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Category: Personal Development

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Body Language Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

How to Out-Negotiate and Understand Powerful Handshakes

“When someone shakes your hand, take note of what their other hand is doing. Their other hand heightens the meaning of the handshake.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

“During our introduction, I felt uneasy. There was something in his handshake that made me think that he was attempting to project himself as being powerful. I wasn’t really sure what that handshake meant but I knew he was sending me a message.” Those were words spoken by a team member when recalling how he felt at the outset of a negotiation.

Handshakes convey hidden meanings. They are one aspect of body language that people should pay more attention to. They can make you feel powerful, be perceived as powerful, or make you appear weak.

Continue reading to discover the hidden meanings conveyed simply by shaking someone’s hand.

Meaning of Handshakes:

  • Hand on Top – One hand on top of the other person’s hand

    • Normally, the person whose hand is on top is signaling superiority. But, allowing one’s hand to be on the bottom can be a ploy to allow the other person to believe he’s in a superior position.

  • Hard – One that appears to be overbearing

    • A hard handshake can be a sign of attempted intimidation. It can also stem from someone that is naturally strong and unaware of the strength they convey when shaking someone’s hand.
    • One’s perception is what denotes the degree that a handshake is strong or overbearing. If you’ve had prior encounters with the other party and have shaken their hand, you have a basis for comparison in the present situation. If you don’t have that comparison, consider what a normal handshake would be like from someone of the same size, gender, and background.

  • Weak – Lacking power, dainty, gentle

    • Weak handshakes convey the exact opposite meaning of those that are hard. Again, don’t necessarily infer that someone is weak because they deliver a weak handshake. It may be the way they wish you to perceive them at the outset of your meeting.

  • Hand/Arm Jerk – While shaking the hand, a quick movement is made that pulls the hand quickly in a jerking motion in one direction and then pushes it backward in the opposite direction.

    • Sometimes, in a playful setting, friends will engage in such banter. In negotiation settings, this gesture is most likely a subtle signal that the one exhibiting it plans to keep the other negotiator off guard. Take note when receiving such gestures and compare it to what follows.

  • Firm – Not too hard, not too soft, both hands parallel to each other

    • In a negotiation, negotiators state through this gesture that they’re equal and respectful of each other.

The person holding the handshake the longest is the one controlling it – they’re stating that they’re not ready to let go. A normal handshake usually lasts for 3 to 5 upward and downward movements. Any more is excessive, which means it’s being done for a reason.

Here’s the rub. Just because someone extends a weak handshake doesn’t make them weak, nor does a strong handshake make them strong.  It can all be a ploy. That means you can use this ploy as a tactic in your negotiations.

By understanding the meaning of handshakes, you understand more of what’s occurring. Thus, when someone shakes your hand, you can respond based on how you wish them to perceive you. That will alter the setting of any negotiation. That will also empower you … 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/

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

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Industries Management Skills Technology

An Anticipatory Leader™ Turns Disruption and Change into Opportunity and Advantage

An Anticipatory Leader™ understands that technology-driven change is accelerating at an exponential rate. They have learned from a large list of high-profile Fortune 100 companies that were great at both agility and execution but experienced dramatic downturns. Reacting to problems and digital disruptions, no matter how agile you and your organization are, is no longer good enough.

Anticipatory Leaders know that a high percentage of future disruptions, problems, and game-changing opportunities are predictable and represent unprecedented ways to accelerate growth and gain advantage. They understand that there is no shortage of trends or good ideas, and they ask which trends will happen and which ideas are the best to invest their time and resources in. They have overcome these challenges by becoming anticipatory. This happens by using the methodology of separating the Hard Trends that will happen because they are based on future facts from the Soft Trends that might happen because they are based on assumptions about the future. Then they apply these Hard Trend certainties to their innovation and decision-making processes, allowing them to accelerate innovation and jump ahead with low risk.

Anticipatory Leaders know that it’s better to solve predictable problems before they happen, and that predictable future problems often represent the biggest opportunities. They know that being anticipatory means creating strategic plans that are dynamic and then elevating their strategic plans to keep them relevant and stop them from becoming obsolete before they are implemented.

They have discovered the power of using the certainty of Hard Trends to give the people that report to them the confidence to make bold moves. They know that if what they are saying is seen as opinion, listeners will want another opinion, but if they speak in future facts that are undeniable future truths, there will be far less debate and much more forward progress.

They fully understand that we are at the base of a mountain of increasing disruption that does not happen just once. It comes in waves, giving every organization and professional only two options: to become the disruptor or the disrupted.

By using the Anticipatory Model and methodology to identify the disruptive Hard Trends that are approaching, they now have the opportunity to make a strategic choice to be the disruptor. They know there is no longer a middle ground.

Anticipatory Leaders know that disruption is often seen as something negative, because it happens to organizations and individuals, forcing them to react by changing quickly or face increasingly negative consequences. Disruptors, on the other hand, are creating change from the inside out, giving them far more control of their future. Disruptors are often using technology to eliminate problems or to reduce the friction that creates a less than desirable experience. I refer to them as “positive disruptors” because they tend to use technology to improve a process, product or service. They enhance the customer experience, and in most cases they transform it!

