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Category: Personal Development

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

What Moves You the Most Fear: Reward or Pain?

“The difference between fear, reward, or pain, is the emotional state that either creates in you.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

Do you know what moves you to action the quickest? I know it depends on the circumstance you’re in. But sometimes, we’re moved more by fear than reward or pain.

You should always be aware of what moves you to action in any situation. Doing so allows you to be more aligned with your decision-making process. And that allows you to understand why you choose to engage in certain actions.

The following are thoughts to consider when assessing how to decide about an action you’ll take. Being aware of those observations will also help you identify the source of motivation that’s controlling your thoughts.

Fear: Most people are motivated more by the fear of loss versus the reward of gain. You can test yourself by examining something that’s of value to you. Assess to what degree you’d feel pain if you no longer had it. Now compare that to other items (i.e. people, things) that you value. Now how do you feel? Through that quick simulation, you’ve prioritized what is of value to you. And, you’ve assessed the emotional state you’d be in if you no longer had it. You can make the same calculations when weighing the benefits of possibly acquiring something new versus not doing so because of where that process might lead. Also remember, something new carries intrinsic risks – it’s unknown – it has no history and thus no track record. It might look good in the beginning and be fraught with hidden dangers to come.

Reward: This can be a great motivator. But you should also note why you’re driven by a reward. If the driving force is to escape what you’re moving from, you should consider that fear might be the predominant source that’s motivating you. That’s important because you don’t want to think you’re driven by reward when the source is fear. The two motivators are directed by different mindsets within you.

The true motivation of reward might appear as you being happy and seeking more to enhance that feeling. As a result, you’re willing to take a risk to obtain what you seek. Always question when seeking a reward what the hidden risk is. Question to what degree it’s the loss of something that you’re familiar with. Thus, make your calculations appropriately to determine if you’re propelled by moving towards or away from something.

Pain: Pain can be a feisty motivator. On the one hand, most people attempt to avoid pain. Then, there are those that embrace it as a source to grow from. Either psyche may be the motivator that moves you to action.

Like the association that fear and reward have to one another, the avoidance of pain can be the conductor that divides one direction from another. That’s to say, if you’re predominately attempting to avoid pain, you may forgo the risk of reward. If you’re immune to pain, you may be more daring. Again, there’s a thin mental line that separates the mindset that’ll move you in one direction versus another. Know what that mindset is.

Always attempt to understand the sources that motivate you. They’re the lifeblood of your being. Thus, the more you know the process that controls its flow, the better you’ll be able to direct it … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

In a negotiation, you’ll be motivated to take action based on fear, reward, or pain. If you’re aware of the driving force that motivates you to action, you should be better positioned to control those actions. By being in greater control of yourself, you’ll be in greater control of the negotiation and the other negotiator. That means that he won’t be able to easily ‘push your buttons’ … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

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/

#Fear #Reward #Pain #Negative #Stop #Thoughts #Emotion #Business #Progress #SmallBusiness #Negotiation #NegotiatingWithABully #Power #Perception #emotionalcontrol #relationships #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions

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Entrepreneurship Leadership Personal Development

The Secret of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurs change the world, but not in the way that you think.

Entrepreneurship can be one of the single most impactful ideas in business today. Entrepreneurial thinking, intrapreneurship, and innovation are pervasive ideas throughout the industry today. Many entrepreneurs that call themselves creatives, they know that they’re creating and building something — giving them a singular vision of what they want to bring into the world.

  • For many, it is malleable, able to change and adapt as they grow and learn.
  • For some, it is a straight-forward single-minded idea.
  • For everyone, it is a problem that they are passionate about solving.

Entrepreneurship makes lives better because it brings new ideas into the fold. Some stick, smartphones, social media, others fade, pet rocks, Beta Max, but all leave an impact, even if it is merely an example of something whose time hasn’t yet come, i.e., Apple Newton.

The key to this is, whatever you want to do, it is entirely up to you to figure it out.
Entrepreneurs’ ideas don’t have to be game changing. In fact, among our communities the most impactful entrepreneurs often have some of the most mundane ideas; they merely do it better and bring a little extra to the table.

The one common element that every entrepreneur has is resilience.

Resilience merely is the ability to remove “I can’t” from your vocabulary. Period. This simple lesson is the most important and is what primes entrepreneurs for success. Because every venture with either will either fail, face hardship, or require grit and determination to move forward.

