What Do You Do When Your Heart Isn’t In It Anymore?
I believe that selling is basically a transfer of confidence and passion.
When you are selling, you are working to give your prospect confidence that you bring a better solution to their situation than does your competition.
You are working to give them passion about addressing the situation that your solution is intended to address.
Confidence and passion are just like anything else. You can’t give away what you don’t possess yourself. Confidence and passion may not be tangible in the way that you can hold something in your hand, but make no mistake, people can clearly see whether you have them or not.
The important thing for every one of us to know is what our sources of confidence are and to be honest about where our passion lies. While we may not have control over what creates passion for us, we absolutely control those sources of confidence. Once you’ve identified them, you have to work very purposefully to maintain them at a very high level.
Sadly, some people, when they feel their confidence and passion slipping away don’t choose to address the issue of re-building their confidence or being honest about their passion. Instead they just talk a bigger game, they make claims about their ability and value that just aren’t true any longer. And like the loud-mouthed athlete who is a little past his playing prime, but still claims to be “the greatest”, it is easy to spot the pretenders, and it is usually a sad sight to behold.
My advice is to be honest with yourself about your level of confidence and the source of your passion. If the confidence has slipped, do the hard work to build it back. If your passion has slipped, you need to search to find where it has moved.
Maybe it has just shifted to another role in your company. Maybe selling is no longer your passion, but mentoring other young salespeople gets you all fired up.
Or maybe your confidence and passion have shifted somewhere else entirely, and it’s time to move on.
Photo by stefg74.
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Pursuing Even More Excellence
I was recently talking with dad about education and career development, and he told me about an opportunity he was given early in his career. The opportunity was definitely interesting, but his response is what really struck me as so notable.
He was taking summer classes at a small state university a few years after graduating. One of his classes was taught by a visiting professor from UCLA who quickly recognized that my dad was an exceptional thinker and could quickly analyze and create strategy. The professor thought he should pursue this gift and study for his doctorate. The professor offered him a teaching assistant position to help cover some of the high costs he would have to incur – namely moving to LA with my mom and brother (I was yet to be born).
Well, he didn’t go.
When I heard this, I was absolutely shocked. He was never someone to shy away from an intellectual challenge, and this was one of the greatest. So why didn’t he accept this one? Then it hit me:
He didn’t have anyone in his inner circle that had more faith in his abilities to transcend his current circumstances than he had in himself.
He didn’t have someone who could see beyond the required sacrifice to recognize the investment that this would be. He and my mom both grew up with modest means. Education and hard work were valued, but they weren’t risk takers. They were encouraged to get good jobs and hopefully raise their standard of living, but a steady job was definitely the goal.
I looked at him with this realization and said, “You didn’t have anyone to push you to do it. I would have pushed you. I would have made sure you did it.” He smiled, nodded and said, “Yes, I have no doubt you would have.”
I really would have because that’s what I do when I see talent. And that’s what we do every day here at BGN. We see the talent, we see the opportunity. We have an objective perspective and many comparatives. We know what success looks like, and we really can see the potential for achievement in individuals and in agencies.
We push people to step up to the challenge and set higher goals, not just for revenue, but also for skills and knowledge. We want to see them blow away their own expectations for themselves. And we want them to take that same level of expectation to their own clients.
Because we see beyond current circumstances for other people, we make it our job to help those people surpass their own modest expectations.
My challenge to you is to review your inner circle, and see who you’ve got on your personal team that believes even more in your capabilities more than you do. And encourages and pushes you to achieve more. If you’ve got someone, then listen very carefully to his or her advice. And ask a lot of questions.
If you don’t currently have someone, then I highly recommend you do some searching and open yourself to the possibility. Growth comes by challenging the status quo, and sometimes it can be hard to do that all on your own.
Having someone else believe in you and encourage you to do something even bigger than you imagined is positively exhilarating and can be life changing. And hopefully then you can pass that gift on to someone else.
Now, in the end, I should be glad my dad didn’t go because I probably wouldn’t be here otherwise!
