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Sometimes we all face a customer who dismisses your best Citizenre pitch with a waive of the hand and the statement, “I’d rather own the system myself so I could get the electricity for free.” At first you may be a bit concerned how you are going to quickly tackle the challenge of convincing this person that it’s better to pay the equivalent of, say, 10 cents a kilowatt hour for Citizenre’s fixed price plan than to pay ZERO for electricity that comes off panels that a homeowner owns outright. The good news is, like all things Citizenre, this is easy. I just say:

“That’s an interesting point, and I’ve talked to a lot of customers about the trade offs of owning a system vs. signing up for Citizenre’s solar service. But it turns out that you are financially better off signing up for Citizenre than buying a solar power system yourself. Here’s why: The average solar power system for a home costs at least $30,000 (1). But even people with $30,000 ready to invest rarely choose to buy solar panels with it because of the very low return on investment of traditional solar installations. Depending on the cost of electricity that you are comparing it to, residential solar installations will break even only after a number of years well into the teens, something like 14 years. That means it takes 14 years just to get you back to zero…it’s not until your 15^th and 16^th years that you actually start to get the RETURN part of the investment. This is why you don’t see solar panels on a lot of houses yet, because it’s got a high upfront cost with a very slow return on investment. What you could do instead is put that $30,000 into a mutual fund for 14 years and you’d expect to do a lot better than just break even. In fact, that is what you should do instead buying your own system: sign up for Citizenre solar power system and then put $30,000 in a mutual fund for the next 14 years. You’ll have solar power in you home and you’ll be much better off financially.”

There may be this follow up question: “We’ll how can you afford to offer this then?”

My answer is this: “Because Citizenre is  taking all of the pieces of the solar power value chain in-house that are currently done by different suppliers…from the manufacturing, to the warehousing, distribution, wholesaling, retailing, installation, maintenance, and billing, even the sales that you and I are doing right now…all of those profit margins for all of those different players are brought under one roof, then with the volume and consolidation efficiency, Citizenre is going to be able to put a solar power system on your property for a fraction of  the cost of what you could do if for. So in our earlier example if you’re not interested in investing in a solar power project for your home that has a 14 year break even, we can do the same thing for about a 7 year break even, and we’ve found investors that are willing to fund a 7 year break even contract if we lock your rate for 10-20 years, because they are still going to have  years left on the contract after its paid for. But you don’t mind because you are happily enjoying a fixed price solar rental system we maintain to provide your energy at a “Locked in” price. The investors are happy because they get to make money on the back end of the contract. And the environment benefits because another house was taken away from polluting power to clean, renewable energy. It’s a true win, win, win.

In his brilliant book,  ”A Brief History of Time,” Professor Stephen Hawking opens with the story of a well-known scientist who gave a public lecture on astronomy.  The scientist described how the moon orbits the earth, the earth orbits the sun, and how our solar system orbits around the center of the galaxy.  When he finished, a little old lady got up and said, “What you have told us is rubbish.  The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”

The scientist gave a knowing smile and replied, “What is the tortoise standing on?”

“You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” she replied.  ”But it’s turtles all the way down!

We all know people like that little old lady.  The point is, why try to convince them otherwise?  If they believe that the universe is a big stack of turtles – or that all network marketing opportunities are illegal pyramids – nothing you present to the contrary is going to change their belief. So as you go about building your business, don’t try to convince, persuade and sell negative people.  SORT your prospects, and look for the ones that are open to opportunity.

One of the biggest mistakes beginners make, is thinking that sponsoring is a one-shot, all-or-nothing event.  Actually, it’s a process.

One that takes different amounts of time for different prospects. Your goal shouldn’t be to sell or “close” anyone, but rather to give the prospect enough information, so they can make the best decision for them.

Unlike sales, where often you are taught to manipulate or close people, in Network Marketing we are looking for people motivated enough to take action themselves.  We simply want to expose them to the opportunity, and see if they are open to it.  Some people are open to new concepts, and others are stuck with the preconceptions they’ve been taught.  You want to look for the open-minded ones, and steer clear of the others.  They are too much work, and they’re no fun to be around.

It’s not about convincing people or changing their beliefs, as much as it is about finding the people who are open to what you have. It is a sorting process, divided into stages, where the prospect indicates their level of interest and commitment at the appropriate level.

Along the way, you will meet people who believe all network marketing opportunities are pyramid schemes.  Why spend all your time trying to convince them otherwise when there are legions of people who are open to what you have?

