By Mauro Libi Crestani. A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” , Oscar Wilde. Having a positive attitude opens your eyes. “A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds; it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before the change.”
We all have met people with negative and poor attitudes. They may be the people in your company that can not judge the value of a product beyond it’s cost. They were the ones that will tell you in many excuses why something will not work. In their mind and in their world nothing will work. They will tell you about the cost and the overhead and can not see a winning product. The Swiss Watch Industry was, meanwhile, able to continue producing watches and once the war was over, enjoyed a market advantage that allowed it to command up to 90% of the world’s consumer watch industry. In 1954, Swiss engineer Max Hetzel developed an electronic wristwatch . The Swiss watch company saw no value in electronic watches. So they allowed the engineer and his invention to go to the Japanese. By the time the 1970’s started the Swiss watch company was in an economic crisis. It no longer had the bulk of the world’s watch sales. The swiss company had the invention and let it go. Their downfall was their attitude. Having a negative attitude in business can be so toxic that t reminds me of a quote from Helen Keller, “There is nothing so sad as a person that eyes and can not see.” “If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” Bruce Lee. I guess Bruce Lee had his own way of saying that if you are positive the sky is the limit. The real successful people and companies want to excel and to be the first in technology. The boxer Muhammed Ali believed that he could achieve anything in the boxing world. He was famous for saying, ‘I am the greatest.’ He believed it and he made it happen. Mr Ali has said that he became the greatest in boxing because he knew that was the greatest before he actually was. I want end by quoting once again Bruce Lee, “Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.” We all have a different set of talents. If we are positive and believe that our own brand has value then we follow our own way. We tend to copy others when we feel that people will not accept us for who we are, that they will not buy our brand of product. We may try to imitate others because we have a negative view of ourselves. Trust yourself and create your own brand and it may turn out to be better than anything else. By Mauro Libi Crestani. Google+ Visit: http://maurolibiempresario.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibithinkingforbusinesses.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibivenezuela2015.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicaracas.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibivenezuela.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicrestaniempresariodeexito.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicrestani15.blogspot.com/ Follow us Twitter @maurolibi15
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By Mauro Libi Crestani. When looking to increase your company’s productivity, one of the key things that all companies do that seems to work is look for ways to change and improve. While looking for that new idea and concept we must not forget a quote by Oscar Wilde, "Nothing succeeds like success" . Was he right? In a world where ambitious people practice the habits of successful people with mixed results, perhaps he was, at least somewhat. What a businessperson might see in Wilde's statement is this: the key to continued success isn't continually reinventing one's ambitions; it's continually translating the success one already has into new opportunities. There is an old saying , ‘If something works stick with it,’ . If you are running a chain of pizza stores and everyone seems to prefer your sauce over everyone else then why would you change the sauce? If your company offers a personal service that is outstanding and gets you many referrals, - Do not change! I love the story of Pete Sampress, the famous tennis player. He had a very successful backhand swing using both hands. It made him famous but he was not number one. His backhand swing was successful but was not as successful as if he used one hand on his back swing. Pete’s couch saw anything that was not a number one standing as a failure and he risked it all to change pete’s back swing. Jim Rohn said, “If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” It is up to you to decide if you found the answer to success. If you have stick with it. By the way, if you did not know, Pete Sampress went on to be number one in tennis and the youngest player ever to win Wimbelton. Companies like Coke-Cola and Pepsi are very successful. People like the taste of their drink. You do not see Coke or Pepsi changing the taste of their drink. They know and believe in Oscar Wilde’s quote "Nothing succeeds like success" . Not changing a success model does not mean that you allow things to stay stagnant. There is an old business saying that stagnation equals death. Apple Computers has a winning concept of their retail stores that people like. Their stores are always crowded. They offer training and excellent service. That they will never change. The technology of their phones are always changing and they always need to look on how to be the number one with the latest in technology. As far as the technology on computers and cell phones that is changing constantly and they realize that if they did not work at coming out with the latest first, then their competition will take that number one spot, that you need to be aggressive and not lose your competitive edge. So the key is to find out what is the constant success and stick with that. Do not reinvent the wheel, just redesign it. Steve Jobs from Apple Co. felt that although the Apple retail stores and their service were winners, that their phone did need to be constantly reinvented as he once said…”Apple is going to reinvent the phone and here it is…”. By Mauro Libi Google+ Visit: https://managementandbusinessprodutivity.wordpress.com/ https://gestionempresarialyproductividad.wordpress.com/ https://busineesproductivityandmanagement.wordpress.com/ Follow us Twitter @maurolibi15 https://www.facebook.com/maurolibicrestani https://ve.linkedin.com/in/maurolibicrestani By Mauro Libi Crestani. "I went for a long holiday for 27 years," Nelson Mandela once said of his years in prison.
