Sales and Sales Management Blog

August 19, 2010

On Being an Optimistic Realist

Filed under: attitude,motivation,success — Paul McCord @ 11:02 am
Tags: , ,

Pessimists.  I don’t understand them.  My wife is a pessimist.  At times she drives me crazy.  I get calls and emails from far too many sellers and sales leaders who are pessimists.  I don’t understand why they persist in selling, a vocation that will drive an optimist nuts, much a pessimist. 

I’m an optimist—an unadulterated, unapologetic optimist.  But I’m also a realist.   

That realism part sometimes comes across as pessimism to some.  As I was speaking to a sales leader of a mid-size wholesale company last week, I pointed out that his sales team was failing to take advantage of one of their company’s primary strengths and even though they were on target to chalk up a nice increase in year over year, they were leaving far too much money on the table..

Instead of trying to figure out how his team could take advantage of a significant competitive strength, my sales manager friend became defensive.  He accused me of discounting the achievement he and his team had made. There was no way he said, that he would let my “negative” point of view poison his team members.

I’ve run across many a seller who either accepted personal responsibility for everything that happened to them or refused to accept any responsibility for anything negative that happened in their life.  One group’s attitude is, “I must have complete control of my life.  If I don’t close the sale it must have been my fault; that way I can correct it and guarantee it won’t happen again.” 

The other group’s attitude is, “I’m a winner and if I lose it’s because something out of my control prevented me from winning.  If it weren’t for that, I’d have closed the sale.”

I believe both of these attitudes are attempts to maintain optimism.  I also believe they are unhealthy and detrimental to success.

In fact, I’ve had more than one seller tell me that what I call reality, they call pessimism.  If I point out a potential danger or issue that a client must look out for, to some I’m being pessimistic.  If I include a warning that a particular strategy or tactic might not be appropriate for all or in a given situation, to some I’m being pessimistic.  If I reprimand, to some I’m being pessimistic.  If I point out failure, I may as well have just shot them.

In other words, for some sellers and sales leaders, those of us who don’t wear rose colored glasses or live in la la land are pessimists, bringing them down, stifling their enthusiasm.  There is no room in their life for anything that isn’t upbeat and “positive,” including reality.

Of course, the opposite is also true.  True pessimists have little or no room in their life for reality either.  For them, if it isn’t doom and gloom, they want no part of it.  They simply aren’t happy unless miserable.  If I point out opportunity, they counter with the obstacles to achieving success.  If I give encouragement, they complain about yesterday’s rejection.  If I suggest a new strategy, they point out the failure of their last strategy.

For one group there is no such thing as failure; for the other, nothing but failure.  For one group, hope is the strategy; for the other, there’s never hope.  For both groups, reality is the enemy.

In my world there are positives and negatives.  There is hope and expectation—based on preparation and training.  There is success and failure.

I expect good things to happen, but take proper precautions to deal with the possibility that the results won’t be everything I hope for.

I acknowledge and learn from my failures (yes, there is such a thing as failure). 

I rejoice in and learn from my successes.

I recognize danger—and opportunity.

I control what I can—and acknowledge what I can’t.

I know my limits—and reach beyond them—and willingly and knowingly accept the risk.

Unfortunately, I know of some managers and trainers who wear rose colored glasses; who refuse to acknowledge to themselves or others that reality exits; who are doing a terrible disservice to the sellers they train, coach, and mentor by intentionally or unintentionally teaching them that optimism is a denial of anything negative or not “positive.”

These rose colored glasses optimists tend to be poor to average producers—but always “on the verge” of a big month.  They just need a little more time.  They always have a prospect who is about to make the giant purchase.  Their big deal is always just around the corner.

They aren’t very teachable (after all, there are no problems to be overcome).  They aren’t well prepared (they’re already prepared, everything’s great). Many don’t work very hard (don’t worry, I got everything under control).

Although I’m sure this perverted view of optimism has been with humans since time immemorial, I do wonder if the “there is no such thing as failure, “everyone’s a winner and gets a trophy,” and “I’m OK, you’re OK” attitude of the past three or four decades has infected more than in past generations?

Although you might not be able to eliminate this perversion from your existing sales staff that has it, I’d certainly advise any sales leader to actively seek to avoid hiring salespeople in the future who have a perverted sense of optimism.  It may seem gung-ho during the interview, but it won’t produce the results you want in the end.

August 2, 2010

Great, You’re Dealing with Your Self-limiting Beliefs; What About Your Self-destructive Habits?

Filed under: career development,sales,selling,success — Paul McCord @ 8:58 am
Tags: , , , ,

We’re all familiar with the destructive nature of self-limiting beliefs.  We’ve been warned about them; scolded about them; shown how to eradicate them.  But what we don’t hear much about are the equally—if not more—dangerous self-limiting habits that we all have.

Most sales trainers, managers, and motivational speakers preach to no end about the evils of self-limiting beliefs and give a plethora of positive thinking exercises to counteract them.  The core belief is that what we believe—what we really in our heart-of-hearts believe—must manifest itself in our actions.  So if we believe that we are lousy at prospecting, we’ll find a way to guarantee that we are lousy at prospecting—we sabotage ourselves in order to verify one of our basic beliefs about ourself as a salesperson, i.e., that we’re lousy at prospecting.