The objective of your sponsoring process should be to weed out the non-prospects, and get the true prospects the information they need to make a decision.  Everyone we know and meet is a suspect.  They may be a candidate for the business; they might be a retail customer; or they may be neither.  Our job is to sort through the suspects and discover the real prospects.

Tim Padden
http://www.citizenre.com

16 Things I Wish They Had Taught Me in School

Image by foundphotoslj.

Sometimes I wish that I had known some of things I have learned over the last few years a bit earlier. That perhaps there had been a self-improvement class in school. And in some ways there probably was.

Because some of these 16 things in this article a teacher probably spoke about in class. But I forgot about them or didn’t pay attention.

Some of it would probably not have stuck in my mind anyway. Or just been too far outside my reality at the time for me to accept and use.

But I still think that taking a few hours from all those German language classes and use them for some personal development classes would have been a good idea. Perhaps for just an hour a week in high school. It would probably be useful for many students and on a larger scale quite helpful for society in general.

So here are 16 things I wish they had taught me in school (or I just would like to have known about earlier).

1. The 80/20 rule.

This is one of the best ways to make better use of your time. The 80/20 rule – also known as The Pareto Principle – basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities.

So a lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think.

You can just drop – or vastly decrease the time you spend on – a whole bunch of things.

And if you do that you will have more time and energy to spend on those things that really brings your value, happiness, fulfilment and so on.

2. Parkinson’s Law.

You can do things quicker than you think. This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set aside for it. For instance, if you say to yourself that you’ll come up with a solution within a week then the problem will seem to grow more difficult and you’ll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution.

So focus your time on finding solutions. Then just give yourself an hour (instead of the whole day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to solve the problem. This will force your mind to focus on solutions and action.

The result may not be exactly as perfect as if you had spent a week on the task, but as mentioned in the previous point, 80 percent of the value will come from 20 percent of the activities anyway. Or you may wind up with a better result because you haven’t overcomplicated or overpolished things. This will help you to get things done faster, to improve your ability to focus and give you more free time where you can totally focus on what’s in front of you instead of having some looming task creating stress in the back of your mind.

3. Batching.

Boring or routine tasks can create a lot of procrastination and low-level anxiety. One good way to get these things done quickly is to batch them. This means that you do them all in row. You will be able to do them quicker because there is less “start-up time” compared to if you spread them out. And when you are batching you become fully engaged in the tasks and more focused.

A batch of things to do in an hour today may look like this: Clean your desk / answer today’s emails / do the dishes / make three calls / write a grocery shopping list for tomorrow.

4. First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.

This is a bit of a counter-intuitive thing. There is often an idea that someone should give us something or do something for us before we give back. The problem is just that a lot of people think that way. And so far less than possible is given either way.

If you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness, opportunities etc.) you have to increase the value you give. Because over time you pretty much get what you give. It would perhaps be nice to get something for nothing. But that seldom happens.

5. Be proactive. Not reactive.

This one ties into the last point. If everyone is reactive then very little will get done. You could sit and wait and hope for someone else to do something. And that happens pretty often, but it can take a lot of time before it happens.

A more useful and beneficial way is to be proactive, to simply be the one to take the first practical action and get the ball rolling. This not only saves you a lot of waiting, but is also more pleasurable since you feel like you have the power over your life. Instead of feeling like you are run by a bunch of random outside forces.

6. Mistakes and failures are good.

When you are young you just try things and fail until you learn. As you grow a bit older, you learn from – for example – school to not make mistakes. And you try less and less things.

This may cause you to stop being proactive and to fall into a habit of being reactive, of waiting for someone else to do something. I mean, what if you actually tried something and failed? Perhaps people would laugh at you?

Perhaps they would. But when you experience that you soon realize that it is seldom the end of the world. And a lot of the time people don’t care that much. They have their own challenges and lives to worry about.

And success in life often comes from not giving up despite mistakes and failure. It comes from being persistent.

When you first learn to ride your bike you may fall over and over. Bruise a knee and cry a bit. But you get up, brush yourself off and get on the saddle again. And eventually you learn how to ride a bike. If you can just reconnect to your 5 year old self and do things that way – instead of giving up after a try/failure or two as grown-ups often do – you would probably experience a lot more interesting things, learn valuable lessons and have quite a bit more success.

7. Don’t beat yourself up.

Why do people give up after just few mistakes or failures? Well, I think one big reason is because they beat themselves up way too much. But it’s a kinda pointless habit. It only creates additional and unnecessary pain inside you and wastes your precious time. It’s best to try to drop this habit as much as you can.

