The slogan of any sales training should be "More business with better clients". More business is not necessarily good business. You've probably heard it before.
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When sales people desparately want to succeed they tend to welcome any client into their sales funnel. Consequently, the pipeline is filled with an excess of bad business.
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When I was a young boy, I asked my father why he kept cutting down the different trees in our garden. In my mind, a big tree was a good tree. My father explained to me how a trimmed tree always lives longer and remains much more productive or fruitful. The same goes for sales and business!
Sales training is about getting back to basic. It's about focus. If training doesn't help you find which clients you want and HOW to do it, then training will only make you more busy doing what doesn't lead to profitable customers. Believe me, more business with poor clients, is not want you want.
To no other person is free enterprise so free as to the individual with sales skills coupled with a network of quality people.
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There's is nothing like a business professional!
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The essence of business development is creating win-win solutions. The only way to visualize and clarify win-win solutions effectively is by sharpening your sales skills. Why? Because sales skills is the WHAT, WHO and HOW to draw mental pictures of value in the mind of another person.
You may have great ideas about value creation (i.e. business), but your business plan comes alive only when you know how to execute it. Execution is helping people believe and work that plan. In other words: Selling!
Life will bring you dark moments. It hurts to go through them, but when you're proactive bright times will dominate your life and can in fact jumpstart your path to success. To a person in sales, with a lot of regular setbacks, this is an important lesson to be learned and can become a lifestyle that will make all the difference.
Yesterday was an awful day for me. Just terrible! In addition, I lost a major contract I expected to close. Everything I had scheduled was headed toward success.
However, not only did I fail miserably, but people and circumstances gave me clear feedback about mistakes I had made. If you're like me; I can live with failure because it's what success is all about, but making mistakes is ten times worse. It's personal and hurts more than failure.
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So I was feeling low!
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Did you ever find that when you look back on life, memories are mostly the happy ones. For some reason, most people tend to forget the dark moments, but savour the bright one's. In sum, all the happy moments appear to the mind as long and enduring bright times. (That's why we sometimes are inclined to think: "I used to be so happy, but now everything's so hard...")
So what can we learn from our ability to filter out the dark moments? How can this help us improve our lives on a daily basis?
Maintain Energy and Momentum
When you're experiencing a dark moment, accept it. Don't fight it. Strong and bad emotions are necessary opposites in a happy life. Let it pass by not making any serious or rash decisions. Close your mouth if you're tempted to take it out on the people around you. Listen more. Get involved in the lives of others and most importantly, retire early and let the body and mind rest it out.
Remember, late night moments are literally in the dark. If you retire early they will not last long. (During the night, your mind will be searching for answers and often find them, sometimes without you knowing it. Let the mind do the work for you.) In stead of extending the day - and the pain - by burning the midnight oil, rather choose to arise early and spend as much of your waking hours in the (day)light. It's a lifestyle that maintains your energy level and increases your momentum. The people around you will be surprised by your ability to get back up so soon after having taken such a serious beating, believe me!
Inevitably, dark moments will occur, however brief they might be, but bright times and feelings of happiness can and will dominate your life, now, not only in the past, if you want it to.
p.s. I'm well aware of chronic illnesses and serious depression, for which there certainly is no quick fix. What we're talking about here, though, is the tendency of any "healthy" person to sink into depression over matters that will evaporate if only you apply the principles outlined above.
Do you ever feel you're not in control? Let's put it this way: "You're not the only one". How do we know we've lost it and what can we do to regain control of our lives?
Not being in control really hurts. Here are some examples to help you discover when you've lost control:
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- When bills are hard(er) to pay (on time).
- When you sense that your mental, social emotional or physical health is declining faster than it should.
- When you know you're not doing what's most important and you just can't seem to get your head around to making that change.
- ...or when you're feeling poor and depressed and you just can't really tell why you sometimes feel that way.
Of course, there's no simple formula. If there was, we wouldn't be hurting in the first place. However, there's are a few principles that have greatly helped many people. You should know these principles. You deserve to know!
There's something else you might like to know about these principles, too: They're currently applied by the most balanced people you encounter in your life. On a sidenote, in the world of business these principles are literally worth millions of dollars, even though that's maybe not why you'd like to know, right now.
