Centurion Company Reviews What Recruiters And CEOs Think About The Value Of An MBA

Centurion Company Reviews - An MBA from a top school can cost almost $100,000—a huge expense. But is it really worth it?Top HR recruiters, CEOs, and startup innovators disagree about the value of MBAs, depending on the situation and person.

Attaching the MBA to your name can affect your hiring chances, your networking abilities, and your innovation skills. While none of the recruiters think to waste your time at a less-than-prestigious graduate program, they do debate whether the top ones deliver on the promise of producing better business leaders.

MBAs are absolutely essential—but you've got to find the right program for you

Christine Ricci believes that an MBA is crucial for success in the business world.

"An MBA or some advanced degree is almost a must-have right now," she said. "It's expected now."

Ricci handles marketing and public relations for B.E. Smith, an interim leadership recruiting firm that focuses mainly on health care industries.

"I'm even seeing senior leaders that are very seasoned go back and get one just because their organization is putting the pressure on to go back and get one," she said.

However, Ricci cautions, not all MBAs are created equally.

"I think it's more important to find the program that's a good fit for you," she said.

If you're fresh out of undergraduate studies, a business school that focuses on seasoned professionals probably is not the best fit, Ricci said.

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Centurion Company Reviews Keys to Inspiring Leadership

Centurion Company Reviews - Forget the stereotypical leadership image of a buttoned-up person in a gray suit hauling around a hefty briefcase. Today, standout leaders come in all shapes and sizes. She could be a blue jeans-clad marketing student, running a major ecommerce company out of her dorm room. He might be the next salt-and-pepper-haired, barefoot Steve Jobs, presenting a groundbreaking new device at a major industry conference.

"Our research indicates that what really matters is that leaders are able to create enthusiasm, empower their people, instill confidence and be inspiring to the people around them," says Peter Handal, chief executive of New York City-based Dale Carnegie Training, a leadership-training company.

That's a tall order. However, as different as leaders are today, there are some things great leaders do every day. Here, Handal shares his five keys for effective leadership:

1. Face challenges.

Great leaders are brave enough to face up to challenging situations and deal with them honestly. Whether it's steering through a business downturn or getting struggling employees back on track, effective leaders meet these challenges openly. Regular communications with your staff, informing them of both good news and how the company is reacting to challenges will go a long way toward making employees feel like you trust them and that they're unlikely to be hit with unpleasant surprises.

"The gossip at the coffee machine is usually 10 times worse than reality," Handal says. "Employees need to see their leaders out there, confronting that reality head-on."

2. Win trust.

Employees are more loyal and enthusiastic when they work in an environment run by people they trust. Building that trust can be done in many ways. The first is to show employees that you care about them, Handal says. Take an interest in your employees beyond the workplace. Don't pry, he advises, but ask about an employee's child's baseball game or college graduation. Let your employees know that you're interested in their success and discuss their career paths with them regularly.

When employees, vendors or others make mistakes, don't reprimand or correct them in anger. Instead, calmly explain the situation and why their behavior or actions weren't correct, as well as what you expect in the future. When people know that you aren't going to berate them and that you have their best interests at heart, they're going to trust you, Handal says.

3. Be authentic.

If you're not a suit, don't try to be one. Employees and others dealing with your company will be able to tell if you're just pretending to be someone you're not, Handal says. That could make them question what else about you might be inauthentic. Have a passion for funky shoes? Wear them. Are you an enthusiastic and hilarious presenter? Get them laughing. Use your strengths and personality traits to develop your personal leadership style, Handal says.

4. Earn respect.

When you conduct yourself in an ethical way and model the traits you want to see in others, you earn the respect of those around you. Leaders who are perceived as not "walking their talk" typically don't get very far, Handal says. This contributes to employees and other stakeholders having pride in the company, which is an essential part of engagement, Handal says. Also, customers are less likely to do business with a company if they don't respect its values or leadership.

5. Stay curious.

"The most successful leaders I know are truly very curious people. They're interested in the things around them and that contributes to their vision," Handal says.Good leaders remain intellectually curious and committed to learning. They're inquisitive and always looking for new ideas, insights and information. Handal says the best leaders understand that innovation and new approaches can come from many places and are always on the lookout for knowledge or people who might inform them and give them an advantage.

