When you are truly inspired by your clients and you serve your clients with authenticity, your clients will become your greatest champions.  I am blessed that as an Achievement Coach, I have been able to provide guidance, collaboration, and partnership to so many creative, ambitious, and excellence-driven professionals and entrepreneurs.  One client in particular comes to mind today...  She's a mother, a wife, and a professional with integrity.  She had discovered through self-introspection that her career no longer inspired her and that it had lost integrity for her.  She knew she needed to manifest change in her life, and so she turned to the services of an achievement coach for insights and collaboration on her journey of self-discovery and transition.  (Because I provide all of my clients confidentiality, she will remain nameless for this article.)

After earnest introspection, assessment, strategic planning, and follow-through, my client experienced nothing short of extraordinary transformation professionally and personally...  Today, just several years later, she is a successful entrepreneur with visions of owning yet another business and achieving success in yet another industry.  For years now, she has been making her own schedule everyday and is the author of her own choices at every turn.  She is a leader to her employees, her customers, and her community.  What's more, her success has been a reward to me several times over as well.

Year after year since she has grown her business and discovered greater satisfaction in her personal empowerment and professional success, she has been a champion of my coaching services.  She has referred many clients to me.  Whenever she is asked about her success, I am honored by the fact that she always mentions our work together as a turning-point and critical resource for her professional, entrepreneurial, and personal development.  When she was honored in an industry periodical for being a breakthrough leader and success story in her marketplace, again she took the time to mention me and to honor our coach-client collaboration.

I share this story not to sing my own praises or even to tout the value of achievement coaching services, but to share my appreciation for this client's courage to want more from life and work, to reach for it, and to live and work by a code of ethics in her achievement of her goals.  Foremost, I want to emphasize here that I acknowledge that it was not merely the collaborative power of coaching or the service I provided to my client that made the most difference, but it was that together we have achieved trust, respect, and authenticity with each other when we work together.  No amount of tactical insights or strategic development can have the impact for a client that can be achieved like a relationship of productivity grounded in authentic human-to-human synergy.

Want more clients?  Want more referrals from your existing clients?  Want more of your clients to be champions for you?  First, be open, honest, ethical, and real with your clients.  Next, be foremost dedicated to your client's achievement.  Next, be committed to ethics, best practices, and being excellent; and hold up excellence as the benchmark for your client's endeavors.  Lastly, and certainly not least, again be open, honest, ethical, and real with your clients.

The truth is that I could elaborate on what I mean by being "open" and "honest" and "ethical" and "real" with your clients.  But I will save each of those articles for another day.  I will simply leave you with a call to action here now:  Please take five minutes today, tomorrow, and the next, and ask yourself what being "open" and "honest" and "ethical" and "real" with your clients means to you.  Then, choose to live it, and open yourself to the extraordinary results for your personal empowerment and professional achievement.

~   ~   ~
Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore
360° Achievement Coaching
Providing a 360° Perspective, Strategies, and Coaching for
Personal Empowerment, Professional Productivity,
Business Growth, and Extraordinary Achievement

A message to experienced sales people…

Do you ever ask yourself, “Am I firing on all pistons?” or “Am I playing the sales game with attention to all of the critical essentials of effective gameplay?”  I think many sales people who are ambitious and excellence-driven wonder this, yet they procrastinate about resolving their concerns.  Avoidance is also human nature, so many deny there’s any need for concern at all.  If you don’t routinely ask yourself these questions, then you should.

Study of adult learning reveals that it is human nature to be drawn to learn new concepts that present themselves with a context or experience of novelty.  We tend to give prioritized attention to new and seemingly uniquely valuable ideas.  Yet as time passes, novelty and prioritization of previously fresh ideas lessens.  We take for granted the value of concepts, and they lose their luster in our field of attention.  It is a false assumption (most everyone makes) that, if we learned a concept before then we “know” it forever…  And since we know it forever, well then, we will always benefit from that knowing and we most certainly apply that concept at every opportune occasion.  Right?  Yeah, right.

What’s more, even important concepts, such as effective communication techniques or productive business strategies, from which we would benefit to re-consider and perhaps implement with a new vigor, are dismissed reflexively if the mind thinks, “oh, that sounds like something I’ve heard before.”  The mind reacts with, “I already know that, I’m smart enough and good enough as it is, and so everything is fine as it is.”

A moment of earnest and honest introspection reveals to us:

• We carry around the false assumption that we we know everything we’ve ever seen before.
• And we keep falling back into living on auto-pilot mode, “good enough and fine.”

If you don’t choose to ambitiously act out extraordinarily on your own behalf, then your mind will live your life for you as “good enough” and “fine.”  I don’t know about you, but “good enough” and “fine” have never been enough for me!  So, I seek-out fresh, bold, concise, and compelling new presentations of fundamentals for effectiveness, productivity, and success as often as I can.  While experiencing a same-old idea that is newly-framed, and so freshly-compelling, we give renewed meaning and newly-inspired attention to the most recent presentation of a concept that we have perhaps previously learned and since let slip away from our active mindfulness.