The idea behind recognizing and changing our self-limiting beliefs is that when we change our belief from a negative (we’re lousy at prospecting) to positive (we’re an effective, productive, skilled prospector), our actions will also change to reflect our new found belief—instead of sabotaging our prospecting efforts, our positive beliefs will force us to find ways to succeed at prospecting.

In theory that’s a pretty fair philosophy.  Except it’s shortsighted because it only addresses part of our problem—our actions are influenced by our beliefs but the actions that hinder or prevent our success are more than just reactions to what we believe about ourselves as salespeople and sales leaders. 

Need an example?

Well, let me first give an example of an action that MAY be a direct response to our belief that we are lousy at prospecting.  Since we are lousy at prospecting, we decide that before we start cold calling we’ll take a few minutes and surf the Internet in order to “relax” and get “ready.”  We start by spending four or five minutes surfing around a couple of news and sports sites.  After a few minutes we make a couple of cold calls and discover that we hadn’t relaxed enough.  As the days pass, without noticing, we’re spending more and more time trying to relax in order to get mentally prepared to cold call.  Before we know it, our relaxation exercise is our prospecting time.  Did we develop this habit simply because it’s easier to surf than make cold calls or did we fall into the habit as an unconscious response to our belief that we’re lousy at cold calling—and besides, it’s a waste of time anyway?

Does it really matter since either way the habit is killing us?

Well, how about an example of a habit that will also kill us but is very definitively not a result of our self-limiting beliefs about ourselves as a salesperson?  From our earliest age we’ve been late for everything.  In fact, we’re one of those preverbal people whom people claim will be late to our own funeral.  At work we’re always rushing to get to our appointments but no matter what, we always seem to walk into our prospect’s office two, three, five, sometimes ten minutes late.  We never have enough time to put our presentations together.  We have to slap something together at the last minute and never have time to practice before we have to meet the prospect.  Surely this isn’t a self-limiting habit developed in order to validate our belief that we’re a lousy presenter or lousy salesperson.  Maybe it just says we’re crappy at time management or that we’re arrogantly self-centered or that we are just plain sloppy about everything we do.

Again, does it matter?  Wherever the habit comes from, it’s killing us and must be dealt with if we want to succeed.

Although we hardly ever hear about identifying and eradicating our self-limiting behavior–our destructive habits—it is just as important as changing our belief system.

How, then, do we eradicate our self-limiting beliefs?

Let me quickly give four steps to identifying and eliminating self-destructive behaviors that I’ve used with dozens of sellers and sales leaders—and myself—that have proven to work:

  1. Replace Negative Beliefs:  I’m not going to go into this in any detail as all you need do is Google “self-limiting beliefs” and you’ll get over 217,000 links to articles, books, ebooks, seminars, workshops, and anything else you can imagine about dealing with your self-limiting beliefs.  Simply let me say that positive self-talk, positive affirmations and other techniques to deal with negative beliefs do work and should be incorporated into any effort to deal with negative habits.
  2. Identify Your Self-limiting Habits:  Of course, this goes without saying.  The hard part is how do you do it? My experience has been that we can discover a number of our self-limiting habits ourselves by simply becoming attuned to what we do, especially what we do just prior to things that we dislike or are uncomfortable doing.  Over the next few weeks pay close attention to what you do.  Since habits are most often unconscious behaviors, you’ll probably have better luck if you keep a log of those things you catch yourself doing over and over.  It could be something as simple as stopping for a cup of coffee every morning on the way to the office or as complex as creating a personal emergency that must be attended to every time you’re asked to work late or retorting with a smart remark anytime someone questions something you say. 

    Unfortunately, we usually can’t find all of our negative habits on our own.  We need help.  Enlist assistance from those close to you: spouse, manager, coach, mentor, or close friends.  More than one observer is ideal.  Observers must be people who know you well and who you trust.  Explain what you’re doing and ask them to observe you over the next weeks and give you feedback on the habits—good, bad, or indifferent–they notice, as well as any habits they are already aware of.  You may not like what you learn, but if your observers are really trying to help, the information you get will be valuable.

    Simply recording the habitual activity isn’t quite enough.  Can you figure out what the action is attached to?  For instance, stopping and getting a cup of coffee is associated with going to the office.  Discovering an emergency that must be attended to is associated with being asked to work late.

    What might be the reason for the action?  Getting a cup of coffee might just be something pleasant—or it might be a way to delay going to the office.  Creating a personal emergency is a way of getting out of staying late.

    Ultimately, you have to decide if the action is negative, positive or neutral—and whether it is a habit that you need or want to change.  I’ve found that if you’re not really committed to eradicating a self-limiting habit you won’t succeed.  If you’re not committed, move on to another habit that you will be committed to eliminating because

    if you only half way try to break a habit and fail, all you’ll be doing is reinforcing your self-limiting belief system.  Instead of gaining on your belief problems, you’ll be feeding them.

