I went on a one day cookery course yesterday. It was a birthday present, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Lots of fun and laughter, and lots of excellent food (cooked by ourselves) all in a great setting at Braxted Park. Of course everyone had arrived there with the intention of having a good day, so the chances were that it would be, but thrusting 12 people together none of whom knew each other, could have been quite quiet, which would definitely have been less enjoyable if that had been the case.

The thing is, it is all about making the best out of every situation you are in. No doubt we all end up going to things we don’t want to go to, and doing things we don’t want to do, but once you are there and doing it, you may as well make it as good as it possibly can be. It is all about your attitude and frame of mind. If you are determined to have a bad time, no doubt you will, and if you decide to have fun, equally well, the likelihood is that you will.

The same rules apply to your business. If you get into a rut of negativity (which is quite easy at the moment) you start to expect things to go wrong. You stop expecting to convert new leads, and instead of preventing bad things from happening, sub-consciously you let them occur, and then just shrug and assume that the world is working against you.

However, now is the time to keep thinking as positively as possible (not easy I grant you). The more you keep on believing that things will get better, the more you do to re-inforce that belief. In due course, if you do enough of the positive things, then good things will start to happen, and your business will once again start to thrive.

“If only I knew then what I know now”. How often have we said that or heard people say it? I suppose it is a sort of cry of regret, because it infers that if I had had more knowledge or even the correct knowledge then perhaps I would have done things differently. But I wonder if that really is the case? In fact for most people it is their character which determines if they are “doers” or just “talkers”

Of course when we were younger, and we had few responsibilities, and probably no dependents, so we were in a far better place to take a risk. But as we grow older, and we have others who look to us for support and guidance, the risks we take may no longer just affect us, so we tend to back away from them. However, to get what you want out of life you can’t just sit back and hope it all works out, so from time to time you have to take managed choices or risks to move things forward towards your ultimate goals.

The point is, that there is nothing to be gained by looking back at what could have happened if we had done things differently. Hopefully for most of us there is still plenty of time to change things in the future. There is no time like the present to start the process, and therefore why not start now to avoid yet more regrets in the future.

So what do you still want out of life? What do you want to do with your business? Work out what you need to do to make these things happen, assess the risks, and then start taking the first few steps. In essence call your own bluff i.e. now you do know what you know, what are you going to do about it?

Have you ever turned up at a meeting, and the first thing your prospective client says is “I have to be honest, I’m not sure I really need your product/service, but just thought it might be interesting to talk to you”, or words to that effect?

My reaction used to be, “Well thanks for wasting my time and money”, but actually I now realise it is quite a strong buying sign. Essentially they are putting up their defenses just in case they decide that I genuinely do not have anything they could want (or that they may deem to be too expensive in their current cash flow situation), but in reality they wouldn’t want to be wasting their own time, so what they are really saying is “Go ahead and convince me”.

It certainly is a challenge to start from this point, but treat it as an opportunity, and learn how to get around it. For me, I now see it rather like a line of defenses, and I have to probe for a way through. So it is a matter of asking lots of questions. As soon as you can feel the “line of attack” being closed off, back off, and find another way. In the end there will nearly always be something that interests them, and once you have identified that, then you can concentrate on that aspect until you get their business.

Sometimes it can take a while, but you will know when you have hit the right button, as their body language changes, and suddenly the person who knew all the answers is starting to be less sure of themselves, and starts asking questions back. The whole dynamic of the meeting will change, and that is the time to ask for their business.

It can take a while to learn this, but provided you know your product/service well, and you are well prepared with your questions, then more often than not you can overcome what initially may appear as an insurmountable challenge.