Leaving the corporate world behind and becoming an entrepreneur is an exciting venture, but it can also put a lot of pressure on you – especially in the first six months. You’ll spend a lot of time learning new things, making adjustments and reacting to situations as they arise. The “bumps” in the road you are likely to encounter are a common occurrence on the entrepreneurial journey, so don’t get bogged down by thinking you’re doing something wrong. You’re not.
The good news is that this phase won’t last long and the lessons you learn from the experience will prove to be extremely beneficial for the rest of your business ownership journey. It’s important to keep in mind that just because you’re in business for yourself, doesn’t mean you have to be by yourself. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. In order to have a positive experience and get optimal results, you need to choose wisely whom you will surround yourself with.
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William (Bill) R. Seagraves, president and founder of CatchFire Funding, is the author of Be Your Best Boss: Reinvent Yourself from Employee to Entrepreneur (TarcherPerigee, on sale February 2016). A serial entrepreneur, Bill coaches mid-career Americans on the best route to successful entrepreneurship. Learn more at yourbestboss.com.
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In the age of electronic calendars, we too often allow meeting durations to be established by our software’s preprogrammed defaults, typically 30 minutes to one hour. By settling for software defaults, we risk holding meetings that are too short to arrive at quality decisions or enabling inefficiency such that the meeting expands to meet the excessive amount of time allotted.
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Six weeks ago you met with your colleagues, had invigorating discussions, examined alternatives, and came up with an impressive plan. Everyone left the meeting feeling motivated, but then today as everyone entered the room and took their seat, you’re met with sideways glances.
“Did you follow up on that plan?”
“No, how about you?”
A quick shake of the head and you realized that the great idea everyone talked about has languished.
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You recognize what someone needs and offer just the right guidance, product data, or experience to help. Yet, except for occasionally, they don’t act on your brilliance. Why? Why would they prefer to keep doing what they’re doing when it‘s obvious, even to them, they’re less-than-effective? Because making the switch to behave differently is not as simple as desiring to do something different: your information, brilliant and well-intentioned as it is, is not heard accurately, nor do people know how to translate what you’ve offered into action. They’re not ignoring you: they just don’t know what to do with the information.
This article is about systems, Beliefs, change, and our status quo – a thought paper on why giving information (pitches, suggestions, rationale, directives, counselling) doesn’t necessarily produce changed behaviors. It’s a bit wonky; more conventional articles are on my blog www.sharondrewmorgen.com.
Our Status Quo Acts Habitually
Our information, our new ideas or implementation requests, our product descriptions and presentations are relevant of course. But they can only be heard accurately and acted upon when our audience has bought in to, and learned how to manage, any proposed change, and all relevant ‘systems’ are GO.
Adopting new behaviors challenges our ingrained, personal, habitual systems. Our status quo (that mysterious mix of unconscious elements developed over a lifetime that define us) does not shift easily: doing anything – anything – different means replacing a familiar choice with something unfamiliar, with no guaranteed results or precise outcomes.
How can we know up front whether any change is worth the risk? How can we keep our system – our habitual, historic, comfortable, and interconnected configuration of rules, relationships, beliefs, goals, etc. – congruent if we behave outside our proscribed standards?
Without answers to these questions, the risk is too high to change. The change itself isn’t the problem, it’s the disruption. So how can we promote change that a person is willing/able to consider? One way is to stop sharing information until the system has prepared itself to change. Or we can actually facilitate the change before offering information. Let me explain what’s going on.
Behaviors vs Beliefs: Why a System Changes
Whether it’s personal or work, our lives are defined by a set of Beliefs we’ve each developed over the course of our lifetime. We live in neighborhoods, work at jobs, and choose friends in accordance with our Beliefs. We even listen (see What?) according to our Beliefs. Everything we do (our Behaviors) emerges from our Beliefs.
Except when we’re incongruent, our Behaviors carry out our Beliefs. As a life-long liberal, I Believe I must contribute, care for the environment, treat others respectfully. My Beliefs inform my politics, my choice of city, my choice of friends; they are hard-wired, and make me me. And I happily bias my actions and decisions against them. This all happens unconsciously, of course. And therein lies the problem.
New input, and suggestions that require change, challenges the status quo which has been ‘good-enough’ until now. We’re asking people to change their Behaviors before they’ve managed buy-in or figured out how to maintain systems congruence: without knowing how to convert our Beliefs into new Behaviors we face incongruence and feel threatened, causing us to reject, sabotage, forget, misconstrue, or ignore what we’ve heard.
Buy-in is the problem because it means altering rules, changing expectations, or reconsidering outcomes like job descriptions, or timing, or relationships. Everything that will ultimately touch the proposed change must buy-in or the system will continue to reject the information.
Therefore, our information – our brilliant recommendations, thoughts, solutions, or leadership, even when directed by bosses or family – cannot even be heard even if the data is valid or important until the system itself knows how to prepare a new pathway to expected results, comfort, and congruence. We protect our system at all costs. (See Dirty Little Secrets for a thorough explanation of this topic.)