That Little Extra
Just for once, let me dive straight into HOW you could gain control, and then I'll just leave it to you to find out WHY you should. (After all, your WHY is ultimately something only you can answer.) On the first day of every week, revisit the following process:
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(1) Define your different roles (e.g. husband, father, employee...).
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Are you able to extract the principles behind why this is a process that really produces long term results? You'll find that these regular steps lead to one very important result: It's what I like to call "that little extra". Here's a real life example to illustrate.
| Some time ago one of my younger daughters paid me a thought provoking compliment: "Dad, you're really good at sitting in front of your laptop". Oh! that hurt me right to the center. Why? Because that's exactly the opposite of what I'd like her to say about me some time in the near future.
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What determines the rise and fall of man? Passion does. Passion is not just a tool in selling or influence. It's you! In fact, Passion is life itself. Passion is about what you open your heart to, and whatever you choose to let in will determine nothing less than the direction and outcome of your entire life.
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Maybe the most powerful feelings we ever experience is the sensation of Passion?
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else matters less, or even close to nothing. This Passion, however, is still something you can choose. Passion - one of your greatest assets in life - doesn't need to be accidental, and it shouldn't be. We should carefully consider why and for what we open our Passionate powers. Why? Because it may (and I believe it indeed will) determine the direction and outcome of our entire life.
Let's consider two basic principles of Passion from which we may extract a few simple rules, and which when applied will produce the success every trainer, manager or even parent wants to achieve:
(1) Passion Precedes Results
In a professional setting the majority of the work force is not passionate at all. If they were, you'd see dramatic improvement both in performance and learning, instantly!
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Before we do training, therefore, we assess the level of Passion in each individual team member by the use of a tool called "Passion Assessment". (We also make use of similar tools for "Connection Assessment" and "Intuition Assessment").
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itself. However, the long term results are of far greater concern. We have found that if team members' Passion from training remains for more than 21 days results naturally follow.
To make such a reality, team members need a burning WHY and WHAT to remain passionate. This makes all the difference!
RULE # 1: .Effective training includes at least 20% WHY and WHAT
(2) Passion Triggers Feelings
...and feelings are good. We want employees to be emotional about their work. The best employees are those who know how they feel and are able to both communicate and stay in control of their feelings in a balanced manner.
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The minute we start tapping into Passion an interesting thing frequently happens: Conflict comes out of the closet.
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RULE # 2: Start building trust by getting feelings out in the open first
So to summarize...
If you want to be successful - if you want to influence others - you have to be passionate about WHY you do WHAT you do. You have to exercise influence in such a way that others become passionate too, i.e. self-sufficient and without your constant help in the long run.
Passion is what will determine your rise or fall. It will be how you rise. It will be how you fall. The same goes for all the people around you. Passion is the beginning of success.
Energy is real. It's the stuff that's behind everything we do and say, and that stuff is either positive or negative. There's nothing in between. It's either positive or negative. Children easily pick up energy - instantly. For example, did you ever see a child that naturally sought the company of a stranger (positive energy)? Or vice versa, did you ever experience a person that every child shuns (negative energy)? Why? It's energy and it's as real as anything. Do you believe adults are the same way? You bet'ya!
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All our senses are in sum a constant antenna. Look at the picture of the child. Even long before its ability to speak this antenna is in place and working. You can only wonder why some parents never understand nor learn that a child's inner feelings and outward behavior directly reflects the energy they themselves send out.
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Most people see energy as some kind of undefined "something" beyond our own control. But there are loads of practical things we can do. Let's pinpoint a few (among millions) just to illustrate:
- regardless of pressure and stress, always get enough sleep and eat healthy food
- regardless of circumstance or people, decide to encourage and speak highly of others
- regardless of how you might feel right now, never let bad emotions influence immediate action
Many of the renowned sales gurus have created language to explain "energy" in their own words. Mahan Khalsa speaks about "intent" and "ego". Brian Tracy emphatically stresses the "psychology of selling". It doesn't matter what you call it, really. It's what comes from inside and spreads through the cracks. It makes ALL the difference!
