Warning: Default decisions and actions, although seductive when chosen and not always easy to recognize, can be lethal to your success.

First, perhaps it’s best to define default. It occurs when you have chosen–operative word, chosen–not to make a decision or take an action that would help you move forward in achieving what you want in business, in your career, or in your personal life.

Many companies lose market viability because of a default mind-set that results in default behavior. Individuals lose out on career and personal relationships, due to default behaviors. So, how do you recognize this lethal-to-your-success choice of behavior? Here are some examples:

Suppose you are preparing for an important client conversation. With “less than complete” client knowledge your discussion, if not “target on”, could produce a meeting outcome of buyer delay and stalled sales cycles.

On the other hand, planning and using the Four Client Agreements defined below will help you gain the critical information to build customer focused recommendations, move the sales cycle forward and distinguish you as a valuable solutions provider!

Try asking for these Four Client Agreements on your next call…

1. Client Agrees to discuss a Valid Business Reason (VBR)

Used at the beginning of each client phone call, meeting, or presentation…the VBR is a statement to discuss what might be important to the client’s business situation. When the client agrees, it promotes interest for an indepth business discussion and reduces resistance to your well planned questions!

Tip: the VBR is a value statement for them, not about us, so no call objective or solution statement at this point in your conversation.

2. Client Agrees to your understanding of their Needs and Buying Concepts.

Used to summarize and gain agreement on the client’s key concepts and their solution image prior to making any recommendation. A broader base of client information will also help you leverage your strengths, minimize your “flags” and overcome price or other buying influence obstacles.

Tip: planning good questions to gain critical information or verify assumptions is well worth the pre-call planning time…especially when on a joint call with a team member!

3. Client Agrees to your Recommendation or Solution

Used to gain agreement from the client that your unique strengths discussion and recommendation fits “hand in glove” to the client’s verified concepts and their image of the best solution. Gain this agreement prior to discussing which “next step” in the sales cycle would be most appropriate.

Tip: if there is not enough client information to make the recommendation statement truly customer-focused versus product focused, evidenced by quantifiable client benefit statements…stop, go back and ask more in depth questions prior to asking for Minimum or Best Action Commitments.

4. Client Agrees To Next Actions

Used to gain agreement on the Best or Minimum Action to be taken by you “and the client” as a result of the conversation. These actions need to be appropriate to where you are in the sales cycle and to the business relationship. This ensures a partnering relationship and moves the sales cycle forward.

Tip: appropriate Minimum Actions requested by you, for the client to do, but not agreed to by the client could be a “red flag” for you with this key decision maker buying influence and opportunity!

Planning and conducting calls with the Four Client Agreements demonstrate to your clients that you understand and provide high value solutions that resolve their issues better than any competitive option. These promote key buying influence conversations that help mitigate issues and leverage strengths of your solutions. (Promise!)

Why is it that you can spend days, months and even years dreaming about reaching your full potential, yet never get there? If there is something you want in your life or in your career that just isn’t happening, you’re probably caught in the same cycle that has trapped so many others – the trap of either not believing you can achieve something or not knowing how. SuccessMapping® will help you break that cycle in eight steps. As you walk through each step, you will actually be creating your own success map. You will identify what you want, map out how to get it and obtain whatever it is that has been eluding you. Maybe you want a promotion or a new career altogether. Perhaps you want to start your own business. You can do it when you map out the right plan.

The first step is to identify what’s most important to accomplish, then check out what you believe about your ability to achieve it at this time. To protect what you value now and achieve more of what you want, you’ve got to believe you can! If you don’t believe you have tremendous potential, your mind will limit your ability to pursue it. The good news is you can change your mind – literally. Science tells us the brain is not hard-wired or static. You can actually reprogram your brain by using it more. Learn new things. Explore new ideas. Exercise your brain for expanded capabilities.
Focus is equally important. Do you know what you want to accomplish? Are your thoughts, feelings and actions focused on achieving your goal, your dream, and your life’s work? Use Step One to prevent distractions from derailing you and make changes that will keep moving you forward.

Think about how much time and energy you waste when you are not clear about your direction in life. Step One gives you the tools to not only decide where you want to go, but to assess that direction, so you can leverage your strengths, minimize potential issues and make the journey a most reasonable and achievable destination.

Stay tuned for more SuccessMapping® concepts, tools and best practices on “how to” map your success!

Download your free Success Map and SuccessMapping® summary checkpoints.