When Information is Applicable
Sales and marketing folks, managers, trainers, coaches, leaders – any profession that focuses on offering advice or promoting action – must stop trying to ‘pitch’ even if someone needs to hear it. Stop trying to lead according to your own vision of what needs to happen. Your job is to facilitate buy-in to promote Excellence. And it might not look like a set of actions you’re familiar with. Once you get agreement and the system creates a way to shift congruently so its Beliefs are upheld (in accordance with the foundational rules, expectations, relationships, etc.), then you’ve got a shot that you’ll be heard or followed.
I’ve developed a change facilitation model (Buying Facilitation®) to manage this buy-in/conversion that I’ve been teaching to sellers, leaders and coaches for decades. But you can design your own model. Here is the relevant question you need to address: How can you design a way to help others find a route to their own excellence by helping them be willing to modify their status quo in a way that shifts congruently?
Once they have a route through to changing the status quo and know they’ll come out butter-side-up, they’ll know what they need to buy, and how and when they want to change. And THEN you can pitch, offer, suggest, or influence.
About the Author
Sharon Drew Morgen is a visionary, original thinker, and thought leader in change management and decision facilitation. She works as a coach, trainer, speaker, and consultant, and has authored 9 books including the NYTimes Business BestsellerSelling with Integrity. Morgen developed the Buying Facilitation® method (www.sharondrewmorgen.com) in 1985 to facilitate change decisions, notably to help buyers buy and help leaders and coaches affect permanent change. Her newest book What? www.didihearyou.com explains how to close the gap between what’s said and what’s heard. She can be reached at [email protected]
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Better stated, how can you engage other people to become interested in you and your product or service? Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends & Influence People) says by becoming genuinely interested in them. And he’s partially right.
The reality, and the secret of engagement is that BOTH people must be mutually engaged and mutually interested, and BOTH people must be intellectually stimulated and emotionally connected. Otherwise it’s just a conversation that will be forgotten, unless the salesperson is taking notes.
What is the secret ingredient of engagement?
The key to deepening a sales conversation, or any conversation for that matter, is to connect emotionally. Favorite teams, kids, college create emotion when spoken about, and the feelings and or situations are mutual.
The secret ingredient of engagement is emotion. Emotion is a key link to rapport, relaxation, and response. Emotion takes conversations deeper and becomes more open. The desire to talk and reveal becomes more intense. It pushes you to trade stories and discover similarities.
To help you get the picture of why engagement and emotional engagement are so important, and how to start the process, I am offering two examples and scenarios:
1. FIND THE LINK! What do you have in common with your prospect? That will build rapport and lead you to a sale faster than anything.
Contrary to popular belief, “Customer types” don’t matter. That’s right, take your amiable, driver, tightwad analytic types and toss them in the trash. My favorite type of customer is one that has a wallet with a credit card in it. Oh wait, that’s everybody.
Here’s the challenge… If you spend 30 minutes trying to figure out what type of person you’re dealing with, and then all of a sudden discover you both like model trains – or your kids both play soccer in the same league – or you both went to the same college – or you both grew up in the same town – or you both like the same sports teams — you will most likely make the sale no matter what type of person he or she is.
REALITY: Personal things “in common” lead to a friendship, a relationship, and lots of sales. Enthusiastic Emotional Engagement at its core.
2. FIND THE MEMORY and DO SOMETHING MEMORABLE! If you can find one thing about the other person, and do something creative and memorable about it – you can earn the appointment, build friendship, create smiles, and make a sale.
I was courting a big client in Milwaukee. Found out the guy liked chocolate and was a Green Bay Packer fan. The next day I sent him a Packer hat full of chocolate covered footballs. The next day I was hired. Coincidence, luck or genuine engagement? I have no idea. I just continue to do the same type of thing as often as I can, and continue to make sales.
I was courting a big client in Seattle. Found out the guy liked baseball. Sent him a Louisville Slugger baseball bat with his name engraved on it. Needless to say I hit a home run (sorry for that).
INSIGHT: To establish the ultimate long-term relationship and to be memorable in the service you perform, you need personal information about your prospect or customer. Information that provides you with insight, understanding, and possible links. (And, oh yes, lots of sales.) The difference between making one sale and building a long-term relationship lies in your ability to get this information.
BIGGER INSIGHT: The more information you have, the better (and easier) it is to establish rapport, follow-up and have something to say, build the relationship, and gain enough comfort to make the first sale, and with consistent follow-through, many more.
BIGGEST INSIGHT: If given a choice, people will buy from those they can relate to. People they like. People they trust. This stems from things-in-common. If you have the right information, and use it to be memorable, you have a decided advantage. Or you can decide “It’s too much work, I can make the sale without it.”
This philosophy gives the advantage to someone else – your competitor.
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author
Jeffrey 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].
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