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Day: September 18, 2019

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Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

“Never Let Good Stop You From Being Amazing” – Negotiation Insight

“Never stop at ‘good enough.’ If you do, you’ll never know how close you are to becoming amazing!” – Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (Click to Tweet)

 

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“Never Let Good Stop You From Being Amazing”

He was the number one problem solver in his company. And he’d been working for days in solitude to find a solution to the latest challenge. Finally, after laboring in thoughts for hours without a break, he felt his thoughts circling. He said this is going nowhere. I’m like a dog chasing its tail. One of these thoughts will have to be good enough. I can’t do any better. With that, he stopped thinking. Good enough had prevented him from being amazing.

You can be confronted by several challenges that occur in the future when you stop at good. The biggest one is, you’ll never get better. And not getting better will prevent you from becoming amazing. Your mental state of mind will say, you’ve settled for mediocrity in the past, do it this time, too. That thought may not be an outward expression. But it will be the signal from your subconscious mind that will stop you from reaching your full potential and higher goals.

 

The following are three ways you can move past good and become amazing.

 

  1. Know your peak times.

    • Everyone has different times in the day when they’re mentally more alert. Thoughts seem to flow through them like a flowing fountain. If you know when that time occurs for you, attempt to be your most creative during those times. To enhance your thinking process, eliminate all obstacles that might intrude on what might be your state of zen. By removing distractions, you’ll ensure that you stay in that state longer. And your creativity will be extended.

 

  1. Be aware of when you’re under pressure or stress.

    • Most people don’t perform well under pressure. And the more it exists, the more likely you are to make mistakes. That can lead to stress. Then, you begin to fight a vicious cycle of tension, which leads to stress, which increases the pressure. When you experience the weight of undue burdens or anxiety, it’s time to stop. You won’t do yourself much good if you continue to burn your brain cells. All you’ll be doing is grinding your mind to a slow halt.

 

    • Don’t beat yourself up. That’ll only hamper your thinking process. Sometimes, amid frustration, you may begin to demean yourself. Don’t do it. Resist saying things like, I’m so stupid. I knew I was too dumb to do this. First, your subconscious hears what you think, even if you don’t say it out loud. And, your subconscious will attempt to create the reality that you state to be your belief. Thus, be cautious about what you say and what you think when you address a situation. If you believe you’re not good enough to conquer or complete a task, you’ll never get to the point of where amazing resides.

 

  1. Know where help is and how to use it.

    • Get the thoughts of others to assist you with your thinking. When two people consider how to solve a problem, they create different ideas than if one was doing so. Thus, when you find yourself challenged by the absence of ideas, ask others to join you. Just make sure that you extend invitations to those that will add to your thoughts and not distract from them.

 

What does this have to do with negotiations?

 

Some people negotiate as a team because they realize that there are more significant opportunities that might otherwise go unobtained. In so doing, they enhance the probability of an amazing outcome and not one that’s just good.

If you consider how you might turn a good negotiation into an amazing one before you enter into it, that singular act will put you on the road to an incredible outcome. From there, you can enhance the process. Just incorporate what I mentioned in steps 1, 2, and 3 … and everything will be right with the world.

 

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 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/

 

#Negotiate #Negotiator #Business #Progress #SmallBusiness #Negotiation #NegotiatingWithABully #Power #Perception #emotionalcontrol #relationships #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions #GregWilliams #Success

 

 

 

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Leadership Coaches and Mentors

There are few forces as powerful as mentors and coaches in leadership development. As individual leaders, we learn our best habits, skills, and insights through having influential individuals in our lives. In time, we use our experiences with them to become coaches and mentors to others. But each role, coaches and mentors, is subtly different from one another, and both are necessary for the proper growth and development of leadership capacities.

 Future leaders need a solid example of how to lead.

Coaches build expertise and provide accountability. As coaches, we help set goals, expectations, and development for our team members and those within our scope of responsibility. We are providing support, assisting in establishing and building careers and personal development, while also providing a level of accountability. This last piece is critical because our team members are answerable to us. This relationship adds an often uncomfortable dynamic in these relationships where the cost of coming up short can lead to stressful situations. As coaches, we have to be able to allow our teams the freedom to explore new areas and try new things. At the same time, we keep our teams grounded in their responsibilities and hold them accountable for their contributions and work.