Anticipatory Leaders know the advantage  a shared Futureview® has when it is based on the Hard Trends that are shaping the future – a windshield view versus a rearview mirror view. The Futureview principle states “How you view the future shapes your actions today, and your actions today will shape your future. Your Futureview will determine the future you. ”Change your Futureview, and you will change your future.

For example, it’s clear that Sears, which is closing over a hundred physical stores, has a different Futureview than Amazon, which is opening over three thousand brick-and-mortar retail stores and over a hundred physical bookstores. These two companies’ Futureviews will shape their future.

Anticipatory Leaders elevate their organization’s shared Futureview, based on the Hard Trends and transformational changes that are shaping the future. They know that their Futureview will change, and in many cases they transform the future of the organization for the individuals involved for the better.

Become an Anticipatory Leader™

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 Anticipatory Leader System today.

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Growth Management Personal Development

Stop Telling People What to Do, Ingage their Hearts Instead

I am a CEO, and I have worked with many other top executives during my career. So I speak from experience when I say that this could be the biggest day-to-day frustration many leaders face . . .

“I tell people what to do, but they don’t do it.”

This issue comes up time and time again. It makes being a leader much harder than it should be.

You talk, you communicate, you spell things out, but somehow only a small percentage of your initiatives come to completion. So you bear down, discipline people, or offer incentives, and those solutions don’t work either.

And do you know what could be an even bigger problem? People do what you tell them to do but there was in fact a better or simpler way that you didn’t know – perhaps one that your people could have told you if you were willing to listen.

I have found a solution to this problem, which I call Ingaged Leadership, let me summarize a few of its key points here so you can test it and get it working for you.

What Is Ingaged Leadership?

Ingagement is founded on the belief that when you align people and create an organization where everyone works together in partnership, that organization becomes vastly more successful. It isn’t a single action you take just once. It is an ongoing, dynamic business practice that has the power to transform your organization, your people, you and ultimately, your success.

What Do Ingaged Leaders Do Differently?

Ingaged leaders believe that it is not enough to tell people to do. They understand that if they want to unlock the full potential of any organization and its people, it is necessary to involve people’s minds, creativity and emotions. I called it Ingagement with an “I” because it gets people Involved, Invested and Inspired.

Getting Started as an Ingaged Leader

That all might sound theoretical. But it isn’t. Here are some ways you can start Ingaged Leadership today. I invite you to try them and see for yourself how quickly they can improve your effectiveness as a leader.

  • Set aside personal opinions about what works and what doesn’t and let people test their own ideas. Of course, any good CEO will stop employees from doing things that are sure to be disastrous. But the fact is, too many leaders step in, err on the side of caution, and stifle people’s inborn drive to strive for great things. I would urge you to get your ego out of the mix and let people try things that are unproven or even risky. More often than not, the results they achieve will greatly surpass your expectations.
  • Don’t just listen well, constantly look for nuggets of value in what other people are saying. Early in my career I thought I was a good listener. In fact, people told me that I was because I sat quietly, didn’t interrupt, and paid attention. But a time came when I realized that although I was attentive, I was only listening closely so I could catch faults in other people’s statements so I could prove them wrong and advance my own plans. I turned that around, began to listen for nuggets of high value, then developed them in concert with the person who had suggested them. The result was a quiet revolution in my leadership effectiveness.
  • Build a top management team that is positively disruptive. That means resisting the temptation to surround yourself with “yes people,” “people who are just like me” and people who prefer the comfort of “group think” to shaking things up. Also have the courage to recruit people who are genuinely better than you at doing certain things, and let them. Their efforts will free you and your results will soar.
  • Ask for help and offer help. Both activities are signs of strength, not weakness.

A Case Study of Ingaged Leadership

In case you think that all this is theoretical, it is not, as this story proves. Last year I had a call from one of my clients, a franchise brand. I cannot give the company’s name in this article, but you know them. They have branded walk-in locations in hundreds of cities and towns across America – probably near where you live.

The caller explained that the company had a very specific problem they wanted me to solve, which my contact summarized as, “Our annual conference is coming up in a few months, attendance has been in the low 20% for the last few years, and we would like you to get more of our store owners to attend. We will be rolling out a new store design and showing it to our people and that’s why we want to get most of our store-owners there.”

Our team called a number of franchisees to ask, “How do you feel about going to your annual conference?” Most of them responded by saying something like, “Oh, the conferences are fun and I get to socialize, but I never learn anything that the company isn’t going to tell me later on anyway. So why go?”  Further we found the franchisees didn’t feel like they were involved at the meeting, they felt like they were being talk at and being sold things. Those comments made it clear that the rollout of the new design was going to be a disaster.

I called my contact back in headquarters and suggested that instead of “selling” a completed new design, the company should structure the convention as an opportunity to let franchise owners come out to see the three different concepts, critique them, and give feedback.

