As I make my daily pilgrimage up and down the 405, I wonder what business owners are thinking on this particular day. How many of them are preoccupied with finding the money to pay back taxes, reduce the credit lines, or to make next week's payroll.

The new normal in the economy requires a lot less selling and a lot more attention paid to other people. And if we do that, won't we rediscover some of the best parts of being human? We might find lots of opportunities to do things together because we like doing them. We might find more trust. My challenge for this week is to recover the art of being human and paying attention to other people. My daily initiative will be to find out from the people I am talking to what sort of offer they would find worthy of acceptance. I am stopping selling and seeking to find out what they are looking for. I invite you to join me. Try it. It's lots more fun.

As I was walking up from the hill in Laguna Beach I climb most days, I was in the fog. At the bottom of the hill it was almost as if the sun had not come up. I was walking in the dark. The closer I came to the top of the hill, the thinner was the cloud cover. I could see the moon, and the sun was just coming up over the top of the world above Laguna. At the top of the hill, I was above the fog, the sun was bright, and I could see out to sea. The other hills popped out of the fog here and there. What a beautiful way to begin the day.

As I began the walk back down I began to think about a conversation I had with a client a couple of months ago. He is a visionary leader. He is the President of a company going through a major transition from a market that is no longer productive to a whole new endeavor. Over the past year we have been working together to help each of the team members move from what they had been doing previously into new roles. Not all the members of the team had made the transition. The President was frustrated, and even a little angry, that one of his key players was not doing what, in the President's mind, he needed to be doing. We talked about this for awhile.

He said he had clearly articulated his vision. He told everyone in the company what he wanted to do and where he wanted to go. He was frustrated because one of his key players wasn't doing what was necessary.

He said he felt like he had been on the mountaintop and had pointed out the next mountain he wanted to get to. Since he wasn't seeing the progress he wanted he was frustrated. He told his key player what to do, but it wasn't happening.

It seemed to me the real issue was that as a visionary leader, the president had laid out the larger objectives. He told people where he wanted to go. In his mind, he had done everything he needed to do. At least he had given everything he personally would have needed to get to the next objective. Even though he had laid out the strategic objective, he didn't help his partner lay out the tactical steps. He didn't spend time reassuring his partner as he went through the transition from a job where he had been very successful to the new responsibilities.
The president had not realized his role as a manager. He was focused on the the mountain on the other side of the valley that was only visible above the fog. He didn't recognize that, as the manager, his responsibility was to help his partner become the best he could be. The tools managers use are coaching, mentoring, and supervising. If he were to assist his partner in laying out the specific responsibilities he had in helping the company achieve the strategic objectives he would help his partner succeed. By spending 30 minutes or so each week with his partner asking questions about how the journey down the mountain was going he would get clear about progress. Asking whether the commitments made last week were accomplished would help determine if he was on track. By doing these things, the the president would be giving the partner the necessary support to succeed.

Even though I could see the tops of the hills above the fog, I would not have any way of making my way from my hill top to the others without a clear plan, a leader who would support me from time to time by holding me accountable, and regular contact. The role of a leader, even a visionary leader, is to provide management for the people who report to him or her. Without that, it is not surprising that even experienced people are reluctant to get off the well-traveled road in the fog to achieve a new objective.

So  if companies are not buying, as we discovered in the last message (see in the October 15th post below), what can you do?

To Your Success in the New Economy!

I know what it is like to be fired. Even if you see it coming, it still hurts deeply. Words like: "I have replaced you" or "We are terminating you," or “Your position has been eliminated," can take your breath away. When I heard them, I didn't know how I would provide for myself or my family. Worst of all, I knew I would have to tell my wife that I failed. It was like someone sucked all the air out of me, and there was not enough air to breathe. I felt like a diver when someone steps on the air hose.

I felt devastated. My world was consumed by grief and despair. I literally did not know what to do. I had trusted in myself and my job. After being told to leave, I had no job to trust, and I didn't know how to trust in myself. And I didn’t have too many kind words for God either.

It took some time for me to begin to admit to myself I had been fired. At first, I tried to pretend it didn't happen, saying it wasn't my fault, or it wasn't as bad as I thought it was. That didn’t help. I was caught in my own belief that I had failed. My imagination was filled with the horror of no job, no money, homelessness, disease and finally death.  And to some degree I was right.

At first my prayers were pleas that I would not have to go through the pain. When that didn't work, I began to pray for knowledge about how to find a new position, or a new source of money.  When that didn't happen, I was at my wit's end. 

And that is when I began to talk. When I acknowledged to other people that I did not know what to do or where to go, I came out of isolation and back into relationship. As I began to speak, I began to trust: first, other people, and then, myself. It took me a little longer to regain my trust in God.

The more I spoke about my grief, frustration and despair, and the more I listened to others around me, the more I recognized that, even though I had been fired, I still had a great deal to offer. Slowly I began to realize that I had not lost myself, I had only lost the opportunity to serve in that particular project. As I listened to others, I heard the question: "What do you want to do?" and "How do you want to serve?"

