Often in conversations with business owners, CEOs, and sales executives we are asked what they can do to support, grow and develop their sales people. Sales is the life-blood of an organization and any investment made in growing and developing your sales people can significantly increase the bottom-line. Knowing what you and your sales professional can do in very specific, actionable detail allows change and skill development to occur quicker and helps focus sales people’s attention on specific attitudes and behaviors that, if altered, will accelerate their selling success. For example, rather than saying “you need to work on your prospecting skills,” the results would identify the beliefs that are sabotaging the sales person’s ability to be an effective prospector and then, identify the specific behaviors that will create prospecting success.

If you or your sales people don’t want to know the truth, this isn’t the tool for you, but if you are looking for an objective perspective on how to support, grow and develop your sales people, and you can handle the truth, this one is, by far, the best. Contact us if you’d like to learn more about it.

We want to eat another dessert but we want to be healthy and skinny as well. Who is we? Who is the self in self control, and who is being controlled?

We want to stand up and make difference and we want to sit down and hide and be safe.
We want to help others and we want to keep more for ourselves.

It’s not a metaphor, it’s brain chemistry. We don’t have one mind, we have competing interests, all duking it out.

This conflict, the conflict between I and me, is at the heart of being human. One side sells the other. Like all kinds of marketing, it’s far more effective if you know your audience. You will do a better job of telling a story (to yourself) if you understand who you are marketing to. In this case, I is marketing to me (and vice versa). The marketing is going on in your head…

Successful people have discovered how to be better at self marketing.”

How do you sell to yourself? What are you marketing to yourself? Take time to listen to your inner conversations … I, Me, and We will enjoy a visit!

(Seth Godin)

He asks us to rethink our definition of what it means to be a leader. Listen now to learn what a lollipop moment is. You’ve been creating them all your life …. and you just didn’t know it!

Ever had the experience of talking to someone and they pull out their smart phone to answer a call or respond to an email? Ever done it to another person? Sure we all have. Well it seems that social neuroscientists studying the brain have called the response of someone that you do this to as being pizzled. The word is the combination of the response of being puzzled and pissed off … pizzled. It seems that the initial response is “I can’t believe he/she just did that?” (puzzled) and then “I can’t believe he/she just did that to me?” (pissed off).

Daniel Goleman, the author of Social Intelligence, in a TED video talked about the experience of being pizzled and how it signifies a loss of compassion and connection in our daily lives. He mentioned the need for more “human moments” (a phrase coined in a Harvard Business Review article by Edward Hallowell) and advised that “the fundamental thing you have to do is turn off your BlackBerry, close your laptop, end your daydream and pay full attention to the person.”

Often, the single most important thing we can do every day is give our full attention to others. We encourage you this week to not create “pizzled” employees but to have more “human moments.” They will certainly appreciate it and maybe, just maybe, you’ll benefit from them as well.

Surely there is a lesson in this for all of us. One wonders how did the attendants miss such an obvious step in their process? But even more curious is why the gentleman whose name wasn’t called didn’t raise his hand to say his name was not called or why we, the passengers, could see the solution to the problem (it felt so obvious to us) and the attendants couldn’t?

Why 5 attendants couldn’t see the solution we, the passengers, saw I’ll never know but what I do know is that we were part of the solution, and they didn’t involve us in solving the problem. They followed their protocols, they talked amongst themselves, yet they didn’t involve those who were most impacted by the delay until we became so loud, they couldn’t ignore us.

I don’t know about you but I’ve certainly had those moments where it seemed like everyone around me knew what I should do, but for some reason I wasn’t ready or maybe willing to hear the answer. Often the answer was as clear as day and when I finally “saw” it, I couldn’t believe I had missed it.

Take a few minutes this week to think about the problems, issues, or situations you have before you. Ask yourself, “what am I not seeing about this situation?”, “what am I missing?” Often, distance, time and reflection are the best remedy for missing the obvious but sometimes, just asking someone else for input can save you a lot of time and energy.