Never giving up is what separates the successful entrepreneurs from those who fall short.

Entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be a world-changing idea. It has to be something that someone is passionate about and willing to see through to the end.
The smallest venture can have the most significant effect. Moreover, for many entrepreneurs, it is not about changing the world. It is merely having an impact on their lives, families, and neighborhoods — the idea of building a career for themselves that bring value into their communities in new ways.

I had a great lunch the other day with The Hero Club, another great organization within the C-Suite Network and had a chance to sit down with some fantastic entrepreneurs that have stared some significant and highly impactful ventures.

I asked them, what was the one thing that kept you going and truly helped you build your business. After some thinking, I received a multitude of answers, all along similar lines; persistence, determination, unwillingness to let go, plain old stubbornness. In short, it was the will to succeed that drove them to create something bigger, better, more profound. It is the will to carry on that creates successful entrepreneurs, not a fancy pitch deck.

It is looking at the world in slightly different ways, finding a problem, proposing a solution, then running with it. However, and more importantly, it is the ability to be able to bounce back from mistakes and missteps. Learn from them, grow, and continue to move forward. Be stubborn about what you’re passionate about. The never give up, never quit, learn, adapt, improvise, and overcome attitude is everything in this area of business.

We don’t have to change the world, but entrepreneurs everywhere are finding ways to improve their lives and their communities. If you look at the aggregate, incremental, impact of all their ventures, it does change the world.

You can find our podcast conversation on entrepreneurship and local impact on The Leadership Update Brief on C-Suite Radio.

Ed Brzychcy is former U.S. Army Infantry Staff-Sergeant with service across three 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.

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Entrepreneurship Investing Management Marketing Negotiations Operations Sales Skills Women In Business

Persuasion – How to Use It in the Negotiation Process

“To become more persuasive, magnify your subject’s needs. Also, know how and when to give or take those needs away.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

“I attempted to coddle him as a method of persuasion. It didn’t work! He told me to put my offer where the sun doesn’t shine. I was speechless!”

What forms of persuasion do you use in your negotiation process? Every negotiator attempts to motivate her opponent through persuasion.

When considering how you’ll persuade another negotiator, you must consider her personality type, the situation you’re in, and the negotiation environment. Those variables will have a large impact on your use of persuasion in the negotiation process.

The following are a few thoughts to consider when deciding how you’ll address those variables in your negotiations.

Personality Type:

In the opening scenario, it appears the negotiator used the wrong form of persuasion – and was harshly admonished. Here’s something to consider when attempting to persuade someone based on their personality type.

  • Takeaway – Most people are more motivated by a fear of loss. That means, they’ll protect what they’ve gained rather than risking its loss for greater gains.
  • You can assess someone’s risk adversity by extending an offer of something they want, making it conditional upon their immediate acceptance, and taking it off the table if they decline. Later in the negotiation, make reference to that offer and observe their reaction. If they give an inkling of wanting it, they’re displaying the effect that the takeaway had. Even if they do accept the offer, you will have gained insight into the degree of risk adversity that they’re willing to undergo. You can use that insight throughout the negotiation.

Negotiation Situation:

Every negotiation is shaped by the value sought. That means the degree of effort applied is based on the perceived value and expectations of the outcome. Thus, if there’s a low expectation of value, the need to persuade or dissuade will be in direct correlation to that expectation. Keep that in mind when utilizing the following thought.

  • What losses have the other negotiator incurred in the past and what effect did they have on him – Having this insight allows you to invoke the painful memories of what occurred in the past. Your subconscious suggestion is, you don’t want that to happen again, do you? You can also use that information as a lever to persuade him from not straying into dangerous negotiation waters.
  • Different situations will influence the need to project different behaviors. Understanding the conditional behavior that shapes that mindset will indicate whether to use coddling or disdaining tools of persuasion.

Negotiation Environment:

The negotiation environment plays a huge factor in your ability to persuade someone. You can use surroundings to summon past emotional experiences. To do so consider these questions …

  • Who else is in the environment and what influencing persuasion is their presence casting on the other negotiator?
  • What has been the experience in the past that the other negotiator has had in environments like this?

Subliminally, we’re moved to adopt certain actions based on the environment. Thus, some actions would not be adopted if the surroundings were different. Having control of these variables allows you to project a greater degree of persuasion.

Other Things to Consider:

There are other things to take into account when assessing how you’ll be more persuasive in your negotiation. Such as …

  • Ethnicity
  • Gender
  • Culture
  • Position (superior vs. subordinate)

I will address the above variables in a later article.