     

  3. Replace a Negative Habit with a Positive Habit:  Instead of simply trying to eradicate a negative habit, proactively work to replace it with one that will help you advance toward your goal.  Trying to eliminate a behavior leaves a space, a void where the action used to be.  If you’re like me, if I have a time void I’ll find something to fill it and often that something is something negative. Why put yourself in a position where you’re consciously trying to create a void that could easily create stress and anxiety?  Instead of creating a void, change the negative behavior with a predetermined positive behavior.For example, instead of wasting time surfing the net in order to “relax,” purposely set aside two or three minutes prior to cold calling to sit quietly with eyes closed and envision yourself making three successful cold calls.  Or instead of waiting until the last second to create your next presentation, schedule your presentation creating time several days prior to the scheduled presentation date and then give yourself a reward if you finish the presentation X days prior to the presentation date.  Move from chaos to proactively managing your time and reward yourself for successfully doing so.
  4. Don’t Accept Failure:  Allow yourself the freedom to backslide without becoming discouraged and giving up.  Habits, no matter what their origin, weren’t created overnight and they won’t be changed overnight.  You’ll probably find yourself slipping back into old habits.  That’s fine.  It’ll happen.  But just because it happened doesn’t mean you’ve lost the war.  You just lost a single battle.  If you give up you’ll be guaranteeing you’ll have that much more to overcome to reach your goals—and reinforcing a self-limiting habit of giving in when things get tough.

It’s been said that we humans are creatures of habit.  So we are.  The great thing is we get to decide if our habits are going to be positive or negative.  No one else can make   that decision for us.  Let’s make them habits that work to fulfill our wants and needs rather than ones designed to sabotage us.

July 8, 2010

5 Motivational Aids—Keep the Passion Flowing

Filed under: career development,motivation,success — Paul McCord @ 11:13 am
Tags: , ,

If you want to be successful you have to be motivated. 

What is motivation?

Is it desire?  No.  We all desire things—happiness, success, money, love, whatever; but just because we want it doesn’t mean we’re willing to do what it takes to get it.

Is it vision?  No.  We can all envision ourselves with the things we want without taking the slightest step to acquire it.

Is it energy?  No.  There are millions of salespeople spending endless amounts of energy everyday toward their goals but not reaching them because their energy is misspent.

Is it commitment?  No.  There are millions who are committed to success who fail daily.

Motivation is a unique combination of desire, commitment, and energy—let’s roll these into a single quality called passion–to reach a goal no matter how difficult it may be or how long it may take to reach.

Passion—that unique combination of desire, commitment, and energy—in and of itself can virtually force you to succeed by demanding you do those things necessary to be successful.  Passion won’t let you rest.  It won’t allow you to quit.  It won’t allow you to become sated until you’ve reached your goal.

Passion demands your best effort.  It pushes you to go beyond the satisfactory to the extraordinary.  It forces you to reach heights you thought impossible.

Passion is pretty heady stuff.  It keeps you on the edge.  It sharpens your senses, keeping you alert to opportunities.  It awakens the creative juices.  It helps keep the doubts and worries at bay.

Unfortunately, passion isn’t limitless.  It has limitations and weaknesses.  Although strong, it must be reinforced or you risk having it burn itself out.

How do you keep your passion burning?

Here are 5 down and dirty ways to reinforce your passion and keep it burning strong:

  1. Love what you do.  There is no substitute for doing something you absolutely love doing.  If you can hardly wait to get out of bed in the morning to get your day started you’re already half way to success.  Certainly we can’t all be engaged in something we absolutely love, but if you can, even if only on a part-time basis, go for it.
  2. Set tangible, realistic short-term goals.  The more often you see tangible progress, the easier to maintain your passion.  Set short-term, realistic goals.  If you consistently see small goals being reached, you’ll soon begin to see large goals being reached.  By the way, reasonable goals don’t mean easy to reach goals.  Goals should consistently stretch you and your abilities.
  3. Visualize outcomes.  Athletes use visualization for a reason—it works.  If you are afraid of making presentations, visualize yourself making great presentations.  If you fear cold calling, visualize yourself being successful at cold calling.  Visualization is a form of practice.  In a study a couple of years ago researchers found that students who only visualized practicing a piece of music were as proficient at playing the piece as students who had actually practiced the piece on the piano.
  4. Use positive affirmations.  Repeating positive affirmations strengthens and reaffirms your internal belief system.  We cannot do what we do not believe we can do.  On the other hand, if we sincerely believe we can do something, no matter how ‘impossible,’ our brain can find ways to get it done.  Once we believe, our brain begins to go work to figure out a way to turn our belief into reality. 

    Our brain will believe what it hears and what our eyes see.  If it has heard and witnessed failure for years and years, it believes we will fail.  Fortunately, we can change that.  It will take time.  We will have to consciously retrain it.  We’ll have to give it positive reinforcement through what it hears—our positive affirmations—and what it experiences—our small successes as we reach our short-term goals.  But just as it learned we are a failure, it will learn we are successful—but this time we can control what we feed our brain.

  5. Use outside reinforcement.  Motivation—passion—is internal.  It isn’t something that is created externally.  That doesn’t mean that external stimulus can’t reinforce our internal motivation.  The problem is that external stimulus such as motivation books, tapes, seminars, and such burn out quickly—usually within just a few days, sometimes within just a few hours.

    That quick burn doesn’t mean external stimulus can’t be valuable.  It can be extremely valuable.  A motivational tape can give us a great burst of energy prior to an important presentation; a motivational seminar can get our creative juices flowing in new directions; motivation quotes can realign our minds at moments of exhaustion or weakness. 

