Self-Devpt. Nuggets™

My Income & Expense Manager is a nifty little Excel-VB driven software. Runs trouble free on MS Excel versions 2000 to 2013. Sells for N5,000 (But if you want, you can fill the form below, to claim it for N1,000 – approx. $5 USD: Offer Expires MNT Friday 31st July 2015).

If this app could speak, it would tell you about a heartbreakingly prolonged, adversity filled period of my life during the last QUARTER of 2007(described in another article here – click)…

That was when I marketed that app, on a CDROM from door to door (via daily pavement pounding) in the Ogba-Ikeja area of Nigeria’s Lagos state.

I pushed myself so hard, that in November 2007, I sold over N41,000.00 (Forty One Thousand Naira) worth of it to micro, small and medium business owners in the above mentioned area. Funny thing is I NEVER thought about how much it was adding up to. I was just going out there each day, driven by a need to make money to meet the basic needs of myself and my dependents.

Below: Image version of printed flyer I used to market an earlier version of the Income & Expense Manager

What I learned during that phase serves me well today, as I sell to high profile buyers from home – using the web.

How is this possible you ask?

You see, if you pay careful attention, you CAN learn a LOT about yourself and the psychology of selling to HUMAN BEINGS in the process of struggling and suffering to make sales!

When you KNOW that you have NO MONEY in your pockets or bank account to buy fuel into your car, or buy food for your wife and kids to eat at home, YOUR RESOLVE to close sales is likely to HARDEN!

Human beings like leisure, pleasure, comfort, fun etc. We do NOT like stressing ourselves when alternatives exist to take things easy. We love EASE.

We therefore need to have something that we simply cannot ignore happen to use, to DENY that love of EASE.

This is why many who succeed as sales persons tend to be those who are DRIVEN by a need they have (e.g. lack of money, hunger, poverty) which they know that CLOSING sales can help them meet

A guy who needs to cough up N150k to complete his rent renewal, will be DRIVEN to try closing more sales of his Web Marketing service (priced at N100k).

He will do so, in order to fulfill his rent obligation, and have a little left over to live on.

What I just said above is what has happened personally to me: October to December 2007 was an extremely challenging period of my life!

But there were many others…

Those kinds of circumstances are what I routinely found myself faced with, and often with NO ONE to help (Especially since close relatives had already been lending me money I never managed to return)!

Those painful, prolonged experiences of struggle and suffering forced me to grow faster than I would have, if I had HAD alternatives to fall back on every time.

For instance, my negotiation skills rapidly improved because of the constant need I had to return home with at least ONE sale of my N2,500 software, so as to provide for my family’s needs for the next day. We were basically living from hand to mouth back then.

Yet, I persisted. Actually I had no choice. My bridges were burnt.

So I had to steel myself (hat tip to Burt Dubin) and fight to get back on my feet.

And it worked: I came face to face with my other self(as promised by Napoleon Hill in Think & Grow Rich) i.e. the one that KNOWS that conquering adversity is necessary step for success achievement.

I consequently gained LOTS of confidence and selling skills refinement from selling my N2,500 app. I also got a LOT of ideas about WHO I could sell to, WHAT I could sell to them, and HOW to make them buy.

It all began to pay off within the first 8 weeks of 2008…

I won high paying projects building apps much more elaborate and sophisticated than the N2,500 app. The client companies (a hotel, as well as a hospital) hired me to develop custom apps for them after I did my demonstration of the smaller app.

Basically, the decision maker asked “Can you build something that works like this app of yours, to do what we do here in MS Excel?”

And I simply replied: “Of course. Just tell and/or show me what you do, and how you do it, then tell me what you want the finished app to do. For best results, let me have someone to vet what I’m doing, to minimize rework, and you’ll have your app in the promised delivery duration. ”

By this time, my selling instincts from the painful periods of hardship had become keenly honed…

Among other things, I’d become adept at parrying any attempts to haggle about or beat down my fees unreasonably.

I was always clear in my mind about HOW MUCH I needed to get from each job, to ensure reasonable peace of mind for me and my family, until I got another project.

The result was that I got home with much more money in my pockets.

Today, I use what I learnt to close sales without even meeting clients face to face.

That’s how suffering helps you. When you have a NEED that you feel compelled to satisfy, and money is required, that NEED is likely to drive you to put in much more effort, than you normally would be willing to, in order to get the money that enables you meet it!

During the period when that need remains unmet, you may feel pain, stress or have to struggle. In other words, you may experience some suffering. But ultimely, if you persist, that NEED you feel is what will drive you to succeed.

That’s why I tell people all the time that suffering is good for us…like Jim Rohn said, “Adversity forces the human spirit to grow!”

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Below: Raw Data Entry Table for the latest version of the Income & Expense Manager app

Click HERE, to buy it for N1,000 (approx. $5 USD) only…just tell me you want the Income & Expense Manager emailed to you for N1,000.0

Click here to read an article that describes the app’s features in elaborate detail: screenshot images, and links to video demos of it in use…