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Centurion Company Reviews Why Successful Entrepreneurs Get up Early

Centurion Company Reviews - When running a business, it may seem like there are never enough hours in the day. Tapping into the power of mornings, a time of day when there are less demands, might be the key to increasing your productivity.

For 15 years, Starbucks President Michelle Gaas has set her alarm for 4:30 a.m. to go running. Gretchen Ruben, popular author of The Happiness Project (Harper Perennial, 2011) wakes up at 6 a.m. and works for an hour before her family rises. Time-management expert Laura Vanderkam highlights what makes mornings special and how we can use them more efficiently in her book What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast (Portfolio Trade, 2013). Here are a few benefits to getting out of bed earlier. 

You are less likely to get distracted in the morning. An entrepreneur's day fills up fast. If you wait until the afternoon or evening to do something meaningful for yourself such as exercising or reading, you’re likely to push it off the to-do list altogether. “There are going to be reasons why you can't tackle a personal priority at 4 p.m. -- things have a lot less likelihood of coming up at 6 a.m.," says Vanderkam.

You have more willpower early in the day. Even if you aren't a morning person, you may have more willpower in the early hours than later in the day. "Willpower is like a muscle [that] becomes fatigued with over-use," says Vanderkam. During the course of the day as you're dealing with difficult people, making decisions and battling traffic, you use up your willpower, leaving you feeling depleted toward the end of the day.

Mornings give you the opportunity to set a positive tone for the day. If you've ever slept in past your alarm clock or forgotten your kids' lunches on the counter, you know that starting off the day with a failure can bring down your mood and affect your productivity at work. Vanderkam says waking up earlier allows you to start the day with a victory and set the tone for a happier and more productive day.

If the thought of waking up at sunrise makes you cringe, Vanderkam recommends these four steps to transform even a habitual night owl into a morning person.

1. Keep a time journal. Vanderkam says one of the reasons people say they don't like mornings is that they stay up too late. She recommends keeping a time journal for a week to show where you may be using your time inefficiently. Vanderkam finds when many self-professed night owls look at their time journals, they often find they aren't spending their evening hours productively or doing anything particularly enjoyable.

2. Imagine your perfect morning. Imagine what you would do if you had an extra hour in the day. Would you exercise? Read the newspaper rather than simply skimming the headlines? "[Getting up earlier] isn't about punishing yourself. You will not get out of bed if you don’t have a good reason to do it," says Vanderkam.

3. Plan your morning. Once you have decided what you want to do with your extra time, plan how to execute it, and set as much up as possible the night before. For example, if you want to exercise in the morning, lay out your clothes the night before, or gather the ingredients for your breakfast.

4. Build the habit slowly. Vanderkam says you will likely hit the snooze button and sleep in if you try to switch your habits drastically. So instead of setting your alarm for 5 a.m. when you normally get up at 7: 30 a.m. set the alarm for 10 minutes earlier each day. To make sure you don't lose sleep, go to bed 10 minutes earlier each night. If you have trouble hitting the sack on time, set a bedtime alarm.

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Centurion Company Reviews 3 Ways You're Derailing Your Employees' Productivity

Centurion Company Reviews - In the past six years, my wife Jodi and I have launched three businesses and hired and fired employees along the way. We've learned the hard way that there are certain things that can derail our team members' daily productivity. This isn't a surprise. Entrepreneurs are often stressed and they transfer that stress onto their employees, making them less productive.

Earlier this month, while in Portland for entrepreneur Chris Guillebeau's World Domination Summit, I decided to ask as many people as I could what their bosses had done in the past to get in the way of their productivity. Here are four answers I kept hearing:

• "They micro-manage me. I know how to prioritize my work."
• "They don't acknowledge the work I've done. They only notice what's left to do."
• "They surprise me with questions I wasn't prepared to answer about the business."
• "They call or stop at my desk and talk nonstop about personal things while I'm trying to get work done."

You might be so caught up in your own stress that you don't realize you're causing your own employees stress on a daily basis. When your employees are stressed out, they are unproductive and ineffective.

Here are three ways you might be derailing your employees' productivity without realizing it:

1. You ask the question: "Do you have a minute?"
There are three kinds of conversations you have with people every day: ones that build relationships, transactional ones or opportunity development ones. "Do you have a minute?" is usually the lead-up to a transactional conversation. This is problematic for two reasons. First, what you're about to ask is going to take longer than a minute to answer. Regularly interrupting employees' workflow sends the message that you don't value or respect their ability to focus and get things done. Secondly, they may not be in a position -- physically or mentally -- at that very moment to have the conversation.