All of a sudden, there was real value for people to go. They weren’t going to be talked at, they were going to be listened to. In other words, they were being Ingaged. The event sold out, to the point where no hotel rooms were available in the original hotel or two hotels nearby. In the end, there was more than 85% attendance. The meeting was a huge success.  Currently the new design is in testing in the field, but assuming customer reaction is strong and positive, there’s an anxious group of franchisees who are ready and willing to convert their locations. Involvement and listening where the keys to this success story.  A traditional hierarchical approach would have met with failure.

Putting the Power of Ingagement to Work

I could report more times when Ingagement has achieved great things. But in the end, all the stories I could tell you are not as important as the new chapters you can write in your own leadership journey. I invite you to add Ingagement to your leader’s toolbox as you watch your story unfold.

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

How a Competent Writer Can Become Good

Stephen King, in his book, On Writing, lists a hierarchy of writers: bad, competent, good (and sometimes really good), and great, which he also describes as the genius level of writing.

Bad writers, King says, do get published. They may write for your local weekly paper. Some of them write best-sellers. If the subject of a book is sensational or compelling enough, a bad writer can do well.

Competent writers achieve a higher level of journalism. They may write genre fiction, which, again, if the subject is compelling, can do well.

He says little about his category of good writers, but he would probably include himself among them. He does very well.

The last category, the great ones, include Nobel Prize winners, Dickens, James Joyce, and others.

King says that bad writers can’t become competent. Competent writers can become good. Rarely will good writers become great.

I’m focusing here on how competent writers can become good writers.

Read a Lot, Write a Lot

In King’s view, doing a lot of reading and writing are fundamental aspects to being or becoming a good writer. I fully agree. I was Independently taking books out of the library at 4 a clip as soon as I was old enough to ride my bike one mile to the library. (Those were the days when kids could roam around town without fear of kidnapping)

Read doesn’t mean social media. While you may accumulate information, you will also pick up a lot of bad grammar and abbreviations. If anything, your writing may deteriorate from over-exposure. You’ll see such atrocities as “Me and him went to the library.” No.)

Reading does mean both fiction and non-fiction. If you’re planning a writing a non-fiction book, read a lot in the area of your specialty, from the perspective of seeing what’s been written. Make sure your book hasn’t been written, and absorb the style of your particular area of interest.

You should also be reading fiction. Your book may be non-fiction, but you will be telling stories in it. You want those stories to catch readers’ interest. Study how fiction writers write.

King recommends reading both good and bad novels so that you can learn the difference between them. Good writers write economically: no roller-coaster sentences, no nouns preceded by three adjectives. Without consciously knowing it, you will absorb a lot.

The odds are good that competent writers write every day. They may be journalists or technical writers. Your job in the C Suite may keep the words rolling out, but a different kind of writing can help you go from competent to good.

Keep a journal to develop more skill in expressing yourself and to focus on accurately describing what you feel. Write down a story about something that happened to you today or yesterday. Tell a story that’s interesting.

Take risks. (Remember, no one but you has to see this.) If you have an urge to write some seemingly unrelated words and phrases, do it. Write a poem or dialogue. Stretch yourself. to help you leap the gap between competence and good writing. Imagination makes the difference.

Seeing the progress you make during your daily writing will encourage you to continue to take more risks. As regular physical exercise increases your comfort in your body, so regular writing will help you to experience even greater enjoyment from writing than you already do.

Pat Iyer is a ghostwriter who helps busy people share their expertise without having to write a book. She also edits other people’s writing, an activity which she loves. Contact her through her website www.patiyer.com.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Leadership Personal Development

Are You Trying to “Keep Up” with Technology, or Ride It?

Across my 40-year career in technology, I have increasingly heard clients and others express to me their greatest fear, which is that they are not “keeping up” with technology. 20 years ago, I would hear that worry expressed a few times a year. Now I hear it a few times a week.

Honestly, at first I wrote it off. I thought that it was just a few Luddites who didn’t want to put in the effort to stay with the pace of change. But then I started to experience that feeling myself, so it became personal. And uncomfortable. I wasn’t “keeping up.”

And, it wasn’t just a feeling. It couldn’t be explained away that I felt like I wasn’t keeping up, but in actuality, I was doing just fine. No, I was convinced that I was in fact not keeping up. Technology was passing me by. And it started feeling worse than uncomfortable. It started to feel downright scary, because my business was about technology. I started thinking about how I rarely saw any 50-year-old programmers. And I started hearing about how venture capitalists would pour millions into a company founded by a 20-year-old, while companies were laying off middle-aged technologists left and right.

No, this wasn’t my imagination. There was a popular perception out their that technology was a young person’s game, and that most people can’t keep up. And the older you get, the more it’s true.

So, I started thinking about this attitude, and I began to realize that it doesn’t actually make any sense to try to “keep up” with technology. No one tries to “keep up” with a car or an airplane. People can’t do what those technologies do. You don’t need to keep up with them–you need to ride them. Technology is a tool that makes you better, not something you need to outdo, like some kind of modern-day John Henry hammering spikes.