Photo by C.P. Storm.
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Fire Yourself
Fire yourself - at least from those activities that deliver you the least amount of value.
My brother reminded me recently of a 1989 Wall Street Journal article by Peter Drucker titled “Sell The Mailroom”. The premise of the article is that organizations should look for those internal functions that, as critical as they are, don’t necessarily lend themselves directly to the organizational purpose.
To quote Drucker,
“If clerical, maintenance and support work is done by an outside independent contractor it can offer opportunities, respect and visibility. As employees of a college, managers of student dining will never be anything but subordinates. In an independent catering company they can rise to be vice president in charge of feeding the students in a dozen schools; they might even become CEOs of their firms.”
Obviously, that makes a lot of sense on the macro/organizational level, but what if you adopted this same philosophy at the micro/individual level? I think it could be powerful!
- Make a list of all of the responsibilities/activities you currently have in your position.
- Prioritize those responsibilities by placing those that most directly contribute to success in your position at the top of the list and those that are your “mailroom/dining” activities at the bottom.
- How much time could you free up if you would “outsource” those activities at the bottom of your list?
- How much value could you create with that re-captured time now being spent by doing more of the activities at the top of your list?
- How much more effectively would those, now outsourced, activities be performed when done so by someone who would have them at the top of their list?
It doesn’t matter whether it’s at the organizational or the personal level, good ideas are worth implementing.
Photo Kevin Krejci.
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You Are Not Entitled
All businesses experience turnover. How you deal with that turnover says a lot about your attitude, your values, your willingness to learn. And it says a lot about your future potential for attracting new employees.
Got issues?
I see employers who clearly have morale issues and do little to nothing to uncover the source of the problem. Or if they do find the source, they choose to do nothing about it. Then, when employees leave, these employers are shocked.
And then they get mad. They get mad at the employee for “deserting them”, or being “disloyal”, or “using them” and then moving on to a better job (which gives the employer the “right” to feel betrayed).
The final step in this dysfunctional cycle is that they vilify the former employee to anyone who will listen. “He wasn’t very good. Poor performer. Bad for the team. Don’t know why I hired him in the first place.”
Former employers bad-mouthing former employees seems to be pretty common. I personally know a number of such situations myself, and I also have enough information from both sides to know that the problems weren’t just a poor performing employees.
For example, I know a CEO who was a bit of a tyrant. When the CFO left the company (to get away from this new CEO), the CEO, in what I can only imagine was an effort to save face, told the staff that it was good riddance, and it was their opportunity to “upgrade.” Really?? What do you think that did to morale? I can tell you it was already on a downhill slide and simply continued from there.
I think that sometimes employers find a comfort in believing that the employees need them and can, therefore, treat their employees any way they want, regardless of care, fairness, or compassion.
Your future depends on it
What they don’t realize is that they carry out this boorish behavior at the peril of their future success.
Who wants to recruit a friend or recommend a peer to work at a company where she’ll be bad-mouthed and considered incompetent when she chooses to leave? And if the employer is saying those things about former employees, what are they saying about the current employees? Word gets around; reputations are built and talented people know they don't need to work for companies like these.
Employers are not entitled to employees. Any of them. And employees do not “owe” their employers anything beyond exchanging their services for a paycheck.
If an employer really wants to keep their employees on staff, have employees who are genuinely interested in helping the company grow more successful, and become a magnet for talented people, they need to start by realizing they’re not entitled to any of those things. They have to work diligently to create the culture where people are welcomed, appreciated, and respected for their contributions, asked for their opinions and participation in building the business, and acknowledged and rewarded for their efforts.
If you see the negative, bad-mouthing type of behavior at your company or at your client companies, where the employer is always right and all former employees are wrong, I suggest you help dig into the root of the problem. If left unchecked, this will erode any good will currently in place, and it’s really, really hard to build back lost trust and forward momentum.
Photo by Pixel Theif.
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Networking: Going All-In
Networking – different images can come to mind with this loaded word.
