When you breakdown a muscle through working out the muscle responds by getting stronger.  When you have a hard time in a relationship the makeup usually strengthens the relationship.  When you decide to change a business to capitalize on a new model, product or target market until you find success, the result is usually a break through.  When you are failing to communicate with someone in a business relationship a lot of times just sharing in the failure can push the relationship to another level.

We fear failure or we fear admitting failure sometimes so much that we don’t allow ourselves to push past the event.  We seem to think it will become part of our identity like a brand or a cross we will bear.  Well, thankfully someone handled that for us.

My point is that conflict to the point of failure is not the problem.  The breakdown is not a failure.  It is only an event that we can assign meaning to.  The meaning we assign is completely up to us.  Whether or not it is positive or negative is based on our focus.

In selling, your close rate can be your breakdown.  Your ability to dissect your process, profile, approach, client feedback, your messaging, your value proposition, your rapport building, contracts and commitments can be the breakthroughs needed to turn 1 out of 10 into 3 out of 10.

In relationships your breakdown could be your communication skill.  Your ability to listen, to connect, to be present, to spend time, to be empathetic, to show affection and to be clear could be the breakthroughs need to keep together or go apart.

The decision to let failure be the defining event rather than the beginning of the solution is the real failure.  You have been led to this point of frustration to be open to learn what you really need to learn…to be ready to breakthrough.  Now go get it!

Change your Identity:

You change your perception of sales people. Sales people get a negative wrap. People think of slick, faster talkers or used car salesmen. I always challenge people on their basic identities of sales people. I try to interject pioneer, frontier’s men, relationship catalyst, solution expert, match maker, life saver, bridge builder, disease stopper, expert, subject matter expert, facilitator, connector, economic driver, etc. All of the above things are true. What we choose to take on as an identify can effect our Sales Esteem.

Change your Scoreboard:

Instead of measuring your life in popularity or feedback, move it into controllable actions like calls, testimonials, connections, dispositions, RFP’s responded to or presentations delivered. Too many times we as sales people live on the highs and lows of the way we feel after a meeting rather than the real numbers that drive our business.

Change your Value:

Every service and product usually finds a competitor but people can always be an individual. You can always decide to be different from your competition even if your product or service isn’t. You can always be the one person that remembers birthdays, writes personal cards, sends great anniversary gifts, is an exceptional public speaker, builds networks for your clients, is genuinely interested in their family, is always positive, is always candid, is always great with follow-up, etc. In short, you can always add value to “YOU” as a person. You always be a player that separates yourself from your competition in the sales world.

Build your Sales Esteem and you will work your way through the sales funnel faster and with greater results. Best thing of all is it’s controlled by you!

Then I ask a series of questions that leaves them jaw dropped.  How are you enrolling clients in your company?  Your vision?  As a referring partner?  The silence is usually deafening as they get immediate clarity in what I am talking about.  They spend a lot of time and money to acquire a relationship and they don’t make it a big deal.

Here are some ways you can really enroll your clients in your company.  Do this and watch you referring business double!

1.       5 Things That Make Us Different:

Create a list of important differences in you and your competition.  Make them understand how they should take advantage of those differences and why it is important to them.  It helps them de-commoditize you from your competition.  They will know why to spend their money with you rather than your competitors.

2.       Paint the Vision: 

Give them a clear vision of what the next three months will look like as your client.  Walk them through how you will learn to serve them better and their role in that process.  Let them know what you will need from them in order to do your job as well as you can.  Talk about your ultimate goals for the relationship,  i.e. “earn the right to clean all their buildings”, “grow their pipeline by 30%”, “help them open three new stores in the next three months”, etc.  Get to a common shared goal that you can use to rally their and your efforts behind.