That change in attitude changed the way I approached my job. I no longer cared whether I kept up with all the changes. I just focused on a constant search for tools–things that multiplied my effectiveness, making me better. When I found them, I rode them. And I ignored everything else, reasoning that if whatever I was currently ignoring in fact turned out to be important, then they would be brought to my attention again soon enough, and I could ride them then.

That change in focus also changed who I thought I was. In my first few years as a digital marketing consultant, I was named to a couple of lists as one of the “100 Best Internet Marketers” or some such monicker. And then they stopped naming me, which should have been upsetting, but it wasn’t, because my focus had changed.

I no longer wanted to play the game of keeping up and proving that I was keeping up by speaking on every new development or coming out with a new book that “explained everything you need to know” about some new development. Instead, I wanted to find the most important things to ride and teach my clients how to ride them, too. It was at that point that I changed my focus from consulting to software. Instead of manually analyzing problems and telling clients what to do, I started to develop techniques that automatically collected data and analyzed it, eventually using Artificial Intelligence techniques, because AI was the best technology to ride for the problems that I am trying to solve.

And I don’t worry whether I am keeping up with 5G or IoT or blockchain. They might be very important technologies for me to ride someday, but, for the moment, I am ignoring them, because I don’t judge them to be important technologies to ride in pursuit of the problems I am solving. At some point, I might change my mind because i can see how useful they are for the problems I am trying to solve then. And you know what? They will still be there waiting for me.

The truth is that human beings didn’t evolve at the pace that technology evolves, so none of us are designed to keep up. But the entire history of humans show that we invent tools to solve problems, and if you treat everything in technology as a tool that you should evaluate to see if it is interesting as a solution to a problem you have, suddenly it stops being scary and starts being fun.

I hope you go out and have fun with technology. Go for a ride.

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Best Practices Investing Marketing Personal Development Sales

So Close But Still So Far: Discounting while Perspective Selling

Conclusion of a Five Part Series.

Are you selling with great perspective but still find your sellers discounting to win opportunities?  Don’t worry, you aren’t alone.  Selling with perspective (or insight, sometimes challenging) wins revenue by uncovering value. In the right hands, that can deliver benefits all over your company. In the wrong hands though, it means producing unprofitable revenue: making your company work just as hard for less reward.

Throughout this series, I’ve discussed perspective,  knowledge or insight that expands a customer’s understanding of one or more business issues. When a seller provides perspective, they apply customer-valued (not just any) insights and expertise about unanticipated outcomes. That might mean improving a decision, or achieving a previously unknown outcome.

Selling with perspective breaks sales professionals out of a death spiral.  That spiral: “since salespeople don’t add value to my decision, I’m going to self-inform. Then, I’ll invite them to bid on my self-defined solution.  As a result, they will have a hard time adding any value”. Using perspective selling to break out of the death spiral is critical. Great, even.  It helps win more opportunities, which is critical.

The thing is, a great perspective seller is most of the way to being able win those same opportunities at much higher margins—combined with higher customer preference.  Perspective selling while discounting iso close, yet so far.

I maintain that any company (including a non-profit, if you think about it) has the same fundamental mission — the core purpose of business:

Any company exists to generate higher customer value than it cost to deliver.

To recap, perspective selling allows sellers to uncover and develop additional value – the very essence of a successful business. Since value is the basis of price (OK, strike “is”. “should be the basis of price”), perspective sellers are perfectly positioned to sell value-based prices. They just need to take their game to the next level.

The Three Pillars/Legs of the Perspective Selling Stool… and Value.

Remember the three foundational “pillars” of expertise (or three legs of a stool) a seller should master:

  1. Business Acumen...This was the focus of part two. Basically, business expertise helps evaluate a prospective customer’s (or any company’s) operational efficiency and effectiveness, then identify value gaps.
  2. Solution Acumen. Feature/benefit selling is dead.  As discussed in part three, solution expertise improves perspective selling by translating a product or service into results/outcomes for a prospective buyer.
  3. Customer Acumen…In part four, we described world-class customer acumen.  It’s expertise in facilitating a group buying decision.  At elite level, sellers incorporate decision criteria players from any (even unusual) role with a valued outcome connected to their solution.

The ingredients of selling a value-based price are all right there above…emphasized in boldface.

Perspective (plus insight selling, and to a lesser extent Challenger Selling) harnesses the most compelling buying process: causing a customer to visualize unrealized, desirable outcomes for themselves. Adding on, valuable outcomes are the foundation of priceable value.  Finally, priceable value is the base of value-based pricing (Unfortunately, this isn’t as obvious as it should be. For proof, just look at how many dollars in discounts you gave out last year).

Can You Please Just Finish the Layup?

Done correctly, perspective selling is uncovers customer-valued outcomes throughout the entire selling process.

Unfortunately, most perspective selling doesn’t explicitly teach asking that one more question: “what will this outcome mean to you…monetarily”?  The exact wording of that basic question varies depending on personal style and situation but could sound like:

  1. What is [this situation] costing you every [year/month/etc.]?
  2. It sounds like that [situation] is causing [other department/role] to spend [hours/dollars/resources] on [current work-around]. Can you tell me about that or get me in front of them to ask directly?
  3. I just saw this at another company. For them, [describe improved outcome], resulted in X% reduction in [risk/cost/waste/etc.] and a [savings/cost avoidance] of $Y.  What kind of result do you think might be realistic in your situation?
  4. …you get the idea. Express the outcome as a result preceded by a [dollar/euro/yen/pound/yuan/rupee/etc.] sign.