On the negative side you might picture a tacky cocktail reception with people milling around looking for the next potential sale, not caring at all about the people or their interests.
It can also be a powerful word and one that conjures up images of getting closer to your own goals as a result of working together with a group of people all focused on similar outcomes.
Networking is a key component to our membership and we design our programs to make it a prominent part of the agenda when we get together face-to-face. At our BGNLive conference last week I was really drawn into recognizing the nuances of networking and the powerful results that can come from it.
The catalyst for change
When you are with a group of people who are all working toward the same goal, networking becomes one of the most critical components to change – it can create that catalyst needed to get started or stay motivated. When you really choose to participate in sharing ideas with one another there are so many things you can gain from it:
- find validation or re-direction of current ideas
- look for answers to challenges
- gain further motivation to continue what you’re doing
- get ideas for new programs or processes
This list could go on extensively. The point is that when you choose to share with others and allow them to share with you (ideas, challenges, fears, successes), you’ll gain ten-fold from it.
R&D: Rob & Duplicate
We had a member describe how it’s taken 5 years to develop a system that, from the outside, looks so simple and effortless. It looks so effortless and it’s taken so long because of all the trials along the way of what didn’t work.
When you get the chance to learn from someone else’s trials and mistakes like this and see the elegant end result – take advantage of it! Sure you want to put your own spin on it, but having a solid starting point will get you at least halfway there. The remainder comes from the effort you put into it back at home.
It takes time
Being able to get to the point of this level of comfort and sharing comes with time. It takes a while to develop these kinds of trusting relationships by meeting face-to-face and continuing the connections all year round. I have watched the group, now over three conferences, getting to know one another, greeting and welcoming the new faces, reuniting with favorite friends, and opening up more and more. As everyone becomes more comfortable, the sharing increases, the ideas are exchanged, and you can feel a level of excitement and energy in the room that feels like that tipping point of change – the Ah Ha! moments as people realize they’re not in this alone and they’re probably being a lot more successful than they might have otherwise thought. The power of the group is a strong motivator to get started and keep going.
Effort = Results
All-in networking is a huge boon for your business if done effectively and consistently because it can shorten your learning curve and speed the time to successful implementation of new ideas.
When you have the opportunity to network with a group of similarly focused people who are serious about improving their businesses, I highly recommend taking full advantage of every bit that you can. Networking is as good as the effort you put into it.
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Work Hard, Play Hard
Wow, another BGNLive (BGNL) has come and gone. While I’m sure that everyone who attended has their own opinion, I felt that this was the most productive and enjoyable session to date.
I started the conference by reminding everyone that BGNL is primarily about two things; learning and networking. For those who haven’t attended a BGNL, this is not your typical “mini vacation” type of conference. There is real work involved. Homework assignments were sent out ahead of time with the expectation that everyone comes prepared to work - for their own benefit, the benefit of everyone back home, as well as the benefit of everyone in the room at BGNL.
Prepare and work they did. I don’t recall ever getting to spend three days with such an engaged group. They took every section, every assignment, and every chance to role play and have group discussions very seriously. They didn’t just sit and listen to ideas, they shared their own. They didn’t show up just to brag about what they have already accomplished, they took an honest assessment and identified all of the areas of improvement still ahead of them.
The work was long and the breaks (at times) were short. But there was an energy that seemed to keep the group focused and forging ahead. My hope is that everyone left having learned something new about themselves and how they will find even greater success. It’s safe to say that I learned as much as anyone. Our members work hard, try new ideas, and are creative and enthusiastic about what they do – any they’re willing to share those ideas to help everyone in the group improve.
As hard as this group worked during the day, they played just as hard each evening. Don’t get the wrong impression of what I mean here - I mean that they truly enjoyed spending the down time together, the networking part of the conference. Not only do they respect one another as business professionals, but they genuinely enjoy one another as people. I had the pleasure of watching long time friends have a bit of a reunion and watched new friendships being formed. You could see it in the level of animated conversation taking place over dinner and a cocktail, and you could hear it in the good-natured joking that would take place the following day.