8. Assume rapport.

Meeting new people is fun. But it can also induce nervousness. We all want to make a good first impression and not get stuck in an awkward conversation.

The best way to do this that I have found so far is to assume rapport. This means that you simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.
This works surprisingly well. You can read more about it in How to Have Less Awkward Conversations: Assuming Rapport.

9. Use your reticular activation system to your advantage.

I learned about the organs and the inner workings of the body in class but nobody told me about the reticular activation system. And that’s a shame, because this is one of the most powerful things you can learn about. What this focus system, this R.A.S, in your mind does is to allow you to see in your surroundings what you focus your thoughts on. It pretty much always helps you to find what you are looking for.
So you really need to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. And keep that focus steady.
Setting goals and reviewing them frequently is one way to keep your focus on what’s important and to help you take action that will move your closer to toward where you want to go. Another way is just to use external reminders such as pieces of paper where you can, for instance, write down a few things from this post like “Give value” or “Assume rapport”. And then you can put those pieces of paper on your fridge, bathroom mirror etc.

10. Your attitude changes your reality.

We have all heard that you should keep a positive attitude or perhaps that “you need to change your attitude!”. That is a nice piece of advice I suppose, but without any more reasons to do it is very easy to just brush such suggestions off and continue using your old attitude.

But the thing that I’ve discovered the last few years is that if you change your attitude, you actually change your reality. When you for instance use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before. You may think to yourself “why haven’t I thought about things this way before?”.

When you change you attitude you change what you focus on. And all things in your world can now be seen in a different light.

This is of course very similar to the previous tip but I wanted to give this one some space. Because changing your attitude can create an insane change in your world. It might not look like it if you just think about it though. Pessimism might seem like realism. But that is mostly because your R.A.S is tuned into seeing all the negative things you want to see. And that makes you “right” a lot of the time. And perhaps that is what you want. On the other hand, there are more fun things than being right all the time.

If you try changing your attitude for real – instead of analysing such a concept in your mind – you’ll be surprised.

You may want to read more about this topic in Take the Positivity Challenge!

11. Gratitude is a simple way to make yourself feel happy.

Sure, I was probably told that I should be grateful. Perhaps because it was the right thing to do or just something I should do. But if someone had said that feeling grateful about things for minute or two is a great way to turn a negative mood into a happy one I would probably have practised gratitude more. It is also a good tool for keeping your attitude up and focusing on the right things. And to make other people happy. Which tends to make you even happier, since emotions are contagious.

12. Don’t compare yourself to others.

The ego wants to compare. It wants to find reasons for you to feel good about yourself (“I’ve got a new bike!”). But by doing that it also becomes very hard to not compare yourself to others who have more than you (“Oh no, Bill has bought an even nicer bike!”). And so you don’t feel so good about yourself once again. If you compare yourself to others you let the world around control how you feel about yourself. It always becomes a rollercoaster of emotions.

A more useful way is to compare yourself to yourself. To look at how far you have come, what you have accomplished and how you have grown. It may not sound like that much fun but in the long run it brings a lot more inner stillness, personal power and positive feelings.

13. 80-90% of what you fear will happen never really come into reality.

This is a big one. Most things you fear will happen never happen. They are just monsters in your own mind. And if they happen then they will most often not be as painful or bad as you expected. Worrying is most often just a waste of time.

This is of course easy to say. But if you remind yourself of how little of what you feared throughout your life that has actually happened you can start to release more and more of that worry from your thoughts.

14. Don’t take things too seriously.

It’s very easy to get wrapped up in things. But most of the things you worry about never come into reality. And what may seem like a big problem right now you may not even remember in three years.

Taking yourself, your thoughts and your emotions too seriously often just seems to lead to more unnecessary suffering. So relax a little more and lighten up a bit. It can do wonders for your mood and as an extension of that; your life.

15. Write everything down.

If your memory is anything like mine then it’s like a leaking bucket. Many of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you don’t make a habit of writing things down. This is also a good way to keep your focus on what you want. Read more about it in Why You Should Write Things Down.

16. There are opportunities in just about every experience.

In pretty much any experience there are always things that you can learn from it and things within the experience that can help you to grow. Negative experiences, mistakes and failure can sometimes be even better than a success because it teaches you something totally new, something that another success could never teach you.

Whenever you have a “negative experience” ask yourself: where is the opportunity in this? What is good about this situation? One negative experience can – with time – help you create many very positive experiences.

