HAPPY NEW YEAR AND WELCOME TO 2013!

Quick question for you. (And this will have a huge impact on what you accomplish this year.) Are you pursuing excellence or are you a perfectionist? To clarify here, I want to distinguish the difference between a perfectionist and someone who is in pursuit of excellence.

Perfectionists are not concerned with the quest for excellence. They generally set unrealistic expectations, have a fear of failure, and are very critical in their self-talk. It is difficult for a perfectionist to finish anything. There is no such thing as perfect, so they are in a never-ending quest to find something that does not exist. Perfectionists never reinforce the positive things they do because they are too busy beating themselves up for their failures.

On the other hand, someone in pursuit of excellence is not hindered by critical self-talk and their self-worth is not dependent on their achievements. Fear of failure does not cripple their efforts or stop them from completing tasks. If something doesn’t work as planned, they will find another way of doing it without all the critical self-talk of the self-absorbed perfectionist.

Being in a constant pursuit of excellence in your business is essential to your success. In business, if you are not performing every day to the utmost of your ability, there is someone out there who has equal (or even less) ability that is in pursuit of excellence every day who will take your place.

You can’t afford to get trapped in the perfectionist attitude. Tasks must be completed without delay. Your self-talk becomes more important than ever when you are a small business owner. Positive reinforcement of your accomplishments without focusing and getting stuck in your failures is crucial to your success. You want to assess your failures and learn from them, but you do not want to obsess over them.

Here are five tips to help you in your pursuit of excellence:

1. Set higher standards and raise expectations for yourself and those around you. When did “good enough” become the standard? When did it become okay to just “get by”?

2. Set goals and create a vision for where you want to go. Having a clearly written vision statement is essential to your continued success. And don’t be afraid to update it periodically as your business and your life changes.

3. Hold yourself accountable in all areas of your life – finances, work/family balance, health, personal development, your spiritual life, your personal character.

4. Do what you say you will do. NO EXCUSES!

5. Have passion for what you are doing. If you are not passionate about what you are doing … stop doing it.

If you want 2013 to be the most amazing year of your life, start now! Pursuing excellence is not for the faint of heart. It requires focus, discipline, perseverance, dedication, and hard work. Do not accept mediocrity in anything. Do not accept anything less than your best. And if you are honest with yourself, you know exactly what that is.

It’s amazing how refreshing it is to start a New Year. Don’t know why, but it seems it’s a chance for a new beginning. Of course we can have a new beginning or start over at any time during the year, but it’s just not the same if we do it later.

I’m not the type to make New Year’s resolutions like quit smoking (I don’t smoke anyway), lose weight (I could stand to lose a few pounds), eat better (that is something I try to be aware of throughout the year even if I don’t always do it), or any of the other things people make resolutions to do (and usually don’t).

But I do enjoy the feeling and the sense of “starting over” in my personal life and in my business life. So I will make a few changes this year. And I’ll quit doing the things that didn’t work last year both personally and professionally. I’ll start doing more of the things that do work. That should get me where I want to go this year. It really is that simple even if, most of the time, we try to make things harder than they should be.

And hopefully I’ll end the year with a much better business and a much better life. But I have to prepare myself to make certain things happen in my personal and professional life. I must have a vision for where I want to be at the end of the year and write it down. You have to know where you’re going to get to where you want to be.

Think about what you need to start doing more of and what do you need to quit doing … and write those things down. It will make a huge difference in your life at the end of the year.

So for the last time this year, I’ll say Happy New Year to everyone and I wish you all the success you can handle.

There is one sure thing in sales. If you don’t have confidence in yourself and the product or service you are selling, you will not succeed. You must have confidence in your abilities and you must value what you have to offer. Fear, lack of self-confidence, low self-esteem, and not seeing the value in what you have to offer can kill your chances of success.