As I reminded everyone at the end of the conference, there is plenty of hard work still ahead. However, they know what hard work looks like. After all, they each spent three days learning, assessing their current situation, and planning for their next level of success. Of course, the equation wouldn’t be balanced without the challenge to keep the networking/friendships active (if only virtually) until the next BGNL.
Yes, this group worked hard preparing for and participating in this conference. But what I witnessed was clear evidence that when you enjoy what you do, it hardly feels like work.
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Your Next 90 Days
It’s a new year, which always means a fresh start, new opportunities, and, hopefully for you, a new role. And while most of you aren’t formally taking on new leadership roles, I would like to suggest that you increase the scope and impact of whatever role you currently fill in your organization to the point of it effectively being a “new role” for you.
Over the next several weeks, I will touch on 10 challenges you should consider as you embrace a 2012 that will allow you to have a greater impact on your own responsibilities and results, as well as for those around you. As I do so, I will borrow from a book I read last year, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Stories for New Leaders by Michael Watkins.
First Challenge – Promote yourself.
This doesn’t mean to go on a campaign of self-promotion, rather it means that you need to mentally elevate yourself to the role to which you have actually been promoted or to which you aspire to create as your “new role”.
Define the role - Start by defining your new role in a way that will allow you to contribute to the organization the greatest value of which you are capable. Be careful to not fall into a trap of thinking that just doing more of what has made you successful to this point will drive success in your new role. Any new/elevated role will require new behaviors and skills. Honestly assess where you have a gap and identify how you will fill it in.
Stop and then start - As you identify and commit to doing the new tasks that will make you successful, be realistic of the additional time they will require. Since there is no way to create additional time, you are going to have to make time on your calendar. Before you can decide what you will start doing, you have to decide what you will stop doing. Look for those activities that could be done just as well, or maybe even better, by someone else. Also, be honest and let go of activities that only keep you busy but aren’t producing results.
Be specific with milestones- Be very clear, painfully honest, and specific about the new skills and behaviors your “new role” will require. You may find it necessary to start setting even more specific milestones than you’ve previously set. Describe in detail what will you accomplish this week, month, quarter.
Finding success means preparing yourself to fail – I don’t mean big picture failure. What I mean is that you need to prepare yourself in advance for the inevitable setbacks that will occur. Know that they will happen and don’t panic when they do. By anticipating setbacks, you will put yourself in a much better position of looking at them as a time to recommit and re-evaluate rather than a time to abandon your plan.
It takes a tribe - Establish as many accountability advisors as possible. Find the individuals with whom you are going to share your vision of your new role, and ask them to hold you accountable for your progress. Be sure this group includes people who can and will mentor you into your new role.
The key to all of this is to identify what success looks like and then create a disciplined plan of improvement to make that your reality.
Acceleration Checklist as suggested in The First 90 Days:
1. What has made you successful so far in your career?
Can you succeed in your new role by relying solely on those strengths? If not, what are the critical skills you need to develop?
2. Are there aspects of your new role that are critical to your success but that you prefer not to focus on?
Why is that the case?
How will you compensate for your potential blind spots?
3. What do you need to do to ensure that you make the mental leap into the new position?
From whom might you seek advice and counsel on this?
What other activities might help you do this?
Photo by iwona_kellie.
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Appeal to Individual Motivations
When introducing a new initiative in your organization, you understand the need to get your team motivated behind the cause. After all, the success of the initiative is going to be largely dependent on their level of support.
All too often, when we introduce an initiative, we only focus on why it is important for the company that the initiative to be successful. While I am certain that your team wants the company to be successful, the Company is only one of five primary areas of motivation for the individuals on your team. The other four are Society, Customer, Team, and, of course, Me. Chances are that if you divided your team up by their primary motivating force, you would have a pretty even number of people in each category.
So, if you want your team to be fully motivated behind your new cause, be sure that you communicate the potential impact the new initiative will have in each area of motivation. Let’s look at an example to see what this may look like.