    Keep favorite motivational tapes and quotes ready at hand.  Take the opportunity to attend motivational seminars and presentations.  Remember the ‘high’ is fleeting—but you can drink of it anytime you need it.

Companies spend billions of dollars every year trying to find the magic motivational bullet.  They’ll never find it because it isn’t something they can order in from a motivational speaker.  We either have it or we don’t.  But if we don’t, we can take the steps necessary to find it and nurture it.

And it isn’t expensive, difficult, or time consuming.

Find your passion and you’ll find your success.  If you’re a sales leader, help your sales team members find their passion and you’ll find your success.

May 24, 2010

Guest Article: “Success Starts With You Being Different,” by Dan Waldschmidt

Filed under: business,career development,sales,selling,small business,success,Uncategorized — Paul McCord @ 8:31 am
Tags: , , ,

Success Starts With You Being Different
by Dan Waldschmidt

You can’t stand out when you look like everyone else.

You can’t inspire and challenge others when you are just as fearful as them to stand out and be noticed.  To put yourself in a position where people disagree with you.  To be criticized, abused, and disbelieved.

To make a difference, you first must be different…

Last Friday I spent the day being inspired at TEDx Greenville.  If you have never had the chance to go to a TED event, then you are truly missing out on an amazing opportunity to be wowed.

In the space of eights hours, there was Vaguen talking about the “Power of Ignorance”, a trumpet choir, a banjo performance, a concert pianist, Marshall Chapman singing rock ‘n roll, and Loretta Holloway singing cabaret. There was a rocket scientist talking about social media and 21 year old student telling the story of traveling across country performing random acts of kindness.   Ellen McGirt, from Fast Company, talked about “Showing Up” and Paul Anderegg demonstrated old-time clogging called “flatfooting”.  Five dudes with Ph.D.’s talked about everything from hydrogen to climate change to the morality of capitalism.  It was diverse and powerful.

And then there was Tradd Cotter, the wonderkind mushroom mountain scientist, and Tim March, the blue-haired performer whose act on broken glass was only bested by his inspiring words about us feeling like we “needed permission” to go do amazing things.  To me, these two were the most inspiring of all the amazing presenters.

Curiously, they were also the most different, which got my thinking…

It’s being different that we look to as a success.  Why?

Most of us have a hard time being different…

Standing tall on the trophy stage is pretty easy.  But standing up in the rest of the world requires a lot of effort.  You really have to be a mental ninja.

That probably explains why we all aren’t more successful.

And here’s an observation for you: It’s not entirely our fault for having this fear.  Everything we were ever taught since the beginning of baby-dom was about “fitting in”.

  • As we entered school, we we told to “get along with everyone” — even when we saw that bad people were taking advantage of those around us.  As long as they didn’t mess with us, we were “cool”.
  • When we went into public, we were told that is was embarrassing to “make a scene” — even though for us is seemed like we were standing up for something.  We were expressing ourselves.
  • At our first job interview, the HR team kept asking us if we were a “team player” — and then went on to explain our compensation that was based on individual achievement.

All these “fitting in” qualities produce high-quality mediocrity.  A “Grade A”, absolutely-guaranteed batch of status quo.

But they don’t produce success — the deeply inspiring breakthroughs that we dream about.

Success is the opposite of being like everyone else.

The reality is that most of us don’t like ourselves in our current state.  We wish we were less fearful, selfish, and more kind.  We know it about ourselves and hope you don’t find out soon enough.  So why would we like you who is trying so hard to be like me.  We were hoping that you would be different — and inspire us.

It may be hard to dye your hair blue and jump around on glass.  It may be hard to get laughed at all through school as you grow bucket after bucket of mushrooms in your parent’s garage.

But didn’t we know that success was hard in the first place?

Whether it’s changing your title on your business card from Receptionist to “Diva of First Impressions” or preparing a proposal to your client that is the exact opposite of what all your competitors have put together — you’ll find yourself conquering more when you put in the emotional investment to be different…

And several things to think about in your Success Quest:

  1. Being different won’t kill you…
  2. Being different will get you noticed…
  3. Being different won’t have people outwardly lauding you… (at first)
  4. Being different secretly makes people respect you…
  5. Being different probably won’t get you the incremental job promotions…
  6. Being different positions you best to be able to change the world…

It’s our obsessive compulsions that yield greatness, not our penchant for compromise.

It’s Thomas Edison trying one more time after the 983rd failed attempt to build a working light bulb. It’s Harland Sanders trying the 1,009th time to convince a restaurant to buy his famous chicken recipe.  It’s Oprah Winfrey sharing hope for the sexually abused in spite of her own scars.

It’s about you deciding that being your same self or like anyone you know is no longer acceptable.

It’s about being different.

And us starting that today.

Dan Waldschmidt is partner in a private equity technology accelerator and a former technology CEO. He got the usual entry-level job right of college, but then he changed the sales process, earned millions of dollars for the company, and became CEO by the time he was 25.  Dan is partner in a private equity technology accelerator and a former technology CEO.  He is an early-early-early adopter of game-changing technology.   He blogs regularly on his motivational selling blog Edge of Explosion.