As you can see, there are many ways to use persuasion in a negotiation. Above are just a few of those ways. There’s one thing that’s irrefutable, if you misuse your efforts of persuasion, you’ll diminish your negotiation efforts. To lessen that probability and to enhance your chances of having a more successful negotiation outcome, consider implementing the thoughts above … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

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/

#Persuasion #Use #Process #Power #Powerful #Emotion #Business #Progress #SmallBusiness #Negotiation #NegotiatingWithABully #Power #Perception #emotionalcontrol #relationships #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions

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Best Practices Culture Entrepreneurship Industries Management Skills Technology

Solve Problems and Innovate as an Anticipatory Leader™

Anticipatory Leaders™ understand that we are at a unique point in human history, filled with waves of disruption and opportunity. We are doing things today that were impossible just a few years ago. If you look at the Hard Trends that are shaping the future, you can easily see that we will be doing things two years from now that are impossible today. That means the old rule, The Big Eat the Small, is being replaced by a new rule, The Fast Eat the Slow. They know this new reality is driven by the exponentially increasing rate of technology-driven change. Many wonder why so many established organizations of all sizes are moving so slow. The answer is simple: they think they are moving fast. But in this new era, they’re actually moving slower than they realize.

Young professionals are aware their organization’s pace is too slow as their mindset is less historical. They have looked around and seen others outside of their industry moving much faster. The best and the brightest of the younger employees often see the older leaders in their organization as almost fearful of making a bold move.

Anticipatory Leaders leverage the complementary strengths and weaknesses of all generations to enable the organization to move forward faster. They combine the wisdom and experience of the older employees with the out-of-the-box thinking and awareness of new technology that the younger employees have to accelerate innovation and growth. They use the confidence that comes from the certainty of Hard Trends to jump ahead quickly with low risk. They know that not moving faster and bolder is the bigger risk and that if they don’t take advantage of new technological capabilities, someone else will!

Here is a big insight that Anticipatory Leaders know: trying to keep up in today’s world will only keep you behind. The reality is that the company you are trying to keep up with is not standing still. It is most likely ahead because it is anticipatory and moving far faster, keeping a good distance ahead of you. It embraces the fact that in a world of exponential change, the advantage comes from jumping ahead of the change curve with the confidence that comes from high levels of certainty, and not relying on reacting quickly after the disruption or problem happens.

When we think of innovation today, we tend to think of the big innovations that disrupt industries or create a new product or service line. This type of innovation doesn’t happen very often in traditional organizations and often has long time frames from ideation to implementation. In addition, only a small percentage of all employees will be involved in the process. Anticipatory Leaders go beyond reactive innovation, even fast, reactive, agile innovation, and empower employees with two new types of anticipatory innovation: Everyday Innovation and Transformational Innovation.

Everyday Innovation empowers all employees to implement inventive solutions to everyday problems by providing easy-to-use methods for rapid problem-solving. This includes applying Problem Skipping and the Law of Opposites, as well as keeping their opportunity antenna up to look for potential problems to pre-solve before they happen. It’s amazing how innovative people can be when they know a few basic principles and are empowered to take positive action immediately.

Transformational Innovation involves identifying the Hard Trends that are shaping the future and using them to become a positive disruptor, jumping ahead with the low risk that comes from certainty and the knowledge that if you don’t do it, someone else will.

If you would like to go beyond agility and become an Anticipatory Leader, pick up a copy of my latest bestseller, The Anticipatory Organization: Turn Disruption and Change Into Opportunity and Advantage, and consider our online Anticipatory Leader System.

 

Categories
Marketing Personal Development

Here’s Why Your Book is a Content Goldmine for Social Media

NYC Branded Lifestyle Portrait Thought Leader Pia Silva Book Baddass Your Brand

Pull Quotes from your Book and Leverage Them on Social

Creating consistent content that illustrates your expertise, life as a business owner and life as a human being is a lot of work – ask anyone who’s done it for any amount of time!

For me, it took YEARS to get to a place where I consistently posted valuable, informative and inspiring content that aims to create solutions for those I serve. But, when you’re a published author, your social content creation workload has been drastically cut down! How so? Well, that book that you’re currently promoting also happens to be a goldmine of social media content.

Quite frankly, there’s a lot of meat on that bone in terms of repurposing content!

