Hope you’re having a great week.

I just arrived back into Sydney today from my trip to five different cities in the US last week.

There were so many highlights, I’m not sure where to begin, but I’ll share some of the most profound ones with you that you may find insightful and inspirational.

Later next week I’m off to Phuket, Thailand for a major Entrepreneur Conference where I’ll be a guest speaker sharing many new breakthroughs I’ve discovered recently for how to take a business from 6 to 7-figures without adding more staff.

1. First and probably most memorable was visiting my 99 year old grandmother who is still as sharp as they come.

She reminded me of a piece of wisdom she shared with me a few years back.

As she was commenting on what most feel is a “tough” economy today as compared to her vivid memory when the economic depression occurred back in the 30s, she said to me:

“Ari, successful people are made in good times and in bad times, so don’t ever forget, the “times” have nothing to do with it, it’s all about your own Mindset.”

I’ll let you sit with that so it sinks in.

2. Spending a full day with an established sales team of a $300 million company in New York last week was quite interesting.

It wasn’t a typical training session. I didn’t present. Instead we sat around a table in a very large conference room and we had a day long discussion about what they perceived as “obstacles” to them bringing in new sales.

In that discussion, one of the many things I uncovered holding them back, was a fear of letting go of trying to “control” the sales conversation, because they felt if they didn’t, they would “lose the sale”.

The big breakthrough came when they finally realized and made peace with the idea that if they could shift to connecting at a deeper level with their prospective clients based on their issues they haven’t fully realized yet, rather than trying to engineer their conversations around their products and services, they would be able to create genuine trust to determine if there really is a sales opportunity or not.

You see, most of us have been conditioned to assume the sale will happen if you move a prospect towards it.

But in this new economy, if you are perceived as focusing only on your goal of making the sale, rather than being a problem solver, you’ll continue to be stuck “chasing prospects”.

Start letting go of trying to control the way your prospects should think about you and your solution — instead, dive deep into their issues, stay there with them, until they say “how can you help me with this”.

3. Saturday in Los Angeles was our sold out Sales Breakthrough day. What an amazing experience that was.

I call it Sales Breakthrough day because that’s exactly what every single person in that room experienced.

At lunch time they all said they could go home and still feel they received more than 10 times the amount of value that they didn’t even expect to receive.

Why will they all now experience their most successful sales year ever?

Because in that room on Saturday, they opened up and shared their deep-seated fears about what might happen if they focussed entirely on creating trust with their prospects, rather than focusing on the “sale”.

They said things like:

“Won’t I be perceived as passive if I’m not aggressively pursuing my goal of the sale?”

“How do I set my monthly sales targets and ambitiously pursue them without applying pressure in the sales process?”

“If I’m not chasing every opportunity in front of me, then how do I maximize my productivity?”

Ah, the internal conflicts we still carry with us, based on the old sales conditioning that continues to prevent so many from being fully “present” with their potential clients.

What are the answers to the above you ask?

Those I will soon share with you in my upcoming updates to you.

Stay tuned…

Now I’m off to spend some personal time with my wife and kids.

Feel free to share your comments below.