About how learning works and a message to students of sales, new sales people, and people who merely want to learn to be more effective communicators and be more persuasive…

When you are seeking out resources for engaging your mind to increase your knowledge and improve your effectiveness, some resources are better than others.  The field of educational psychology tells us that we learn more information more quickly and more deeply when the information is presented using generally-conversational language, carefully-chunked concepts, patterns, memory devices, and triggers.  So, whenever I am learning new ideas and concepts, I don’t just look for the book with the brightest colors and the glossiest cover…  I seek out resources that employ information presentation techniques and formatting that I know will best support my understanding of the information and ease the challenge of retaining new information.

THE GOOD NEWS for new sales people and experienced sales professionals…

Dale Brakhage’s book, ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette, is an ideal refresher course for essential sales concepts.  To begin with, the ABC-format of this book is easy-to-read and very understandable.  Readers will appreciate the bite-sized chapters and enjoy the insights and anecdotes featured throughout the book.  Moreover, ABC’s of Selling incorporates techniques to enhance learning.  Readers of this book become engaged in a “conversation” with the authors.  The style of the text is less formal and more accessible to attract and hold the attention of younger readers and those who communicate more frequently via the Internet.  Selling is persuasive communication, a complex process.  ABC’s of Selling breaks the complex process of selling into simple behaviors that readers can easily learn and demonstrate.  Those behaviors, called essential concepts, appear in a matrix, the alphabet, which all readers can easily recall and recite correctly at any time.  Associating the simple behaviors of selling with the alphabet provides readers with an effective memory device, called a trigger which allows them to recall the behaviors easily.

Also a valuable feature of the of the book, acclaimed celebrity chef, author, philanthropist, speaker and advertising industry business woman, Edie Hand, co-authored ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette by contributing the book's "etiquette essentials."  Hand has authored, co-authored, and helped to develop over twenty books ranging from inspirational cookbooks to novellas from a strong woman’s perspective.  Not only does ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette recommend essential “selling” strategies and methods for expressing yourself and your ideas, but the book also emphasizes a dimension of sales that is often neglected, the human-to-human conscientious courtesy of “business etiquette.”  Merging selling tactics and the practice of better human relations through business etiquette will help you learn to listen with intent and empathy, express and demonstrate respect for others with appropriate protocols and manners, better manage and present your ideas, work efficiently to achieve goals and objectives, communicate effectively, and ultimately create mutually-valuable and appreciated transactions of exchange between people.

I was recently enlisted to edit Brakhage’s ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette, and I felt so strongly about the value of the book that when I was invited to do so, I enthusiastically contributed the foreword to the book.  Most people find it difficult to sell their ideas.  Even more people struggle when trying to sell products or services.  People everywhere want to succeed in business and need to know how to be persuasive and behave appropriately.  Everyone should learn how to sell!  ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette can help you communicate more effectively, persuade others to accept your ideas and agree with you, and get more of what you want out of life.  ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette reinvigorates our focus on the fundamentals of communication, persuasiveness, and sales principles and tactics.

Buy "ABC's of Selling with Etiquette" now!

~   ~   ~
Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore
360° Achievement Coaching
Providing a 360° Perspective for
Creating Awareness, Accountability,
Action, and Extraordinary Achievement 

What is a 10% increase in productivity or sales worth to your business? 20%? Or 30%? What if you could improve the effectiveness and productivity of the most critical members of your business by even 10%? What is that worth in additional revenue, cost savings, and ROI?

Please join me, Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore, on Tuesday, July 13th, at 3:00 p.m - 3:40 p.m. for a free teleseminar to explore the benefits and value of Achievement Coaching.  Following the 20-minute presentation, I will open-up the call to any questions for 20 minutes.

Have you ever wondered...

• What is coaching?
• What is the difference between coaching and consulting?
• What is the difference between coaching and counseling?
• What is the difference between Life Coaching, Professional Achievement Coaching, and Sports, Fitness, or Wellness Coaching?
• Why do people procrastinate about "doing what it takes" to achieve their goals?
• Why is Achievement Coaching valuable?
• How does Achievement Coaching work?
• What are the benefits and value of Achievement Coaching to professionals and executives?
• What are the benefits and value of Achievement Coaching to businesses and organizations?
• What are the different ways coaches price their services and why?

Achievement Coaching changes everything...

• Emotional Intelligence
• Responsibility
• Accountability
• Effectiveness
• Strategic Thinking
• Communication
• Productivity
• Empowerment
• Fulfillment
• Wellness and Fitness
• Work-Life Balance
• Clarity
• Focus
• Rewards

For more event details and free event registration, please visit Teleseminar Presentation and Q&A: How Achievement Coaching Empowers People, Maximizes Human Potential, and Produces Extraordinary Results.

TAKE ACTION NOW! Arrange for a confidential no-risk meeting now at 360° Achievement Coaching offered by Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore.

What if a major corporation was charged with inventing the first stop sign? They'd brief their agency and let the agency do their thing. Sorta. Welcome to corporate creativity where groupthink and endless revisions help good ideas get executed. Sorta.