The moment that I find out that I’m working with an author, I immediately get excited at the prospect of diving in and building out content pieces from that book that repurposes their expertise that they’ve crafted and honed over time. This presents a unique opportunity to create a solid foundation of content by creating a hyper-focused strategy that can offer a lot of content for months, even YEARS, on end. During pre-session strategy calls with my author clients, I first direct them to identify interesting passages, chapter titles, and sentences throughout their books, and use those words to create short, social media posts that elaborate on the concepts introduced in those words and phrases.

Usually, I instruct them to specifically choose passages that they can build a unique story around that teaches a lesson that is relatable to the audience they serve.

Example of Repurposing a Chapter Title

For example, I was working with an author/coach client the other day, and as we were flipping through his book, and we came across this page:

NYC Branded Lifestyle Portrait Thought Leader book

I asked him if he felt he could write a valuable story that’s not the same anecdotes that he mentions in the book that focused on fear in a way that would serve his audience.

I suggest that clients mix it up and not always use verbatim passages from the book in their social media as a way to keep their content fresh and not literally a complete copy/paste job. Does that mean pulling entire paragraphs are illegal in some way?

Of course not – but, mixing in new stories with what you’ve already written allows the author the opportunity to provide some variety. It allows offers those in your audience who’ve already read the book a new spin on what is an old theme for them.

In any case, he had no problem creating a new story around the FEAR chapter title, and that’s when I snapped this photo and it became a part of his image content portfolio.

It’s that simple.

Why Not Simple Repurpose Content with Words Only?

I’ve often heard the counterpoint that it’s just easier to copy/paste the chapter title, sentence or passage into a simple text graphic for social.

And they would be right – it is MUCH easier.

That’s always an option, sure, but, the whole point of creating social posts is to gain your audience’s attention and inspire them to act on whatever call-to-action you set out at the conclusion of the post – comment, share, sign up for an offer, pick up the phone and call you, etc.

If you simply create a text on-screen graphic of the quote, yes, that certainly works, but, there is more dimensionality to an actual shot of the book itself – it’s more tangible, more real. It gives the impression to the viewer that they are reading the book themselves.

Photos like this draw people in by breaking down the fourth wall between you and them, and thus, becomes more relatable.

When you factor in that you’re competing against the rest of the noise in your audience’s newsfeeds, leveraging compelling images like this will help inspire them to stop, look and read…

…oh, and buy your book, as well, 🙂

John DeMato is an NYC branded lifestyle portrait photographer and content creation expert who serves speakers, authors, coaches and high-level entrepreneurs across the country. His 50+ e-book, S.H.A.R.E. M.A.G.I.C.A.L. I.D.E.A.S., lays out the how what and why behind creating a memorable and referable online presence – sign up to get your FREE copy today.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Personal Development

Casting About vs. Fishing Where There’s Fish

One of the toughest obstacles that entrepreneurs face is much more difficult than coming up with a good idea—it’s choosing which good idea to focus on. You want to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket, and you also don’t want to be so frazzled that you aren’t able to devote the right amount of energy to the one idea that will bring you the most success.

This hurdle is especially confounding as we approach the new fiscal year. We are determined to make changes. We want to stop beating a dead horse. And we want to find and identify alternatives. Many books have been written about how entrepreneurs get distracted by “shiny objects” right as they’re on the edge of success. If only they’d been a little more focused… But no. They were completely distracted.

Somewhere between beating a dead horse and shiny objects lies the answer. Is the horse actually dead? Is there something within those shiny objects that can save him?

Many entrepreneurs are just finishing the fiscal year, dedicated to their main project, while entertaining new possibilities at the same time. As we begin the new fiscal year, we should take a page out of the ancient Japanese craftsman’s book. At the end of each year, they thoroughly clean their shop. This shows respect for their workspace and gives them a chance to mentally and physically sort things through.

Take Inventory

Looking at inventory allows you to learn what sold and what didn’t. This task alone seems obvious, but many entrepreneurs keep on moving without taking a minute to actually understand what worked! Anything left in the inventory are slow movers and un-sold products. These are now taking up precious physical and mental space. It’s a good time to think about how much energy you’ve exerted into your slow-moving products. In the new fiscal year, you’ll need that space—mentally and physically!

Clean Up

Look at everything. Decide whether you want to hold on to each thing, change it, or just get rid of it. When you think about each initiative you’ve sought after this past year, the ones that fell through don’t have to be considered a total loss. What lessons have you learned from each experience? And how can they help you as you pursue your main priority?

