Driving for sales success? Jim Rohn is the fuel.

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The root of your sales success lies in your sales philosophy. How did you develop yours? Mine came from a combination of home environment, books, education, mentors, personal development programs, personal experience, and observations.

You establish and revise the basic principles of your philosophies by exposure to information, your experiences, and listening to the belief of others – especially those you respect. You try to only accept “the good stuff” and then adapt it to (or change) your way of life.

One of the most respected was Jim Rohn. Jim passed away a few years ago, but was and still is considered by many (me included) to be America’s foremost business philosopher. Growing up on a farm in Idaho, Jim developed principles and philosophies that were gleaned from his dad and his first employer and mentor, Earl Schoaff.

While you may believe that you determine your own philosophy, much of it is pre-determined or influenced by your home environment during childhood. After that, it’s up to you to seek influencers and mentors. People who impact the way you think, and create the motivation that drives your actions.

Some people are under the misconception that their personal philosophy and making a sale are not connected. Wrong. Your philosophy is the umbilical cord that provides the “essence of life” to your ability to sell.

Here is the essence of the sales success life cycle according to Rohn:

  • Philosophy drives attitude.
  • Attitude drives actions.
  • Actions drive results.
  • Results drive lifestyles.

Frustrated with your lifestyle? Not meeting your goals or expectations? Here’s how Rohn breaks it down:
If you don’t like your lifestyle – look at your results.
If you don’t like your results – look at your actions.
If you don’t like your actions – look at your attitude.
If you don’t like your attitude – look at your philosophy.

Here are some philosophical quotes and concepts that drove Jim Rohn — and may put gas in your car and bucks in your knowledge bank:

Balance. Life is a combination of “want to” and “how to,” and we need to give equal attention to both.

Activity. The few who do, are the envy of the many who watch.

Career Growth. The most important question to ask on the job is not “What am I getting?” The most important question to ask is “What am I becoming?”

Goals. Set the kind of goals that will make something good of you.

Reality. You must get good at one of two things. Planting in the spring, or begging in the fall.

Motive to Educate. Motivation alone is not enough. If you have an idiot and you motivate him – now you have a motivated idiot.

Personal Development. Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.

Hypocrisy. What we demand from our children, we must demand of ourselves. There must be a standard by which they live – and as parents, we must set it – and live it.

Motivation the wrong way. If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

The nose on your face. Success is the study of the obvious.

Work vs. Pay. If you work at your job you will make a living. If you work on yourself, you will earn a fortune. Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.

Numbers. Get your personal numbers in line with your business numbers. Balance sales numbers with education numbers and health numbers.

Wealth. I found it easier to get rich than I did to make excuses.

Time. We can no more afford to spend major time on minor things than we can to spend minor time on major things.

Pay. You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.

Paid. My father taught me always do more than you’re paid for as an investment in your future.

Customers. One good customer well taken care of could be more valuable than $10,000 worth of advertising.

Happiness. Learn to be happy with what you have while you pursue what you really want.

Plans. If you don’t make plans of your own, you will probably fit into someone else’s.

Jim Rohn was the master of the crafted word. He took the situations of life that are the subtle difference between success, mediocrity and dismal failure — and empowered his listeners to understand their own world in a new, better, and more powerful way.

Sitting in his audience (as I did 25 times), I (and everyone in the room) was compelled to take copious notes – I have saved them for more than 20 years, and they provide the wealth of wisdom for you to enjoy, benefit from, and take to the bank.

Part two of the Jim Rohn philosophy will be presented next week.

GitBit. Want more thought provoking and inspiring quotes by Jim Rohn? Just go to www.gitomer.com and enter the words JIM ROHN in the GitBit box.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

Checklist for Influencers: questions for sellers, coaches, leaders, change agents

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Most of you are really good at what you do: as influencers, sellers, coaches, change agents, or leaders, your intuition, excellent skills, and history of success guide your ability to facilitate change for your clients. And yet… Using conventional models and questions – both designed to drive the predisposition of the facilitator – it’s inevitable that your interactions will have bias, and will unwittingly restrict possible outcomes accordingly. Here’s a checklist of questions to help you determine the extent of your bias:

When attempting to influence someone (as sellers, leaders, etc.) can you be certain that your natural assumptions, unconscious expectations, and goals play no/little role in biasing or restricting the outcome?

Are you aware of, and make allowances for, your full range of biases? Can you think of the role your biases play that might predispose outcomes?

