Got a lot of emails on last week’s post about the importance of playing the right music to get you in the mood before sales appointments or important meetings.

Quite a few of you have sent me in your list of preferred tracks – brilliant, thank you. I’m contemplating pullin together a ‘kick-ass’ playlist or compilation. Watch this space…

However, to continue the music theme I noticed something else this week. When I was 19 I was working as a cashier at Barclays in Leeds. I used to have to work every other Saturday. I discovered that, on a Saturday morning, if I began Meatloaf’s ‘Bat Out of Hell’ just as I got into my car I could, with a bit of luck on the traffic lights, get all the way to the car park in Leeds city centre before the track finished. It kept me focused!

Recently, I was driving down to Cornwall for the weekend with Sue and the children and we had the iPod on shuffle. ‘Bat out of Hell’ came on and suddenly I found myself transported back over 25 years to my youth. Music has that power.

Next up, the iPod Gods gave me ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. What was happening? Two iconic tracks from the seventies, back to back. But then I got thinking. Why are those track as fresh and powerful now as when they were first released in 1977 and 1975 respectively?

The answer is because they were both mould-breaking. They were both very different at the time to anything else out there. Both tracks were responsible to a large extent for kick-starting the success of their artistes.

And you know, it’s like that in business too. And not just big international business like Apple or Google. This applies at a local level.
What is it about your business that’s truly unique and makes you stand out from the rest?

What’s your ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ or ‘Bat out of Hell’?

I was driving down to Cheltenham last week to meet with one of my top franchisees, Simon Bullingham, who runs thebestof Cheltenham. Simon is one of our very best franchisees. He’s built a great business and has a fabulous reputation in the town.

One of Simons little tricks is that whenever he’s going to see a potential customer he plays up-tempo loud rock music in his car on the way there. He’s the king of the Power Ballad.

Why?

Because it gets him in the mood.

Music is hugely powerful in this respect. Play 3-4 of your favourite up-tempo, inspirational tracks loud enough and you’ll feel different.
The right music can significantly increase your chances of success in a sales meeting, because it pumps you up, makes you feel confident, fuels your self-belief, gets you playing ‘from a 10′.

It’s the simplest easiest thing to do and all the super-successful sales people I know do it- yet it’s little used by average sales people. Hmmmmm.

Play the right tunes before your next important meeting…

What was the first thing you did when you came into work this morning?

The answer has a lot to do with your level of success in business.

Did you dive into the day-to-day, like so many business owners do? Did you get stuck into the work ‘in’ your business? Maybe you checked your emails or made a plan for the day?

If so, then that’s very dangerous to your long term success.

You see, the smart business owners started work this morning by focusing at least an hour of their time, uninterrupted, on the marketing of their business.

They worked ‘on’ their business not ‘in’ it – at least for an hour when they first got in. I know it can be difficult to make this happen. It’s a hard habit to establish -especially with so much to do and get on with.

But no one ever said achieving success was easy.

The fact is that unless or until you begin finding 60 -90 minute chunks of uninterrupted time several times a week your business won’t materially shift from wherever it is today. That’s why this is so important – and finding that 90 minute slot pretty much every day has definitely been one of the keys to my success in business. I tried leaving it till later in the day and doing the more urgent (but in truth less important) stuff first but it doesn’t work. Things get in the way, time whizzes by and it just doesn’t happen.

That’s why I spend 90 minutes every morning, before I open email, check voicemail, before I even say ‘good morning’ to my team, working ‘on’ my business, not in it.

I can’t recommend it strongly enough if you’re serious about success.