Thankfully, this isn’t a “keep selling until you lose” situation.  Perspective sellers uncover value early and often — way before the proposal/price negotiation stage.  Remember, that’s the whole point of being an insight seller. It’s like great perspective sellers are leading a fast break with the basketball.  They only need to finish the layup by helping the prospect monetize their already-expressed valued outcome.

The Three Pillars of Perspective Selling and Value Price Selling are the Same. They’re Just Used Differently.

Now, re-read the boldface text on the three pillars above.  Next, go back and read the typical questions just above.  Then, notice how the three pillars help a seller:

  1. Understand the cost impact on the customer’s business? (hint: business acumen, possibly solution acumen)
  2. Predict a secondary/related business result, (business acumen, solution acumen), then recruit a new buying influence with something to gain (customer acumen).
  3. Refer a prior success (solution acumen) into the current prospect’s situation (business acumen), then start one persona on the path to monetizing the problem in their own world (business, solution, and customer acumen).
  4. …you get the idea. It takes all three legs of the stool to support both perspective and value price selling.

Perspective selling carries your conversation widely and effectively around an organization. However, Value price selling can carry your conversation more effectively into the C-suite.

Perspective selling uncovers and clarifies value drivers. In contrast, Value selling monetizes drivers.  Full Value Selling pushes sellers to monetize every single value driver they possibly can.

Perspective selling wins opportunities.  Better still, Full Value selling builds so much monetary value for your solution that your higher price is a better bargain to the customer than the exact same proposal sold only with perspective.

Selling value is one of those areas where less is less.

More value is more price. Importantly, price is profit.

Your company exists to generate higher customer value than it cost to deliver.

If you aren’t happy with your current results, could it be because your sellers are trained — and compensated (that’s another blog post, or several careers) – to go after exactly the outcome you pointed them toward?

Contact me if you want to talk about it.

To your success!

Categories
Growth Leadership Personal Development

Why Failing to Train Your Employees Costs a lot More Than You Think

Let me start this article by quoting a conversation between a CEO and a head of training.

The CEO says, “What if we spend all this money training our staff and they leave us?” And the head of training replies, “What if we don’t train them and they stay?”

The point of this adage is that if you spend a lot of money and they leave that is not great. But if you don’t train them and they stay, it costs you a lot of money.

***

Early in my career when I worked for CCA Global Partners, I supervised operations at a number of flooring stores that practiced a philosophy hiring philosophy that seemed logical. The company routinely hired salespeople who had worked at other flooring retailers, and then didn’t train them. The assumption was that experienced salespeople were “pretrained.” Training them would be costly and superfluous.

That assumption might have made sense, but it was flawed. The fact that those salespeople had experience didn’t mean that they came armed with the best selling skills. So, my team and I developed a blended program of live and eLearning that taught the comprehensive selling skills that our company needed. We trained salespeople on the products they were selling, on how to increase the size of the average order, on how to explain to customers what to expect when their new flooring was installed, and more.

The performance of the experienced people we trained was dramatically better than the performance of experienced people who were allowed to “learn on their own.” For every $750,00 in sales made by salespeople we trained, the “learn on their own” salespeople generated only $400,00 in sales, or only about 60% of what trained employees did. Another way of looking at it? Untrained employees contributed about 60% of what the trained employees did against margin (the amount of money they generated after subtracting the cost of commissions, the cost of goods sold, the cost of processing credit cards and other expenses).

And the advantage becomes even greater when you consider the additional cost of employment that include benefits, social security taxes, the cost of a desk and a phone, and other expenses.

In my years of analyzing training results, I have seen time and time again that the ROI on training is dramatically greater than most company executives believe it will be. In simple terms, if a trained worker becomes 100% productive and an untrained worker is only 60% productive, you are losing $40,000 in value on every $100,000 of business you conduct.

And here’s another statistic that should catch your attention. When you look at the amount of money that each employee contributes after commissions (the “contribution margin”), properly trained salespeople generate something on the order of $122,000 more for of $1 million in sales that your company makes. And when you tally those gains across a salesforce of five, 10, or more employees, you easily see that the gains are significant.

Why Trained Employees Generate More Income

There are many reasons. Trained salespeople . . .

  • Close more sales
  • Generate larger average sales
  • Sell fewer products at discounted prices, and more products at list price
  • Make fewer mistakes
  • Sell the right products, reducing the cost of returns and product replacements
  • Build customer relationships that result in more repeat business
  • Generate more positive reviews online
  • Increase your net promoter scores
  • Help keep morale and productivity high among all your employees, because people don’t like to work with untrained people who don’t know what they are doing

There are many more reasons why trained employees contribute more to the bottom line. Even if you have a company that attracts a small volume of walk-in traffic and only a small number of customers come through your door, for example, trained salespeople will increase profits for you, even if you do not increase the number of customers you attract, your business will still be up if you train them to sell each customer just a little bit more, to make higher margins.

