Ask questions and listen
Listen without an agenda and sincerely focus on how your product or service can best serve your customer’s hopes, dreams, and goals. It’s a good idea to listen with mindfulness and then respond with a question instead of thinking about what you are going to say next while your customer is talking. I think of listening as a meditation, just being present and jotting things down in my notebook. In my experience, it’s a best practice to get as much information as possible before trying to answer, as building win-win relationships means remembering that it is not about what we want but what the other person wants.
“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”
Setting goals
I wrote it down, put a date on it, listed the obstacles I had to overcome, identified the people, the groups, the organisations I needed to work with, spelled out a plan of action, set that time limit in there, and identified all the benefits to me. It was only when I did that, that the goal became a reality.
“If you want to achieve your goals, help others achieve their goals.”
Embark on your journey now
As a salesperson you already know there is a vast difference between understanding something well enough to buy it as opposed to understanding it well enough to sell it. Zig Ziglar described selling as a transference of feeling and I tend to agree with him. I think effective sales procedures work everywhere and you do not need to be a “natural born” salesperson in order to be a good one. Selling is an exciting profession and in many ways a complex one. There are many specialists in the field and no one person has a monopoly on all the information.
The reaction to success is different for different people. A common problem people experience, following success, is to go into an emotional dive or feel depressed. There may be a bit of an anti-climax afterwards due to the loss of focus and routine. I have never seen a spreadsheet that tells you how you should treat people. How do you react when you experience a dive in emotions? Contact me via e-mail for tolerance, understanding as well as solid actions.
Aspiring vs being
“Money won’t make you happy... but everybody wants to find out for themselves.”
Money makes the world go around
“Money won’t make you happy... but everybody wants to find out for themselves.”
The effectiveness of goal setting
As a football fan, “goals” have a completely different meaning than when we speak about them in the professional or personal context. GOALS provide focus, enhance productivity, boost self-esteem and increase commitment. I think it essential to make your goals SMART. In my world, S.M.A.R.T is an acronym and is extremely helpful when goal setting - S = specific, M = measurable, A = attainable, R= relevant and T = timely.
“A goal properly set is halfway reached.”
Specific
The more specific you are, the more likely you are to reach the goal. What specifically do you want to accomplish? Who’s involved? When? Where?
Measurable
How will you know when the goal is achieved? What milestones can you measure along the way?
Attainable
Make sure your goal is realistic and achievable.
Relevant
Be clear on why you want to work toward this goal. How is it significant to your life?
Timely
Anchor your goal with a deadline and create a calendar leading up to it with all the steps you need to take to reach your goal mapped out.
Contact me via e-mail when you have written down your goals and are ready to have them defined. we can go through the S.M.A.R.T acronym as it’s only when you do that, that goals became reality.
How can you become a meaningful specific and not a wandering generality?
This means that you should not become someone who is wandering through life with no specific purpose or meaning to your life. Instead, be someone who stands out from the crowd. With dreams and goals that add meaning and purpose to your life as you accomplish them along your life journey, you become a meaningful specific.
I think that marketing is creating true stories, that when they intersect with people who want to hear them, these stories will change those people for the better. Seth Godin recommends reaching your “smallest viable audience that you can be sustained by.” And he describes the smallest viable audience as “that core group that you know, you understand and seek to interact with and so delight them that they will tell others.”
I don’t want to trick people into paying attention for a short while by making interesting click bait. I think that whatever your brand aesthetic may be, consistency in tone, voice, and style is crucial in building trust and keeping your audience coming back for more.
Why Do We Do What We Do?
The great Zig Ziglar said, “Motivation gets you going, and habit gets you there. Make motivation a habit and you will get there more quickly and have more fun on the trip. You are free to choose, but the choices you make today will determine what you have, be and do in the tomorrow of your life.”
We are not in the business of knowledge transformation we are in the business of skill acquisition. Do you know the difference between a skill and a habit? A skill is the ability to do something well and a habit is something you do mentally or physically, that starts as a choice and then becomes a nearly automatic pattern.
In reality, a habit is the function of our subconscious mind. There is no greater evidence of the marvelous power of our subconscious than the force and sway habit holds in our life. We form habits in our subconscious mind by repeating a thought or behavior and act it out over and over again until it establishes tracks in our subconscious mind and becomes automatic. What percentage of our daily behaviors are choice? Studies have shown that between 40 and 45% of what we do each day are habits. Therefore, when we understand how habits work, then rather than being the consumer of our lives, we become the creator.
The Power of Habits training is about teaching leaders and individuals how to leverage habits so that they can improve results. The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, being more productive and achieving success is understanding how habits work. The Power of Habits training will do 3 things: increase performance, improve outcome and ignite culture. Performance is what we do, results is what comes from our actions, and culture is how we behave.
We change the world by changing behavior and there’s a process to that and at Peak Balance (Vital Smarts), our digital learning tools can help facilitate training outside the traditional classroom settings. We have put together a series of micro-trainings which consist of a series of short, focused learning modules that are delivered through Adobe Connect. These trainings have proved to be highly effective at accelerating onboarding and improving retention.
For further information - contact: sb@peakbalance.dk
Do You Know How Your Customers R-A-T-E Your Business?
Ziglar, Inc., via Associated Press
The American author and motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar used the word R-A-T-E as a tool to assess how your customers are going to rate you.
R = Reliability, Recovery & Responsiveness
Customers understand that life is not perfect and mistakes will happen. However, this does not mean that your business is unreliable and frequently breaks its promises. Customers expect good businesses to be reliable and do what you say. On the rare occasions (they expect them to be rare) that you can’t then your customers expect you to make it up to them in another way, recover. How you make it up maybe as simple as an apology or some small compensation payment. They expect you to be responsive – i.e. quick to take action.
A = Assurance
Customers want to feel that their problem is being handled by an expert. Assure them that you know your business by demonstrating you understand their problems and the solution!
T = Tangibles
Your customers have an expectation of your brand and its appearance. From the staff and business setting to all of your on and off-line material. Your customers will judge you by your looks. Therefore part of meeting their expectations means making sure you look your best.
E = Empathy
Empathy is about connecting with your customers at an individual and personal level. Every customer wants to feel HUGged. That is Heard, Understood and Given incredible value. No one wants to feel like just another number or sale. You can HUG your customers by doing simple things like using their name when you address them, remembering specific details about their service needs/specifications that make it easy for them to buy from you. Show your customers that you care for them individually.
By really understanding the answers to these questions you will be able to set your customers’ expectations realistically and honestly. Customers tend to value honesty above everything. Setting expectations do not mean that you then can’t exceed them. It just establishes the baseline within the scope of your offer. For example, Richard Branson (Virgin), who has built an empire based on providing exceptional customer service explains it like this: “The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them — preferably in unexpected and helpful ways. Setting customer expectations at a level that is aligned with consistently deliverable levels of customer service require that your whole staff, from product development to marketing, works in harmony with your brand image.”
Are you interested in having a deeper dive?