Can you think of any of your Communication Partner’s (CP) biases that were overlooked but ended up determining the outcome? How do you manage your CP’s biases, triggers, filters, and assumptions to expand choice and possibility, and avoid unconscious resistance, fallout, and restricted results? (Not to mention lost sales and difficult implementations.)

Do you know what you’d need to do differently to enter a conversation without bias or assumptions to facilitate your client in determining their own systemic parameters?
Are you aware how your curiosity and questions are subjectively biased toward the goal you think you need to reach – and 1. potentially lose a more congruent outcome, 2. alienate many who might need your solutions?

How can you be certain you’re speaking to all the right people, or using the best questions for them, specifically, to gather the most appropriate information given their idiosyncratic knowledge and culture?

Do your current methods of avoiding resistance work?

Are you aware of how much your brain filters what you hear and how much more is being said than what you’re hearing? Are you aware of the cost of misunderstanding what’s going on outside of your goals and expectations?

How much of the early data you gather turns out to be accurate? How do you know when/if you ever get to the accurate data? How do your expectations and the bias in your questions interfere with the Other’s recognition of the full fact pattern (largely unconscious at the start)?

What would you need to believe differently to consider that your current skill set, biased mind set, and habitual set of expectations is creating a diminished ability to influence the full extent of real change and avoid resistance?

How often do you assume something is ‘working’ or was successful – a coaching client was changing, or a buyer was going to buy – and you were wrong? Do you know for certain what happened behind-the-scenes that caused the failure and you could have circumvented?

Are you aware of how your own biases, assumptions, triggers, and filters, have gotten in the way of success – or do you believe you’re right and the other person wrong/stupid?

What would you need to believe differently to be willing to add some new skills to use less bias? To enable your CPs to recognize and manage their unconscious systems elements that have informed all choices and need to be shifted for change (a purchase, an implementation) to occur so they can easily buy, change or adopt your terrific material?

Facilitating Choice

We’re all in the business of influencing, or attempting to get what we want. Yet we fail a very high percentage of the time; sellers loses 94% of their prospects; coaches lose 70% of follow on clients; implementations fail 97% of the time. It’s not our fault: we fail because our conventional skills are focused on:

  • content push
  • premature goal setting
  • the facilitator’s expectations
  • listening for pre-determined details

and miss the unspoken metamessages, values, history, rules, and consensus issues that make up our CPs status quo. It’s possible to enable our CP partners to do the change work from within, without us biasing and limiting possibility to our own subjective view.

I have developed a generic change management model with a unique skill set that facilitates decision making and change at the core unconscious, systemic level and avoids bias and resistance. I developed it over many decades by coding my own Asperger’s systemizing brain and designing a new form of listening, a new type of question, and coding the steps that happen unconsciously during all change. I’ve trained it to 100,000 sales people, coaches, leaders, and negotiators globally. It’s a model that must be learned and added to your current skill set; it takes some time to learn and practice because it’s so different from conventional models. But it’s scalable. DuPont, for example, trained 8,000 sales people and KPMG trained 6,000 consultants.

Using this new decision facilitation model, you’ll be able to help others determine how to quickly and congruently buy, change, implement, etc. themselves in the area you are facilitating. No more delayed sales cycles or lost prospects; no more failed implementations; no more resistance to change. You can close 40% of all qualified prospects from first call, in half the time; you can help coaching clients discover their unconscious incongruences on the first call; you can implement large change events with no resistance.

I can teach you how to unhook from your personal biases and enter conversations in a way that leads/ discovers/ creates all that’s possible through win/win, servant leadership and congruent change. Imagine being able to enter every conversation and have it reach its most ethical, financial, and creative possibility. Imagine.

About the Author

Sharon Drew Morgen is founder of Morgen Facilitations, Inc. (www.newsalesparadigm.com). She is the visionary behind Buying Facilitation®, the decision facilitation model that enables people to change with integrity. A pioneer who has spoken about, written about, and taught the skills to help buyers buy, she is the author of the acclaimed New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: Why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

To contact Sharon Drew at [email protected] or go to www.didihearyou.com to choose your favorite digital site to download your free book.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the job. Or is it?

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Hate your job? Things at work not going your way? Productivity down? Not earning enough? Thinking of leaving? Here are some job realities you may want to consider before flying to another light-bulb.

First figure out the WHOLE why. You need to take a deep look into the situation before you decide to move. What is causing these feelings of unrest, distrust or unhappiness?

Here’s a list of reasons – BUT, don’t just read them. If you’re unhappy at work, list the ones that apply to you and write a “why” sentence next to it. Don’t just confirm the reason in your mind, go deeper to discover the “reason behind the reason.”