At first I had no answer. I was too caught up in my own drama. Slowly, I recognized people were not asking me what I needed or what I wanted to do, they were asking me how I wanted to serve. They believed I had something to offer. If I have something to offer, I have a reason for hope. I have a reason to live. And that is where I realized the mistake I had made. Looking back now, I realize that my fears came from the belief that I, alone, was responsible for my life, and that if I couldn't produce money, I would die. Today I know that is a lie.

I had fallen into the belief that I had to work to get air to live when the reality is that there was plenty of air for everyone. My beliefs were like a tight-fitting deep sea diver's helmet around my head. I thought my job was to find enough places to plug my air tube into to get sufficient oxygen.

When I focused on others, I saw that lots of people were breathing freely without a helmet. When I trusted enough to open my facemask, I found out I could breathe deeply. There was plenty of air freely available for the taking. The challenge was to believe I could trust that God would supply.

Finally, I understood that I was not responsible for providing all the things I needed. When I discovered that God would supply them, I was finally able to ask: "How can I serve?" That became my prayer.

God's hand was in all the new projects that came after that: the martial arts magazine, the Toshiba technical writing project, the Internet CD product . . . all the projects that followed came when I took a deep breath and trusted God to give me what I needed. I learned my job was to find people to serve.

I stopped blaming myself for not having all the answers. Getting fired gave me the opportunity to find out that even though I was not in control, I was going to be all right. The lesson was difficult to learn, but I didn’t give up. When I started asking God to help me find a place where I could serve, I found unexpected opportunities. I discovered there was plenty of air to breathe.

I also discovered that I didn’t have to do it all by myself. By listening to friends and family who cared about me, by asking God to help; and by asking for places to serve rather than to be served, I found I wasn’t alone and never had been.

If you are struggling today, take a deep breath and feel the wind on your face. You are a holy creation, a favorite of God. You have infinite possibilities before you. Accept this truth with confidence and joy. Ask for help from God, from friends and family, from those around you. Embrace the pain that losing a job brings.  Look for new freedom and the chance to serve. Know that all will be well.

I used to think of myself and my services as a fire truck looking for businesses with fires in the basement. My job was to look around, talk to people and find out if they had fires in the basement they wanted to talk about. Often, when they were willing to talk, they were also willing to let me put the fires out. In other words I could help them solve the problems they were facing. My experience was usually that people with fires in the basement were out front looking for the big fire truck to pull up. When they heard the siren, they started pointing to the building.

If I had the answer, I would bottle it and se…ll it…. Oh that's right no one is buying these days. So how will we help businesses out of this dilemma? There will be risks. It will require courage. Those with the most courage will take the first risks. They will have the highest probability of being at the front of the parade when the music starts again.

The economic confusion has not yet been resolved. The numbers from the economic indicators that will make the biggest difference have not started upward. It might feel like we are becalmed in the south seas waiting for a breeze.

In my conversations with business owners and management consultants around the country, I am hearing five things people are doing to prepare for the new wind.

(I just read this in SellingPower Magazine, and I thought you would find this interesting.)

This is the fifth time the United States has been in a recession since 1970, and with each one, top sales leaders have found ways to grow revenue. So which sales strategies have worked best recession after recession? The Forum Corporation recently dug through reams of research on past recessions with the aim of discovering just that – the most effective selling strategies for the most challenging times. The Forum Corporation senior consultant Jeffrey Baker revealed Forum’s findings in his point-of-view paper, "The Downturn’s Upside – Creating a Recession-Proof Sales Strategy." He says there are five strategies that have worked time and again during recessions. Here’s a look at each one:

Expand relationships. Customer relationships have always been key to successful selling. But it’s no longer enough to have just one or two solid relationships at a client organization. With more and more people joining the buying process, salespeople must deepen relationships with customers and prospects, as well as expand their relationships upward and across client organizations. Don’t sit idly by waiting for news of others who have entered the fray. Seek them out now.

Address customers’ risks. Customers are more concerned than ever with risk – just look at your longer sales cycle for proof. Use those concerns to help you build your case. Skilled salespeople will uncover key risk concerns of customers early and address these risks directly and in a way that builds competitive selling advantage.

Remember that risk concerns are always an opportunity. When prospects ask for a lower price, for instance, you can remind them of the risks of supplier failure and that desperation pricing from a supplier is often an indicator of precarious finances. Or maybe you have a product that can mitigate a customer’s risk in a certain area – now’s the time to focus on it.

Be bold and insightful. Customers are so overwhelmed with all the changes happening in their businesses and industries that they don’t have time to listen to yet another generic sales pitch. To be heard today, you must be able to offer innovative insights on the customer’s business. How can you alleviate a specific pain? What fresh ideas do you have regarding the customer’s company? How have other clients solved a problem with which this prospect is grappling? Anything less than a targeted, intelligent, well- researched idea isn’t going to get you in the door.

For a copy of Forum’s full point-of-view paper, visit www.forum.com.

Management is not rocket science, but there are systems, lists, rules, and ideas that can make your job easier, more productive, and make you more successful!