How to Prepare your Home for Solar and Save Money Now

Hello my name is (your name), I help you reserve your solar power system with Citizenre. I am following up with you about a new tool that will help you prepare your home for solar, help reduce your carbon footprint and save money now while you wait for your system. As you know, it has been some time since we have spoken. That reflects delays in our manufacturing plans. Everything is still moving ahead, and we expect to announce our manufacturing plans in the near future

But in the meantime, there is still a great deal that you can do, to both help the planet and to help yourself. You may not have fully realized this, but Citizenre is more than just a solar company. We are a “clean energy company”. The company has just released a video with Sustainability Consultant, Chris Prelitz, that explains how to prepare your home for solar and save money right now.

The links are below to view the videos, but they can also be found in the Resources section of your customer back-office, so I want to make sure that you know how to log in.

If you don’t know how to log in to your account. Just go to jointhesolution.com and click on “My Account” on the upper right of the screen. Put in the email that you registered with and the system will send you a new password. Sometimes the email will go to your spam folder, so if you don’t get it right away, check there. Once you are in, just click on Resources, then Video.
If you know how, then great! I think you will enjoy the video. I also want to make sure that you know that even though our manufacturing plant has been delayed, your low monthly rental is locked in from the time you signed the contract and you will still receive all the benefits we have promised to you, so no worries there.

In addition, it is even possible that you might receive a greater energy and environment benefit, if you are able to take some of the steps in this video. If you save energy now, you will have a lower energy bill today. If you are diligent about it, you may also reduce the size of the REnU system that you will need in the future. That will result in a smaller monthly payment for every single month that you rent.

That’s a win-win-win – you win, we win because you save money and the planet wins.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at (contact info).

Video Links:

www.citizenre.net/extras/videos/chris_prelitz/

www.citizenre.net/extras/videos/chris_prelitz/steps_to_save.html

1.Thou shalt not use the Citizenre name in your advertising unless it
is an approved article or an approved resource created by the company
for your use.

2.Thou shalt not state that our solar units are FREE. This is a weak
posture. They are not free. Never try to “bait and switch” your
prospect. Trust is a delicate thing. You can say “No purchase
required” or “No equipment to purchase”–but our product is not free.
You can explain how our model is like providing the satellite to sell
the monthly programming… just don’t use the word free.

3.Thou shalt not imply employment or a job if you are advertising for
Ecopreneurs, and thou shalt not guarantee or promise an income.

4.Thou shalt not use our video on any website other than our corporate
site. The footage on our video has strict copyrights and any postings
on You Tube or Google video or any private sites could compromise our
use of that footage.

5.Thou shalt not use the names of our celebrity endorsers in your
advertising. Especially do not use the name of Morgan Freeman. It is
his voice on our video, but that clip was not recorded for
Citizenre.We were given the rights to use it.

6.Thou shalt always be professional and completely ethical when
communicating with prospects. Often the loudest skeptics become our
strongest advocates if you can answer all of their questions with
class. Even if you are not using the name of Citizenre in your ad,
your ad will still lead back to our site. The impression you make is
important.

7.Thou shalt never use any advertising that is misleading. Citizenre
does NOT sell electricity. That would make us a utility and put us
under a completely new set of regulations. We are the manufacturer and
renter (not lease) of an appliance that happens to produce
electricity. The customer actually produces their own power from the
system we rent them. Hence, we give power back to the people. Do not
state or imply that we sell electricity.

8.Thou shalt not promote our service or opportunity on any
“questionable” websites. This includes, but is not limited to,
websites that promote pornography, gambling, or anything that some
people might find offensive or that could tarnish our stellar image.
Also, you can not post on Ebay (or any auction site) or any site where
you are breaking their policies. Don’t try to cheat your way to
success. Be smart.

9.Thou shalt not represent yourself as an employee or agent of
Citizenre. If you use the name Citizenre on your answering machine,
you MUST use the words Independent Ecopreneur or Independent Associate
or Independent Direct Seller.

10.Thou shalt follow the Policies and Procedures and represent
Citizenre in an ethical and professional manner at all times. You will
be the initial point of contact many people will have with our mission–
make a great impression. You are the first line of enthusiasm and your
energy creates the Powur of Citizenre. You make a difference.

If you are looking for a way to Grow your business /meet and greet others that share an environmental interest . This just might be the place to do it .

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you would like to learn more about how to do this send me an email and I will put together a Conference call to walk you through being effective with inexpensive advertising.

How_to_Place_Google_Ad

Google online PPT 

-Tim Padden

House of Solar

There is a time and place for everything.

This is the time and place for American to make a global difference.