There are disagreements as to whether a positive attitude in business really has positive effects. Look at those political prisoners who went to some of the harshest prisons. See how they survived. They had amazing attitudes despite all. A warder's first words when Nelson Mandela and his ANC comrades arrived were: "This is the Island. This is where you will die." They faced a harsh regime in a new cell block constructed for political prisoners. Despite being sentenced to life imprisonment, Mandela always remained optimistic about his future. He wrote, “I never thought that a life sentence truly meant life and that I would die behind bars.” He continued: “Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed towards the sun and one’s feet moving forward.” Being optimistic doesn’t mean deceiving yourself. There is very little benefit in wearing rose-tinted glasses and pretending everything is okay when it’s not. But optimism means acknowledging and accepting the situation you are in, and choosing to make the best of it. Choosing hope and action over despair and self-pity. Natan Sharansky spent nine years in a soviet prison. How did he survive? Sharansky was driven by the determination never to let anyone determine how he would act. His mode of attack, curiously enough, consists of a truly discomfiting combination of good humor, optimism, and a sassy, wisecracking, with an amazing positive attitude to his situation. Sharansky’s habit of finding satisfaction, interest, or comic relief in the bare walls of his cell, or in the idiocy of his captors, so often in the course of his memoir does he exclaim “What a delight” and “How wonderful,” that one begins finally to appreciate how a mischievous and canny cheerfulness can be forged into armor steel-clad enough to carry its wearer unscathed through hell’s fires. It should be no surprise that Sharansky’s prison codename for a hunger strike was “celebrating to the limit.” With attitudes as positive in these two ex-cons – is it any surprise that they political leaders upon their release? Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankel also echoes this idea. After several years spent in concentration camps, he wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”By Mauro Libi Crestani. Google+ Visit: http://maurolibiempresario.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibithinkingforbusinesses.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibivenezuela2015.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicaracas.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibivenezuela.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicrestaniempresariodeexito.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicrestani15.blogspot.com/ Follow us Twitter @maurolibi15 By Mauro Libi Crestani. Every company should train their employees and managers to learn the power of the word ‘yes’. Business initiatives should be adapted where this word becomes not only the only acceptable word but becomes internalized within the fabric of the company. This will not be an easy change but will show great benefits in customer satisfaction and in more sales during negotiations. When a customer has certain complaints and you agree then there really is no where for the customer to go. Responses to complaints might go like, ‘Yes, I understand why you would feel that way. How about we try this.’. By agreeing with the customer without admitting guilt, you have let the customer know that you own the problem. You are going to ‘make it work’. There is nothing left for the customer to argue about. They feel heard and that their complaint has and will receive its due attention. Satisfying an upset customer has its value. Internal marketing is sometimes just as important as external marketing. If your employees have some issues in the office , your best response should be using the power of yes — and say, “Absolutely, we will make it work,” because it truly was the absolute best way to create buzz and excitement in the office. I read this review online and think every company should want such a review. But never, ever, have I experienced such an accommodating, do anything, never-say-no, begin with the power of yes staff as the one that Chef ……I was blown away by their helpfulness and their unbridled commitment to excellence. They were truly invested in helping me achieve success with our event because that meant their success as well. I asked for many things and needed the help of many staff members over the course of the week. I never heard the word NO once. Every request was met with an enthusiastic embrace of the power of yes. During a negotiation try to get the customer to use the word YES. Ask questions like, ‘You deserve great service, don’t you agree?’ Thus is a loaded question where the customer can only answer Yes. If you keep the negotiation in such a positive frame of mind and mood and make the customer feel very positive about every part of the deal. If the attitude of the negotitation is that ‘you can make it work’. If the attitude is that the customer will only hear the word yes from you , then chances are that you will only hear yes from them. That is known as yes momentum. Last but not least when you want to make an appointment with a client, your job is to get them to appoint such a meeting. It is bet not to offer them a chance to say no. So do not ask them . ‘Can you make an appointment this week?’ if you phrase the question that way, the client may just say no and that they will call you when they can make it. It is best to ask them, ‘is Monday or Tuesday better for our next meeting?’ This way the client has been given a choice and does not feel forced into the meeting. They feel like they have maintained control and that it was their decision. It also does not allow for a no to occur between you and your client. By Mauro Libi Crestani Google+ Visit: https://managementandbusinessprodutivity.wordpress.com/ https://gestionempresarialyproductividad.wordpress.com/ https://busineesproductivityandmanagement.wordpress.com/ Follow us Twitter @maurolibi15 https://www.facebook.com/maurolibicrestani https://ve.linkedin.com/in/maurolibicrestani By Mauro Libi Crestani. “A negative thinker sees a difficulty in every opportunity, a positive thinker sees an opportunity in every difficulty.” How true that saying is. Now let's be practical, in life things happen. Sometimes those things that happen are good, and sometimes those things that happen can be very bad. When bad things happen to you or your business you have choices to make. You can see them as the end, the last nail in the coffin and just give up. Yes, that is a choice. You can also chose to learn from the incident and see it as an expensive lesson that can help you grow, help you be better than you were before. A quote, “Attitude will make or break a company, a school or a home. The remarkable thing is that we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude that we will embrace for the day. We can not change our past…. We can not change the fact that people will act in a certain way….. we can not change the inevitable. The only thing that we can do is plan on the one thing that we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. A superior attitude will produce superior results.” If you want your company to succeed you need to create an atmosphere of positive attitude in yourself, your workers and in your customers. Everyone of your employees have to see the company as a winning one, one with great potential. They have to see it as the place that they want to spend their working life in as there will be so much opportunity for them if they prove themselves worthy. Employees that feel good about the company as a stable work environment, as a place where they can make a very good living, they will give the company their full efforts. It also pays for a company to invest in creating employees that have a positive attitude. A salesman that believes every time he sees a client that he will make the sale, probably will make the sale. A salesman that does not have much hope of being able to sell, probably will not be able to sell. Zig Ziglar, a famous business consultant once said, “You don’t build a business – you build people – and then people build the business.”. Being a positive business person means that you look for opportunity even when things are going ‘alright’. A positive person never accepts alright. Alright just is not good enough. If you are selling an ‘alright’ product – how many will you sell. If you are having a medical surgery, do you want to go to an ‘alright’ surgeon. NO! You want to go to the best, someone that makes you feel like there is no better. Milton Berle, a comedian once said, “If opportunity does not knock, then build a door.” Every salesperson should be aware that people may hear your words but they feel your attitude. The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible. A positive thinker wants amazing, he wants to dazzle his customers with a superior product and a great service. A positive thinker will never accept the acceptable because that is too average and not acceptable. He wants the dream for himself and his company and because he knows in his heart that he can achieve it, nothing will stop him from achieving his goal. By Mauro Libi Crestani. Google+ Visit: http://maurolibiempresario.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibithinkingforbusinesses.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibivenezuela2015.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicaracas.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibivenezuela.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicrestaniempresariodeexito.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicrestani15.blogspot.com/ Follow us Twitter @maurolibi15 By Mauro Libi Crestani. “Positive thinking is not only expecting the best to happen! But it is also about accepting that whatever happens is for the best…”.
