Bank finance articles and tips

You have made it through the bankruptcy process and your discharge date is finally almost here. Your hard work and dedication has paid off. Congratulations: You are finally officially debt-free.

But don't pat yourself on the back too quickly. If you've been tightening the belt around your finances, you be tempted to go on a spending spree or fall back into your bad financial habits. This is why most bankruptcy courts require consumers to undergo credit counseling classes before they can have their debts discharged. However, this isn't to say that everyone takes these lessons to heart - and dispelling years of bad financial habits with just a few weeks of credit counseling classes doesn't always work....

In my selling skills workshops, I ask the participants to nominate what they believe is the most important interpersonal skill they need to master. The usual suspects - the meet and greet, qualifying, objection handling, closing routines - all get to figure in the discussion, and predictably, good questioning technique soon rises towards the top of the pile. However, to the surprise of many of the participants, we always finish up agreeing that, irrespective of how well we get to master the skill of asking carefully-chosen, well-timed questions, it will all amount to nothing unless we have the dedication and discipline to actively listen to the answers. I guess we should keep in mind that people don't care how much we know until they know how much we care... and they will quickly appreciate how much we care by how attentively we listen to them....