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Day: June 3, 2019

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How Long Will You Carry Your Burdens?

“Burdens will enslave you. Set yourself free by releasing them.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

The rod broke! It was repaired – clothes were placed back on it – it broke again, was repaired again and now it had fallen again. The rod gave way to the burden of the weight it carried.

In life, you too carry burdens. They come in the form of anxiety, stress, disappointment, perceived rejection, lack of perceived success, and what may appear to be mayhem. When encumbered by them, you’re delayed from swifter movement until you’re able to rid yourself of them. Between those points, those burdens weigh you down – they cause you not to be as efficient as you otherwise would be – they wreak havoc in your life, which spills over to those closest to you. They cause your life to be a hell on earth. Stop the madness! Control your burdens.

Extended Time:

Over an extended time, the rod was slowly bending to the will of the weight it bore. The slowly yielding process that sapped the strength of the rod occurred at such a leisurely pace, the naked eye couldn’t recognize what was happening. That’s what occurs to you when you have too much of a burden to carry. The weight of it slowly causes you to denigrate into a state of decline. If recognition occurred sooner, you could address the situation before it sapped you of your vitality.

Comfortability:

So why don’t you recognize when a burden is becoming too uncomfortable to endure before it becomes too uncomfortable to endure? The answer is, your psyche tells you that you can bear the discomfort – you can take the pain. It won’t last much longer – be tough! While that can serve as a great source of motivation in the right situation, it’s a double-edged sword. Thus, if not controlled, it can leave you in an uncontrollable state.

Caution:

When you’re besieged by heavy burdens, don’t let them weigh you down – you already know the consequences of that. When you’re beleaguered by thoughts of uncertainty that assail your mind, listen to those signals. They’re warning you that your load is too heavy – it’s akin to your engine light flashing red. At a minimum, recognize and acknowledge that you’re in an area that may be fraught with potential danger.

Action Time:

The rod broke because the heft upon it was too great a load to sustain. Like the rod, your life will also break if you don’t castoff burdens that are too great for you to the harbor.

If you sense too many obstacles are creating too many burdens for you to bear, shed them from your life. Your load will be lighter. You will be able to move more freely as you move towards greater goals that will improve your life. You will have freed yourself to be freer to achieve more and be more of what you were meant to be … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

Negotiators bring their burdens into the negotiation. Those burdens cause them to react in different ways depending on the gravity of them. Thus, their burdens impact the negotiation process.

Just like people move quicker away from something that’s too painful and more slower towards pleasure, so will they release a burden when it becomes too cumbersome to bear in a negotiation. What that suggests is, depending on the negotiator type that you’re negotiating with, you can use the weight of a burden or the release of it (pleasure) to motivate him to adopt one position versus another. The one you choose would be dependent on which served you best. And that would be dependent on the situation and the individual.

While burdens can be cumbersome, recognizing the value of using them as a tool during a negotiation can work to your benefit. Thus, if your burden is too heavy during a negotiation, attempt to transfer it to the other negotiator. You’ll get a reaction from him – note it. If he displays discomfort, extend an offer to relieve him of that burden. He’ll be grateful to you for having done so. You will have taken the burden that you gave him back. But you will have also gained a better position in the negotiation for doing so.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

Listen to Greg’s podcast at https://anchor.fm/themasternegotiator

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

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The CEO Blues: “Winning Sales”​ vs. “Winning Profitable Sales”​

The “winning more sales” industry is huge, crowded, and noisy; the “winning more profitable sales” industry is, well…disturbingly quiet. There are a few sales performance companies who put terms like “profitable sales” into their advertising. Unfortunately, precious few know how to turn tagline into the profit line.

To a sales leader, the difference between those two may be a secondary concern.  However, there is nothing a corporate leader cares about more. Corporate leaders:  here are the organizational differences between the two.  Sales Leaders:  I want to prepare you to have this conversation with your CEO.

World Class Sales is a Real Achievement.

Building a winning sales organization isn’t easy. According to CSO Insights, “world class” sales organizations make up only about 5-9% of companies each year. Without diving into research methodology (I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a research wonk), suffice it to say that I think this year’s definition of “world class” is as good as any they’ve ever come up with. This year, the world-class label applies to companies who (I’m paraphrasing below. If you want a copy of the report, contact me):

  • Add value to every customer interaction, every channel.
  • Build persona-specific customer value consistently, through the customer’s journey.
  • Align Cross-functionally (although CSO Insights takes a narrower view than I do of which functions they include ) to deliver a consistent experience.
  • Continuously learn and improve by building a great coaching infrastructure.
  • Enforce rigor around call planning and forecasting.
  • Leverage their sales analytics as a sales improvement tool, not just a sales monitoring tool.
  • Use a purposeful talent strategy.
  • Have built a system of finding, harvesting, and replicating best practices.

Building an organization with all of these characteristics is a challenge. Disappointingly, achieving “world class” might simply be causing the CEOs Blues: winning sales, but not profitable ones. While world class is a huge achievement for many companies, most CEOs want more.

Selling Profitably Isn’t Much Harder. But it’s Very Different.

Selling profitably means selling at a win-win price reflecting customer value. Most sales training companies help sellers build enough value to win a sale, but not to win it at a value-based price. When done correctly, the higher value-based price actually coincides with higher customer preference.

Let’s look at some of the differences between world-class sales, and world-class profitable sales. Comparing/contrasting with the list above:

  • “Adding value during every interaction” goes from “figure perspective out for yourself” or “use the persona-based value propositions we give you” to developing a deep organization-wide understanding of customer value and specific tools for salespeople to build it.
  • The entire customer experience evolves beyond providing persona-specific value messages. Besides messaging, value-enabled sellers gather customer insights and build customer value from first web click-through customer’s end of product life.
  • Cross-functional alignment extends beyond the walls of the sales and marketing silos. In contrast, everyone who touches a customer has a value-building and value-insight-gathering role.
  • Great coaching culture is equally valued. What’s coached, plus who all is coached expands.
  • Customer value shapes call planning and forecasting more directly. Think about it: if you know clearly just how highly a customer values each offer you will make next month, how much more accurate do you think forecasts will be?
  • Sales analytics are even more focused, emphasizing how sellers focus on value.
  • The talent strategy is every bit as important.

A few years ago, a VP of sales with a Fortune 500 company described this as “elite level” selling. I can’t argue and maintain that it’s within the reach of most sellers. As your organization begins building a value culture, it takes on these characteristics.

Pricing is Profit. Value Shapes Pricing.

As your company masters elite selling, you have the tools to price with confidence, with your customer’s blessing.

Ask your CEO if he/she’d like more profitable sales. In preparation, do yourself a favor and do a quick exercise: calculate 1% of your company’s revenue, then add that number to your net income line. Next, calculate that increase in profitability as a percentage. You just calculated what your CEO could report to your company’s owners if your sellers simply added just 1% to your company’s pricing. Phrased differently, this is how profits would increase by discounting just one percent less.  Heck, do the same calculation for a 1/10th of 1% reduction discounting.

When your CEO indicates that it seems worth pursuing further, dig a little deeper. Ask:

  • Does everyone who touches my customers (aka sellers) regularly conduct commercial/value conversations with their customer contacts?
  • Do my sellers know how my customer makes money…and all the ways my offer can help them (hint: most “world class” selling organizations don’t)?
  • Do my sellers know how to measure customer value with a customer?

Contact me with your answers, and let’s see if we can have some fun together building your business…profitably.

To your success!