One important approach is to reorganize. Think about your nonproducing, “failed” initiatives, and incorporate them into the initiatives that proved successful for you. Have you acquired new contacts, referrals, or skills that will benefit you in the coming year? Organize these. Make a list to acknowledge them. Then you’ll know you’ve gotten the most out of those “shiny objects”.

 Refocus

Focus on your true customer this coming year by using the experiences of last year. These customers might be different than those you’ve pursued previously. Like a fisherman casting his line looking for a bite, it’s time to pull in your line, check your bait, and move your boat toward the action.

There’s a market for what you’ve sold this past year. Move closer by addressing that market more efficiently. How did last year’s customers learn about your goods or services? How can you make those channels better? Learn to recognize each opportunity to utilize any new skills you’ve learned over this past year.

When it comes to your main pursuit, has the market changed? How can you tweak your presentation and products to be more compelling and relevant than ever? Chat with your customers.

We understand that fiscal years are just simple measures of passing time. But a year also represents a period of work that you can learn from, once you take the time to analyze inventory, clean up, and refocus. So while everyone else is feeling motivated to surge in new directions, maybe you can imitate those Japanese craftsmen, using analysis, reflection, and redirection.

Here’s to your new fiscal year, one made even better by the last!

For more, read on: http://c-suitenetworkadvisors.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

The Problem with Hiring People Who Are Just Like You

Many company owners, managers, and executives make the mistake of hiring people who are just like they are, or putting together teams of similarly minded people. Software engineers tend to like to work with other software engineers, for example, and people who launched businesses by selling assertively tend to hire assertive sales professionals. As a result, their organizations fail to have the balance that they need for peak performance.

Instead, take a look at what’s happening within your organization. As you look at your team, do you see people who are doing only what they are required to do, rather than what they love to do and at which they excel? If that is the case, your company, as well as your team, could be better served if you recruited a mix of people who together provided all the skills necessary.

Imagine that your business is like a symphony orchestra. Now imagine your orchestra is made up only of musicians who can play strings and tympani. What kind of music will it make? Granted, it might sound okay, but it will not make beautiful music. A full symphony orchestra usually has a group of musicians who play more than 13 different instruments, not just one or two. And chances are that your organization needs people who can perform a dozen or more specific roles.

When considering your business teams, think of yourself as a conductor who, with the right mix of ingaged people and a beautiful score, can achieve brilliant success.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Management Personal Development

Focus on What Matters Most

Whatever You Focus on Expands

Just as a photographer focuses on taking the shot of their subject, leaders need to focus on.  Seeing things as a photographer sometimes has its advantages to a leader. You need to look from every direction to see what’s working and what’s not. Solving problems, challenges, and difficulties allow you to visualize better for what you are looking for. Imagine what your sense of accomplishment will feel like when you are able to focus and get done what you need to complete. You can actually create habits to help you focus without distractions to get things done.

“Life is like a camera…focus on what’s important, capture the good times, develop from negatives, and if things don’t work out, take another shot.” – Unknown Author

Focus means paying attention. Essentially, if you want to develop focus, develop the skill of paying attention to a particular thought, task, or goal for a specified amount of time – without allowing distractions to break your concentration. Don’t expect it to take place overnight. Be patient and pay attention each time you are about to do and say things that pull you back to your old habits and patterns.

There are so many ways where your attention gets distracted. If you want to try this out, start working on something and your phone will ring, you want to look at your emails, and then again you have someone who wants your attention to ask you something or …You get the idea. So it is very easy to focus on something you don’t need to really focus in on. Your mind wonders and your attention drifts off somewhere else.

Is Your Leadership as Focused as You’ll like it to be? 

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” — Steve Jobs

Everyone has a different meaning for the word “Focus”. The word focus means the concentration of attention or energy on something. Focus means paying attention. So if you want to develop focus, develop the skill of paying attention to a particular thought, task, or goal for a specified amount of time – without allowing distractions to break your concentration. The more you focus your attention, the more you get accomplished.

It’s easy to focus when you have a clear goal. How do you maintain your focus when you don’t have a well-defined goal, or when your mind is confused with many thoughts? Choosing what matters is incredibly hard because no one can do it for you. Staying focused on the task, clarifying the goals, articulating the vision, and encouraging others to stay the course are characteristics of determined leaders.

