Life is what you make it

How do I become a better version of myself on a daily basis?

Life isn’t fair, and if you think that it is fair then you are in for a rude awakening. Life is a competition and those who are willing to make the supreme sacrifice often win. Some people get off to a difficult start and have incredible obstacles to overcome. I’m hard on myself, trying on a daily basis to become a better version of myself. I am constantly pushing myself to become a better human being and when I am in front of my clients, they can feel that energy. I think everyone is driven by a selfish drive of reputation and the ones who are open to this understanding have a unique opportunity. When working in sales, you can command a nice compensation package because it’s nothing to do with your education and everything to do with your communication skills.

The why behind the why

Most salespeople are product pushers, I think you have to stop acting like a seller and start thinking like a buyer. In other words, spend more time discovering their problem and then use this knowledge to solve their problem. The ability to uncover problems that the buyer already has becomes much easier when you detach yourself from the outcome. All salespersons can find out the buyers’ problems, but only the best salespersons can find out their why. And only the greatest salespeople can find out what’s behind their why. It doesn’t matter what industry; you have to learn the right questions to uncovering what’s behind the buyer’s why.
TIP: Ask questions slowly, as it will give the buyer time to be a little more reflective in their answers.

Be prepared

What can you do to prepare yourself for success?
It depends on how you define success. If you are talking about a prestigious titles, huge salaries and big houses then I’m not the right person to ask. On the other hand, if you are speaking about developing skills,influence, and personality then here I am.

One should always well prepared before serving in our professional and personal lives. The decisions I have made in my preparation time are the decisions that will last for the entirety of my lifetime. I think the key to speaking well and excellent communication is preparation, so I choose to be well equipped with language, temperament, and influence in order to be valuable. I have studied people from different ages who have different opinions, personalities, and temperaments. I study life with all of its twists and turns and one of the most valuable skills I’ve learned is organising and getting people to work together, preparing for those steps and stages is all part of life.

Being alert for the inevitable

Most of what Peter Drucker mentioned in his book, “Managing For The Future” is more of common sense, at least from today’s perspective. Practicing them consistently is difficult. I think the leaders first task is to be the trumpet that sounds a clear sound. Here are a few excerpts from the book that I particularly enjoyed:

“And nothing is noticed more quickly – and considered more significant – than a discrepancy between what executives preach and what they expect their associates to practice.”
— Peter Drucker
“The Japanese recognize that there are really only two demands of leadership. ONE is to accept that rank does not confer privileges; it entails responsibilities. The OTHER is to acknowledge that leaders in an organization need to impose on themselves that congruence between deeds and words, between behavior and professed beliefs and values, that we call ‘personal integrity’.”
— Peter Drucker

Knowing the scenario

I came across a book from Peter Drucker titled “Managing For The Future” which was first published in 1992. The power of great writing is that it is timeless. I read this old book and still enjoyed reading it because ideas presented in the book (specially on Leadership) are still very relevant today. The shape of corporate organisations has changed between 1992 and now. The nature of work has changed drastically too – we are out of factory model and into the knowledge oriented one, but the core principles of leadership have not changed. I think awareness, sensitivity and understanding are essential leadership skills required to lead in the 2020’s.

“Essence of leadership is not ‘leadership qualities’ or ‘charisma’. The essence of leadership is ‘performance’.”
— Peter Drucker

It's much deeper than that

In sales, the person who has the solutions has the power. And what we ask is infinitely more powerful than what we say in sales situations, as salespersons are usually placed on the low trust end of the scale. When you want to dig in and get to know the buyer, it’s a good strategy to use questions to get them talking. I think the magic always happens when the other person is talking and the secret to unlocking other people is to be interested in them and not your verbal vomit.

Our job as sales professionals is to go out and create some curiosity and interest without doing dumb things like spamming buyers. Life-long learners will remain curious and they never settle on thinking that they know it all – and that’s what sets them apart. As sales professionals we need to start conversations and get business meetings. Invest in yourself, take what you have right now and make the best of it. Contact me via e-mail to book a 1:1 session in October.

