achieve a 10% increase in sales in just 2 months Reduction in wastage Lower direct and indirect labour cost Lesser overtime and thus lower labour cost Higher and more predictable quality products and services, leading to more sales Cut down in repair and maintenance cost Faster turnaround, resulting in higher sales and lower overheads Lower overheads Higher productivity, leading to lower labour cost and higher profi

Once there were 5 children sitting in front of a deity; they took turns to say their new year wishes.  The first child wished to have an entire house of candies, and the deity readily granted him this wish.  The second child was cleverer, he wished to own the McDonald's company, so that he can have as many fast food as he wishes.  This wish too was granted. The third child was even smarter. He wished to have all of the wishes of the children in the room.  Surprisingly, this wish too was granted. Now the fourth child said the ultimate wish: he wished to have any wishes he can have in this world.  Isn't this the wish-all wish?  To his astonishment, the deity granted this child his wish. Now come to the fifth and last child, and he paused for a while and said, "I wish to have no more wishes, because if I had ever lasting happiness and contentment, there is no need to wish for anything because life is complete and perfect". My friends, isn't this the best new

From Bloomberg news dated 23 November 2016 (abridged version) Two years ago, Oppo and Vivo couldn’t crack the top five in China’s smartphone market. Now they outrank everyone after elbowing Apple aside, thanks to people like Cheng Xiaoning. Cheng runs a thriving electronics store in the rural town of Miaoxia, tapping into her WeChat social media account to promote the brands that pay the biggest commission, and in her case that’s Oppo and Vivo. While such payments start at about 40 yuan (US$6), they escalate for more expensive handsets and reach almost 200 yuan for Oppo’s high-end smartphones. “That’s why I like to introduce the Oppo R9 Plus to potential customers,” she said. “Business has been perfect, actually never been better.” Cheng and tens of thousands of like-minded boosters form the vanguard of the pair’s  charge  against Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Working with the local stores that dominate sales in China’s far-flung provinces, Oppo and Vivo came out

Our achievement-oriented society is always crazy about skills and certification: the more skilled you are, the higher would be your income. However, we do know that in the longer term, having more skills without being skillful will not sustain your success.  You need to be both skilled and skillful to enjoy sustainable growth.   By the way, skillful means being careful, mindful, considerate  and most importantly, having good intention with wholesome thoughts .  Wholesome thoughts include love, kindness, equanimity, empathy and joy.  For example, if I am a skillful driver, I would be very considerate and would not want to cause traffic jams unnecessary by driving too slow during peak hours.  A skilled driver may not be as skillful as me unless he has the same state of mind as me.  At the end of the day, what matters are always moments: it is not what you do but what you do in that moment that makes the difference .  Accidents are usually caused not by people with poor skills but b

From South China Morning Post Jan 2018 Tencent Holdings, China’s biggest internet company by market value, is on a collision course with Apple and Alphabet with its aggressive push into mini mobile applications, which allow users to bypass traditional app stores and run programs directly within its WeChat application. Tencent has re-engineered the WeChat messaging app in a way that applications smaller than 10 megabytes can run instantly on WeChat’s interface. It is now offering 580,000 mini programs after just one year of development, compared to the 500,000 mobile apps that Apple’s App Store published from 2008 to 2012, according to Hu Renjie, WeChat’s mini program director. “The mini program is a brand new product model which can seamlessly link the offline and the online together,” said Hu, adding that the mini program scheme has attracted 1 million developers. As well as bypassing the need for app stores, mini programs offer speed of access to users because they can be lo

Before we talk about WeChat Marketing, let's understand WeChat first. WeChat, which has more than 800 million monthly active users today, was initially modelled off WhatsApp, but it has since integrated social media with free messaging and calls. WeChat is WhatsApp + Facebook + Linked-in + SMS + YouTube + Twitter + Instagram + Android Pay + Apple Pay + Uber ++++ WeChat is a superapp. WeChat decidedly focused on connectivity, morphing what was once a stand-alone messaging platform into an indispensable mobile portal for making payments, booking doctor appointments, filing police reports, hailing taxis, accessing banking services, video conferencing, playing games and much more. Take mobile payment as an example. In 2013, WeChat debuted its first payment system. Users can send each other money, pay utility bills and even invest in a wealth fund through the app. Its parent company, Tencent, invested billions of dollars in ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing (

I'm sure you have realized that this is getting more common nowadays: we are being subjected to wild swings instead of gradual swings.  In business , companies like to ignore customers' feedback and insist on pushing their new products to the market and forcing their customers to upgrade.  You see this in PC, mobile phones and TVs.  As the new product did not take into account customers' feedback, they will invariably fail.  The companies have no choice but to re-introduce back the old product.  A good example is mobile giant Samsung, who has taken out the micro SD card in its phones in 2015 only to be put back in 2016 Salespeople too like to subject their customers to wild swings.  When business is good, salespeople have no time to service customers and customers are forced to fend on their own.  When times are bad, salespeople have all the time and they visit their customers everyday and over-service them, until the customers cried out 'Buay Ta-han!' (mean