Prioritizing tasks is the First Step toward Working Easier

“If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.” -Jack Dixon

The smallest things can make the biggest difference. Take a few minutes to think about how focused you are as a leader. No matter what you do your thoughts, ideas and opinions distract you from focusing on what you need to do is key to getting things done. How you manage to focus on what matters most needs you to constantly stop and re-focus to work on what’s in front of you. Focusing on where you’ve been slowing your progress.

Keeping the Focus on What Matters Most

“My key to dealing with stress is simple: just stay cool and stay focused.” -Ashton Eaton

Are your best efforts where you should place your focus? Often that focus isn’t the best direction for the company. How distracted do you get while working on a project or task? What do you do to get back on track?

“Don’t dwell on what went wrong. Instead, focus on what to do next. Spend your energies on moving forward toward finding the answer.”

– Denis Waitley

Sometimes when you focus on negative situations they can paralyze you by making you stuck. Where You Look Is Where You Go. It is very easy to lose sight of what you need to do as so much information overload comes at you every second of every day. How you keep things straight and knowing what to focus on takes skills and training.

Where You Put Your Efforts

“Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do.” – John Carmack

Moving yourself or your organization forward requires you to focus on what you want to accomplish and where you want to go. If you continue the way you are going, most likely everything and anything will distract you. Phones rings, having to look at emails, having others asking you questions or just wanting to chat, and so on are just a few examples of distractions you need to close off.

“How can I focus on positive stuff when all I have in my life is negative stuff?” By making a choice to create a new habit and find something positive to focus on. Where you focus is your choice. What will you focus on today? When you focus on things do you notice the detail or are you oblivious to the specifics around you?

Shift Your Priorities

If you’re stuck in a rut you are unable to go anywhere. By shifting your priorities you get to think better in order to uncover valuable insights to help move you and your organization forward. You then can see other things that are more important to focus on. You are blinded by one thing that is not what matters most. The problem, challenge or difficulty may not go away, yet it does not need to be the centerpiece you focus on.

“The one thing you can always control is how you REACT to the uncontrollable.” -Dr. Alan Goldberg

Have you figured out what matters to you and your business?

In the end, Focus on What Matters Most for greater productivity and the results you work towards. You choose where to put your focus. Be aware of what you are doing to accomplish your goals.

Categories
Best Practices Investing Marketing Personal Development Sales

The Sales Initiative With the Highest ROI

There are so many initiatives to choose from in sales performance area — it can be hard to prioritize, but limiting discounting is a no-brainer.

Which one has the highest ROI?  For most businesses, the highest yield comes from building a systematic approach to pricing and discounting.

Here’s the math.  For the average company making 10% pretax profit:

  • One dollar in new sales yields 10 cents of profit.
  • One dollar in avoided discounting – on all the deals you’re already winning — increases your company’s profits by that entire dollar.

Certainly, every business has different issues and challenges, so exceptions exist.  However, controlling “discounting spend” carries a built-in 10:1 advantage in ROI. In all of my years of experience consulting sales organizations, and leading others, 10:1 boils down to “a worthwhile issue to explore” (being married to a Brit has developed my skill at understatement).

Your pricing and discount approval system might be invisibly killing your company.  If you are a CEO, CFO, CRO, CSO, in Sales Leadership, or Sales Enablement, you are probably suffering a profit leakage. Worse still, many companies aren’t even measuring or tracking the problem.

What’s Your Discount Spend Per Year?

At this past week’s Sales3.0 Conference, I conducted an unscientific “man in the lobby” poll on company processes around pricing and discounting. I had conversations around this question:

How many dollars in discounts did you give out last year? I don’t just mean discounts based upon invoice terms. Include any reduction in price below list, standard, or typical (for semi-custom and custom products).

Nobody I talked to could answer.  Think about that: a significant number of sales enablement and sales leaders I talked to didn’t even track discounts given.  Gut check time:  do you? Given the profit impact of discounting, this begs the question “why?”.

Pricing and discounting is my specialty, of course.  If you would like to address the issue, I’m happy to give you my best thinking about your situation.  Contact me. If you don’t have a crystal-clear analysis of your discount spend, call me anyway.  As you can see from my informal poll, you are in good company.

How Do You Distribute Discounts?

To make you feel even less alone, let me share a few more common situations. Many companies give discount dollars out reactively. Discounts often go disproportionately to:

  • The salesperson is best able to game the system, possibly the squeakiest wheel.
  • Reps reporting to the regional manager who used to be the salesperson above.
  • Whiniest customer.
  • Most politically connected channel partner.
  • ..I could go on.No need to, though, is there?

