Sales Effectiveness Quotes

In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.

Listen to people from your heart, as if your life depended on it, and you will find that in turn people will listen to you with all of theirs.

He advances like a floating Dracula. The menace is ruined by the sporting-goods-store bag loudly crinkling against his leg. A shoebox is in it, judging from the shape. Imagine the wretched sales assistant who had to help Joshua choose shoes.I require shoes to ensure I can effectively run down the targets I am paid to assassinate in my spare time. I require the best value for my money. I am size eleven

Instead of waiting for a leader you can believe in, try this: Become a leader you can believe in.

It wasn't an effect of alcohol. It was more like we got drunk on the night.

Goals that people set for themselves and that are devoted to attaining mastery are usually healthy. But goals imposed by others--sales targets, quarterly returns, standardized test scores, and so on--can sometimes have dangerous side effects.

You can’t sell it outside if you can’t sell it inside.

The choices you make from this day forward will lead you, step by step, to the future you deserve.

The purpose of leadership is to change the world around you in the name of your values, so you can live those values more fully.

Time would come when gold would outweigh blood. But this was still Virginia of old, where a dubious God held that those who would offer a man for sale were somehow more honorable than those who effected that sale.

Business is not a popularity contest, it's a sales campaign. Popularity is only good if it converts to sales. Influence is only good if it converts to profit.

We’re all somebody’s prospect; we’re all somebody’s customer.

When you’re a manager, you work for your company. When you’re a leader, your company works for you.

Whilst people have answered questions, I have only heard my own voice thinking of the next question.

Work/life balance is not about escaping work. It’s about living exactly the way you want to when you’re at work.

The first step to solving any problem is to accept one’s own accountability for creating it.

Spend your time designing the greatest reputation a man could possess.

I was so sure that I knew what they needed and what I wanted to sell them that I never stopped long enough to find out what it was they wanted to buy.

True leaders live their values everywhere, not just in the workplace.

What first separates a leader from a normal human being? A leader knows who they are as a human being.

They lived off each other's hypocrisy, fuelling a worthless market of trash.

Profitability. Growth. Quality. Exceeding customer expectations. These are not examples of values. These are examples of corporate strategies being sold to you as values.

People submit too easily to change from others. And yet, for some reason, whenever they consider changing themselves, the focus is always on what they are giving up, never what they are about to gain

Trust me. If you do not decide where you are heading, and refuse to take the appropriate action, you will end up being shaped into what others would have you become. Then any change will not be made for your benefit but for theirs.

Explain the value and justify the cost - People don’t mind paying; they just don’t like to overpay.

Avoid selling to dumb customers, there aren't enough left!

Most men have professions, yet few act like professionals.

The first step out of the gate has to be knowing where you want to end up. What do you really want from your company?

When rewards come from an external source instead of an internal source, they’re unreliable, which means they’re dangerous if you grow to depend on them.

Be yourself! Don’t try to fabricate your personality in the guise of impressing others.

Everything you desire is always just outside your comfort zone, dear boy. If it wasn't you would already possess it, would you not?

Get up in the morning on a mission to save prospective clients from the shabby, ill-fitting, overpriced and worthless alternatives that those charlatans - who are your competition - are trying to get away with flogging them.

One additional unit of income can do a hundred times as much to the benefit the extreme poor as it can to benefit you or I [earning the typical US wage of $28,000 or ‎£18,000 per year]. [I]t's not often you have two options, one of which is a hundred times better than the other. Imagine a happy hour where you could either buy yourself a beet for $5 or buy someone else a beer for 5¢. If that were the case, we'd probably be pretty generous – next round's on me! But that's effectively the situation we're in all the time. It's like a 99% off sale, or buy one, get ninety-nine free. It might be the most amazing deal you'll see in your life.

We all need salespeople who help people with the same enthusiasm shown by a small child describing the best Christmas present EVER

Don’t tell me you’re passionate about your job – show me that you’re passionate about helping people like me.

Values are deeply held personal beliefs that form your own priority code for living.

Values are the individual biases that allow you to decide which actions are true for you alone.

The worst thing in your own development as a leader is not to do it wrong. It’s to do it for the wrong reasons.

Corporations took our innate impulse toward dissent and our desire for meaningful change, and transmuted them into effective sales tools for their products.