Training Is Not Just for Salespeople

To cite another example from my years in the flooring industry, I was once responsible for creating a program that trained flooring installers the basics of customer service, such as explaining to customers exactly what to expect during the installation process. Thanks to that program, we took the percentage of customers who said they would not buy from us again from 13% down to less than half a percent.  We dramatically increased the likelihood of doing referral business by word of mouth advertising.

In Closing . . .

Not training is hugely expensive . . . far more expensive than training. In your company, I urge you to look for all the opportunities where proper training can dramatically increase profits, reduce waste and provide an outsized ROI for every training dollar you spend. If you start to look, I am willing to wager you will find many more opportunities than you expect.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Negotiations Skills Women In Business

Do You Know the Hidden Source of Your Happiness?

“To unveil your sources of happiness, you must know where it lives.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

He spoke with his website designer. After the call, he felt a heightened sense of happiness. As he reveled in his bliss, he assessed his state of pleasure and reflected on why it was in abundance. He realized that those feelings stemmed from that conversation. He thought, “My website will be updated, which means my services and skills will be presented better. That will bring in more business and create more opportunities for me.”

Do you note when you’re happy? Are you aware of the hidden sources of your happiness? Sometimes, we’re happy and we’re not aware of it. It’s usually because we’re not attentive to what put us into an elated state. Are you aware of what causes that lack of recognition?

Continue reading and you’ll discover why it’s important to pay attention to your level of happiness and the benefits gained from doing so.

Know Yourself:

Do you really know what it takes to make you happy? Or, do you leave it to chance? If you relinquish such an important force to chance, without recognizing it, you’re neglecting your wellbeing.

The more attuned you are to your emotions, your dreams, and driving sources of motivation, the easier it’ll be to identify those variables. That means, regardless of your state of mind, you’ll be able to alter it. But to do that, you must be aware of how and when to exercise that control.

The more aware you are of the environments that challenge your happiness, the more opportunities you’ll have to avoid negativity. First, you must know yourself, know what you want, and focus on constantly moving in the direction of your needs and desires.

Accomplishments:

When you sense you’ve made accomplishments, you feel the momentum of progress. And that makes you experience happiness. Conversely, when you’re not making progress, you may feel like you’re in a rut. That diminishes your happiness.

If you’re more aware of your environments and the people in them, you can make better assessments about the probability of outcomes. That’s another reason you should surround yourself with like-minded people. They can serve to help you strive for higher achievements. Their actions can have a profound impact on you and your degree of happiness.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

When negotiating, your emotions sway from one end of the spectrum to the other. At times, they’re like a wild and uncontrollable ride. At other times, they’re akin to a pleasurable stroll on the beach. In either case, your emotions will dictate your actions. Thus, the more aware you are about what causes you happiness, the better you can control your emotions. With that, you’ll be in greater control of your actions when negotiating.

Happiness is truly a state of mind. If you’re more aware of the actions that lead to greater happiness, you’ll be able to induce that state more readily. You’ll also be able to use that skill in times when you might otherwise feel besieged by others, which could lead to unwanted outcomes.

When you learn to control the occurrences that lead to greater happiness, you will have created space where more happiness can reside. That will make you the controller of your happiness quotient … 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/

#Happiness #Source #Emotion #Business #Progress #SmallBusiness #Negotiation #NegotiatingWithABully #Power #Perception #emotionalcontrol #relationships #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions

Categories
Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Management

Reflection is the Better Part of a Champion

The Power of Looking In

I don’t know about you, but I want to be a CHAMPION – in life and in my leadership! My guess is that many of you do too, but leaders have a tough gig. You’re under the spotlight 24/7 trying to move your team in the right direction only to find others around you seem to be dancing to a different beat. That used to be me, the consummate go-getter, can-doer, workhorse type of leader I thought my employer wanted, until one day I realized that all of the hustle in the world wasn’t getting me where I wanted to go.

Unfortunately, many people, especially busy leaders feel the same way. Yet they fail to spend the time needed to truly reflect on their past to figure out how to change. It’s all too easy for driven, passionate people to get lost in the day-to-day grind.

Don’t get me wrong, I prefer being on the front end of the hustle and grind every day, but I also want to feel a bond or connection with who I am and the people I include in my life. To do this, I had to make time for the process of focused self-reflection on my goals, behavior and overall state-of-mind.

So why is the process of self-reflection essential? Because it helps to build emotional self-awareness. By taking the time to ask yourself the critical questions, you gain a better understanding of your emotions, strengths, weaknesses and driving factors which all lead to increased emotional intelligence – which for leaders is one of the most critical skills to have.

In simple terms, self-reflection is the process of taking the time to reflect on the past to help you to learn and grow into the future and avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. Sounds easy, right? Well, the process is, but the things you’ll discover in honest self-reflection can be painful as you face some of the hard truths of the past. But trust me, to improve the future, it’s well worth the journey.