April 22, 2009

Guest Article: “I Think It’s Time for Me To Call It Quits,” by Tim Wackel

Filed under: attitude,Economy,motivation,sales,selling,success — Paul McCord @ 7:41 am
Tags: , , , , ,

I Think It’s Time for Me To Call It Quits
by Tim Wackel

I don’t know about your experience but I’m hearing so much economic doom and gloom that I think it must be time for me to give up and quit. The newspapers and television networks have convinced me (and almost everyone else) that we’re in a hopeless situation. I really wanted my business to prosper and grow in 2009 but I must be an idiot for believing there is any chance for success. I guess it’s time to turn off the lights, lock the doors and wait patiently for the economy to improve.

Or is it?

Maybe business development professionals everywhere need to answer these four questions (honestly) before tossing in the towel.

#1. How does this “recession” actually affect you? The National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as three quarters of falling real gross domestic product. This might be fascinating stuff to some people, but I can’t directly correlate “real gross domestic product” to my sales effectiveness.

Can you?

Even during a recession companies still have to buy goods and services. They may buy different, they may buy less, but they still have to buy. If you can’t convince prospects that what you’re offering is a solid investment with meaningful return, then maybe the problem lies closer to home.

#2. Do you really believe you’re on your customer’s speed dial? Customers are nervous just like everyone else; they’re reading the same headlines that you are. Sitting in the office waiting for them to call you isn’t going to help you meet your goals.

Reach out and contact everyone you’ve ever done business with. Show up with valuable ideas, offer help, look for referrals and ask for their business. This isn’t open season to “call and check-in” but it’s a great time to reconnect and nourish all of your existing relationships.

This may sound like a lot of work because it is. Very few people ever drift into greatness; it requires action.

What are you waiting for?

#3. Are you as good as you could be? Many sales people think that once they’ve taken a professional selling course, they’re essentially done with learning. That may be OK if someday your closing question becomes: Will that be paper or plastic?

Success as a sales professional requires skill, knowledge, attitude and purpose. If you’re not consistently developing yourself in these areas then you’re going backwards. There is no status quo.

There are more development tools available for today’s sales professional than ever before. Books, podcasts, tele-seminars, live training programs, webinars, personal coaches, downloads, sales portals and much more.

You can’t wait for your boss or organization to take responsibility for your success. It’s up to YOU!

It takes courage to admit you can be better and confidence to believe you can change. It takes nothing at all to create excuses.

#4. How much energy are you wasting on things you can’t control? The world surrounds us with headlines about inflation, bailouts, credit crisis, mortgage fiasco, recession, debt, jobless claims and on and on.

Are you concerned? I know that I am. But I don’t have much control over what is happening in the headlines, so why get tied up in knots?

This is a valuable lesson I learned as a kid on the farm. It’s a tough life and it sure doesn’t get easier if you worry all the time about whether or not it’s going to rain. All you can do is take care of the equipment, prepare the land, plant the seed, fertilize the fields and wait for the harvest.

And running your sales business isn’t much different.

  • Take care of the equipment (invest in yourself)
  • Prepare the land (make yourself known in all of your accounts)
  • Plant the seed (add value with every contact)
  • Fertilize the fields (take care of your customers)

Wait for the harvest (if you do everything else right, the business will follow)

Tim Wackel is hired by sales executives who want their teams to be more successful at blowing the number away. Tim’s “no excuses” programs are insightful, engaging and focused on providing real world strategies that salespeople can (and will!) implement right away. Sales teams from BMC Software, Cisco, Fossil, Hewlett Packard, Allstate, Thomson Reuters, Raytheon, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Catalina Marketing, Philips Medical Systems, Red Hat and TXU Energy count on Tim to help them create more success in business and in life.  Vist his website

March 18, 2009

Guest Article: “The Paradox of Expertise,” by Kevin Eikenberry

Filed under: attitude,career development,developing expert reputation,success — Paul McCord @ 7:28 am
Tags: , ,

The Paradox of Expertise
by Kevin Eikenberry

Throughout life most people tend to look up to others who are experts in their fields — whether they are authors, speakers, leaders, athletes or some other expertise. In our minds and in our culture we value – and sometimes even revere – expertise.

For this reason it isn’t surprising that most everyone strives – consciously or unconsciously – to become an expert in some area(s) of life. When you want to be an expert in your work, you strive to learn the skills and tools that will make you more successful. You probably study and passionately practice a hobby or two or other related interests with the goal at least in some part to gain knowledge and expertise.

Reaching new levels of expertise does more than satisfy your sense of self competition. It helps you create better results, achieve more in less time and, when you share your expertise, help others achieve better results as well. Plus, beyond all of these things, your expertise can give you status, promotions and higher pay.

When you think about all those ideas (and many more), it’s not too surprising we want to become experts in our fields and areas of interest is it?

And yet this expertise can also get in your way . . . if you allow yourself to fall into a very seductive trap – the trap of arrival.

When you’re an expert and you’re in the know, it’s so easy to feel like you’ve “arrived” and once you believe you have arrived, you run two major risks:

You “know-it-all”. If you believe you know it all, you have very little incentive to continue searching. If you’re in list trap, you might not listen to people with less experience than you. You also may not be open to new ideas because of your confirmed expertise. Your habits and dedication to become an expert can create a false sense of confidence. Yet when you look at someone else’s situation you realize there’s always something about the topic that you don’t know. But in your field you may miss that fact – after all, if you do know it all, there really isn’t anything else to learn is there?