Arlene Johnson has spent more than two decades helping companies and leaders achieve extraordinary results.   Now, for the first time, she is sharing her expertise, so that people  everywhere can develop their own step-by-step Success Map™ and begin reaching their career and personal goals.  In her new book,SUCCESSMAPPING®:   Achieve What You Want…Right Now! (Emerald Book Company/August 2009),  she presents an eight step process, that helps readers overcome the stumbling blocks that get in the way of success.

“While companies have tools and systems to help them improve their performance, individuals don’t,” Johnson says.  What they need, she says, is a map for success – a map that gets them started,  keeps them focused and keeps them “in the game’ ” until they win.  In her book, Johnson describes how people can develop a game plan no matter what their goals are, whether they are CEOs or employees, students or  homemakers.

The Eight “Success Blockers” That Can Get In The Way

The perils of trying to reach one’s goals without a map – like embarking on a road trip without knowing the best route – are many.  “Unwittingly, we often think, say, and do the very things that  keep us from succeeding,” Johnson writes.  In fact, she has identified  eight major “Success Blockers” that tend to trip people up on the way to  achieving their goals.  Each step of her SuccessMapping program addresses  one of these potential stumbling blocks and enables readers to identify and  overcome these obstacles without being stalled or derailed.

The Eight Progressive Steps of SuccessMapping®

Every person’s Success Map will be unique, but is built using the same step-by-step method to  achievement.

1. What Do You Really Want? The first step of the SuccessMapping process addresses what is perhaps the most fundamental Success Blocker – neglecting the possibilities and not believing in oneself.  Johnson explains how to harness more of a person’s innate potential by reframing negative thoughts – from indecisive to committed, from insecure to confident. She also offers a “goal check” worksheet that readers can use to assess how achievable their goals are and identify where adjustments may be needed.

2. The Power of You – with Intention. Having decided, in step one, on a specific goal,  step two is about overcoming the next Success Blocker  – lack of focus.   The crux of this step lies in developing an “Intention Statement” that declares what a person wants to accomplish.  “This keeps you energized,  engaged, and focused on making the best decisions and taking the best actions,” writes Johnson.

3. The Power of Choice. Achieving any goal demands change – and when faced with change, people can choose to engage, do nothing, or resist.  In this section, Johnson  explains how, by preparing in advance, people can learn to make choices that help them engage in change and seize opportunities.  As Johnson writes, “The  choices you make, how you think and behave, and the actions you take are  reliable predictors of your success…if you choose to wait and see, you  have chosen not to succeed.”

4. Using Your Strengths. All too often, people fail to leverage their strengths. This step helps readers identify the strengths sitting in their mental closet, and enables them to select and use the ones most relevant to their goals.   As Johnson says, “Using a personal strength you have now to more easily achieve what you next want to accomplish is an exercise of personal power.”

5. Transforming Stumbling Blocks Into Steppingstones. Ignoring potential obstacles is another major success blocker.   Johnson details her problem-solving process for flushing out and resolving any potential stumbling blocks – whether external (other people or situations that affect what a person wants to be or do) or internal (the person’s own fears,  self-doubts, and concerns).

6. Ask For and Get What You Need. It’s not always easy to ask for – or get – help from others.  SUCCESSMAPPING lays out an approach that will help people know how to ask for what they need. . .and get it.  Effective communication is key – and  Johnson’s Collaborative Conversation Plan is the answer.  Johnson points out, “As mortal humans, we’re just not good at guessing what’s going on in people’s minds – well, at least not accurately.”

7. Making Decisions…With No Regrets. Making decisions without foresight is Success Blocker 7. Johnson has developed a Decision Matrix that makes it possible to evaluate all actions that could be taken in any given scenario, and then enables readers to select the action that will be most effective for achieving their desired results.  As Johnson says, “Using the Decision Matrix tool  results in informed decisions, yes or no, that are easy to commit to, with no regrets.”

8. Yes, I’m Really Ready to Achieve My Intention Statement. Ultimately, not being change-ready can sabotage any goal. Johnson explains how to recognize and manage the normal negative reactions to change in order to become comfortable with new norms as quickly as possible.  Johnson reminds us that, “Even when we feel change ready,  we can be quite surprised with how we actually respond when the change occurs.  The moment you’re asked to actually do something different is when your real  transition begins and the predictable change dynamics kick in.”

Reaching career or personal goals – whether it’s winning a promotion, surviving a reorganization, shining in a presentation, or going back to school – requires much more than hope and wishful thinking. SUCCESSMAPPING includes motivational exercises and checklists to mark progress, as well as dozens of anecdotes and real-life examples, to maximize potential and turn dreams into attainable goals.