3.       New Products, Other Services and Innovations: 

It is so important to take the time to make sure your clients understand all the services you provide, the products you have rolled out in the last couple of years and the new services and innovations that keep you on the cutting edge.  Most companies I work with that do this see a double digit increase in their dollar per client.  I can’t tell you how many times I have talked to customers who said, “I didn’t know you guys did that”.

4.       Philosophy and Commitments: 

Philosophies are what bring businesses together.  It is so important to write yours down and share them with your customers.  Get it down to your standard and commitments you have and the ones you expect from your clients.  My commitment has always been to be a 5 to 1 return on investment as a consultant.  I have always been in a place where I could create that for my clients because my plan and goals reflect it.  You could have the commitment to be transparent in pricing as a goal to create a partnership feel vs. a vendor.  Whatever you feel is important in your client relationships should go down on paper.

5.       Guarantee: 

If you have one you should make sure you go through it with your client.  Get them to fully understand it so they will become a mouth piece for you on this level.  Get them to understand it, market it and promote it as one of your differentiators.

6.       Philanthropic and Community Activities: 

This is a huge part of your business and what you are about beyond making money.  Sharing how your company is a viable productive part of society as a whole can be a great differentiator.  Businesses are just organizations of people with common goals.  They want to be a part of things that are bigger than themselves.  Showing how you are engaged in your community is a great way to illustrate that voting with their dollars for you is a very good move for the community at large.

7.       Founders and your People: 

Market your people like they are running for office.  People want to believe they are buying the best.  Show them with employee bios, backgrounds and resumes how great your people are.  Tell the story of your people and your business.  They will be enthralled in it and love to share it for free.

8.       How  you Grow: 

Tell them how you grow.  Walk them through the ways you acquired your best clients.  Tell them the stories of the referrals and the introductions that led to best and biggest deals in the company’s history.  Tell them that you regularly ask your clients for referrals and your official policy is By Referral Only.  They will love that you need them that much more and that they can help you grow and see how much you value them as a client.

When we design a program for a client, it has to have three components of belief (in order of importance below) to really make the impact we are looking for:

1. Self
2. Company
3. Product

Self:  You must always start with the individual going out to take the arrows for the company.  They must believe in themselves, and if they don’t, you better believe in them enough for them to borrow some confidence or they WILL NOT be successful.  This game of waiting to see if they perform after you have hired them will keep you both in the dance of just barely hanging on to their job.  Get rid of them or get behind them!

Company:  People want to belong to something greater than themselves.  Sales people are people too and nothing embodies that “belong to” more than an organization or people coming together for one mission.  A company is nothing more than a team of people serving others in some manner and collectively creating more value than their customers could do themselves.    The difference in the value they create and the value they consume is profit.  The number one job of the leader of the sales team is to sell the company back to his or her sales people every day.  It is a daily occurrence that involves inspiration and motivation and companies that get bored or tired of this become weak and stop growing.  Your people have got to believe in your mission, your organization and the leadership that drives it.

Product:  Sales people need an “unfair” advantage, at least in their mind.  I always try to find the unfair advantage we have in the market place with our product or service and really get our sales people excited about that.  It could be speed, strength, durability or a special feature no one else has, but product and service design without talking to your sales team is like sending soldiers to battle without consulting them on weapons they would like to carry.  I can believe all day in the war against Hitler but it is really going to be tough to get me to jump out of an airplane with a bow and arrow.   When we don’t listen to our sales people about the product, we tend to undermine the two other beliefs they need in order to sell.

All of these beliefs are related, but if you can organize your motivation, education and inspiration accordingly to make sure they are all there, your sales team will be a powerful force to be reckoned with!

Businesses are spending money with other businesses to create yes here is, wait for it.  .  .  .  more business.  It is just crazy enough to work.  I don’t know why our governement didn’t think of it but they didn’t so thank you to very capitalistic and good for our economy NFL.  .  . Just as american as lemonade stands and bakeries run by starry eyed immigrants trying to make a better life for themselves selling wait for it. . . apple pie.