Which brings me to December of 2017. My personal life was epic! I’d met the love of my life, I had great friends, a beautiful family, and I was healthy and happy – all was good on that front.

On the professional side, I had a kick ass corporate job doing what I love to do and making good money doing it. But something was missing – I was immensely thankful for my life and fully understood how blessed I was – but I wasn’t happy.

Of course, some of you might be thinking, “wow, this chick is ungrateful or even greedy” – but I assure you that wasn’t it. I felt like there was a higher purpose for my life. I didn’t feel like I was contributing all I could, and my work wasn’t fulfilling. I should’ve been happy – but I wasn’t.

Then, one night over a glass of wine – when all great conversations take place – I told a good friend of mine that I felt stuck and wasn’t sure how or what to change. Was it me or some outside force keeping me from my real purpose in life?

She suggested some self-reflection to figure out what was going on and gave me some guidelines on how to begin. Now, for the record, this is not something I was all that comfortable doing, most likely because it was foreign to me, but I trusted her, so I tried it.  What I discovered changed the course of my life and it just took four questions to get me there.

Am I on the path to my dream future?

Luck happens at the intersection of preparation and opportunity.

You have to prepare for that decisive moment that ultimately comes in everyone’s life when opportunity knocks. You’re either ready, or you’re not. But wait, if that’s true, why am I here? Stuck! I had prepared and prepared… for years! Still no opportunity. Or so I thought.

What I discovered through my own self-reflection was that opportunity had knocked, more than once, but I chose not to open the door. I was prepared yes, but I was letting those opportunities go by. I made up excuses as to why “now” wasn’t the right time. I wasn’t sure that I would be successful and told myself I needed more time. The reality was that I was just scared of failing. I’d taken risks my whole life without an ounce of fear. I’d failed as well as succeeded, so what was different about now? … I was older.

I told myself I needed to be sensible, the risk was too high. But I knew that nothing great comes without some risk. The choice we all face is; are we willing to accept the risk. In my case, was I ready to walk away from a corporate job that paid six figures, benefits, and insurance to take the leap and build my own business in speaking? If I wanted to get on the path to my dream future, the choice was mine – lady luck had nothing to do with it.

The great thing is, even when one door closes, and many did…. you can open it again. That’s how doors work!

Am I performing at peak performance?

If you were able to look into the brain of Nick Foles, quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, during their stunning win over the Patriots in the 2018 Super Bowl, you’d find many predictable mental strengths present. Peak performers know their purpose. They set and prioritize goals to fulfill that purpose. They have high self-esteem, they’re process, not outcome-driven, they don’t worry about making mistakes and can easily take risks, and they’re cool under pressure.

For me, I felt like I possessed all or at least most of these mental strengths so I should be able to say yes, I’m performing at my peak. I’m an intentional learner, always looking for new and innovative ways to challenge myself, so why did I feel stuck?

As I began to reflect and take a hard look the past couple of years, one thing stood out. I was always learning, but not always growing. I was stuck in my leadership role at work and began to narrow my focus. I stopped seeing new possibilities for myself and acted accordingly. I was mainly playing the “role” of peak performance. I was on stage every day, grinding it out 10-12 hours a day, but never looking outside of my own script. That had to change. I needed to find my tribe of people who know how to build the business I wanted. I had to be ok with the unknown and just improvise. It was time to get out of the sea of sameness and take my professional life from boring to badass.

Nothing great was ever accomplished by playing it safe. It was time to wake up, kickass & repeat – DAILY.

Am I living up to my own core values?

My values and beliefs weren’t formed merely by a mission or vision. They’ve emerged naturally and over time. Through hours teaching and coaching, more years leading teams, and hundreds of hours of debates and discussions with coaches, mentors and other leaders from around the world. My core values aren’t merely elements of a deliberate business strategy. They’re the result of a tireless ongoing pursuit of excellence. And, they’re simple – they define the RHYTHM of my life and leadership:

  • Respect: There is zero tolerance for disrespect. All ideas, opinions & conversations are welcome.
  • Humor: Humor has a significant effect on leadership. It connects with people on an emotional level. If they’re laughing, they’re learning.
  • Yes – Find a Way: You get one at-bat in this thing called life, so don’t waste time thinking “I can’t,” find ways to say “YES, I can!”
  • Trust:  You can’t build relationships with people who don’t trust you so creating positive relationships built on trust is the key to success.
  • Humility: True humility is staying teachable, regardless of how much you already know. Growth requires learning, and learning requires humility.
  • Mastery: Focus 100% of your time and energy into mastering the art of influential leadership.

As I began to look at my core values, it was apparent that I had fallen short on a couple of them. The first was in finding the YES. I preached a good sermon on this one regularly but had failed to follow through on it myself which resulted in me not walking the path that I’d dreamed of. The second was HUMILITY. I was becoming unteachable because I was so focused on my role and what it provided me that I wasn’t growing outside of it. I had to learn to let go because true growth always leaves something or someone behind.

Am I using my talents to the fullest extent?