You know the truth and you must answer the following question honestly and without hesitation – “Do you believe in yourself and what you have to offer?” If you cannot answer a resounding yes to this question, even though you may think you are projecting confidence and self-assurance to your prospects, they sense something other than confidence and self-assurance. They may not know what it is or be able to describe it but something is causing them to not be attracted to you, your product, or your services. Something is causing them to have a negative reaction to what you have to offer.

Most people can sense fear and self-doubt in other people. They may not acknowledge those feelings but they are still there. Professor of Psychology Randolph Blake and doctoral student Eunice Yang of Vanderbilt University conducted research to learn the speed at which we recognize fear. Their research has shown the human brain becomes aware of faces that express fear faster than it becomes aware of faces that express other emotions. Check out this article “People Sense Another Person’s Fear Faster Than Anything Else They See” by Tamara Hardison for more details on this research.

Everyone has this instinct that senses fear, lack of self-confidence, and low self-esteem in another person. None of these traits can be associated with success in any field. Here are five ways you can improve in all these areas:

1. Never stop working on your personal development. Study the classics by Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Anthony Robbins, and others. There is a great little book called “How I Raised My Self From Failure To Success In Selling” by Frank Bettger written in 1947. The basic principles still apply. Study this material and apply it to your life and to your business.

2. Become an expert in your field. Know everything you can possibly know about your product, your service, or your industry. Never stop learning. This will give you more confidence in yourself and your prospects will sense your increased self-confidence. They will be more receptive to your message if they know you are the expert in your chosen field.

3. Don’t ever put yourself or anyone else on a pedestal. Either way you lose. You are deceiving yourself and the other person when you do this.

4. Don’t base your self-esteem on how successful you are now or on how much money you make. Don’t base your self-esteem on external factors, especially ones that are out of your control.

5. Learn to make decisions quickly. 80% of all decisions you have to make should be made immediately. This is a habit you can develop and the more you do it, the better you become at making difficult decisions.

Always approach your prospects and clients from a position of power. Always show respect for the other person but project a sense of quiet self-confidence and self-assurance. Believe that you are the best person to deliver this product or service. Your sales will go up and people will be much more receptive to your message.

This is how Paul J. Meyer, personal development and growth guru, defines success. “Success is the progressive realization of worthwhile, predetermined, personal goals”.

How do you define success? For some people it may be the accumulation of wealth. For others it may be to finally have their kids finish college. Still for others it may be retirement and playing golf everyday. Success is a personal thing and unique to each individual. Just as you should have clearly defined goals in place, you should also have a clear picture of what success looks like for you. It is difficult to measure success in your life without a clear picture of what success looks like for you. This should be done without the influence of others.

This brings up another question. Are you allowing other people to define success for you? Have family members, society, or friends defined success for you? Sometimes we get caught up in what other people have defined as success for us. We see the lifestyles of the rich and famous thinking that is the true definition of success. This may be true for some people but not for others. I would say you are successful if you are passionate about what you are doing and pursuing worthwhile goals in your business and in your life.

Give this some thought and write down what success would look like for you. Be very specific and don’t just say “I want to be a millionaire” or “I want to get my kids through college”. What would your family life be like? How much money would it take for you to feel successful? Write down an actual dollar amount. If you really look at how much money it would take to be financially independent, you will be surprised at how small this figure may be. What kind of car would you drive and what would your house be like? Get very specific with this and write down all the details. Look at each area of your life: health, spirituality, finances, family, and business. What would success look like in each of these areas? Once you complete this exercise, start writing down specific goals that will get you a step closer to building your success. I will address the topic of goal setting in a future article.

How would you define success in marketing your services or business? Again, you must be very specific and write down actual dollar amounts, number of clients, or whatever else you want to use as a measurement of your marketing success. It is crucial to know what defines success in marketing your services. Otherwise you may spend money in the wrong place and not know what type return you are getting for the dollars spent. Having a system in place to measure your marketing success is critical to your business.

Success means different things to different people. You are the only one who can truly know if you have attained success in your life. It should be the right thing for you whether it is success in the area of finances, family, spirituality, health, business, or whatever. Going through the exercises mentioned above will get you one step closer to being successful.