You’ve “seen-it-all”. Your expertise and experience definitely helps you greatly in diagnosing a situation and seeing patterns that others might not see. At the same time, because of your experience you may miss a subtle difference because you automatically match the situation up to the pattern “you’ve seen a hundred times before.” Your vast experience and exposure may actually blind you to what you really need to see. You must remain open to new possibilities to make your expertise of greatest possible benefit to yourself and others.

All of this proves the wisdom of the quotation from the great basketball coach John Wooden:

“It is what we learn after we know it all that matters.”

What you already know may keep you from seeing what is most important in a given situation.

That is the paradox of expertise.

You strive to gain valuable expertise and when you gain it you may fall prey to the problems that your expertise can cause.

When you approach every situation with the curiosity of a learner, you will avoid many of those problems and actually continue to grow your expert status at the same time!

Potential Pointer: As you strive to grow your expertise realize that it’s a journey not a destination. Remain open to learning new things and applying new techniques. When you match your ongoing openness and curiosity with your considerable expertise, you will avoid the paradox of expertise.

Kevin Eikenberry is a two-time best selling author, speaker, consultant, trainer, coach, leader, learner, husband and father (not necessarily in that order).  Kevin is the Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group, a learning consulting company that has been helping organizations, teams and individuals reach their potential since 1993. Emphasizing the power of learning, Kevin’s specialties include leadership, teams and teamwork, organizational culture, facilitating change, training trainers and more.

October 9, 2008

Guest Article: “Identify and Overcome the Four Curses of Sales Success!” by Dave Anderson

Filed under: career development,sales,selling,success — Paul McCord @ 5:22 am
Tags: , , , ,

Identify and Overcome the Four Curses of Sales Success!
By Dave Anderson

There are certainly more than four curses of success but these four are perhaps the most devastating. Up until this point you can claim to be unaware of these curses and plead ignorance as a reason for falling prey to one or more of them. But once you are aware of them any future deviation cannot be blamed on ignorance. Instead, you must consider your failure as a confession of stupidity!

1. Abandoning the basics.

Thinking you’ve outgrown the basics or that they somehow don’t apply to you anymore is a surefire way to turn your up times into a sudden descent.

2. Getting cocky.

Cockiness is one of the most reprehensible and alienating traits of successful people. You become cocky when you feel superior to those you work with and look down on them; when you gloat and brag about your success; when your pride blocks your growth and causes you to go into denial when someone suggests a way you could improve. When you’re ready to “write it down; build the manual and document the formula” people will secretly anticipate and cheer your fall. And normally, they won’t have to wait too long.

3. A diminished work ethic.

The Law of Laziness declares that, “As prosperity rises the work ethic diminishes.” Keep in mind that the price you must pay for continued success is never paid in full. It is a lifelong installment plan and once you default, your decline is not far behind.

4. Becoming selfish.

Successful people often catch the “Disease of Me” and start to think that the sales department should revolve around their own ego-driven universe. In their selfishness, they turn increasingly inward rather than stepping up and fulfilling the vital role of a sales leader, which is turn more outward and add more value to the people around you.

Three Tips to Overcome the Four Curses

1. Compete against yourself more than with others.

The truest measure of your success is not whether or not you’re better than everyone else, but if you are better than YOU used to be! You can be better than everyone else and still be WORSE than you used to be, which is no reason to beat your chest in pride!

Remember: Your objective is not to become successful and then let your pat on the back turn into a massage. Rather, your objective should be to strive to reach your maximum potential. As long as you continue to grow, you will never reach your maximum potential. It is an endless journey. But it’s the journey that keeps you moving; stretching; learning; hungry and humble.

2. Don’t financially overreact to the good times.

When you’re making good money, pay yourself first and save a few bucks. Don’t fall into the trap that tells you that you’ll never see another poor day. Overextending yourself during the good times can create an inner stress that distracts you and your fear of loss can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, sending you into a downward spiral.

3. Maintain an attitude of gratitude.

The secret of “never being satisfied” is to always be grateful for what you have while you strive for what you want. It is not an excuse to dismiss or disregard your current blessings. (Remember: the more you’re grateful for, the more you’ll have to be grateful for. But when you’re ungrateful for what you have, you’ll soon have even less to be grateful for.)

Peak performance author, columnist, trainer, speaker and radio show host for sales, management and leadership, Dave Anderson walks the talk as a leader. He has led some of the most successful retail automotive dealership in the country—the most recent dealer group he led had over $300,000,000 in annual sales—and now gives 150 presentations, workshops and speeches annually on sales and leadership development around the globe. Dave is president of the Dave Anderson’s Learn To Lead and LearnToLead.com, a cutting edge web site providing hundreds of free training resources to thousands of subscribers in over 30 countries.

July 6, 2008

Change Your 2008 On July 24

Filed under: cold calling,lead generation,marketing,prospecting,Referral Selling,sales,sales training,selling — Paul McCord @ 10:30 am
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Three Incredible One-hour Tele-Seminars on One Day
That Will Change Your 2008

Attend 1, 2, or All 3 Tele-seminars and Pump Up Your Pipeline for the Second Half of the Year

Afraid of the economic slowdown?