These schemes not only kill profits, but they also demoralize your salesforce.  Everyone in your whole company knows who gets the discounts.  If the distribution doesn’t make good sense, word gets around.  Especially if you are paying your salespeople on revenue instead of profit, you are steadily stirring a pot of resentment.  Some of your salespeople think that “favors” (a perversion that only sales-compensated teams believe in) are being doled out to select “golden children”.  This can have an effect on morale and retention, in addition to the direct “profit surrender” effect above.

When you discount vs. when you can build value

It’s no mystery that sellers combat discounting by building value in the customer’s mind. I don’t favor the term “selling value” because value is only in the customer’s mind, and “selling” sounds too much like “telling” to the untrained ear. Here’s the thing, though.  As the graph below shows, your ability to build value has pretty much faded by the time the customer wants to discuss price and discounts.

Ability to sell value vs discounting

Here’s the good news: Most sellers need only a few simple tweaks to their regular selling process and methodology, and coaching those tweaks is straightforward for sales leaders.  I don’t want to sugarcoat it, though:  these tweaks require coaching sellers through a behavior change.

Here’s the better news: when your sellers build value,  prospective customers have clearer expectations of their outcomes — financially and personally. Very often, they have a higher preference at a premium price.  It often happens that the premium price is more resistant to competitive price discounts than the lower price you might have agreed to without using good value discipline.

Who Can Build Value?

Here’s the best news of all: it all works even better when everyone who touches your customers is on board.  Your product can trigger value in many unexpected corners of a customer’s company, and the more of these you find, the more value there is to be built.

What does Great Look Like?

A robust, disciplined price exception system can work a lot of ways.  In fact, it may have the same process steps and participants you have now.  The process steps are less important than changing what gets discussed during those steps.

Price exception decisions need to use much more objective information than most do today.  When they do, they are harder to game, and can be deaf to whining.

Coaching salespeople to build value becomes part of the sales culture.  Luckily, this doesn’t have to complicate coaching.  When a seller can articulate value built, coaches know they’ve done a great job with the entire sales process and methodology. It’s only when sellers can’t articulate value that coaches need to diagnose problems with detailed methodology and skills coaching.

Finally, sales shouldn’t be the only department who cares about revenue instead of profit.  That value system keeps sales leaders from making the transition to general management.  It creates culture problems in organizations.  To that end, your compensation plan may need to change.  If your people aren’t paid on profits, they’ll settle for profitless revenue.  Even if you can’t measure profits precisely, pay them precisely based upon a consistent profit estimate

Pricing is Profit.

Every dollar of additional price on a won deal is a dollar of profit for your company. Discounting discipline is a great way to stop profits from leaving your firm.  An investment in shaping up your discounting discipline is one of the highest return on investment places you can apply your company’s scarce resources.  If you know how many dollars in discounts you gave out last year, what would happen if you could only prevent 10% of those lost profit dollars?  20%?  5%? Now compare that number to the cost of other sales performance initiatives you’ve implemented. Does this shape your upcoming priorities?

Contact me if you’d like to explore your situation together.  If you found this post valuable, please share with your networks, like, and/or comment below.

To your success!

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Growth Management Personal Development

How to Set New Executives Up for Success

Are you doing everything you can to create a culture that sets new executives in your company up for success? Or, do you have a record of fast-tracking them for failure?

It’s an all-too-common scenario in companies across America. A company “rock star” gets promoted to a senior position, only to flounder in the new role. Or, someone who had an outstanding track record in another organization comes on board at a new company. Expectations are high and the future looks bright—and then that person fails to live up to expectations.

In fact, according to Ron Carucci, a recent guest on my Talking Business Now podcast, 50% of all new executives fail—and they fail fast, usually within 18 months.

Carucci, the managing partner of Navalent and the co-author of “Rising to Power: The Journey of Exceptional Executives” conducted a 10-year study on executive transition. His research not only discovered the rates at which new executives fail but also the reasons why they fail. One eye-opening insight is that 61% of those who failed said they weren’t prepared for the challenges, and 71% said their organization didn’t help them prepare.

The study also revealed the four characteristics of rising leaders who beat the odds and thrived. Tune into the podcast to find out those key determiners of success and how your company can build a culture that supports them.