Speaking from the heart is simple. Listening wholeheartedly, however, is much, much more difficult and most rare.

What you deserve will be down to you, and you alone.

Think about it: if someone had found a way to manipulate human choice and free will – if someone actually had that kind of power – wouldn’t it be a tad surprising if they then decided to share their secret with the masses in a book for $20? Not to mention how it would be just very slightly unethical.

You didn't succeed. Well, what of that? There's nothing to prove, you know, and the revolution's not a question of virtue but of effectiveness. There is no heaven. There's work to be done, that's all. And you must do what you're cut out for; all the better if it comes easy to you. The best work is not the work that takes the most sacrifice. It's the work in which you can best succeed.

A manager’s emotional commitment is the ultimate trigger for their discretionary effort, worth more than financial, intellectual & physical commitment combined.

We all need salespeople who deliver value that wasn’t there before they arrived.

The salesperson you’d ideally like to be and the salesperson you’d like to encounter as a customer should roughly be the same, shouldn’t they?

Solving the problem means helping the customer to understand why you’re the best person for the job

Focusing on Earning the Right will have an incredible effect on the success of every single sales call that you will make from this day on.

Your values are your essence: an undistorted mirror showing you at your pure, attractive best.

Careful now: even a financially rewarding, intellectually stimulating work environment isn’t the same as living your own values.

It’s impossible for a company to get what it wants most if managers have to make a choice between their own values and company priorities.

Success means: I want to know the work I do means something to somebody and helps make the world, if not a Better place, not a worse one.

Success for Managers means: I want to be in healthy relationships. I want a real connection with people I spend so much time with.

The myth of management is that your personal values are irrelevant or inappropriate at work.

We all need salespeople with humility, honesty, integrity, empathy and an old-fashioned work ethic that ensures the job gets done.

Just as you can’t be an effective teacher if you’re not going to push your students, you can’t be an effective Challenger if you’re not going to push your customers.

Destiny and fate are of one’s own making, and riches and happiness are rarely found at the end of an easily-traversed path.

Everything would have been for nothing just because I simply didn’t listen.

I should become happier at what I do and leave others happier than before they’d met me.

Finding happiness by delivering it.

I have set my mind to make sure I am prepared to accept success, whatever the trials ahead, whatever the work required.

In this world of half-jobs and liars, I will prevail.

You can only see your current horizon. Every time you move nearer to your desired destination, new horizons will become clear. New, previously hidden, opportunities will come into view.

A company can’t buy true emotional commitment from managers no matter how much it’s willing to spend; this is something too valuable to have a price tag. And yet a company can’t afford not to have it.

Unwittingly, I have sailed through my entire life, so far, with neither direction nor destination. I had a vague instinct to reach dry land every once in a while for supplies, but never anything more than that.

If you woke before dawn one morning with the formula for a vaccine, which would cure the most ghastly disease currently known to man, releasing millions from an agonising death, would you roll over and resume sleeping until daylight?

Journalists effectively have the same function as the sales signs in shop windows or the advertising leaflets in our letterboxes. These mediators of information have an incomprehensible desire and capacity to fill people’s consciousness with rubbish that is both trivial and false, while erecting huge walls around serious questions.

I have discovered fallen trees across my path and have possessed neither the strength to move them nor the patience or tenacity to find an alternative way round. I have simply returned to where I came from, and told myself there had been no other choice.

Everybody sells something to somebody every day, whether it’s a product, a service or just a case of making sure that they get their own way.

Management controls performance in people because it impacts skills; it’s a matter of monitoring, analyzing and directing.

Leadership creates performance in people because it impacts willingness; it’s a matter of modeling, inspiring, and reinforcing.

Any expert will tell you that if you want emotionally committed relationships then people must be allowed to be true to who they are.

Companies should be the best possible place to practice fulfillment, to live out values and to realize deep connectivity and purpose.

When you’re not on your own agenda, you’re prey to the agenda of others.

When you don’t know what true for you, everyone else has unusual influence.

Why live my personal values at work? This is an excellent question to ask. If your attorneys are planning an insanity defense.

This is your one and only precious life. Somebody’s going to decide how it’s going to be lived and that person had better be you.

Let’s get right on top of the bottom line: You must live your personal values at work.

There will be plenty of other problems in the future. This is as good a time as any to get ahead of them.

Try not to take this the wrong way, but your brain is smarter than you are.