New to Sales?

Getting burnt out on the endless, fruitless cold calling?

Can’t find a way to get your career in gear?

Not making the money you want to make?

Just want to make more money?

Whether you’re engaged in B2B or B2C sales, these seminars will show you how to radically increase the number of appointments you set with qualified prospects.

What You Know About Your Prospect:

  • You know your prospect doesn’t want your cold call.
  • You know your prospect thinks your call is nothing but a waste of their time
  • You know your prospect resents the interruption
  • You know your prospect has gatekeepers in place to keep you away

What You Know About Yourself:

  • You know you don’t have a way to grab your prospect’s attention and interest
  • You know you can’t differentiate yourself from your competition on a cold call
  • You know you can’t leave a voice message because it won’t be returned
  • You know you’re wasting a huge amount of time and effort cold calling
  • You know you’ll never become a top producer cold calling

So, what’s the answer?

    1. Discover a way to quit cold calling and still use the phone to make connections with qualified prospects
    2. Discover how to grab your prospect’s interest within 10 seconds of them answering the call
    3. Learn how to turn your business from cold calling based to referral-based which is the way top producers generate their business

1PM Central
Never A Cold Call, Always an Introduction

Discover how to turn cold calls into a referred call where your prospect welcomes your call and WANTS to hear what you have to say.

You’ll Learn:

  • To turn cold calls into real conversations about how you can address real prospect problems and issues
  • Immediately capture your prospect’s attention and interest
  • Get your voice messages returned
  • Get past the gatekeeper without lying or manipulation
  • Differentiate yourself from all the other calls your prospect receives by demonstrating your professionalism, your knowledge about your prospect, and by making a call that is worth your prospect’s time

3PM Central
The First 10 Seconds-How to Instantly Engage Your Cold Call Prospect’s Interest

Still want to cold call instead of getting a referral to the prospect? Then you must learn how to grab your prospect’s interest. The first 10 seconds of your cold call determines whether or not you’ll capture your prospect’s interest-or get blown off. Learn how to get your prospect to not only listen, but to pay attention.

You’ll Learn:

  • To formulate an introduction that grabs your prospect’s interest
  • Determine what you should be talking about BEFORE you call your prospect
  • Create rapport with the prospect, not hostility from the prospect

5PM Central
The PWWR Referral Generation System-
Don’t Dream About Referral Business,
Learn How the Mega-Producers Get Tons of Referrals

Learn to turn your business from low return, high time investment prospecting methods such as cold calling and networking into a high return business through generating a large number of high quality referrals from your clients and prospects. Mega-producers don’t cold call, fax worthless fliers all over the place, or run from ‘networking’ event to networking event. Instead, they’ve learned how to get 5, 6, 7, even 10 high quality referrals from every one of their clients and even their prospects.

Just asking for referrals will get you nowhere. Instead you have to learn HOW to make referrals work.

You’ll Learn:

  • Why your client won’t give referrals if you just ask
  • What you must do to get your client comfortable and willing to give quality referrals
  • Get your client to AGREE to give you 5 or more quality referrals
  • What you must do to EARN the referrals
  • How to make it easy for your client to give 8, 10 or even 15 referrals
  • How to guarantee you get an appointment with the referred prospect

Can’t Make it One of More of the Seminars? No Problem!

Since each session will be recorded, register for the seminar and if you can’t make it you’ll still be able to ‘attend’ at your convenience after the 24th.

Register for any individual seminar $67.00

Register for any two for only $114.00 save $20.00

Register for all three for only $151.00 save $50.00

REGISTER HERE

July 5, 2008

Guest Article: “Lift vs. Drag: A Business Leader’s Perspective,” by Waldo Waldman

Filed under: business,career development,Leadership,management,small business,success — Paul McCord @ 7:13 am
Tags: , , , ,

LIFT VS. DRAG – A Business Leader’s Perspective
By Waldo Waldman

So, how do you get a 35,000-pound F-16 jet fighter to fly?

It’s no easy feat. To overcome the force of gravity, you have to create a force greater than gravity’s grasp. That force is lift.

As the F-16 blasts through the sky, there is an “enemy” of lift that must be overcome. It’s an aerodynamic force which resists the forward motion of the jet (known as drag.)

There are two kinds of drag – induced and parasite. Induced drag is a “good drag.” It is a byproduct of lift and is necessary for flight. Parasite drag is not helpful because it battles against the “good” drag, working to slow the aircraft down. It’s caused by the non-lifting portions of the aircraft, such as the landing gear, missiles, and external fuel tanks.

Here’s the big picture. In order to fly, a jet’s lift must exceed drag. The less drag, the easier the plane flies.

Let’s look at this on a practical level in fighter combat. When evading missiles or engaging another fighter in close combat, one of the first things you must do is what pilots call “jettison your stores.” You have to get rid of all the parasite drag hanging from the jet that’s not critical to immediate, fast flight. Fuel tanks and bombs, for example, must go. This reduces your weight while simultaneously reducing drag, allowing the fighter to be much more maneuverable to avoid getting shot down.

Simply put, if you don’t need it, you drop it.