The next time you need some time with an employee, send them an email to tell them exactly what you need "a minute" for, if possible, 12 to 24 hours in advance so they can prepare.

2. You dictate without asking what they need to better do their job.
One of my favorite ways to engage everyone around me to be more productive is to end our conversation asking what they need from me in order to get a task done. I like to ask: “Now that we've talked about that, what can you think of that you'll need to ask me about over the next 72 hours?”

One of my clients, Joe Bruzzese began doing this and found that in one week's time, five of his team members asked a total of 27 questions when he ended conversations this way. His big takeaway: They would have had those questions at some point, and because they talked earlier, they were able to handle more on the front side.

3. You send mixed messages about your company's goals.
Make it a point to remind your team of your main purpose. This may seem obvious, but one of the biggest ways to derail your employees from being productive is sending them mixed message about your company's end-goal and overall message.

Being clear about your company's goals makes it possible for everyone to set their own priorities and be their best every day. By being more engaged in work we believe in, our stress is lower and we get more done.

Over the next week, carry a notecard with you everywhere you go. Keep track of how many times you interrupt or distract employees in these ways. You just may see, you're actually causing them stress. Minimize the stress and they'll ultimately get more done.

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Centurion Company Reviews Retirement Myth #1: Accumulation Is The Main Thing

Centurion Company Reviews - For years, Wall Street has been telling us the same thing: Save and invest as much as you can for retirement by trying to obtain as high a return as possible.

With bond returns sagging in a slow growth economy, this advice isn’t particularly helpful.

The only thing we can do outside of saving more is to control our spending. Accumulating assets is great, but how to keep expenses down now and in retirement isn’t something Wall Street likes to talk about.Most of us are still spooked by stock-market volatility, insider trading, hedge fund shenanigans, bank derivatives and poor regulation. Now we have to worry about a skittish bond market and the end of the Federal Reserve’s monetary easing policies — throwing yet another monkey wrench into the works.

The delicate balance between saving and spending involves a plan. But most people don’t like to do it. Even with all of the financial turmoil of this young century, less than half of workers over 45 have even bothered to calculate how much it will cost to retire,according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), a private research organization.

Granted, there’s just too much uncertainty in retirement planning.

Middle Baby Boomers like me who got married late are still worrying about college expenses. Healthcare costs are sure to go up as Medicare is eventually overhauled. The outcome of the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act is still a moving target. If we’re in a slow-growth economy, then stock returns may not float our boat in retirement.

The only thing we know for sure, at least according to the EBRI research, is that we’re likely to retire later. The good news? You can still plan and there are plenty of tools out there to help you.

The best initial approach to retirement planning is to stop worrying about accumulating assets.  Focus on boosting your savings rate while cutting spending. Use retirement calculators to plot out some scenarios. Can you downsize your home and cut your living expenses, taxes and transportation costs? Plug that into a calculator. Would moving to a lower-tax state help reduce your income-tax burden? Would eliminating some major expenses like car or mortgage payments make a difference? Run the numbers.

Here are some useful free calculators online that I like.

* ES Planner. This unique tool focuses on maintaining your standard of living by adjusting spending, rates of return and maximizing Social Security. The Basic version is free, but you can pay for more computing power if you upgrade.

* T. Rowe Price. The mutual fund company offers a suite of tools ranging from a Social Security benefits calculator to a “Ready-2-Retire” tool.

* Ultimate Retirement Calculator. This more comprehensive tool allows you to plug in part-time and business income, inheritances and other one-time benefits.

At the very least, ignore the ads from Wall Street proclaiming how much money they make. Settle down and run the numbers.

I know it sounds unsexy and dull, but you can yield some surprising results when you combine a spending and savings strategy. It’s a two-fisted approach that can work for anyone who’s disappointed with markets and current yields.