Human behavior is only unpredictable and dangerous if you don’t start from humanity in the first place.

You can stuff yourself with emotional fulfillment until it’s dribbling down your chin & your ego will quickly chomp it down and demand more.

Here’s what you need to know most about leadership: Lead your own life first. The only thing in this world that will dependably happen from the top down is the digging of your grave.

Salespeople who think that it’s all about price aren’t required: If it can be sold on the internet at the lowest price, you can take the huge cost of a sales team out of the equation.

Effective immediately all fuel, whether in possession of a refinery, a fuel wholesaler, or even your local gas station, is property of the United States government and will only be available to first responders and the military. He stated that all fuel sales to the public would be halted immediately and anyone caught selling fuel in violation of this Executive Order would be arrested.

There could be dozens of other reasons why she’s stepping down early,” I said in an attempt to make Kai feel better. “For instance, she could be getting blackmailed. Or maybe she met a hot young stud on vacation and wants to spend the rest of her days cavorting with him in the Bahamas instead of listening to boring sales reports.” I paused, my brow furrowing. “Your parents are divorced, right?” I remembered reading something to that effect online. “If they aren’t, forget what I just said and stick with the blackmail.

It's not about in store versus online, or physical versus virtual... business in this century is often but not always about omni-channel distribution and getting leads and sales through a variety of platforms that may include all of the above or unique combinations.

Maybe she’s a natural beauty, an untouched beauty. The sales pitch for every powder, cream, procedure. But there’s always a consequence, some side effect that keeps away the promised miracle. Acne from pore-clogging foundation. Asymmetry from filler injected willy-nilly. Body dysmorphia from the asymmetry caused by the filler, which even when dissolved leaves your skin stretched out and floppy. It’s the same with pills: Vicodin cuts the pain, but then you can’t shit;

Many readers are familiar with the spirit and the letter of the definition of “prayer”, as given by Ambrose Bierce in his Devil’s Dictionary. It runs like this, and is extremely easy to comprehend: Prayer: A petition that the laws of nature be suspended in favor of the petitioner; himself confessedly unworthy. Everybody can see the joke that is lodged within this entry: The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right. Half–buried in the contradiction is the distressing idea that nobody is in charge, or nobody with any moral authority. The call to prayer is self–cancelling. Those of us who don’t take part in it will justify our abstention on the grounds that we do not need, or care, to undergo the futile process of continuous reinforcement. Either our convictions are enough in themselves or they are not: At any rate they do require standing in a crowd and uttering constant and uniform incantations. This is ordered by one religion to take place five times a day, and by other monotheists for almost that number, while all of them set aside at least one whole day for the exclusive praise of the Lord, and Judaism seems to consist in its original constitution of a huge list of prohibitions that must be followed before all else. The tone of the prayers replicates the silliness of the mandate, in that god is enjoined or thanked to do what he was going to do anyway. Thus the Jewish male begins each day by thanking god for not making him into a woman (or a Gentile), while the Jewish woman contents herself with thanking the almighty for creating her “as she is.” Presumably the almighty is pleased to receive this tribute to his power and the approval of those he created. It’s just that, if he is truly almighty, the achievement would seem rather a slight one. Much the same applies to the idea that prayer, instead of making Christianity look foolish, makes it appear convincing. Now, it can be asserted with some confidence, first, that its deity is all–wise and all–powerful and, second, that its congregants stand in desperate need of that deity’s infinite wisdom and power. Just to give some elementary quotations, it is stated in the book of Philippians, 4:6, “Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication and thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.” Deuteronomy 32:4 proclaims that “he is the rock, his work is perfect,” and Isaiah 64:8 tells us, “Now O Lord, thou art our father; we art clay and thou our potter; and we are all the work of thy hand.” Note, then, that Christianity insists on the absolute dependence of its flock, and then only on the offering of undiluted praise and thanks. A person using prayer time to ask for the world to be set to rights, or to beseech god to bestow a favor upon himself, would in effect be guilty of a profound blasphemy or, at the very least, a pathetic misunderstanding. It is not for the mere human to be presuming that he or she can advise the divine. And this, sad to say, opens religion to the additional charge of corruption. The leaders of the church know perfectly well that prayer is not intended to gratify the devout. So that, every time they accept a donation in return for some petition, they are accepting a gross negation of their faith: a faith that depends on the passive acceptance of the devout and not on their making demands for betterment. Eventually, and after a bitter and schismatic quarrel, practices like the notorious “sale of indulgences” were abandoned. But many a fine basilica or chantry would not be standing today if this awful violation had not turned such a spectacularly good profit. And today it is easy enough to see, at the revival meetings of Protestant fundamentalists, the counting of the checks and bills before the laying on of hands by the preacher has even been completed. Again, the spectacle is a shameless one.