As a country we moved from the values of serving others to consuming everything we could. Our businesses began to see service as just another way to get and retain more customers who would consume their goods and services. When consumption becomes the key indicator of success, we move away from our values. We are made for serving. Our government, our religious establishments and our businesses all began with the idea of serving others. This notion of serving others is the foundation of democracy. The preamble to the Constitution declares that the government is established to serve the interest of the people.

Every business owner I have spoken with said they originally started their business with the idea of serving the people in their marketplace. What happened to our idea of service as the central value for our lives, our communities, our government, and our businesses? We began to get very clear that behaviors created the outcomes we wanted. Getting what we want is the definition of success. As we learned what behaviors resulted in the outcomes we wanted, we began to believe we were the authors of our success. As we began to want more, we increased our behaviors or made them more effective. Large service industries were created to help people and companies improve their behaviors to achieve greater outcomes. Gradually, the outcomes became the only measure of the correctness of our behaviors. We began to believe that, if our behaviors achieved the outcomes we wanted, they must be right. As we focused on the outcomes, much like the quarterly reports of public companies, we began to ignore our connection to the values we had. We forgot we were here to serve.

One example of this is the controversy of the editorial in the Wall Street Journal by the CEO of Whole Foods. He was taken to task for publishing his thoughts because many people thought his fiduciary responsibility to his company's shareholders should come before his beliefs about what health care should look in America. If the brightest and best of our business leadership cannot participate in a public debate about something as significant as health care, how can they serve? Is it only by generating the greatest profits for their shareholders? California is broken because people have focused on obtaining the assurance they will get what they want (consumption) with no conversation about how government is to serve the people. Maybe the call for a Constitutional Convention for California will result in conversations about what we want California to be like in the next decade.

When we focus on outcomes and the behaviors that lead to them, we can lose our connection to values. Our beliefs, which in a healthy state of affairs, come from our values, begin to be generated by our desires. If some behaviors begin to provide the outcomes we want, we can always find a way to make our beliefs conform to the behaviors. Over time we begin to abandon our connection to our values in favor of the beliefs that justify our behaviors. Many people felt uncomfortable when, in the aftermath of 9/11, the President order us all back to the malls to continue our consumption. Even though we felt uncomfortable, we did our duty and bought all we could believing that if we stopped consuming, the enemy would have won. Curious, isn't it? And the media loved it.

One of the sources of our distraction is the advertisements that tell us what we want, what we should want, and even what we have a right to have. Driving our economy and our lives, the media has learned to be very effective about influencing our desired outcomes and demonstrating the behaviors that will bring the outcomes they have convinced us we want. Our consumption became our downfall. And many are still wandering wondering what beliefs we should adopt now that our economy is broken.

Doing the same behaviors we did three years ago is not producing the outcomes we want. The first move business owners and managers made when the behaviors did not produce the outcomes they wanted was to command everyone to do more of the same behaviors faster and better. To their dismay and confusion, this didn't work. Others sought technology as a solution. That didn't work. Many are still wondering what to do to bring back the success they had before. The answer is in getting back in touch with our values. In today's world these values must be universal, inclusive not exclusive. Recognizing that service underlies all universal values will lead us to a genuine curiosity about how we can serve our marketplace, our employees, our families, friends, and neighbors. Genuine curiosity about the needs, wants and desires of people and businesses combined with an intense desire to serve will generate a path back to prosperity. This is the essence of the American proposition.

Our country, our businesses, and our economy have been built on serving others. We got confused in the midst of prosperity when we turned from serving others to consuming all we could get. Success is properly defined as helping others be the best they can be, not getting everything we are told we should want. So the question is not: "How do we get back to the place where we can get everything we want?" The real question is: "Who do we serve, and how can we help them be the best they can be?" When we ponder that question, we are on the road to recovery.

From my colleague Paul Lanigan of the Sandler Training office in Dublin, Ireland

Whether you are talking about your sales career or your personal life, you achieve success as a result of several interrelated factors which fall under three categories:

• Attitude
• Behavior
• Technique

Learning a new prospecting approach (technique), for instance, won’t ensure you of more business unless you have a plan for implementing that approach (behavior) and the belief (attitude) that it will work for you.

Attitude has to do with your outlook – the perception you have about yourself, your company, your product or service, and your marketplace. It can be one of possibility, or one of limitation. And, since it’s your perception, it’s your choice.

Behavior relates to having a systematic approach to the task at hand or step-by-step plan for reaching goals. Haphazard behavior will not take you closer to success, nor will guesswork or lax standards. Don’t let yourself off the hook because you’re having a bad day or would rather be playing golf.

Technique relates to the application of various skills. It consists of strategies and tactics you use to implement your behaviors.

A successful salesperson realizes that what he or she thinks and feels about the selling process and how he or she behaves during the selling process can greatly affect the outcome of the process. Prior beliefs, judgments, and actions that don’t support your current goals can sabotage your sales efforts. An attitude and/or behavior adjustment, coupled with proven techniques, can be just the ticket to improving your sales outcomes.

Be the best!