Let's consider an every-day example of how energy makes all the difference while for instance raising a child or taking care of your family. Lillian and I have five children. As a family we've frequently discussed in family counsel how we'd like our mornings to be. But even though everyone puts forth an effort, with five kids ages four to twelve, there's bound to be some challenges - every single morning. How does energy apply in such a situation? And what does this have to do with sales or influence?
If I'm frustrated, irritated, impatient, tired, late or even just gradually growing angry, any one of these emotions will automatically transmit to the people around us - immediately. I may try to hide it, but really it's impossible to keep that energy inside. It all leaks out through the cracks. And we know it all too well, don't we?!
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But, you see, the trouble isn't really knowing and understanding. Remember, what's common sense isn't necessarily common practice out there... In fact, it's mostly exactly the opposite; what we know we should be doing, we often don't do. That's how it requires constant and conscious effort to stay focused on positive energy. Now, let's look at why it makes such a difference to do so. | |
I should be the first to admit, I don't always succeed. Reflect for a moment on what might be the elements of a typical morning for any of us...
(1) Getting up
PATH TO NEGATIVE ENERGY: When the alarm goes off, our partner gets up, but we ourselves might be tempted to just slumber a tiny bit longer. Already at this point negative feelings may start building up inside. Children jump into our bed, someone turns on the bright light or opens the curtains, we get reminders of how much there's to do today, and even when we do get up, both the toilet and shower are occupied.
PATH TO POSITIVE ENERGY: The night before we've retired early. Together with our partner we wake up before everyone else, well rested. We make our bed together and turn on pleasent music in the living room. The volume is so low you can hardly hear the music. Family members wake up with a hug and kind words. Whenever anyone does anything to trigger bad feelings we remind ourselves: "I love this person!" and we ask "I wonder how he or she feels right now / how can I be of help?"
(2) Getting breakfast
PATH TO NEGATIVE ENERGY: Everyone's hungry and looks out for their own breakfast. When someone enters the kitchen another leaves. It's usually best to be among the first to eat, because sometimes we run out of milk or even bread. The kitchen is messy from yesterday when we didn't take the time to clean it up. Sometimes there's unkind words spoken as the rush and disorganized meal causes frustration or even accidents. The youngest kids are at times alone in the kitchen, when everyone else is going back and forth trying to get ready... not smart!
PATH TO POSITIVE ENERGY: The night before the table has been set by one of the kids. Breakfast starts at seven sharp. If someone's late, nobody calls out loud for the missing person. Rather, it's an opportunity to give that someone another a hug and a compliment. Breakfast is kind of slow. Some of us are just quiet. There's time to think, to wake up and time to speak and ask questions as we check up on some of the most important upcoming events of the day. When fruit and vitamins have been swallowed we're ready for another day.
(3) Getting out the door
PATH TO NEGATIVE ENERGY: While everyone is more or less desparately scrambling together their stuff, you regularly discover that a shoe or a glove is missing. Someone's yelling for more toilet paper while others are brushing their teeth, too fast and in a hurry. Parents repeat the threatening warning everyone knows so well: "You're gonna be late for school - again!"
PATH TO POSITIVE ENERGY: "Good luck with the test today" becomes everybody's que to getting ready. The table is cleared by all in less than a minute. Someone's telling a joke as hugs and kisses are passed and the youngest kids stand waving at the door. It's tradition!
Your feelings about the others
The difference lies in how you feel about the people around you. The above mentioned path to positive energy is of course never that perfect! It rarely is. However, there are proactive elements in it that makes it much easier to keep a sincere and heartfelt smile on your face - throughout the remainder of the day.
Getting up, getting breakfast and getting out the door are all activities that repeat themselves every day. Even if you're single and alone, there's always a number of "good reasons" to quickly start tapping into negative energy right from the very start. If you do, however, you'll only generate more negativity. Why not think it through, discuss the details and decide what you want, together?
People who take control of how the day starts tend to sincerely and honestly think more positively and highly of the people around them. As a result they also find themselves surrounded by people that want to and indeed do return those positive feelings.
If energy is to work for you and not against you here's what you may want to consider: Retire early in the evening and start the next day with a conscious effort to stay tuned in on the positive, especially every time you're tempted not to.