God has the goodness to put some of our Purgatory into each day; let us accept, embrace the cross which is presented to us. Let us take care not to complain, nor to imagine that suffering is a new invention. A person might easily suppose it was, on seeing our astonishment, and hearing our murmurs. The saints, crushed and ground down by trials of all sorts, seized on suffering as gold from the mine. “See how the gold taken from the earth is cast into a crucible; had the gold thought and speech, it would cry out: I suffer, take me out of this. And yet this gold is purified, and soon it will shine on the brows of kings, and on the altars of the living God. The cross effects the same in our regard; it is our crucible.”—P. De Ravignan.

When I was in the advertising business, I used to offer free seminars to advertisers about how to create better ads (the material in this chapter being the content). That was not so long ago, but since then the Internet has ballooned to major significance. If I were selling advertising today, I’d have that seminar online. Think of how this cuts down on your travel expenses. I used to fly all over creation to deliver those seminars. And appointments were harder to get. The education-based marketing concept that you learned in Chapter Four works hand in glove with the ability to do things over the Internet. Here’s the pitch I’d do today: “How would you like to learn to make your advertising literally 10 times more effective? And you can do it right from the comfort of your favorite office chair.” It’s hard to resist such an offer. There are many examples I could give you to flesh out the model of turning your Web site into a community. The examples below are simple and some are even silly, but each shows how far this concept can go and how it helps you capture more leads and build a better brand.

Household was making loans at a faster pace than ever. A big source of its growth had been the second mortgage. The document offered a fifteen-year, fixed-rate loan, but it was bizarrely disguised as a thirty-year loan. It took the stream of payments the homeowner would make to Household over fifteen years, spread it hypothetically over thirty years, and asked: If you were making the same dollar payments over thirty years that you are in fact making over fifteen, what would your “effective rate” of interest be? It was a weird, dishonest sales pitch. The borrower was told he had an “effective interest rate of 7 percent” when he was in fact paying something like 12.5 percent. “It was blatant fraud,” said Eisman. “They were tricking their customers.

A good marketer can sell practically anything to anyone. Tobacco is literally dried, decaying vegetable matter that you light on fire and inhale, breathing horrid-tasting, toxic fumes into your lungs.121 At one point marketers promoted smoking as a status symbol and claimed it had health benefits. Once you give it a try, the addictive nature of the drug kicks in, and the agency’s job becomes much easier. If they can get you hooked, the product will sell itself. Since the product is actually poison, advertisers need to overcome your instinctual aversion. That’s a big hill for alcohol advertisements to climb, which is why the absolute best marketing firms on the globe, firms with psychologists and human behavior specialists on staff, are hired to create the ads. These marketers know that the most effective sale is an emotional sale, one that plays on your deepest fears, your ultimate concerns. Alcohol advertisements sell an end to loneliness, claiming that drinking provides friendship and romance. They appeal to your need for freedom by saying drinking will make you unique, brave, bold, or courageous. They promise fulfillment, satisfaction, and happiness. All these messages speak to your conscious and unconscious minds.

NOVEL, n. A short story padded. A species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. As it is too long to be read at a sitting the impressions made by its successive parts are successively effaced, as in the panorama. Unity, totality of effect, is impossible; for besides the few pages last read all that is carried in mind is the mere plot of what has gone before. To the romance the novel is what photography is to painting. Its distinguishing principle, probability, corresponds to the literal actuality of the photograph and puts it distinctly into the category of reporting; whereas the free wing of the romancer enables him to mount to such altitudes of imagination as he may be fitted to attain; and the first three essentials of the literary art are imagination, imagination and imagination. The art of writing novels, such as it was, is long dead everywhere except in Russia, where it is new. Peace to its ashes — some of which have a large sale.

