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Reflection

What exactly are goals?

Consider WHAT you WANT to create and achieve next year. What matters to you so much that you are going to “make it happen,” as my father used to say by setting a strategy. Those are your goals.

Goals should always be written as RESULTS. Articulation is important. I like the S-M-A-R-T process because it’s clear and simple.

               Specific                             Clear, not ambiguous or vague.
               Measurable                    It can be counted. Numbers or percentages…

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Goals Again

Yes. Goals again!

In most showrooms, December is rather quiet, with customers, clients and designers preparing for and celebrating the holidays. Prior to setting goals for the new year, December is a good month for evaluation and analysis if you didn’t do so in November. If not, see my November blogs for assistance.

Are you noticing any resistance to writing goals for next year? Do you have any sense that you don’t really need to do write goals? Perhaps you feel that you have figured out a p…

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GRATEFUL THINKING

In the season of Thanksgiving, I thought it might be helpful to bring gratitude to every element of the sales process and to see where we can expand our effectiveness. And since thoughts impact words and words impact deeds, it’s a great place to start.

Grateful thinking is a process and a practice that starts with prompts and reminders to begin building the practice. Personally, I notice that when I let my practice and structure lapse, my thinking follows, and I am not ‘operating’ from a place of…

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Practice – the concept

Most of us would agree that to achieve excellence or to be good at something, we have to practice. Right?

We may have natural talent in an area of interest, but talent alone will only get us so far. To go beyond our innate skills, we’ve got to practice.

Conceptually, practice equates with something of interest. To invest the time to practice, we would need the desire to improve…to learn beyond what we know…to discover and expand our limits…to experience ourselves beyond who we know oursel…

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Recognizing Resistance

Resistance is one of those things that is so easy to see in others but nearly impossible to see in ourselves. Some of that comes from the oft-believed notion that we are ‘open to new things’. How many people read Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson and saw themselves as Haw, the mouse who was willing to try a different way that would produce a better outcome?

Every day, EVERY day, I ‘invent the possibility’ of being willing and open. And I do that every day because it sets my thinking to …

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Something Bigger 

Small changes are easier to make when there is a bigger outcome in mind… one that is sparkly and burning and so much better than the current reality. 

If the outcome isn’t big enough, the effort isn’t worth it, is it? Does losing 3 pounds really inspire as much as losing 10? Or WHAT will losing 10 pounds bring to your life (lower blood pressure, knees that are less cranky, pants that aren’t as tight...or the jeans that look fabulous at that magic number) that really matters to you?  The goal …

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New Year’s....are you ready?

I hope you have made good use of this month to reflect on the past year and start to put pen to paper to create the new one. 

Have you completed your goals for this year? Did you make them 12-month goals or did you try to achieve them by Thanksgiving so that you can enjoy the holidays stress-free, with your loved ones?

  • What did you learn from this year that you don’t want to repeat next year? 
  • What new challenges await you? 
  • What are the areas you want to develop – business skills? Tec…

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The Last Month of the Year

December is a funny month. 

For retail showrooms, this tends to be a slower traffic month with a lower average sale. And, like November, it also tends to be a good delivery month, with holidays driving making homes lovely for family and guests. 

Residential trade business continues to be strong and retail traffic has started to wane a bit but is still sufficient to hit targets. And trade showrooms can go either way as these are not typical times. 

Given the unpredictability, this is a c…

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