Over the years clients sometimes have built dysfunctional procurement routines to protect themselves from dysfunctional sales people and sales systems. In fact, "sometimes" is a euphemism. In my experience, almost every organization has to varying degrees a dysfunctional procurement culture. These flaws arise mostly from sales people who do not honestly protect client interests in the pursuit of short term business. What can you do today to reverse this trend?
There are loads of books written touching this subject. In Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play, Mahan Kalsa and Randy Illig beautifully elaborate on the matter. Maybe, in my opinion, they do so better than anyone else up to this point. For this reason, quite frankly, this book is simply a must read!
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You can do many things to combat dysfunctional selling. When you do so, you'll promote the development of healthy and open procurement models. One basic habit inevitably reinforces ways to how you better can protect client interests. It is this: Seek out senior sales people and executives and ask them what they would have done differently had they started their careers today. The advice you'll get, you'll see, almost always will point you in the direction of how to --better protect client interests--.
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The first principle of influence or selling is POSITION. I often summarize the principle of position with two words: "It's Thursday!" What's position..? It's Thursday! If you haven't heard me explain it during training, here's it is.
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Your position in any sale is where it all starts, pluss it's what affects everything else. Think of it as a question to a customer about what he or she thinks of you and your offer. If you skip all the beating around the bush, every customer always has a very clear opinion of both you as a person and your offer, at any given time. You better believe it. You may not get it out of them, but they have one. Their perception of you and your offer, that's your position with them. If you hypnotized them they'd give it to you, loud and clear. | |||||||||
To illustrate. If someone were to ask me what day it is, I'd be able to respond promptly: "It's Thursday". No discussion. End of story. It's finite. Accepted. Taken for granted.
Is it a fact, though? Sure, it's a fact; it's Thursday. A relative fact, maybe..? What?! Well, what if the majority of the world's populace just decided to make it Friday? Hypothetically speaking, it's possible... But highly unlikely, don't you think? That's how position works, how position appears. It easily seems as though nothing can be done about it.
Position is the first principle of sales success. Position is perception of relative facts. "It's Thursday" is a relative fact. OK, it's an extreme example, but it's still relative. The principle of position as perception of relative facts teaches us a load of things. Maybe the first most obvious lesson is this:
(1) Your position will either work for or against you
So many times I do training and dig into specific business cases with sales people. Every time a sales team starts discussing real customer cases there's a number of recognizable characteristics in individuals that come to the surface. They reveal the differences between high and OK performers specifically related to the principle of position:
You can see how one quality leads to the other, as these traits are listed almost in successive order. A second lesson that follows the first is:
(2) Change the position itself or you adapt to it
"It's Thursday" as an example of POSITION also illustrates how positions in fact regularly change, we just need to be there when it happens. Either you change the position itself or you adapt to it. If you were to ask me again tomorrow, I'd say "it's Friday". Of course, you say. Well then, why don't you stay at it until you win that way. Almost always, I repeat, almost always, there are ways to change or improve your position, i.e. the way the customer perceives the facts about you and your offer. Typical positions we can influence are:
- a bad or malfunctioning product
- a poor brand or reputation
- a market in recession or tight budgets
- incompetent management, mine or yours
- a failed relationship with a customer or vendor
These are just examples. Now, today, consider your most important sale, right now. Ask yourself what your position is. If you're not sure you're in a better position than your competition (and competition is not just other companies, but every factor that competes with you getting the contract) then look closely at what can be done. You'll find there's always something.
I'm telling you, you can decide to be a high performer if you're willing to do what it takes to improve your position. You do this by either "working around the fact that it's Thursday or changing the relative fact that it's Thursday". Either way you can win!
So what's this energy thing in communication? Well, it's everything. How can you communicate and not relate what you're doing to energy? Communication is energy. But there's more to energy in communication than you might think. Let's take a quick look at energy again, and maybe we'll catch a glimpse of it.
There are different energy levels in communication. You may have felt it. It's real. It matters. It's something every successful individual intuitively knows and effectively applies. Most of all, it's quantifiable, specific and something you can repeat - over and over again - that is, if you know how to.