But even if you’re stretching yourself in the service of a core personal project, you don’t want to act out of character too much, or for too long. Remember those trips Professor Little made to the restroom in between speeches? Those hideout sessions tell us that, paradoxically, the best way to act out of character is to stay as true to yourself as you possibly can—starting by creating as many “restorative niches” as possible in your daily life. “Restorative niche” is Professor Little’s term for the place you go when you want to return to your true self. It can be a physical place, like the path beside the Richelieu River, or a temporal one, like the quiet breaks you plan between sales calls. It can mean canceling your social plans on the weekend before a big meeting at work, practicing yoga or meditation, or choosing e-mail over an in-person meeting. (Even Victorian ladies, whose job effectively was to be available to friends and family, were expected to withdraw for a rest each afternoon.)

In fact, as these companies offered more and more (simply because they could), they found that demand actually followed supply. The act of vastly increasing choice seemed to unlock demand for that choice. Whether it was latent demand for niche goods that was already there or a creation of new demand, we don't yet know. But what we do know is that the companies for which we have the most complete data - netflix, Amazon, Rhapsody - sales of products not offered by their bricks-and-mortar competitors amounted to between a quarter and nearly half of total revenues - and that percentage is rising each year. in other words, the fastest-growing part of their businesses is sales of products that aren't available in traditional, physical retail stores at all. These infinite-shelf-space businesses have effectively learned a lesson in new math: A very, very big number (the products in the Tail) multiplied by a relatives small number (the sales of each) is still equal to a very, very big number. And, again, that very, very big number is only getting bigger. What's more, these millions of fringe sales are an efficient, cost-effective business. With no shelf space to pay for - and in the case of purely digital services like iTunes, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees - a niche product sold is just another sale, with the same (or better) margins as a hit. For the first time in history, hits and niches are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability.

A second example of this abandonment of fundamental principles can be found in recent trends in the U.S. Supreme Court. Note what Lino A. Graglia, a professor of law at the University of Texas, has to say about this: 'Purporting merely to enforce the Constitution, the Supreme Court has for some thirty years usurped and exercised legislative powers that its predecessors could not have dreamed of, making itself the most powerful and important institution of government in regard to the nature and quality of life in our society.... 'It has literally decided issues of life and death, removing from the states the power to prevent or significantly restrain the practice of abortion, and, after effectively prohibiting capital punishment for two decades, now imposing such costly and time-consuming restrictions on its use as almost to amount to prohibition. 'In the area of morality and religion, the Court has removed from both the federal and state government nearly all power to prohibit the distribution and sale or exhibition of pornographic materials.... It has prohibited the states from providing for prayer or Bible-reading in the public schools. 'The Court has created for criminal defendants rights that do not exist under any other system of law-for example, the possibility of almost endless appeals with all costs paid by the state-and which have made the prosecution so complex and difficult as to make the attempt frequently seem not worthwhile. It has severely restricted the power of the states and cities to limit marches and other public demonstrations and otherwise maintain order in the streets and other public places.

Richard Lovelace makes a compelling case that the best defense is a good offense. “The ultimate solution to cultural decay is not so much the repression of bad culture as the production of sound and healthy culture,” he writes. “We should direct most of our energy not to the censorship of decadent culture, but to the production and support of healthy expressions of Christian and non-Christian art.”10 Public protests and boycotts have their place. But even negative critiques are effective only when motivated by a genuine love for the arts. The long-term solution is to support Christian artists, musicians, authors, and screenwriters who can create humane and healthy alternatives that speak deeply to the human condition. Exploiting “Talent” The church must also stand against forces that suppress genuine creativity, both inside and outside its walls. In today’s consumer culture, one of the greatest dangers facing the arts is commodification. Art is treated as merchandise to market for the sake of making money. Paintings are bought not to exhibit, nor to grace someone’s home, but merely to resell. They are financial investments. As Seerveld points out, “Elite art of the New York school or by approved gurus such as Andy Warhol are as much a Big Business today as the music business or the sports industry.”11 Artists and writers have been reduced to “talent” to be plugged into the manufacturing process. That approach may increase sales, but it will suppress the best and highest forms of art. In the eighteenth century, the world nearly lost the best of Mozart’s music because the adults in the young man’s life treated him primarily as “talent” to exploit.