Here’s your self “why” test:

  • Belief system failing in product – you don’t think your product is really better than the competition’s.
  • Belief system failing in company – you’ve lost faith in the company’s ability to perform.
  • Poor service after you sell it – continuing complaint calls are lowering your morale.
  • Boss is a jerk – for one reason or another he or she hasn’t earned your respect.
  • Poor management – acting in their own self interest, can’t sell better than you.
  • Conflicts with coworkers or management – too much who-struck-John. Politics.
  • Poor training – you aren’t getting adequately prepared to sell.
  • High turnover – many good people leaving.
  • Too much work – you work too hard, and you don’t want to put forth the effort.
  • Poor pay – low pay for your effort.
  • Poor working conditions – lack of sales support.
  • Business hurting – the economy and sales are less prevalent or slower.
  • No upward opportunity – you’re stuck in non-growth mode.

And of course the one reason you may have omitted is – it may be you.

Self-test for these:

  • Your poor attitude
  • Home life problems
  • Money problems
  • Drinking or other self-abuse stupidity
  • Your poor sales skills
  • Your poor work habits
  • Poor performance on your part
  • Placing blame rather than taking responsibility
  • Stress (caused by one or many of the above)

Well, that’s an “ouch” test, huh? Did you find your “thorn?” Did you discover “why?” – or did you already know, and I just confirmed it. So now that your skin is itching with the reality, what are you going to do about it?

Well, not so fast there, Sparky.

I’d like you to consider some deeper reflection first.

DO THIS: When you find your biggest reason(s), ask yourself “why?” four times to get to the bottom of the reason. That would be the REAL reason.

Let’s say you selected the reason: My boss is a jerk – OK, why? “Well, for one thing, he’s constantly on me to produce.” OK, why? “Well, because he says I’m not seeing enough people, nor am I closing enough deals.” OK why? “Because it’s harder to make sales. People aren’t buying.”

Sounds like it ain’t the boss after all – it’s you.
That’s not a boss issue. That’s a training, sales skills and intensity issue.

All salespeople suffer from two incurable diseases:
1. The grass-is-always-greener syndrome
2. The moth-to-a-light-bulb syndrome

ASK YOURSELF FIRST:
What are you really looking for?
If you’re going to switch, will this move you up or forward?
Can you fix what you have?
What would you really like to be doing?
If you leave here where will you go?
What risks do you take by leaving this job?
How will a new job get you closer to your real career goals?
How will a new job get you closer to your real monetary goals?

If you decide to leave, don’t leave for the wrong reasons, and don’t leave the wrong way. I have just given you the “why” formula. That will get you to an understanding of your self-thinking. Then there’s the “how you will leave” part.

2.5 more rules apply:
1. Leave professionally. Give notice. Tell the truth.
2. Leave ethically. Give back everything. Don’t “take” anything with you. Especially customer lists or any trade secrets.
2.5 Leave positively. No bad words or lawsuits. Just peacefully go. Leave with your reputation in tact. Leave with a reference.

To leave or not to leave? That is the question. Your job is to find the answer. Your own answer. It’s a big decision. A career decision. An advancement decision. And yes, a money decision.

My advice is: make sure you know the REAL reason. And make sure you do it in a way that would make your mother proud.

If you’re one of the fortunate few who LOVE their job, please pass this on to someone whining about how green the grass might be someplace else.

FREE GitBit. I have one more piece of advice about your job. Something to think about everyday. Go to www.gitomer.com, enter JOB in the GitBit box.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

Leaving for greener pastures? Do you know why? Are you sure they’re green?

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Why do salespeople quit their job?

More money?
Better job opportunity?
Don’t like what they are doing?
Don’t like their boss?
Don’t like their corporate politics?
Don’t like how you’re being treated as a person?
Don’t feel the company is supporting you as a salesperson?
Just had their commissions cut?
Company going back on their word about paying or deal structure?
Not paid what you felt you were owed?
Just lost their best customer to the competition?

Answer: some or all of the above.

Salespeople seem to hopscotch jobs as moths flutter from one light bulb to the next, trying to find the brightest one. I don’t think the question is just, “reason for leaving.” I think it goes deeper. I think it’s “cause and effect,” and even deeper, “motive.” Motive being a short word for motivation.

This issue is further complicated by the fact that most people, when they do leave a job, won’t tell the boss their real reason for leaving. Oh, they give a stated reason like better opportunity, more money, but there’s always an underlying motive. An unspoken reason. Like, “I hate you.”