Let’s say that you were going to invest in sales training. : )
You would very likely point out the fact that the training is necessary due to poor growth over the past 24 months. The Company has to get back to a period of growth and this training will help to do so.
However, it could also be explained that, because of no growth, profitability has suffered, and you are no longer able to contribute to the philanthropic causes you believe in so strongly. Society.
You could also talk about how the training will bring a much more Customer focused approach ensuring your ability to make a greater impact on the success of their business.
The Team will also benefit from the synergies that will result from the training’s focus on fully leveraging individual talents and creating more effective team structures.
Finally, you could appeal to their Me-centric concerns by explaining how the expected results from the training will lead to better financial and growth opportunities for everyone involved.
If you aren’t taking the time to tap into the various motivational forces that exist in your company, you are missing opportunities to gain full support. And for any initiative to be successful, you have to ensure the broadest level of support possible.
Photo by KittyKat3756.
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One Thing
“One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean &*$#.” That is the secret of life according to Curly in City Slickers.
Now, I don’t know if that is truly the secret of life, but I do think it is a great start to finding the secret to your success. Okay, maybe there isn’t just one, one thing. Maybe your sales success is a series of “one things.”
In my article Willpower vs. Self-Discipline I discussed the difference between willpower and self-discipline. The main difference between the two being that willpower mostly focuses on a single act while self-discipline delivers repeated actions. Getting to that consistent, structured self-discipline takes a lot of work, and sometimes the hardest part of that is just getting started. So, I’ve got some suggestions to get you off the fence and start down your path toward self-discipline – one step at a time.
After all, you can do anything once, right? So, let’s talk about the things that if done “once” will deliver you selling success.
Daily ONE Things
Read
Read ONE article/blog from a source that understands your industry. You will be shocked at the opportunities you find to share what you learned.
Personal brand management
Share ONE idea/link/retweet via social media to enhance your personal brand. Give your prospects something powerful to find when they search you online, because they will.
Weekly ONE Things
Suspecting
Identify the ONE suspect (someone with whom you want to do business, but whom is not yet aware of that fact) you will contact this week to set up a meeting. Nothing is more important than filling your pipeline.
Prospecting
Identify the ONE prospect (someone who knows you want to do business with you and with whom you are having ongoing sales discussions) in your pipeline who you are going to move to a final decision. A stagnant pipeline is worse than an empty pipeline because it gives a false sense of security.
Client relationship management
Proactively contact ONE client this week for no reason other than sharing an article, an idea, or to just check in. Goes so far in building the personal connection.
Thank you
Send ONE handwritten thank-you note to someone who is making a difference for you. It may be the only piece of mail they actually read that day.
Referrals
Take ONE client or center of influence to lunch this week for the purpose of asking for a referral. Of course, be sure you have earned the opportunity to ask for a referral.
Practice
Role play ONE part of your sales process, with a partner, each week. Be prepared to execute your process, as well as to answer questions and objections that are sure to come up with prospects and clients.
Planning
Plan out your weekly activities. Instead of meeting each day not knowing what it holds, decide ONE time, at the beginning of the week, what things are the most valuable use of your time.
Monthly ONE Things
Team member relationship management
Take ONE team member out to lunch this month to learn how you can help them be more successful at what they do. I promise, the more you help them be successful, they more they will be able/willing to help you be successful.
Prospect research
Get online and do some in-depth research to find a group of potentially viable prospects. Search through your connections, your connections’ connections, your local marketplace, or industry resources to identify suspects and find possible links to get a referral or introduction.
Quarterly ONE Things
Personal development
What is the ONE business book you will pick up and read this quarter? Never stop learning.
Annual ONE Things
Planning
Take time to plan out your upcoming year with goals for prospecting, keeping prospects moving through the sales process, as well as sales goals. Outline how you plan to achieve these goals with your own personal marketing plan.
Book of business management
What is the ONE segment of your book of business you are going to pass on to someone else? I know this one is tough for producers to get their arms around, basically “firing” some of their clients, but it’s typically the right thing to do. When I profile books of business (ranking the accounts from most revenue to least revenue), I will almost always see that the bottom 25 percent of a book usually only generates 1 percent of total book revenue, many times only averaging a few hundred dollars of revenue per year. These accounts slow your growth more than you recognize.