A mentor helps with these tough situations. Mentors are advisors and guides, not supervisors. Developing leaders are not directly answerable or accountable to their mentors, and they are not professionally responsible for any suggestions, advise, or work that mentors provide. As mentors, we provide advice, assistance, and an outside, third-party, perspective, and only hold our mentees accountable in a personal setting. There are no professional penalties if they fall short on expectations or fail to deliver results—although this may impair any relationships. This dynamic provides great strength towards mentoring-style relationships. They are excellent for advice and asking tough questions while receiving impartial and clear guidance on how to proceed under challenging situations.

Growing and developing leaders requires both ends of this spectrum of support. Future leaders need a solid example of how to lead. No text or training program can provide the substantial influence of having a great leader and a great example to follow. A great coach provides direction and accountability. They help to push leaders out of their comfort zone and expand their horizons, knowledge, and skills. A great mentor allows for a better area to have the difficult conversations around navigating these murky seas.

Developing leaders will face difficult situations which they will be uncomfortable discussing with their leaders, especially where accountability and failure are at stake. A mentor provides experienced insights into these situations and can help give answers to the tough questions. Both are necessary for developing the core leaders in every organization.

Ed Brzychcy is former U.S. Army Infantry Staff-Sergeant with service across 3 combat deployments to Iraq. After his time in the military, he received his MBA from Babson College and now coaches organizational leadership and growth through his consultancy, Blue Cord Management.

Categories
Growth Management Operations Personal Development

Want to be more customer-centric? Try crossword puzzles.

Six months ago, I started doing crossword puzzles. I did it so I’d spend less time staring at my phone but ended up with another, unexpected benefit. It turns out that crossword puzzles are as much about perspective-taking as they are about trivia or vocabulary. Perspective-taking is the essence of empathy, and empathy is the key to customer-centricity.

Subtle shifts in meaning can drastically change outcomes

When I’m stuck on a clue, it’s usually because I’m thinking the wrong way. Puzzle authors count on that. They pick words and phrases with many meanings, like this one: “Number of prime ministers on Downing Street.” The answer was 3 letters. I assumed “number” meant amount and answered “one.” There’s only one British Prime minister, right? Yes, but wrong. The word they wanted was “ten.” To figure that out, you had to read the clue as “the number of the place on Downing Street that belongs to the prime minister.” Subtle change, big difference.

Being able to look at things from many perspectives is key to running a customer-centric business. I once heard a leader say “customers thought these were marketing emails, but they’re not.” Wrong. If customers thought they were marketing emails, they were marketing emails. A better question to ask is “what made customers see these as marketing when that’s not what we intended?”

Knowledge gaps often derail an otherwise good experience
When you practice perspective-taking, you may also expose a knowledge gap between you and your customers. When I got stuck on the clue “Mel Torme’s nickname,” the problem wasn’t perspective. I’m just not familiar enough with 1950s pop culture to come up with “The Velvet Fog” on my own.

The same thing happens with customers all the time. Last week I had problems tagging people in LinkedIn posts I wanted to schedule via Hootsuite. The service rep kept explaining “you can’t tag profiles, only pages,” which confused me. I thought they were the same thing, but she didn’t pick up on that. A few extra words – you can’t tag personal LinkedIn profiles, only company LinkedIn pages, – and our exchange would have been far less frustrating.

Most people, including that rep, aren’t trying to be difficult. Perspective-taking is hard, especially in the chaos of modern life. Our brains want to interpret things as fast as possible, so they call up the most common, familiar, or recent interpretation they can think of. We trust our brains, so we assume that’s right unless something external, like the wrong number of letter spaces, makes us think more broadly. Humans can learn to trigger new thinking without external cues, but it takes practice. That’s what crossword puzzles offer – a low-risk way to strengthen perspective-taking muscles that will help you deal with friends, family, and clients in the future.

How do you practice taking unusual perspectives? Maybe you act in local theater. You could read books or watch shows for which you’re not the target audience. (Tuning in to an old movie on the Outdoor Channel exposed this city-girl to a world of camping products she never knew existed!) Whatever you choose to do, I can assure you that empathy exercises will be eye-opening, often fun, and worth it for any leader who wants to stay more connected with their customers.

Categories
Best Practices Investing Marketing Negotiations Sales

Are You Winning Enough Opportunities at the Right Prices?

While many of my Sales Consultants specialize in specific industries, I have defined my niche differently: companies who produce a differentiated product or service, and who want to be fairly compensated for their value. This means selling at a higher price, In alignment withthe customer.