Tame your frenzy. Frenzy is an emotional state, a feeling of being a little (or a lot) out of control. Frenzy is often underpinned by other emotions, anxiety, sadness, anger, etc. These emotions cause the brain to go into “fight or flight” mode. Positive emotions and thoughts have the reverse affect. They relax the brain and enable it to engage in increased functionality. The authors give some scientific data to support this and suggest that you “try to improve your balance of positive and negative emotions throughout the day. Notice when your brain gets “hijacked” or fixated in negative thoughts or patterns. Most of all, do things that increase positive emotions – breathing, exercise, meditation and getting enough sleep.

Apply the breaks. Distractions are always lurking: wayward thoughts, emotions, sounds and interruptions. Fortunately, the brain is designed to instantly stop a random thought, an unnecessary action, and even an instinctive emotion from derailing you and getting you off track. What can you do? To prevent distractions from hijacking your focus, use the ABC method as your brain’s brake pedal. Become Aware of your options: you can stop what you are doing and address the distraction, or you can let it go. Breathe deeply and consider your options. Then choose thoughtfully: Stop? or Go?

Another option I liked was to institute “distraction-free meetings” where everyone is expected to contribute and offer thoughtful and creative input, and no distractions allowed.

Shift Set. While it is great to be focused, sometimes you need to turn your attention to a new problem. Set-shifting refers to shifting all of your focus to a new task, and not leaving any behind on the last one. Sometimes it is helpful to do this in order to give the brain a break and allow it to take on a new task. What can you do? Before you turn your attention to a new task, shift your focus from your mind to your body. Go for a walk, climb stairs, do some deep breathing or stretches. Even if you are not aware of it, when you are doing this, your brain continues working on your past tasks. Sometimes new ideas emerge during such physical breaks.

Distractions are a part of life yet so is our ability to choose what we do, when and how we do it. This week watch the distractions that keep you from being focused and productive. If you find you need a little more focus, remember you, and only you, have the ability to “tame the frenzy, apply the breaks and shift set.”

Isn’t it interesting that “treats employees well” is #4? The old adage, “happy employees make happy clients,” must apply here. Customers can tell when employees love what they do. Customers watch how employees are treated and make assumptions about the Company. Your employees are a reflection of the Company. How do you see them?

Our most successful clients are those CEOs and Presidents who believe that every dollar they invest in developing, growing and managing their employees directly impacts their organization’s success and bottom line results. They view their employees are “assets” and investing in them, even in the most challenging of times, is a long-term investment with a long-term pay-off.

When an employee feels and is treated like an asset, not an expense, their commitment to you and the company shows in every interaction they have with your customers!

Here is the question: Can a company cash in on, and claim ownership of, an employee’s social media account, and if so, what does that mean for workers who are increasingly posting to Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus during work hours?

Not an easy question for sure. Here are some of the details of the case. The employee, who authored a Twitter account on behalf of the company, claimed, after he terminated employment with the company, that he should be paid a percentage of the revenue earned from the account. He says the company gave him permission to continue “tweeting” yet he changed the Twitter account name to his name only. As a result of his efforts, the company continue to make revenue and he felt he should be compensated for a percentage of the business realized from these efforts. The company rejected that and filed a suit against him saying the Twitter account was a customer list and so property of the company and asked for compensation for the use of the list.

The courts have not decided on this one yet but we can certainly glean some lessons from this one:

1. If you don’t have a social media policy, now is the time to develop one.

2. If there are positions in the company that are responsible for communication with your clients using social media, have them sign a document that states that the company owns the account and if they should leave the company, the account and all future revenue, stays with the company.

3. If employees are writing content, the company should decide the account name and when possible, avoid using the employee’s name on the account.

4. “Inspect what you expect.” If you are going to have a policy, monitor it!

We’re looking out for your best interest on this one. Let’s make this the first lesson we all learn in 2012!