Become a better listener

Active listening is different from hearing or even paying attention, hearing is something we do without thinking and without consciously trying to. I think a deeper level is when we listen for context, so here are some tips on how to improve your listening skills:

1. Talk less
2. Do not interrupt
3. Maintain direct eye contact
4. Put your phone down
5. Listen with your eyes and look for the unsaid
6. Remain interested
7. And if you are waiting for a pause, so that you can speak, then you're not actively listening

Generosity is a boomerang

Life gets so much better when you expect less as I think time generosity is grounded in empathy and emotional labour. In my world, generosity does not mean free; generosity does not mean lowering the price of what you do or giving it away. Generosity means showing up with emotional labour to do difficult work that some people think you might not need to do. This means that when someone is truly generous, they are bringing extra effort into something that may not work.

 

According to research from scientists at CalTech and Harvard who tried to figure out why giving feels harder for some than for others, and they found that the decision to give or take simply comes down to how much importance you attach to your interests versus someone else’s. Therefore, if you’re the type of person who considers other people’s needs as much as your own, self-sacrificing tends to be automatic. On the other hand, if you typically place more value on yourself, then giving feels more onerous.

Athletes don’t crack under pressure

Working in sales means that you are speaking to people every single day and just like in sports not everyone is going to like you. I think sales is a great career for sportspersons and competitive minded individuals who are continuously looking to grow themselves. Sportspersons know how to work together as a team, we know how to take coaching, we know how to communicate, we know how to prepare, we know how to lose and bounce back from that loss and have another win. You may not get it all these things if you haven’t played elite sports. Once you have played elite sports then you understand how to get through challenging moments and I’m convinced that you have gained that resilience and toughness to make it through tough times.

Worrying is a waste of life

There will always be things that you wish you could tell your younger self. It’s important to note that you don’t have to learn all of the lessons on your own. Don’t be a student of the school of hard knocks, ask for help and seek experienced insights early and often. Here are some bits of advice to my younger self.

Don't be impressed by:
1. Money
2. Job titles
3. Affiliations or network size
4. Years of experience
5. Appearances
6. Imitators
7. Big words

Be impressed by:
1. Kindness
2. Trustworthiness
3. Genuine generosity
4. Humility
5. Integrity
6. Tireless educators
7. Shared optimism

We can do it better

I do not define marketing as hype, advertising, promotion, scamming with selfish, narcissistic short-term thinking. Marketing is telling true stories that spread stories that change people’s opinion or their actions. One key element is that there is a community of people that care about what you are doing and want to go where you are going. Essentially every successful community that I can think of needs people from a diverse background, experience, and a point of view. I think that if the people in your community are moving in the same direction, then everything is going to be alright.

 

Luck is all about the amount of work, preparation, and time you put into your craft. As a marketing professional, the more we can connect those people and amplify them, the more likely it will be that our marketing will succeed. When we are willing to take responsibility for the work we are doing, then we are bringing something to the world. If you do it better, it will work better…
Contact me via e-mail for marketing workshops.

A good fit

I’m always trying to identify how I can be of service to others. I’ve had mentors in my career, and I’ve also learned from being in the trenches for many years. When choosing a mentor you should ask yourself whether you admire this person for his or her achievements and industry experience. I think your mentor should ideally be someone who shares your professional outlook and perhaps has even accomplished the goals you hope to achieve. I’m a student of the selling game and am constantly looking at best practices and at people who have positive influences both on people and revenue. Therefore, I think that it’s really important to pick your mentor carefully as they have to spend time with you as well.

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What do you know about your buyers?

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Psychometrics is a scientific discipline concerned with the construction of assessment tools. Being able to identify the psychometrics of B2B buyers - for example, their needs, challenges, and motivations - will help you effectively tailor marketing messages and sales strategy for what your buyers are looking for, and ultimately winning them over in the sales process. Creating buyer personas gives you an inside look into your target audience’s buying decision process, and what they hope to achieve. This will save time and overhead by allowing you to create the most efficient and concentrated marketing strategy based on your most profitable targets and how they act and behave. Contact me via e-mail for sales and marketing workshops.