Since the term "energy" may sound a bit blurry or hard to "practice in real life", why don't we bring some structure to it. Just for argument's sake, let's say there are three levels. The first level would be ME, myself. It's when I begin to resonate with a particular kind of message. The second level is US, you and me. It's when we begin to resonate with each other. The third level is IT, something out there. This would be when we begin to resonate with the environment, the higher and invisible forces we're surrounded by.
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(The third level doesn't need to be any more mystical than e.g. two individuals having a long distance conversation by the use of a cell phone. Are you able to explain the force or channel through which they're interacting? Unless you've studied it in school, you're probably not. But there's no immediate need to understand or explain how a cell phone works, only the fact that it does). | |||||||||||||||||||
That third level
Most people can easily relate to the first two energy levels (i.e. ME and US). But to some, the third energy level (i.e. IT) sounds too mystical. That's OK, if you feel it that way. Just remember though, whatever the message you behave will be understood differently on each level (yes, "behave" is the appropriate word for it). You see, each level gives more information, because behavior takes on different and more meaning the higher up you communicate. When all the others around you are perceiving the world on "the third level", you'll be missing out on quite a bit if you're still only communicating on "the second level". Why don't you just go in faith for once and test yourself. You may discover there's more to communication than you originally thought. Quite frankly, what have you got to lose?
Even though level one (ME) and level two (US) are understood, most people seldom experience them for real in a professional setting. How sad this is! What's more, because there's no resonating ME, WE don't resonate either (i.e. US). Why? Because there's a natural principle based sequence to this. We can't resonate unless there's first individual resonance. And that's also why so few people understand the third level, which in turn is dependent on both ME and US. You get it?
Let's illustrate with an example to make sure I didn't lose you: Now that there's such a stir around Michael Jackson's passing away, why don't we consider him for a moment?
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First, do you think Michael Jackson ever went on stage without reaching some kind of "resonating ME"? Do you think his best concerts were without a burning desire to share his best self? Of course not. Did he like the songs he was singing? Indeed, we may suppose he did. Second, do you think his resonating with the crowds was significant to their musical experience or his performance on stage? I'd say, probably... Third, do you think his wildest fans might refer to something bigger than just music and dance while experiencing him first hand during a concert? Does their ecstatic behavior make sense to us? Maybe not. Does it make sense to them? In some inexplicable way, most likely. If in doubt, take a look at Michael Jackson for yourself. | |||||||||
It begins with the individual, spreads to those around and then becomes something intangible, but real. At this point, I'll quickly point out that effective communication seldom is a "performance", but rather a shared experience. It can be quietly done without any extravagance or even technique. The absolute minimum that it takes is sincerity (outbound energy) and sensitivity (inbound energy).
Practical and doable
To help understand each level, a long time ago, I put together three scenarios visualising what essentially takes place every time there's a shift in energy. The three scenarios explain each level more precisely. If you haven't heard them explained during a training session or read them I suggest you do so now, before reading the conclusion of this article.
What's the big deal? Well, my message and claim is simple: YOU CAN, it you want to, communicate in a much more exciting way than you're currently doing. It's possible to trigger enormous amounts of energy on three levels. First of all inside yourself. Secondly, in others. And third, and most of all, in unison by the use of power in your environment. And to what purpose? To get a much deeper commitment in yourself and others. If you're in selling, knowing about this is simply a must.
So how do we apply it? Here's how to put it into action. Always stay focused on three areas (one for each level respectively):
Position + Trust + Behavior = Message
Each of these is very concrete and measurable. We dive deeply into each of these areas in my book The 3 Energies Behind Sales Success, but if you'd like some other examples (and they're merely examples) of books written on each topic, you may consider the one's listed below. Note! These authors don't necessarily explain how to unleash the energies, but they tap into the do's and don'ts:
- Level 1: Position - Strategic Selling, Miller Heiman
- Level 2: Trust - The Speed of Trust, Stephen M.R. Covey
- Level 3: Behavior - SPIN® Selling, Neil Rackham
Conclusion
To trigger energy - the stuff that adds real power - and makes communication become really powerful, you'll have to work on answering the WHAT (position), WHO (trust) and HOW (behavior) questions. This is the secret to energy in your communication. There's no shortcut, but hard work. However, once the energy's there, it sure feels like a shortcut.
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