Life definitely presents its challenges. When we are presented with a task to accomplish there are three periods of time that can either hinder us or enhance our abilities to see the task through. A few months ago I went to a friend’s graduation. The guest speaker was a middle aged female CEO. She told a story of how her success started. The other students in her graduation class were limited by their lack of experience. When they went on interviews, it was always the same story. The job interviewer always asked about what experience that the graduate had with maybe a software program that they never worked on or with some business system that they knew nothing about. The graduate had to be honest and say that they lacked the experience and the job went off to someone else. This CEO when she went on her first interviews after graduation spoke about her experience with software and systems that she knew nothing about. You see, she was a believer that each opportunity was for her growth potential and in her best interest. She also believed that whatever skill they wanted and needed that she could learn the skill before she started her job. So she did not consider her tale of experience to be a fallacy. She was so positive that she would be proficient in this software and skill if she put her mind to it. When she got that first job, she put in her full efforts to learn everything that she could to be fully trained and knowledgeable and the best at what was expected of her and she succeeded. Now, this is not my story and I am not telling anyone to lie on a job interview. I am talking about believing in your ability to be the best by study and effort and to act on it today because you have this positive belief in your own ability. Google+ Visit: http://maurolibiempresario.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibithinkingforbusinesses.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibivenezuela2015.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicaracas.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibivenezuela.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicrestaniempresariodeexito.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicrestani15.blogspot.com/ Follow us Twitter @maurolibi15 By Mauro Libi Crestani. “Positive thinking is not only expecting the best to happen! But it is also about accepting that whatever happens is for the best…”. Life definitely presents its challenges. When we are presented with a task to accomplish there are three periods of time that can either hinder us or enhance our abilities to see the task through. A few months ago I went to a friend’s graduation. The guest speaker was a middle aged female CEO. She told a story of how her success started. The other students in her graduation class were limited by their lack of experience. When they went on interviews, it was always the same story. The job interviewer always asked about what experience that the graduate had with maybe a software program that they never worked on or with some business system that they knew nothing about. The graduate had to be honest and say that they lacked the experience and the job went off to someone else. This CEO when she went on her first interviews after graduation spoke about her experience with software and systems that she knew nothing about. You see, she was a believer that each opportunity was for her growth potential and in her best interest. She also believed that whatever skill they wanted and needed that she could learn the skill before she started her job. So she did not consider her tale of experience to be a fallacy. She was so positive that she would be proficient in this software and skill if she put her mind to it. When she got that first job, she put in her full efforts to learn everything that she could to be fully trained and knowledgeable and the best at what was expected of her and she succeeded. Now, this is not my story and I am not telling anyone to lie on a job interview. I am talking about believing in your ability to be the best by study and effort and to act on it today because you have this positive belief in your own ability. By Mauro Libi Crestani- "I only know that summer sang in me a little while, that in me sings no more." That excerpt from one of her sonnets expresses how much poet Edna St. Vincent Millay probably knew of depression. Psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison, herself a person with bipolar disorder or manic depression, notes in her book ‘Touched with Fire’ that the majority of people suffering from mood disorder "do not possess extraordinary imagination, and most accomplished artists do not suffer from recurring mood swings." She writes, "To assume, then, that such diseases usually promote artistic talent wrongly reinforces simplistic notions of the 'mad genius.' But, it seems that these diseases can sometimes enhance or otherwise contribute to creativity in some people. Biographical studies of earlier generations of artists and writers also show consistently high rates of suicide, depression and manic-depression." In simple terms, there may be some poets, some writers and other great genius who are very depressed and can still be creative. President Abraham Lincoln was such a person. He had bouts of manic depression and he was very creative in his speeches, in his thinking. But the fact is that some people can still remain positive despite having depression. They are the exceptions. Abraham Lincoln was such an exception. Besides, their quality of life very poor. Even the ones who are depressed that can still maintain creativity , they do not know how to enjoy life. Being successful in your career is of no value if you can not enjoy life. But like I said, most people with depression lose their creativity. Marie osmond sumed it up best, "I'm collapsed in a pile of shoes on my closet floor. I have no memory of what it feels like to be happy. I sit with my knees pulled up to my chest. It's not that I want to be still. I am numb." This is what depression usually does. It takes away your ability to be of any value business wise, family wise and to have a personal life. Doctors think the combination of short-term treatment with medications plus the long-term use of positive thinking might reduce depressive symptoms. Mauro LibiCrestani. “Brain scans have shown that positive thinking stimulates the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which regulates the relationship between mood and thought.. A positive mental attitude may also influence the brain’s reward system, which involves the chemical dopamine, helping to restore a sense of pleasure that’s often lost with depression” ,Dr. Doraiswamy says. Google+ Visit: http://maurolibiempresario.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibithinkingforbusinesses.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibivenezuela2015.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicaracas.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibivenezuela.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicrestaniempresariodeexito.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicrestani15.blogspot.com/ Follow us Twitter @maurolibi15 By Mauro Libi Crestani. Corrie and her family accomplished more than most. They were Dutch and when the Nazi’s took over their country during World War II, they built a safe house to hide Jews and to save whom they could. On February 28 1944, the nazis raided their house and arrested the entire Ten Boom family. They were first sent to prison and then to a concentration camp. Corrie’s mom told her to instill a positive attitude within her to survive the camp, “There is no pit so deep, that he is not deeper still”. The family were strong believers in God, but the message was clear. There is no prison and situation so bad that they are not stronger than. Corrie was released from the camp ten months later by a clerical error. She was left penny less, yet her attitude was one of hope…. ”God does not have problems for me – only plans.”. After the war, she set up a rehab center in the Netherlands. She travelled the world as a public speaker, appearing in more than 60 countries. During this time, she wrote many books, several which became films. She was to receive many awards for her heroic deeds. She was also knighted by the Queen in honor of her work during the war. In Harlem a museum is named after her. There is also a woman’s college in NYC names after her. Anna Frank was also from the Netherlands during World War II. She was jewish and had to go into hiding when she was just 9 years old. Her end came a few years later when she was killed in a concentration camp. Each and everyday she had to keep hidden in a small room. She was never allowed to have friends or go outside, at any moment she could have been found and killed. How did a girl her age mentally survive all that time in hiding? She keep a diary and believe it or not, she keep hope alive with her positive attitude. “The great news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!” Hopefully none of us will every have to be in such circumstances as Anna Frank . If you read her diary, you will see just how a positive attitude can help one through the worst of times and circumstance. In normal everyday life, a positive attitude could bring one to their full potential. It is only when they give up that all is lost. By Mauro Libi Crestani. Google+ Visit: http://maurolibiempresario.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibithinkingforbusinesses.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibivenezuela2015.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicaracas.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibivenezuela.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicrestaniempresariodeexito.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicrestani15.blogspot.com/ Follow us Twitter @maurolibi15 By Mauro Libi Crestani. Categorize Customers can be a very productive and profitable initiative for an office. I was to quote an article called Increasing Sales Productivity By Getting Salespeople to Work Smarter by Dr. Harish Sujan, Barton Weitz, and Mita Sujan. “While personal selling as a communication vehicle has the advantage of allowing salespeople to treat each customer differently, in practice, salespeople cannot take the time to treat each customer in a totally unique manner.” “The golden rule for every businessman is this: put yourself in the customers place.” , Orison Swett Marden. People are different and companies are different. If you are trying to sell products to a woman’s boutique shop you may cater your sales pitch on beauty items, on items that would enhance a woman’s looks. If you were selling products to an auto repair shop, your sales pitch might cater to reliability of the product and its longevity. Once I saw a movie with Mel Gibson. He was a poor salesman and was passed up for a promotion in his company even though he had been with that company for many years. He also was a poor dad who just could not get along with his daughter. His daughter felt that he didn’t care and that he didn’t understand her. Mel Gibson’s character then had an accident and as a result of that accident he was able to hear the thoughts going through woman’s minds. As he started to hear what women were thinking he began to realize that his mind was centered around his own wants and needs. Looking more into the wants and needs of his customers, family and friends, Mel Gibson’s character began to understand that people were individuals and he started putting in an effort to understand what they were thinking. The movie ended with him becoming a better salesman, better dad and a better person. While all customers could be equally profitable, some clients are more profitable than others. By categorizing your customers, you can take the action that’s appropriate for them, identify their marketing and cater to their varying needs while improving your profits. You may break down your customers into general groups, which requires different marketing strategies to reach them. For example, separate customers who want you to come to them from those who are self-service, or group customers with volume accounts versus irregular buyers or standard product buyers versus premium purchasers. Focus on the qualities that make each group unique so that you can obtain the results you want. Now, you can not be all things to all people. You have to find where your talents are best and it may be best to focus on those customers. It would be nice to sell luxury cars and cheap cars and cater to every type of customers needs. However, you may find it more profitable to sell one brand of cars or type of cars and cater to those customer needs. Steve Jobs took customer service a step further. He said that you can not just try to understand your customers what they want right now, you have to try to figure out what they will want tomorrow. By Mauro Libi Crestani. Google+ Visit: http://maurolibiempresario.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibithinkingforbusinesses.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibivenezuela2015.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicaracas.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibivenezuela.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicrestaniempresariodeexito.blogspot.com/ http://maurolibicrestani15.blogspot.com/ Follow us Twitter @maurolibi15 |
AutorMauro Libi Crestani is a Venezuelan businessman CEO of Grupo Libi; a group of various food companies in the country. Archives
Agosto 2016
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