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Centurion Company Reviews Leadership Change And Adaptability

Centurion Company Reviews - Who we think of as “successful” changes as we mature.  When we were kids, it was typically about “fame” or “notoriety.”  Film and pop stars had it all for us.  As we got our degrees and entered the workforce, we viewed “intelligence” as success.  Who was the smartest person in the room?  ”Money” certainly is a barometer for success.  However, over the years, we have seen fame wane, or pure intelligence fail our leaders, as they were ill equipped to see their ideas put into practice.  Now, adaptability – the ability to not only embrace but to use change to enhance your and your organization’s trajectory – is the desired trait for the modern leader.  Great leaders love change, see it as an opportunity, and realize the potential for growth.

Love Change

The adage thrown around corporate board and lunchrooms is that “no one likes change.”  I disagree with that.  Great leaders LOVE change.  The masses may not like change; they may like to keep the status quo.  But real leaders love change.  They thrive on the possibilities that change brings.  They fully realize that many will see change as a negative disruption for their daily lives and it is a leader’s responsibility to help them through that disruption.  Our routines are like comfort food, and our great leaders know this – can truly empathize with it.  They also understand that major changes occur and cause us to re-evaluate our roles, our organizations, and ourselves.  A great leader will be mindful that change can be uncomfortable, and will help their peers and teams see what the future can hold for them.  More importantly, they will take the lead on how to get there and will help their folks get to that “new reality.”

Change Is Opportunity

I have had the pleasure of being a leader is several world-class organizations.  I have also learned the hard lessons of having tenure in companies that were “not so world-class,” as well as one colossal train-wreck of a company. Great organizations always had leaders who embraced change and look for the opportunity in the chaos.  While at eBay, there was a constant state of flux, and then CEO Meg Whitman rotated her leaders around the organization to build bench strength.  The CFO today might be the CMO tomorrow. But, when she stepped down, the organization was nonplussed and new leadership stepped in – just as she had designed it.  SAP will be going through a similar change as was announced today with Co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe stepping down as he transitions to his new role on the SAP Executive Board.  This comes during a time of a dramatic change at SAP as we transition to a cloud and data focused organization.  Again, the strength of the culture of leadership at SAP is how executives and leaders at every level stepped up and embraced the change, communicated to their teams, and helped see the amazing opportunities change can bring.  Change brings new responsibilities and new opportunities to leaders who are willing to embrace it, not shy from it.

Change Brings Change

Are you doing the exact same thing, in the exact same way, you were 5 years ago?  How about 10 years ago?   The reasons why you aren’t is “change.”  We changed and adapted along the way – change in schooling, geography, organization, responsibility, personal, etc.  Every great leap forward in your career has been brought about by change.  There are obvious limits to the pace of change that is good for your career.  Constant, unending change is detrimental.  But, a change – even a jarring one – can force you to step out of your comfort zone and help you realize new skills within yourself.

Many people and organizations around you will deride change. Wall Street is generally leering of change; Customers may see change as destabilizing.  However, our world is getting smaller and smaller, and we are more interdependent on market forces we sometimes cannot see.  Change comes at a now alarming rate.  As leaders it is our job to help the market view change through our eyes, help our customers see change to their benefit, and help our people see change as a way to enhance their growth and development.

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Centurion Company Reviews Why Our Brains Like Short-Term Goals

Centurion Company - Achieving your goals isn’t just about hard work and discipline. It’s about physiology. By understanding how the brain processes success and failure, you can jump-start your productivity to create a winning streak and put an end to failed New Year's resolutions.

The more times you succeed at something, the longer your brain stores the information that allowed you to do so well in the first place. That’s because with each success, our brain releases a chemical called dopamine. When dopamine flows into the brain's reward pathway (the part responsible for pleasure, learning and motivation), we not only feel greater concentration but are inspired to re-experience the activity that caused the chemical release in the first place.

This is why the cultivation of small wins can propel you to bigger success, and you should focus on setting just a few small achievable goals. While your ambitions can remain grand, setting the bar too high with goals can actually be counterproductive. Each time we fail, the brain is drained of dopamine making it not only hard to concentrate but also difficult to learn from what went wrong.

Why We Learn More From Success Than Failure

Ever find yourself destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over again? According to a study completed by researchers at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, that is exactly how our brains are wired to work. Their findings determined that our brain cells only learn from experience when we do things right and failure doesn’t register the same way.

In the experiment, monkeys viewed two images on a computer screen, one that presented a reward if the subject reacted by looking right, another when it looked left. The study showed that the brain response when a monkey received an award for looking the right way improved its chances of performing well on the next trial.