Just makes me smile inside.  .  .  You can feel it if you have been down in the city.  You can feel the energy that good commerce brings to a city to ready to serve the world. 

It is time to get back to work people selling this country just like this City has sold the NFL.  Yesterday I saw the old Nordstrom’s turned into a huge very cool temporary night club. 

It is time to start working on the build-up rather than the bail out.  I for one am greatful to Alison Melangton and her team.  http://www.indianapolissuperbowl.com/host-committee/

Sometimes we spend all this energy and most of all time on these meaningless or even petty stands.  I find myself asking my dad (who we lost last year) what he would think of all these things people do. (or more to the I do) My Dad a had a kind of been there done that type of energy.  He had made many mistakes in his life and many with his family.  He lived the life of someone who knew the waste of time and energy that we all go through fighting fights we think important at the time.

I think he would get that wry smile he had where he knew he could be totally useful with his wisdom and really make you feel he understood and he “lived” it.  Oh, sure as his son it really got old but other people just fell into his accepting and forgiving energy.  I think Dad knew his time was getting short and wanted to make an impact in peoples lives, mainly his family.  He wanted them to not go through some of the pain he had seen.

I think it is easy to forget why we love our family, or any of the people that are important to us.  The heat of the moment, the paint of a hurt, the wronged or disrespect we feel makes it easy to overlook why we love who we love.

I think we love because it makes us closer to our maker, to see greatness in others.  To forgive them of their humanness and see them for their greatness.  We love to accept the faults in ourselves and to celebrate the chance that greatness can live in us as well as the people we love.

We love to give of ourselves and believe there is greatness in others as well as ourselves.  Love is not easy but, maybe it is not supposed to be.  .  .  Maybe we when we forget why we love we should understand that loving someone else can change the world and always has.

Whether it is Martin Luther King, Ghandi or my Dad.  Great people were great because so many loved them.  Kind of funny huh?

Happy Sunday.

Here are the strategies I have taken from the people I find mentally tough.

Line in Sand

Those who are mentally tough all seem to have a “Line in Sand” moment; something in their life caused them so much frustration, pain or headache that they refuse to be in that situation ever again. It is a “negative motivation” for sure, but like two magnets facing the same direction, it drives them forward as much as anything else in their life.

Jim Rohn tells a great story about this called the “The Girls Scout,” where he couldn’t afford to buy cookies from a charming little Girl Scout who was all smiles and laughter. People who are mentally tough have those moments that “resolve” themselves to be more than where they are. It is visceral, powerful and lasting experiences like this that change people’s lives and in turn change the lives of all the people they effect.

Powerful Questions

The next thing that people who are mentally tough do is they ask very smart questions that allow them to be resilient and powerful when tough things happen. They ask themselves things like,

“How can we make this the best thing that has ever happened to me?”

“What is the best thing that can come out of this?”

“So what, now what?”

“What is the solution here?”

“What can we learn from all this?”

“What is God trying to teach me here?”

“How can this make me better?”

And, my favorite . . .  “How do I use this to live my purpose?”

These are all very powerful questions, life changing questions. People that are mentally tough control their focus by controlling the questions their minds are focused on and in doing so spend energy on the most powerful ways for them to spend their energy. This becomes a self-affirming reciprocal relationship w/ their own well-being.  .  . meaning, they ask powerful questions, get powerful answers, get better results, build their confidence of what they can handle and then rinse and repeat.

Big Whys, Big Vision

All you need to do to understand this is think about our greatest generation. The Greatest Generation - they were and are the toughest generation most of us will ever know for one very simple and clear reason.  Their “why” and vision of the world they were creating was bigger than all of ours.

They rallied an entire world together to beat a villain and restore humanity to an entire world. Their stories of suffering in the cause or the sacrifices they readily made are so great and revered, we can only hope that we have just a sample of that courage and power. I don’t think they have anything else other than such a great “why” and “vision” that they became so mentally tough they seem to dwarf generations they didn’t know suffering, tyranny or a world war.