I’ve had the opportunity to work in many industries: electronic components, telecom gear, telecom services, commercial real estate, and banking. I’ve also been the highest priced option in all of those industries: a combination of products and services.

I have always worked for some of the most famously “high-priced” providers in whatever business I was in. The common thread, and the reason I’ve been successful in each role? In a stroke of early-career luck, I learned the fundamentals of selling to full value (much more involved than “value selling”, and much more effective at establishing higher preference at a higher price) at an early stage, and was able to refine that methodology for use in increasingly “commoditized” industries (what can be more commodity than selling money?). Those experiences formed the core of my Full Value Selling™ methodology.

How do successful selling and selling at the right price interact? Let’s take a look at some research.

Differentiation Gets Valued. 

Look down the left hand side of the graphic below, produced by CSO Insights. Noel Capon describes similar levels of relationship shown in his benchmark work, Key Account Management and Planning. The higher up a customer places a supplier on the vertical axis of this scale, the more value they find in the buy-sell relationship.
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CSO Insights has found that higher levels on the vertical axis correspond to higher win rates, which is awesome. Curiously, they have not even thought to study pricing power.  That is apparently my lonely corner of the selling performance market.

Value CAN Get Compensated.

Many sales methodologies can be used to help selling organizations progress up the scale – at least as far as your customer wants you to go. Far fewer methodologies teach how to get a customer to want you higher on the scale.  The higher a supplier is able to achieve relationship-wise on this scale, the more leverage the supplier has to price.  Again, having leverage doesn’t automatically guarantee successfully using that leverage.

The difference between “winning more reliably” and “winning more reliably at the optimum price” is where I specialize. Full-Value Selling™ helps sellers consistently and smoothly help customers quantify the value received, and more acutely see the bargain they are obtaining – even at a higher price than competitors offer.

When customers are more rigorous at analyzing your value, they see price more clearly in relation to that value. Consumer behavior research shows that people only analyze value until they “get over the hump” to justify a purchase. What this means is that they won’t fully appreciate your entire value on their own; to appreciate your full value to them, customers need to be taken beyond that “make the sale” minimum. Sellers who want to reliably win premium-priced deals can do a little more: help the customer think through FULL value. This makes the seller not only able to win at more advantageous prices but resist discounting more effectively.

Relationship vs. Process Rigor vs. Sales Performance.

CSO Insights has extensively studied companies on not only the level of customer relationship achieved but on how rigorous their salespeople follow a selling process. The horizontal axis on the matrix represents four major categories of selling methodology/process rigor. “Random” means that every rep uses their own personal process. In “informal”, sellers go through process training, but none is enforced. “Formal” is the designation for ongoing process reinforcement and enforcement. “Dynamic” process processes are systematically revisited and updated in response to internal and external changes.

How does selling rigor interact with relationship quality? I’ll discuss results in a moment, but think about how much easier it might be to consistently achieve better customer relationships if sellers know how to perform best practices? The key to progressing to the right on the matrix is how well organizational support manifests itself in effective front-line sales manager (FSM) coaching and mentorship. Teaching a methodology gets you only so far; following it long-term, and making it part of your corporate culture is a huge differentiator.

What are the performance outcomes associated with your position on this matrix? Take a look at the color-coded outcomes corresponding to the matrix above:

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Notice that these outcomes, while highly compelling, are deafeningly silent on pricing achieved. Any sales consultant, myself included, want to help you move up and to the right. I want to help you do more…by filling the void in that deafening silence.

Selling Well vs. Selling Well Consistently vs. Selling Well, Consistently, and Profitably

I also do work throughout our company’s clientele on improving how sales managers coach sellers.  This is key to helping my clients achieve consistently great sales results, but also consistently optimum pricing. I can’t help my clients consistently achieve more profitable pricing for the long term without their commitment to long-term adoption.

Selling value consistently yields higher sales performance, but pricing those reliable sales results yields higher profit performance…think of it as a third dimension of sales performance. I help clients add a third axis to this matrix: doing it all profitably, by achieving optimum win-win pricing. This doesn’t replace any methodology; it complements those tools seamlessly with another: a relentless focus on value delivered.

If you want to move upward and to the right on the Sales Relationship Process matrix, we might need to talk. If you want to do that while achieving higher pricing that your customers love, we are kindred spirits, and I invite a deeper discussion of your goals.

To your success!