The study makes important discoveries not only about the way we learn but the brain’s neural plasticity or ability to change in response to experiences. When behavior is successful our cells become finely tuned to what the animal was learning at the time while a failure shows little change in the brain or improvement in the monkey’s behavior.

Set Goals Your Brain Likes

Collecting wins, no matter how small, can chemically wire you to move mountains by causing a repeated release of dopamine. But to get going you have to land those first few successes. The key to creating your own cycle of productivity is to set a grand vision and work your way there with a few, achievable goals that increase your likelihood of experiencing a positive outcome.

“Your vision is your destination, and small, manageable goals are the motor that will get you there,” says Dr. Frank Murtha, a New York-based counseling psychologist with a focus on investor psychology, behavioral finance and financial risk taking. “Without the vision you’re on a road to nowhere. Without the goals, you have a destination but no motor. They work in tandem, and you need both.”

Create a Road Map for Your Subconscious Mind

Kick off goal setting by preparing a short vision statement of where you want to go. “Vision creates a picture for the subconscious mind. Our subconscious is what makes us such good problem solvers compared to a computer,” says Dr. Richard Peterson, a psychiatrist and neuroeconomics researcher who has written two books on financial risk taking. “We can see 1,000 dimensions of a problem and sort it down to the most important very quickly.”

The subconscious is not only responsible for 90 percent of the decisions we make in day-to-day life, but is also the part of the brain that is largely in charge when we are performing creative tasks or charting unknown territory. The very act of giving your emotional brain a detailed portrait of your end goal also ensures that, even inadvertently, you will take the steps needed to steer yourself toward it.

Articulate your vision with words and a picture or two; the more detailed the better. Post this where you can see it regularly.

Work Your Way There With Short-Term Goals

To rack up those first few wins, you’ve got to set only a few short-term goals at a time. Each should ideally take no more than three months to achieve. The goals should be realistic and specific, and incorporate your strengths. Writing them down, ideally in a place where you will see them every day, will help you stay focused.

If success releases the production of dopamine, failure can do the opposite. Setting over-reaching goals, or too many goals at once, can be counterproductive for those seeking to harness the power of the brain’s reward center. If you set four goals and achieve only two of them, it’s human nature to focus on what went wrong; even the successes you were able to accomplish fail to drum out what you weren’t able to achieve.

Remember, success begets success.

Centurion Company Reviews How To Stay Motivated And Accomplish Anything

Centurion Company - Sustaining motivation can be tough under the best of circumstances. So how can you stay motivated when your to-do list runs to four pages, you just got another rejection letter, your adult child announced his plans to move back home, the car and washing machine went on the fritz at the same time and you can’t find time in the day to work on your own personal projects?

Motivation is not magic. It does not come in a bottle. There is no little blue pill for it. But it’s something you can tap into by design then harness. Every inspirational author, speaker and life coach has his own tips (and DVDs and seminars), but over my decades of observing super-successful, high-achieving people, I’ve come up with a list of seven things that are fundamental to sustaining motivation, whether you’re trying to finish a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle or climb Kilimanjaro.We know those pop-psych directives to put a photo of you at your most fit on the fridge or write yourself a check for $1 million and tape it to your computer monitor or plaster your mirrors with affirmations, like “I attract my perfect soul mate.”

Seven Steps to Staying Motivated

1. Set a goal and visualize it down to the most minute detail. See it, feel it, hear the sounds that accompany the end result (wind rushing through your hair, applause). Elite athletes visualize their performance ahead of time — right down to the smell of the sweat dripping down their face as they cross the finish line.

2. Make a list of the reasons you want to accomplish the goal. In our busy, distracting world, it’s easy to get blown off course. This is why you need to ground yourself in your goal. For extra “success insurance,” write your list with a pen. Studies show that when we write by hand and connect the letters manually, we engage the brain more actively in the process. Because typing is an automatic function that involves merely selecting letters, there’s less of a mental connection.

3. Break the goal down into smaller pieces and set intermediary targets — and rewards.I’ve called this “chunking” long before there was a Wikipedia to explain that there are eight variations of the concept. To me it’s the best non-pharmaceutical antidote to ADHD. Tony Robbins, arguably the foremost motivational speaker and personal development coach, says: “A major source of stress in our lives comes from the feeling that we have an impossible number of things to do. If you take on a project and try to do the whole thing all at once, you’re going to be overwhelmed.”

