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What is one of the most important success principles?

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The most important success principle for me has always been to say what I mean and mean what I say. It’s very important to come from a position of honesty and integrity and to do things that not only create value for you, but also for those around you. You don’t go into it dependent on the outcome, whether it will be reciprocated or not. If the value is reciprocated, they are the type of person you want to work with. If the value is not reciprocated, you have saved yourself months of time dealing with someone you don’t want to work with. You give up a little bit upfront, but that just comes with honesty and integrity and knowing that you’re creating value for those around you.

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Do you have a value-offer model for some of our business owners who are listening today? Any suggestions for those people who have been offering something that isn’t working, that’s not getting them the leads they were hoping for?

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There’s no specific “X plus Y equals Z” formula for this. For us, we have free intro seminars, which are a sales tool, but our clients get the value of three to four hours of class. They learn in our selling arena. There’s a lot that they can take out of that. We give them a preview of what we’re going to teach. In order for you to give the value upfront, you have to have a product or program that you really believe in. Then you can stand behind it 110 percent because, in order to be convincing, you have to be convinced. Once you’re convinced, you can sit there and be as high pressure as you want because you believe in it. If you’re making logical sense and it’s something that is genuinely going to help the person you’re standing in front of, then you’re on the right path. So for the business owners, I think you just have to tip that value scale so it’s a no-brainer. You want to give them $1,000 worth of value for only a dollar.

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Sign me up! The interesting thing, and where we seem to be moving, is that you just can’t have that me-too product or service anymore. You have to offer something that you know is unique. You create something that you know stands out because you designed it to capitalize on your own strengths and the needs of the people you’re serving. So you are convinced it’s the best thing out there.

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Let’s go way back, before The Art of Charm was this huge, international service that it is. You guys were just starting out. You didn’t have all these products and freebies that you could offer. How did you offer value then?

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We always had the advantage of our intellectual property, which was the curriculum that was created. Nowadays, what’s going to sell the best is a knowledge-based product. Something that you can give the knowledge away for free. That’s what blogs and all these web sites online are for. People are visiting them for the content – to be entertained or to learn. Lucky for us, we had something we could teach people. Even to this day, our web team worked on barter. Tens of thousands of dollars was traded as credit toward programming for stuff that we teach. Our programs are high price-point. We’ve probably bartered with 75 percent of the vendors that we work with. They all wanted to take our programs. If you have something that people genuinely want, you cannot fail. We go on our podcast or the forum and ask our people what products and programs they want. You have to build a community, a base of followers, who are in line and in tune with your message. If your message is something that is contagious and it’s something that they want, and they know their friends and family want, then you have no place to go but up.

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Thanks Benjamin for your words of wisdom!

In addition to The Art of Charm, you can listen to Benjamin on the PickUpPodcast.

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We can’t thank you enough for reading our post today, but we’ll do our best! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

There’s a group of people who actually believe their lives will get better this year. Can you believe it? Join us next time to find out who they are. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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Relationship Building Blocks

(Image in today's post by hisks)

Phil, what does reCareered mean?

It means someone who is seeking a job change, or trying to revitalize their career, or someone who is between jobs and wants help with how the job markets have changed in the last eight years or so.

How has the job market changed?

Eight years ago, the majority of resumes were delivered on paper. Around 2000, it changed to where most resumes were delivered digitally.

And how does that change the resume itself?

It changes it completely. The paper-based resume had to be static. The only way to customize it was by a cover letter. A digital resume can be searched. It also increased the number of resumes that went into most companies, by as many as ten-fold.

We always hear about search engine optimization and how you want to rank at the tops of the pages for Google. But apparently you can do the same for your resume … it can be optimized?

You bet, and it’s especially critical in today’s world. Most major employers get thousands of resumes for each job, but they only staff to look at twenty to thirty. That’s two to three percent. So your goal, in submitting your resume today, is getting to the top two or three percent. Through resume search optimization, you can manage that process rather than have it be random. My strategy with my clients is to make a resume a single-use document – to have it infinitely customizable so that you’re gaming the search engine and forcing it higher up the search page.

How do we make a good impression right upfront?

There’s been research from the University of Toledo and Stanford University that states that interview decisions are made within the first two to thirty seconds. That blew me away. The rest of the interview is just somebody justifying their initial decision. So it’s a “gut feel” decision that may occur even before you shake hands. It’s all about preparation. Learn about your client – how they communicate (verbally and non-verbally), how they dress, how they look. If you want a job, go to a place that’s close to their office and sit there during lunch. Talk to people from that company who are getting lunch there. On a Friday night, go to Happy Hour at a bar close to their office and talk to people from that company. When you talk to them, watch their body movements. What’s the tone they use? What’s the speed they use to talk? You can also do that with their written communication – their web site, annual reports, press releases. The key to all this is communicating to your audience that it seems like you already work there.

It reminds me of the book, Guerilla Selling. It’s all about learning about your customer, in that case, but in the case the employer you’re going after – getting as much information as you can, wherever you can. It’s amazing how much information you can gather.

Sure. That’s also an effective way to use LinkedIn, Facebook or your own personal network. Chances are you have contacts within that company. A lot of people only use those contacts to see what jobs are available and to ask them to pass their resume along. They leave out some of the greatest uses of a network – talking to people within an organization to find out what an organization is like and what the communication style is like. Listening for how they’re answering questions rather than just what they’re saying.

This is fantastic advice because you do want to fit in. It’s all about mimicking. When you’re at an interview, should you sit up straight and lean forward or should you try to have your body language be similar to the body language of the interviewer? From what I’ve read, you should try to mimic that person.

That’s exactly what you’re doing – it’s called mirroring. You’re trying to show that you fit in. You speak the same language. You’re really trying to act like you already work at the company. It takes a ton of preparation. A lot of people aren’t willing to put that preparation in, but the people who do get a huge, almost an unfair, advantage.

Phil's links

You can get free daily job tips from Phil at his blog or visit his main site, reCareered, the place for resume search optimization and job search 2.0. 

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