What “parasites” do you have dragging you down and stopping you from reaching new heights in your life?

Parasites are the negative relationships that sap you of your energy and time while giving nothing in return. Parasites are also the fears, doubts, mental baggage, dramas, and self-limiting beliefs that strangle your ability to take action. They suck the life out of you. They can drag you down emotionally and hold you back from being a successful leader.

Do you have any of that hanging around?

We all have parasite drag in our lives. We’re just not aware that we have it or we put off doing anything about it until our own personal “missiles” begin to fly. If we’re dragged down too much, the missiles will hit us.

What are you holding on to that you really need to let go of? Here’s my advice. Jettison your parasites now!

Wingmen are the opposite of parasites. They are the relationships in your life who lift you to new heights. “Wingnuts” are parasites that drag you down.

Are you willing to jettison what’s dragging you down so you can become more fulfilled and successful? Perhaps it’s an unhealthy relationship, laziness, or a private addiction such as TV, gambling, or a sugar fix. Or maybe a bad job is bringing you down or a fear of failure is stopping you from starting a new business.

Want to find what gives lift in your life? Look at what drives your passion. Look at the relationships and activities that get you excited and energized and ready to “push it up” in life. Then, pursue them relentlessly. Seek what gives you life.

When flight planning for success, winners have an ability to get rid of distractions and focus on action that leads to positive results. They also surround themselves with people who challenge them. Jim Rohn, one of my favorite philosophers, has a saying that I love, “Don’t spend major time with minor people.” If you want to be a success, spend time with people at work and in your private life who lift you up. Folks who have the courage and compassion to tell it like it is. These people won’t settle for your excuses, but they will inspire you and give you hope.

The question remains: How do you attract these types of people into your life? You do it by giving your time, advice, and hope to those in need. In essence, you become a wingman to others and help them to fly to greater heights. You do the hard work to build your own character before expecting it of others. This is the core of leadership. When you do this, wingmen will naturally be attracted to you. They will feel comfortable coming to you for help and you will slowly but surely find yourself surrounded by people you trust. As I always say, never fly solo.

Leadership Wingtip – Leaders push themselves up, while pulling others up.

Discipline, hard work, and productive relationships are the lifts in life that overcome the parasite drags of unhealthy relationships, addictions and complacency. They are your tools to conquer mediocrity and live with courage. They will help you to win. Don’t leave them from your flight plan.

If you want to reach new heights in business and in life, make sure you do whatever it takes to maximize your lift and minimize your drag. Not only will you avoid the missiles, but you’ll hit your target as well!

Waldo Waldman builds team unity within organizations as a high energy leadership inspirational speaker. A former combat-decorated fighter pilot with corporate sales experience, Waldo brings an exciting and valuable message to organizations by using fighter pilot strategies as building blocks for peak performance, teamwork, leadership, and trust. He has worked with dozens of corporations such as Panasonic, UPS, Hilton, Aflac, Bank of America and Hewlett-Packard. Visit www.yourwingman.com to learn more.

June 10, 2008

Metaphysics, The Law of Attraction, BS, and Sales

Filed under: Law of Attraction,New Age Metaphysics,sales,Sales Process,selling,success — Paul McCord @ 7:20 am
Tags: , , , , ,

A simple google search will indicate how intertwined new age metaphysics and the law of attraction have become within some segments of the sales industry. In some instances, there is little or no separation between them.

There is an obvious desire on the part of many salespeople to find some mystical connection to success. Not a spiritual connection in the traditional Judeo/Christian sense that hard work is rewarded, but in the sense of having a magical formula to success. If you simply desire it enough, if you can align yourself with the universe in just the right way, if you understand that you attract what you believe and think and then align your thoughts and beliefs in the right direction, if you just invest enough money with the right new age guru they’ll teach you the secrets that only the initiated know that will make you successful, you’ll be able to have all you’ve ever wanted and more—and it’s so easy to boot.

This mystical view of sales has become so prevalent that there is a whole plethora of trainers in the market promising easy success—for a price. That’s not to say sales trainers don’t deserve to charge for their teaching and training, for they certainly do. But playing on the desire for easy success and charging outrageous fees has spiritual consequences itself.

My concern is how easily some salespeople are being influenced and quite simply ripped off by many of these gurus. On occasion I get emails asking about various trainers or systems. For instance, last week I got an email from a gentleman asking me if I was familiar with X trainer who promises that if you buy their system which includes an ebook, a 12 CD set, a series of 4 one-hour seminars, and a binder for only $2,795, you’ll increase your sales by at least 1,000% the first year. Or, a couple of months ago I received an email from another gentleman who informed me that he was only a week or two away from being fired for lack of production and wanted to know if I knew of any law of attraction trainers that could take him from where he is to bringing in enough sales to save his job over the next 5 days.

As long as there are salespeople there will be salespeople desperate for fast, easy, miracle cures to their sales woes—and consequently, sales trainers willing to offer those cures to those willing to pay the price. Although the trend for many is to look for some new, great secret that will magically change their sales business, the truth is the secret is already well known—find real strategies and techniques that work, learn them, master them, and apply them.

Sales success really is that simple—and just that hard.

« Previous Page — Next Page »

Theme: Rubric. Blog at WordPress.com.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 4,396 other followers