So there you have it. If you need a little help getting started on that path to self-discipline, use the power you already have in willpower to get it going. You don’t even have to do all of the ONE things, just pick a few. But really, I think you have enough willpower to tackle them all. You just have to be honest enough with yourself and ask, “How badly do I really want it?”
Photo by Lululemon Athletica.
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Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead!
Every company should have a plan. A plan of where the company is going. A plan for everyone in the organization to follow and rally around as enthusiastic supporters of a larger goal.
We all want to be working toward a higher purpose beyond the next task on our to-do list. What we come into work for every day needs to be connected to that larger goal that the whole team is working together to achieve.
Create a theme.
The company plan will likely be comprised of several large objectives to reach the Big Goal, but it should all be drawn together with a central theme. It should all tie back to the larger idea of WHY you’re working to achieve that Big Goal. Without the WHY clearly defined, it’s just a random set of goals.
Sometimes people want to reach a certain revenue number – which is fine if you’re the owner of the business and expect to reap the financial rewards of that number. But what incentive is that for your salaried team members to dig down deep and really put in the extra innovation to help you reach that goal? They need something larger to work toward that is going to motivate them intrinsically on a daily basis.
Here’s an example.
I worked for an organization where my boss made a pitch to re-organize separate corporate sales teams, which had come together through acquisitions, into one unified team. He was eventually given the go-ahead to do it, but was met with a very pessimistic attitude from all directions. The company was a little lost in it’s overall strategy, yet, as the sales team, it was our job to convince customers that we were a strong, unified, focused company.
He knew that we needed confidence and belief in what we were selling in order to make this successful. So, in his effort to help bolster the team spirit, we set about creating our own goals, team structure to meet the goals, and a culture to support the confidence and trust we needed in each other to achieve this impossible task. It was exciting because we were told it couldn’t be done; yet we had a leader who, at least publicly, had unwavering confidence in us that we could do it.
We all rallied around the goal and had team meetings on how we were going to do it. The structure started to come together, and as we worked through that, the culture started to become apparent and contagious. At one particularly defeating, yet exciting meeting, our fearless leader proclaimed emphatically, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”
Well, that was it. That became the theme for our team and our rallying cry. All we had to say was that one line and everyone knew what it represented:
- confidence in ourselves and our team abilities
- belief that we were selling something of value to the clients
- the goals we had set
- our constant pursuit of improvement
- proving to everyone that the impossible CAN BE DONE.
One small phrase changed everything for the team. We created a logo and used it on our internal materials, created posters for everyone to hang at their desks, used it as the theme for our quarterly off-site training sessions. We had team jackets embroidered with the logo and wore them proudly. We carried the spirit of that idea everyday and used it as our constant reminder that we were working toward something larger than just a number. Yet all of our energy we poured into that “something larger” drove that number every day.
A few pivotal ideas and actions drove our success. And they’re the same key ideas for any successful company plan:
- We had a leader who had a very clear vision of what we needed to accomplish.
- Our leader communicated that vision regularly and with great enthusiasm about what we were doing.
- Team members got to participate in developing the strategic and tactical components of the plan – the parts we were responsible for executing. Since we developed it, we owned it!
- Even though we each had differing responsibilities, we knew that each of us was contributing in our own way to the larger goal. No one questioned what his/her role in that big picture was – it was clearly defined.
- There was a culture of expectation, which created natural accountability. No one wanted to be responsible for the ship going down.
- Leadership provided guidance and ongoing training and support to make sure we could do our jobs to the best of our abilities.
- We each performed our roles and worked as a team to achieve our individual goals, our sub-team goals, and the whole team Big Goal.
I look at this experience very, very fondly because it worked. It was a real life example of great leadership and teamwork making a difference and demonstrating success. It can be done anywhere. You just have to decide that you want to do it.
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