Quotes About Strategy

Old age and treachery can always overcome youth and skill.

He who contrives, defeats his purpose;

Old age and treachery can always overcome youth and skill." This is partly because time lasts forever, when you're two. Half an hour for me was a week for my son.

He who contrives, defeats his purpose; and he who is grasping, loses. The sage does not contrive to win, and therefore is not defeated; he is not grasping, so does not lose.138

Fortify Your Position

After a few days of this degeneration, I decided to take the spoon back. I prepared for war. I set aside sufficient time. A patient adult can defeat a two-year-old, hard as that is to believe. As the saying goes: "Old age and treachery can always overcome youth and skill.

When people think, they simulate the world, and plan how to act in it. If they do a good job of simulating, they can figure out what stupid things they shouldn't do. Then they can not do them. Then they don't have to suffer the consequences. That's the purpose of thinking.

before a problem can be solved it must be formulated precisely.

Wait a second, Bill: you mean to tell me that if I put you into Union Carbide at 7 and took you out at 32, and I put you into U.S. Steel at 16 and took you out at 41, and I put you into Facebook at 70 and took you out at 130, then you wouldn't be saying, 'Pick me up at least a few thousand shares of Microsoft right now, on the spot, come on'?

In addition, in the same way that you took as much time as you needed to write out the best possible version of yourself, you also wrote out a secondary and a tertiary version as well. This will ensure that you can keep talking about yourself intelligently if the sale drags on, forcing you to execute additional loops.

Here are a few quick examples of language patterns that work very well with this type of step-down approach: "If you give me 1 percent of your trust, I'll earn the other 99 percent." "Frankly, on such a small sale like this, after I split my commission with the firm and the government, I can't put puppy chow in my dog's bowl." "I'm obviously not getting rich here, but, again, this will serve as a benchmark for future business.

The third way is to use certain key phrases that paint a picture that runs counter to the worries and concerns that a typical high–action-threshold prospect ruminates on. Some examples of this are: "I'll hold your hand every step of the way" … "We pride ourselves on long-term relationships" … "We have blue-chip customer service.

Certainty, clarity, confidence, and courage. These are your linchpin states for achieving wealth and success. If you don't learn how to trigger them, then you're playing Russian roulette with your future—essentially hoping that you'll be in the right state when you enter a sales encounter, versus knowing you will be because you have a surefire strategy to do it. The name of that strategy is olfactory anchoring.

In essence, pain creates urgency, which makes it the perfect vehicle for closing these tougher sales.

we don't leave a crucial outcome like honest communication up to chance. We ensure it by making it the sole responsibility of the salesperson, and then providing him or her with a bulletproof formula to achieve that outcome every time.

So, all Bill has to do now is lay out a closing scenario, explaining the various steps that Mr. Smith needs to take to get the ball rolling, and then ask him for the order.

promise you that it's not. In fact, once you become even reasonably proficient with the Straight Line System, you'll be able to take any prospect, regardless of where they started off on the certainty scale, and move them to higher and higher levels of certainty with remarkable ease. It will simply be a matter of taking immediate control of the sale, and then moving your prospect, step by step, down the straight

A basic rule of mathematical life: if the universe hands you a hard problem, try to solve an easier one instead, and hope the simple version is close enough to the original problem that the universe doesn't object.

if gambling is exciting, you're doing it wrong.

One thing the American defense establishment has traditionally understood very well is that countries don't win wars just by being braver than the other side, or freer, or slightly preferred by God. The winners are usually the guys who get 5% fewer of their planes shot down, or use 5% less fuel, or get 5% more nutrition into their infantry at 95% of the cost.

basic rule of mathematical life: if the universe hands you a hard problem, try to solve an easier one instead, and hope the simple version is close enough to the original problem that the universe doesn't object.

a group of MIT undergrads won millions of dollars by understanding the guts of the Massachusetts state lottery.

countries don't win wars just by being braver than the other side, or freer, or slightly preferred by God. The winners are usually the guys who get 5% fewer of their planes shot down, or use 5% less fuel, or get 5% more nutrition into their infantry at 95% of the cost. That's not the stuff war movies are made of, but it's the stuff wars are made of. And there's math every step of the way. —

Que nadie se equivoque, cuando se pierde un partido o un campeonato, siempre habrá otras oportunidades; cuando se pierde el estilo, se pierde todo.