What did you say?

Verbal communication is a skill, one must be careful about how you say things to avoid misunderstandings because everyone has different meaning for same words. In this world what you say doesn’t matter as much as how you say it. When putting forward an opinion, you need to think about your choice of words, your gestures, body language and about your tone intensity pitch. 

 

My father always used to say, “It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it!” I think that this is correct and incorrect at the same time, as it's both what you say AND how you say it. The non-verbal components of an assertive message are really the key to its effectiveness. When a customer sees you - your look and your body language - you are already communicating to them, non-verbally, and they are deciding whether or not they want to listen.

I trust science

In general, scientists are motivated in their work by curiosity about the world and how it works. Behavioural science is the branch of science that deals primarily with human interaction and has a fundamental connection to sales, as salespersons ask a lot of questions, experiment and interact with buyers. 


Contact me via e-mail for a peer review of your sales process. I think that sales professionals who understand the core concepts of behavioural science are better able to engage their customers because they have:

  • Increased self-awareness

  • Improved emotional intelligence

  • Improved agility

  • Reduced social anxiety

  • Reduced fear in managing difficult conversations

  • Improved ability to assess challenges and opportunities objectively

Tell the truth

c/o Apple TV

Many of you have heard about the Apple TV series, “Ted Lasso”, perhaps you have seen it. It’s about an American football coach Ted Lasso who is hired by a wealthy divorcée to coach the English football (soccer)team AFC Richmond. Here’s 10 leadership lessons from Ted Lasso:
1. Believe in believe
2. Live in the moment 
3. Doing the right thing is never the wrong thing
4. All people are different people
5. Optimism is a superpower
6. Be kind
7. Tell the truth 
8. Happiness is a choice
9. Forgive first
10. See the good in others

Many of you may also have heard the English phrase, “Many a true word is spoken in jest.” Watching “Ted Lasso” may not make you a better sales leader. What’s wrong with sales leadership today and how I can fix it? Contact me via e-mail if you are interested in hearing more.

,

Don’t mistake courtesy for consent

,

Some salespersons are busy going around and around but never seeing clients, so their progress is small. Many sales trainers forget to separate “knowledge” and how much time salespersons should spend in front of their clients in their sales training. It’s essential to teach salespersons that they should never mistake activity for achievement.

Do you have a systematic way of getting better every day?
It often takes more than a good idea to make things a success. All around us there are hidden forces which make it difficult for us to reach our goals, close a sale or convince others to adopt new ideas, often, an outsider’s expertise is most helpful in identifying these areas of improvement. I would like to offer you a free 30 minute consultation to help you maximise performance and leadership - for yourself and your organisation. 
Click here and book a free 30-minute consultation with me. This offer ends on 30th January 2022.

More feedback required

How do you start a feedback loop?
- Plan (choose an action)
- Execute (perform the action)
- Monitor (observe the reaction)
- Analyse (measure the reaction)


Touch points are interactions between businesses and customers that occur during the customer’s journey. These moments significantly influence customer experience as well as brand perception. A good customer journey is when we include everyone who’s involved in a touch point - customers, the people who influence them and those they influence. In order to start a feedback loop, you will need to add another layer to the journey - who, on our brand’s side, holds responsibility for each step and what constitutes a handoff to the next group. These teams need to provide feedback at each step so everyone along the customer journey understands the bigger impact of their work.

Asking better questions

I think that when you slow down and ask better questions, you will sell more effectively. The quality of your questions will determine the quality of the relationship you develop with your clients. If you ask them dumb, simple questions then that’s the relationship you are going to have. On the other hand, if you are asking deep, insightful questions - questions that make them say: “Nobody has ever asked me that” or “I’ve never thought about it from that perspective, let me think about it.”

When the quality of the questions is high, the client knows you are really trying to understand where they are coming from. It’s not about getting them to say yes, it’s about getting them to say, “That’s right, you understand.” Selling isn’t hard when you know how!

““If we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.””
— Tony Robbins

Brain contribution

When we express gratitude, our brain releases dopamine and serotonin - two hormones that make us feel lighter and happier inside. It’s been really important to take care of our minds during this pandemic and understanding how to trigger this feeling is an important tool to have at our disposal. Before you can trigger it, let’s understand why gratitude is so important. We experience gratitude when we shift our focus from what we don’t have to what we do, and when we take time to appreciate and be thankful for those who have contributed to the abundance in our lives.