Enter chunking. My system involves chipping away at a project. Break it down into the smallest realistic steps and only do one at a time. Neuroscience tells us that each small success triggers the brain’s reward center, releasing feel-good chemical dopamine. This helps focus our concentration and inspires us to take another similar step. Try this with your bête noire, whether organizing your papers and bills or setting out to find a new job.

4. Have a strategy, but be prepared to change course. Let Thomas Edison inspire you in this department: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.” “The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

5. Get the help you need. It doesn’t necessarily take a village, but even if you could theoretically accomplish your objective alone, there’s inherent value in sharing your plan. It’s why people get married in front of witnesses. Announcing your intentions sends a strong message to the world and, more important, to your unconscious mind, which can sometimes sabotage our best efforts. Also, we often overestimate our abilities. The flip side is being highly selective about whom you tell and ask for help. It’s akin to the builder’s rule to always get “the right tool for the right job.”

6. Pre-determine how you will deal with flagging motivation. This is not defeatist thinking. On the contrary! It’s (almost) inevitable that at some point along the way, whether because of temporary setbacks or sheer exhaustion, you will need a little boost. When that happens, I think of what others have endured to reach their targets and to quash even the beginning of a pity party, I invoke the most hard-core endurance models I can think of: friends fighting serious diseases and Holocaust survivors.

Winston Churchill is particularly inspirational on this front. After London endured 57 consecutive bombings by the Germans during World War II (the Blitzkrieg), he was invited to address a group of students. In that speech, he uttered his immortal line “Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, give up.”

7. Continually check in with your reasons for carrying on.Despite his all-too-human flaws, Steve Jobs embodied this brilliantly. He once told an interviewer: “I think most people that are able to make a sustained contribution over time — rather than just a peak — are very internally driven. You have to be. Because, in the ebb and tide of people’s opinions and of fads, there are going to be times when you are criticized, and criticism’s very difficult. And so when you’re criticized, you learn to pull back a little and listen to your own drummer. And to some extent, that isolates you from the praise, if you eventually get it, too. The praise becomes a little less important to you and the criticism becomes a little less important to you, in the same measure. And you become more internally driven.”

See the Big Picture

There’s also a more meta, “Why are we here?” way to think about motivation. The great Jewish Rabbi Hillel (alive around the time of Jesus), famously said, “If not you, then who? If not now, when?” If you truly let those words sink in, it’s hard to be slacker.

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Centurion Company Reviews Tips For Finding (And Retaining) More Customers

Centurion Company - While many business leaders are content to sit at their desk waiting for the phone to ring, in today’s competitive business environment, you must begin thinking differently in order to grow (or retain) your client or customer base. This doesn’t mean changing your service offerings; it means spending time on the prospect-client relationship itself. Below are three tips to help you do just that.

Tip #1: It’s personal

In a time when texting, email and online meetings are common, you need to find ways to make things personal. Remember, it is almost always a P2P (people to people) relationship before it’s a B2B or B2C relationship.

Entrepreneurs tend to love chasing after new wins. That being said, sometimes we need to be reminded to maintain relationships with the people we already do business with.

Carve out the time needed to step outside your world and into theirs. Is your client or customer in a different town, city, or state? Fly there. They are worth it. There is no better way to build a personal relationship than meeting in person, listening to their stories and engaging in a way that email and social media can facilitate but not replace.

Tip #2: Go the distance

In the world of tech, speed, and instant gratification, my generation of entrepreneurs is constantly tempted by the idea of that knockout sale or glamorous overnight success – sometimes so much so that we forget to go the distance and understand their motivation.

Simply doing our job isn’t enough. We must go a step further to learn about our customer’s goals and how we can best assist in meeting them. Remember, your clients or customers never just want a website, an accountant or a power drill. There are bigger goals behind each of these tools: increased sales, more insights about their business, or maybe a tree house for the kids.

If you know what your customer’s goals are, it is easier to sell them something they actually need, rather than something they will buy just once that may not improve their lives. If you give them what they really want, you will become much more than just another vendor.

Tip #3: Feel their pain

Humans are emotional. Even though we’d like to think that every emotional connection we make with our customers is positive, there are plenty of occasions where that is simply not the case. Don’t fret, though, because a negative emotional connection can also be good for business if you know what you are doing.