What is a “pyramid?” I grew up in real estate my entire life. My father built one of the largest real estate brokerage companies on the East Coast in the 1970s, before selling it to Merrill Lynch. When my brother and I graduated from college, we both joined him in building a new real estate company. I went into sales and into opening a few offices, while my older brother went into management of the company. In sales, I was able to create a six-figure income. I worked 60+ hours a week in such pursuit. My brother worked hard too, but not in the same fashion. He focused on opening offices and recruiting others to become agents to sell houses for him. My brother never listed and sold a single house in his career, yet he out-earned me 10-to-1. He made millions because he earned a cut of every commission from all the houses his 1,000+ agents sold. He worked smarter, while I worked harder. I guess he was at the top of the “pyramid.” Is this legal? Should he be allowed to earn more than any of the agents who worked so hard selling homes? I imagine everyone will agree that being a real estate broker is totally legal. Those who are smart, willing to take the financial risk of overhead, and up for the challenge of recruiting good agents, are the ones who get to live a life benefitting from leveraged Income. So how is Network Marketing any different? I submit to you that I found it to be a step better. One day, a friend shared with me how he was earning the same income I was, but that he was doing so from home without the overhead, employees, insurance, stress, and being subject to market conditions. He was doing so in a network marketing business. At first I refuted him by denouncements that he was in a pyramid scheme. He asked me to explain why. I shared that he was earning money off the backs of others he recruited into his downline, not from his own efforts. He replied, “Do you mean like your family earns money off the backs of the real estate agents in your company?” I froze, and anyone who knows me knows how quick-witted I normally am. Then he said, “Who is working smarter, you or your dad and brother?” Now I was mad. Not at him, but at myself. That was my light bulb moment. I had been closed-minded and it was costing me. That was the birth of my enlightenment, and I began to enter and study this network marketing profession. Let me explain why I found it to be a step better. My research led me to learn why this business model made so much sense for a company that wanted a cost-effective way to bring a product to market. Instead of spending millions in traditional media ad buys, which has a declining effectiveness, companies are opting to employ the network marketing model. In doing so, the company only incurs marketing cost if and when a sale is made. They get an army of word-of-mouth salespeople using the most effective way of influencing buying decisions, who only get paid for performance. No salaries, only commissions. But what is also employed is a high sense of motivation, wherein these salespeople can be building a business of their own and not just be salespeople. If they choose to recruit others and teach them how to sell the product or service, they can earn override income just like the broker in a real estate company does. So now they see life through a different lens, as a business owner waking up each day excited about the future they are building for themselves. They are not salespeople; they are business owners.

Knowing one’s emotions. Self-awareness—recognizing a feeling as it happens—is the keystone of emotional intelligence. As we will see in Chapter 4, the ability to monitor feelings from moment to moment is crucial to psychological insight and self-understanding. An inability to notice our true feelings leaves us at their mercy. People with greater certainty about their feelings are better pilots of their lives, having a surer sense of how they really feel about personal decisions from whom to marry to what job to take. 2. Managing emotions. Handling feelings so they are appropriate is an ability that builds on self-awareness. Chapter 5 will examine the capacity to soothe oneself, to shake off rampant anxiety, gloom, or irritability—and the consequences of failure at this basic emotional skill. People who are poor in this ability are constantly battling feelings of distress, while those who excel in it can bounce back far more quickly from life’s setbacks and upsets. 3. Motivating oneself. As Chapter 6 will show, marshaling emotions in the service of a goal is essential for paying attention, for self-motivation and mastery, and for creativity. Emotional self-control—delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness—underlies accomplishment of every sort. And being able to get into the “flow” state enables outstanding performance of all kinds. People who have this skill tend to be more highly productive and effective in whatever they undertake. 4. Recognizing emotions in others. Empathy, another ability that builds on emotional self-awareness, is the fundamental “people skill.” Chapter 7 will investigate the roots of empathy, the social cost of being emotionally tone-deaf, and the reason empathy kindles altruism. People who are empathic are more attuned to the subtle social signals that indicate what others need or want. This makes them better at callings such as the caring professions, teaching, sales, and management. 5. Handling relationships. The art of relationships is, in large part, skill in managing emotions in others. Chapter 8 looks at social competence and incompetence, and the specific skills involved. These are the abilities that undergird popularity, leadership, and interpersonal effectiveness. People who excel in these skills do well at anything that relies on interacting smoothly with others; they are social stars.