Which part of the brain controls our important cognitive skills, for example, emotional expression, problem solving, memory, language, judgement, and sexual behaviours?
The amygdala is responsible for the ‘fight/flight/freeze’ mechanism of our bodies and when stress makes you feel anger, aggression, or fear, the fight-flight response mechanism is activated. The frontal lobe controls our short-sighted behaviours to be able to act with a goal in mind and this may include things  like self-control, planning, decision-making and problem-solving. I think that it’s the subconscious mind that controls all our behaviours and since it is open to continued suggestions, we are being changed by the constant messaging. 

Active imagination

Imagination is more important than knowledge because imagination is the only thing that can open up our minds and our hearts to the possible - to the successful and fulfilling future we all envision for ourselves but that may seem out of reach because we currently don't have the knowledge to see the exact path to that.

“I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
— Albert Einstein

Sunday exercise

When we close our eyes, or even if our eyes are open and start to use our imagination - the Einstein brain - we have just activated one of the bigger centres of our brain, the occipital lobe that’s connected to the motor cortex. It’s also connected to the motivational circuit; the nucleus comes and releases that dopamine that makes you feel good and makes you want to act. So, if you visualise yourself achieving the goal, if you visualise yourself behaving in ways that match the new belief, even if you visualise the words or you take the words on a sheet of paper and you read them. 

 

Try it: Close your eyes, see it, and feel it, your brain will begin to create a mental movie with the words and as it creates a mental movie with the words that’s happening in your subconscious mind. And when you give the subconscious mind these instructions a couple of things happen because of the way the brain hierarchy works. Number one is survival; number two is safety and number three is energy conservation. When you do something consistently, it takes between 60 and 365 days of repetition to override an old habitual circuit. Therefore, if you visualise yourself achieving the goal, feeling the success you want to feel, seeing the belief on the screen of your mind, you are actually creating an artificial numeral network through the science of neuroplasticity. And since your brain wants to conserve energy, if you do this on a consistent basis, your brain will automatically set aside the old beliefs and replace them with new beliefs, and then you will have deliberately and consciously evolved yourself.

New mindset, new results

When somebody says no to you, don’t take it personally, in my mind when they say, no - I say next, which means when you say no to me, I’m just going to move onto the next client or opportunity. There’s so much business out there, so are so many potential customers to go after, you just have to have the abundance mindset. 

 

Always reflect on why you lost the sale when you are rejected. And ask: What could I have done better? I will always encourage you to reflect on why you lost that deal but don’t just sit there and beat yourself up about being rejected. The real sales mindset is that the rejection is not about you and rejection is part of the game, that’s why you are in sales - if you don’t like rejection, you really shouldn’t be in sales.

Remote working

In the current remote working world, managers and leaders must promote ownership and accountability to help their employees to connect to the organisations mission. Do you have a clear picture about your team members?

-       Who are they as a person?
-       What skills can be improved?
-       How can you help them to thrive?

 

Leaders who want to maximise self-motivation for each member of their team would have given them a clear definition of their purpose and role in the organisation as they began working from home. And this should be connected to the organisations overall purpose (or why). Purpose may include a desire to make an impact by contributing to something larger than themselves or challenging themselves to grow and learn new skills. Overcoming challenges and acquiring mastery is one of the most satisfying parts of the human experience, regardless of whether it is work related or not. How well do you understand your employees’ current skills, aptitude, and potential?

Consensus buying

More people are now involved in making buying decisions in the B2B world as the product or service being sold will probably impact more than one stakeholder, and in some cases more than one department. And the risk associated with this high-priced item you are offering comes with more risk; therefore, more people need to be in on the buying process. The challenge we face as salespersons is now, we must develop “consensus buying.” When I say consensus buying, I mean it’s difficult to get 5 to 10 decision makers on the same page. How do we control the narrative? It’s the salespersons job to find common ground and work towards a consensus.

 

All stakeholders have an opinion on what they should buy and for what reasons they should buy, and in many cases it’s all about self-interest as they are only looking from their own perspective. Now this gives the salesperson an opportunity to get people on board, build consensus and serve all these different interests. Therefore, good sales training is more important than ever before, contact via e-mail for sales training and workshops.