And then there’s the boss, who has to tell his other people why the salesperson quit. Standard reasons, better opportunity or more money.

It’s interesting to note that more than 74% of people who quit their job do so because of bad boss or bad company policies. Yet, no boss that I have ever spoken to ever told me: my best salesperson quit and it’s all my fault.

NOTE WELL: The departing salesperson will soon become the scapegoat for everything bad that’s ever happened in the history of the company within one week of their departure.

If you’re the boss, and you throw the person who quit under the bus and back up, it sends a message to every other person on the team that you’re going to do the same thing to them if they leave. Not a real boost to moral. If you’re the salesperson and you don’t have the guts to tell the boss the real reason why you’re leaving then you’re going to have to be willing to accept your fate with respect to the trashing that you’re going to take.

There’s no easy answers here. Some industries are more incestuous than others. Banking, personnel, accounting, and advertising seem to have an excessive amount of job hop scotching going on.

The subject is WHY are you quitting and what can you do to build your career, rather than having to start it over?

I get a minimum of ten requests a week from salespeople wanting to quit their job and asking for advice. What I tell them is what I’m going to tell you:

1. List the real reasons that you dislike what you’re currently doing.

2. Now, list the reasons that you like what you’re doing.

3. Add a one sentence description to both the dislike and the like column to give yourself further insight as to “why.”

4. Ask yourself which one of the bad things will be eliminated at the new job and which one of the good things will continue at the new job. This way you give yourself an evaluation before you enter your new position.

5. Call people at the place you want to work or that you’ve just been hired to work at and find out what they like and dislike.

6. Write down what you feel you gain (other than money) at your new position and ask yourself could you have gained the same thing at your old position?

NOTE WELL: As you know, if you read my column, we’re about to get to the .5. You will not like the .5. The .5 will make you grimace but the .5 will show you the real reality of where you are and where you seek to grow.

6.5 Become the number one salesperson at your existing company, then quit. If you’re thinking about leaving your job and you are not the number one salesperson, it is likely that you will not be the number one salesperson at your next job, and it is even more likely that you will bring half your disgruntlement to your next job. If you stay at your present job until you become the number one salesperson no boss will be able to throw you under the bus, you leave a hero of the company, you leave with pride, you leave with self-respect, and you leave with the attitude of a winner, not a whiner.

See? I told you you’d hate it.

So here’s your opportunity: quit complaining, quit whining about your job or your circumstance, quit trashing other people to make yourself look good, and just dig in. If you really consider yourself great at sales, then attaining the number one position shouldn’t be much of a problem. Heck, you’re always bragging about how great you are, prove it!

There’s rewards for being number one. People will be nicer to you in your company. You may even earn some degree of respect, your value in the marketplace will increase, you’ll have choices, genuine choices, and you’ll have the peace of mind of knowing that you’ve done it for the right reasons, not the negative reasons.

BOSSES BEWARE: If you’re salespeople are leaving you at a rate of greater than 20% per year, look in the mirror. If you “can’t find any good people out there” let me give you a big clue; there’s plenty of good people out there, they’re just not working for you.

SALESPEOPLE BE AWARE: Your next boss may be no better than your previous boss. He or she just may be sweeter in the interview process than in the day to day battle. You’re best tactical and strategic advantage is to arrive on the scene as the number one salesperson from your previous job rather than the number one whiner about your previous job.

If you do this you have set the stage for sales success. Your sales success.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

What Is the Best Mindful Business Strategy?

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Mindfulness garners a lot of recent attention. Wisdom 2.0, a conference that blends mindfulness with technology, leadership, and culture, hosted over 2,400 participants earlier this year. Attendees come from all over the world to learn and engage in developing meaningful mindfulness practices.

A new area for mindfulness is how business strategies are developed. Strategy development and mindfulness are a great combination, and the best mindful business strategy starts with a simple concept – Be present.

Being present is a simple idea. However, many businesses are not present, especially when it comes to making a decision and moving forward with a strategy. The next generation of leaders are using mindful practices to gain meaningful results.

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About the Author

Jon MertzJon Mertz is one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business and highlighted as one of the Leaders to Watch in 2015 by the American Management Association. He also is the author of Activate Leadership: Aspen Truths to Empower Millennial Leaders. Jon serves as vice president of marketing at Corepoint Health. Outside of his professional life, Jon brings together a community to inspire Millennial leaders and close the gap between two generations of leaders. Follow him on Twitter @ThinDifference or Facebook /ThinDifference