The point is, know your “why” and vision and know what you would be willing to die for.  What is so great to you that you would readily hand-down your life for the chance for it to live?

Rituals to Recover

We all have our week moments, the times when we question our God, the love of our family, our business or what we are selling. People who are mentally tough have great rituals to recover. Mentally tough people train regularly, meaning they are always working on things that make them mentally tough and it is ritualistic in their lives.

Here are some examples:

1.   Habitually visit and practice their Faith

2.   Habitually visit and work on their physical fitness

3.   Habitually visit and review the things that drive their “why,” family, charities, or other clear pictures of the who and what is motivating them

4.  Habitually read and listen to things that affirm their well-being and execution of their vision. Books about positive Psychology, stories of triumph and or classics that reinforce their values and goals.

5.  Have a Support Circle, where they strategically build relationships with others that have goals, dreams and drive that is as great as or beyond theirs.

6.  Regularly act as both formally and informally as mentors, they seek aggressively and by design people they want to have mentor them in their lives.

Being mentally tough is a culmination of habits.  If you execute them, you can improve your mental toughness.

Here’s the problem with this logic: it may be true when picking office furniture or getting a new e-mail marketing service that is 30% cheaper, but it doesn’t work in firing the Accounting firm we have had for twenty years or Hiring a New VP of Sales in a organization that only had 2 C-level Executives or buying another company.

Analyze – Compare – Decide – Execute is the decision model for small decisions for Corporate America, not for Big Decisions.

This takes a much more thought out and full understanding of how “people,” not businesses make decisions. After all, companies are run by “people” that have the same strengths, weaknesses, talents and demons we do. Here is how to get Big Decisions through in Corporate America.

First Step: Make the See it and Feel it

Find a way to see and feel the pain of not taking action (show them examples of companies that turned down new product lines that might still have them in business. Put products in their hands that product that sold billions of dollars.

Get them a Simple Next Step

Don’t sell the entire investment of the new product line (the financing, new capital expenditures, or the management team they would have to fire), rather, just meeting the inventor, or seeing if the technology works would be suffice. The magic of momentum can take over just from there.

Give it a Rally Cry

Make sure you have taken the time to create some rally cry for your initiative (“2000 by 2000,” “IDI or Die,” or “Beat Microsoft” for example).  Businesses are teams that can rally for extended periods of times to do some incredible things if they play like a team. They need an evolved mission to take on this kind of effort consistently.

Celebrate the Wins, Share the Love

The nay-sayers will look for their chances to pull you down. Celebrate your wins often and without taking any of the credit rather assign it to the player who helped the most and edify them in the process. The initial product launch can turn into a company wide movement with this alone.

So, the Decision Model for “getting big things done” in Corporate America is the following:

See it – Simple Step – Rally Cry – Celebrate Wins – Share the Love = Dynamic Change

It is not about being right, its about getting people excited about what they can do together when they come together. It is about being clear and simple in the steps and building on the momentum of others engaging in the change.  It is not about pride of authorship but about leading a movement.

Now go get it!

Here is my point.  Today is the day to decide to play bigger.  To make the conscious decision you are here for greatness and to move accordingly.  You could continue with the cloud you have looming over you head or you could see that cloud for what it really is.  The shadow of the purpose you have not truly embraced, the purpose for your life that you could create for yourself if you just allowed yourself to speak it.

Speak your greatness into life, find your purpose and live accordingly.  I know you face challenges but you also have resources that only you can tap.  Talents given you by God, now what you do with them is your gift back to him.

Thanks Dad

The possibilities for you reach even greater heights.

See the wave for what it is.  .  . your teacher, your best friend, your confidant in growth!  Honor the feeling for it comes bringing you a warm tide of refreshing, beautiful change that you have needed and wanted but you knew that if you really admit it.