Dream big

All our unfulfilled dreams, constitute a limitation on what we are and could become. Usually it’s fear and it’s close cousin, anxiety, that keep us from doing those things that would make us happy. The things we long to do - educate ourselves, become successful in our work, fall in love - are goals shared by all. The things we are afraid to try usually are made up of broken promises to ourselves. Yet the means to achieve these things are not obscure. Why don’t we do what is necessary to become the people we want to be?

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
— Henry David Thoreau

Most people are stuck in life because of fear, fear of everything outside their comfort zones. We are exposed and vulnerable when crossing a bridge; that keeps many of us from crossing to where our dreams live. Our minds have a way of rising to the occasion - challenge it - and it will reward you. Our dreams transport us to magical places that we try to capture in music, film and art, but we only dream when we sleep deeply. I think you should focus more on why you want your dreams to come true, rather than on how to make them come true. When we do this, the “hows” happen in a miraculous way.

Going through the motions

Now we are in the first week of 2022 and after the festive season many people are struggling to get back into the work rhythm. I think human behaviour is driven by our attitudes, and our attitude is based around the beliefs that we have. Maybe if you understand at a deeper level what you really want then you will really want to act. What’s your passion?

When you develop that something that’s bigger than yourself, it will help you to stay focused and stop your subconscious mind from hijacking your thought process. I think that if you learn to sell and share information, then selling products and services will become as natural as positioning yourself at an interview or on a date. When you are in a leadership position, you must be able to sell the organisation’s vision, goals  and your ideas with enthusiasm and energy if you want your team to follow without protest.

“When it comes to developing your style, listen to other people and absorb what is useful, discard what is not and add what is uniquely yours.”
— Bruce Lee

Working from home

Working from home is not a new phenomenon but due to the Covid-19 pandemic it has become the new normal for most employees. It’s more than likely that many of you have been or will be working remotely for the foreseeable future, so it’s imperative to distinguish between private and professional life at home. As employees are the key drivers for all businesses, companies, and organisations, hopefully your boss sent you home with more than just your laptop. 

 

In a remote working model, autonomy, mastery and purpose will help leaders to replace control with empowered self-control. Leaders and managers should focus on empowering and motivating their teams by establishing clear goals and boundaries for each member of their team and allow them freedom to operate within these boundaries. I think leaders and managers should concede control and enhance motivation by trusting employees to work in ways that suits them best.

Think positive

The brain tends to focus more on negative thoughts and this is based on the instinctual parts of the brain. We can train ourselves to focus on the positives as well. Here’s a simple exercise: Write down 3 things you are grateful for and 3 things that you did well every day for 7 days. By doing this simple you can change your brain and you will see your self-esteem grow. The more you are grateful, the more you will have to be grateful for.

Teach a man to fish

Hunting is all about the kill, while gathering or farming requires nurturing over time to yield the bounty. In his book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, Jared Diamond studied why some cultures today are highly advanced and others are still living very primitive. One of the key factors he found was the difference between how they ate. A hunter for example ‘works today, eats today,’ which points to short-term thinking. On the other hand, a farmer can grow a crop that can last him a whole year or more, which requires more nurturing but also provides more long-term resources.

When setting goals, you want to set both short-term and long-term goals. A short-term goal is a goal that is designed to be completed in a short period of time, typically, between a few weeks and six months Long-term goals can be anything ranging from a year to ten or even twenty years. They may be vague, but that is exactly what long-term goals are meant to be – to serve as a vision for your future.

Take responsibility

As we near the end of the calendar year we’ll see many people setting goals both sales and personal goals for the New Year. Are your goals financial, physical, educational or career? Setting goals gives you both a long-term vision and a short-term motivation. It focuses your acquisition of knowledge and helps you to organise your time and resources so that you can make the most of your life. I think that they will abandon them within a couple of weeks, as most goals and resolutions are intentions and intentions don’t equal behaviours or achievements. Every one of us are in our current situation right now as a result of our life choices, behaviours, and habits.


By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals, and you'll see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. You will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognise your own ability and competence in achieving the goals that you've set. Contact me via e-mail when you ready to take responsibility and fulfil your goals like top-level athletes, successful businesspeople, and high achievers.