Clients and customers typically come to us for two reasons: potential gain and the removal of existing pain. You’ll get an earful when you learn about their aspirations, but you’ll also have to use your intuition to source whatever else is going on. Dig deep and understand what’s really bothering them, and then take it away.

Think painkillers that take away headaches versus vitamins that keep you healthy. Leverage both principles, and you’ll add more value to your customers.

Sure, in some cases you’ll lose a prospect or customer based on factors that are out of your control. However, by building solid relationships and doing what you can to discover goals and pain points, you will find and retain more business.

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Centurion Company on Personal Goal Setting

Centurion Company - Many people feel as if they're adrift in the world. They work hard, but they don't seem to get anywhere worthwhile.

A key reason that they feel this way is that they haven't spent enough time thinking about what they want from life, and haven't set themselves formal goals. After all, would you set out on a major journey with no real idea of your destination? Probably not!

The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You'll also quickly spot the distractions that can, so easily, lead you astray.Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn your vision of this future into reality.

Why Set Goals?

Goal setting is used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. Setting goals gives you long-term vision and short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge, and helps you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.

By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you'll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. You will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you've set.

Starting to Set Personal Goals

You set your goals on a number of levels:

• First you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life (or over, say, the next 10 years), and identify the large-scale goals that you want to achieve.
• Then, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit to reach your lifetime goals.
• Finally, once you have your plan, you start working on it to achieve these goals.

This is why we start the process of goal setting by looking at your lifetime goals. Then, we work down to the things that you can do in, say, the next five years, then next year, next month, next week, and today, to start moving towards them.

Step 1: Setting Lifetime Goals

The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or at least, by a significant and distant age in the future). Setting lifetime goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.

To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of the following categories (or in other categories of your own, where these are important to you):

• Career - What level do you want to reach in your career, or what do you want to achieve?
• Financial - How much do you want to earn, by what stage? How is this related to your career goals?
• Education - Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to have in order to achieve other goals?
• Family - Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
• Artistic - Do you want to achieve any artistic goals?
• Attitude - Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? (If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.)
• Physical - Are there any athletic goals that you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
• Pleasure - How do you want to enjoy yourself? (You should ensure that some of your life is for you!)
• Public Service - Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?

Spend some time brainstorming these things, and then select one or more goals in each category that best reflect what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals that you can focus on.

As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want. (If you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants - however, make sure that you also remain true to yourself!)

Step 2: Setting Smaller Goals

Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a five-year plan of smaller goals that you need to complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan.

Then create a one-year plan, six-month plan, and a one-month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.

Then create a daily To-Do List of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals.

At an early stage, your smaller goals might be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your higher level goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.

Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.

Once you've decided on your first set of goals, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your To-Do List on a daily basis.

Staying on Course

Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience. (A good way of doing this is to schedule regular, repeating reviews using a computer-based diary.)

SMART Goals

A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants (some of which we've included in parenthesis), SMART usually stands for:

• S - Specific (or Significant).
• M - Measurable (or Meaningful).
• A - Attainable (or Action-Oriented).
• R - Relevant (or Rewarding).
• T - Time-bound (or Trackable).

For example, instead of having "To sail around the world" as a goal, it's more powerful to say "To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2015." Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!

Further Goal Setting Tips

The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective, achievable goals:

• State each goal as a positive statement - Express your goals positively – "Execute this technique well" is a much better goal than "Don't make this stupid mistake."
• Be precise: Set precise goals, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you'll know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
• Set priorities - When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by having too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
• Write goals down - This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
• Keep operational goals small - Keep the low-level goals that you're working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward.
• Set performance goals, not outcome goals - You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. It can be quite dispiriting to fail to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control!
• In business, these reasons could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, they could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck.
• If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals, and draw satisfaction from them.
• Set realistic goals - It's important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (for example, employers, parents, media, or society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions.
• It's also possible to set goals that are too difficult because you might not appreciate either the obstacles in the way, or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance.

Achieving Goals

If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the self-confidence you deserve.When you've achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress that you've made towards other goals.

With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:

• If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goal harder.
• If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goal a little easier.
• If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
• If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.

• Feed lessons learned back into your goal setting. Remember too that your goals will change as time goes on. Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, consider letting them go.

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