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Learning by doing

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Why is experience in life considered to be the best teacher?
I think experience is one of the best teachers because when you do something you are actually involved in the whole process. And this helps you understand your behaviour and reaction towards a given situation. Learning by doing and teaching by experience can produce higher learning results and have a more lasting effect. Too many people in sales get a little bit of success and get carried away thinking they know it all, and don’t need to practice, study, plan, or review because they think they are already great. Sometimes that’s just the ego, but I think it’s imperative to remain humble. Do you think that happens in any other profession, sport, or activity?

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”
— Aristotle

Habits change behaviours

We all have those habits we wish we didn’t, but just can’t seem to break. It can be a challenge, but with some time and effort, habits can be changed. Here is my list of powerful habits: 
- Wake up early
- Practise gratitude 
- Spend time with nature 
- Choose right friends
- Deepen your relationships
- Know yourself better
- Be ok to say no
- Invest in yourself 
- Test your limits 
- Invest in experiences 
- Diversify your income stream

Certified trainer

The Power of Habits training is based on the New York bestselling author, Charles Duhigg’s book of the same name, “The Power of Habits”. During the Covid lockdown I completed the Power of Habits training course and learned how habits work and how to unlock the power to change them. The training taught me the skills to identify and create the habits needed for success within your organisation. The course focused on the science of habit formation and helped us to learn how to recognise when they need to change, what behaviours they ought to change, and how to make the desired behaviours stick. It sounds simple but in practise it’s much more difficult, for example,
a) Identify the habits,
b) Use skill instead of will, to replace limiting habits with effective ones, and
c) Create new routines that produce desired outcomes.

Everything is an opportunity

The most successful people have a thirst for learning, developing and maintain a high level of skills. My daily mantra is: “I will learn from every interaction.” I think selling is a matter of constant and continuous error correction and learning. The best salespersons I know have confidence and are humble enough to accept that there is more that they don’t know than what they do know. Everything is an opportunity, every won deal, every lost deal, every interaction, every presentation is an opportunity to evaluate and learn then adjust and do it better next time.

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
— Seneca

Sales has this weird paradox, for example, when you are in front of customers, they want you to be confident. When you are not in front of customers, you are pulling apart your interactions and generally behaving in an insecure way so that you can see the things that you should be seeing. This combination of confidence and confident vulnerability is the sweet spot where curiosity meet anxiety and is where you will fine tune your sales performance.

Brand with purpose

Your purpose is about where you spend your best energy and where you put your love, and it isn’t always about your day job. Your purpose might be something you are in service of, something or someone you love and care about deeply, or it might be a call to action that you cannot turn away from. Your purpose doesn’t have to be big and dramatic, or even a global one. I feel like the luckiest and most privileged person in the world because I found purpose in my life at a very early age.

Some people are having short term success with hustling and spamming, but it’s trust what makes people continue to buy. We all want to trust brands who help us solve our problems, unfortunately nowadays consumers seem to have very little trust in brands. I think trust is claiming the high ground and stating things that are actually true. In the short run, you may not get a lot of sales as the brands who are spamming and hustling but in the long run they’ll be gone, and we’ll still be here.

It's a selfish desire

Everyone who you come into contacts with wants to know what’s in it for them and they don’t really tell you what they are going to get out of it, they may not even know or realise, nor want to admit it. One thing for sure is that they are thinking about it because it’s a selfish desire and in most cases, they wouldn’t care if it wasn’t selfish. Once you figure out what it is and you genuinely understand these concepts, you can use it for good or you can use it mysteriously, and this is so powerful that professional salespersons need to keep it in check.

Just imagine that you had a framework of questions that would unveil what your buyers vested interest were and a guided series of “need/payoff” questions that align with your buyers. These questions are just as valid in a romantic scenario and I know they will give you an advantage over your competitors. Contact me via e-mail if you are interested learning these concepts?