In the classic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Jimmy Stewart plays a small-town man who dreams of making his fortune in the big city. When he learns that’s not going to be possible, he begins to feel hopeless and depressed. A guardian angel named Clarence was sent to show him what life in his small town would be if he’d never been born. By being deprived of his talents, the small town was completely different and much darker.

Now, this story is fiction, but it’s relevant to everyday life. When we share our talents, the world literally becomes a different place. There’s no point in having a talent if you don’t share it. I am blessed with the gift of gab as my Dad would say so teaching and speaking just comes naturally for me.

As I reflected on my career, I realized that I’d moved slowly, over the years into a leadership position that was more of an administrative, decision-making type of role and less and less of one that utilizes my real talent. I was leading projects, teams, deadlines, and meetings and doing less of what I loved. Our gifts and talents are considered our strengths, and I wasn’t using mine.

I believe that every person has an innate ability that is uniquely theirs, and if it’s not used to better the world, it’s wasted.

The beginning of a new year

Now here it is, 2019 and last year was remarkable. I left the corporate world, moved to a new city, I’m creating a beautiful life with the love of my life, and yes, I’m finally building my own speaking business. I’m not gonna lie, this past year has been a wild, scary ride, but nothing great is ever easy.

And I can’t wait to reflect on this year, look at my successes and failures, and make the needed course corrections so I can build an even bigger legacy in 2020!

Because…

Reflection IS the better part of a champion.

 

Photo Credit: Nathan Anderson @ Unsplash

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Industries Leadership Marketing Personal Development Sales Technology

Virtual Reality and Subliminal Marketing

Virtual reality (VR) has become a reality, as nearly every tech company has created a product that features it, and it is now seen by many as mainstream. Facebook-owned Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and the HTC Vive are just a few examples of household names that have launched us into the future of the immersive experience.

There is little doubt that VR has the potential to revolutionize the entire entertainment, tourism and even learning industries if audiences adopt the concept of strapping a device to their heads. At the same time, there will be those who feel instantly compelled to compare the technology to such fads as the first 3D television.

However, if the masses embrace VR as predicted, should we be concerned that this completely immersive experience could lead us once again down the dark road of sinister subliminal advertising?

Applied to VR equipment and other, similar technology, subliminal advertising has the increasing capability of wielding a much deeper impact on the unknowing user. given the vast, immersive characteristics of the VR environment. Consider one concept we’ve seen, where music apps and a smartwatch claim to play subliminal messages at a frequency overlaying music that cannot be detected by the ear, but only by the subconscious brain. This seemingly harmless idea could be incredibly valuable to savvy advertising agencies, as well as to candidates running for office.

Removing the everyday distractions of modern life and locking consumers away in an entirely immersive experience is every marketer’s dream — so before “plugging in,” we should all consider the potential implications of the use of this unregulated technology to manipulate us.

When we take a closer look at the advertising that surrounds us, it’s obvious that subliminal messages are real and powerful, as seen in one 2015 example created by a Brazilian advertising agency. The advertisers placed a billboard of people yawning at a busy metro station in Sao Paulo. This “contagious billboard” was fitted with a motion sensor that automatically detected when commuters were passing by and then displayed a video of somebody yawning.

The campaign aimed to convince passers-by that they were tired by using infectious yawning. The billboard followed the yawning video with this message: “Did you yawn, too? Time for coffee!” If it is possible to convince busy commuters to buy coffee by broadcasting a subliminal message, can you imagine the power potentially wielded within an immersive virtual reality experience that is completely free from distraction?

The gathering of data from our online purchases already allows subtle messaging for influential purposes, so the adverts that pop up and the messages we receive are certainly no accident or coincidence. Everywhere we turn, we are unwittingly subjected to product placements in video games and movies, but we congratulate ourselves on being able to see the messages and resist their pull. However, would we be as resistant to such messages if they appeared while we were completely immersed in virtual reality?

There is an enormous responsibility for any advertising agency considering bringing any form of advertising or marketing to virtual reality. If the consumer experience is in any way tainted by the out-of-date and detested marketing messages from our past, consumers will fail even to adopt the medium.

The main problem is that the current method of advertising is broken, and billions of dollars are wasted on ads that are either not seen or deemed irrelevant to a consumer’s lifestyle. This change in customer behavior is ushering in a new era of marketing called “targeted display advertising” (TDA) that uses consumers’ own data to deliver personalized ads that resonate with them.

Organizations finally have a handle on big data, and they will be able to leverage our mobile devices to learn what we’re interested in even before we clearly know ourselves, based solely on our browsing histories.

As we drift between devices and screens, we have surrounded ourselves with wave of white noise that has become a frustrating obstacle for any advertiser striving to stand out amongst all the distractions. However, a headset that removes any form of outside interruption by pumping sound into a consumer’s ears and preventing his or her eyes from wandering could make subliminal messaging hard to avoid.

Before becoming paranoid about what’s to come, it is important to understand how this technology can also be used for the greater good, too.

Virtual reality can make a positive difference in our lives by opening up fantastic opportunities for learning, rehabilitation, teaching and tourism. But I would like to see more conversations and debates about how subliminal marketing messages should be used in that environment, to help solve any problems before they occur.

What are your thoughts on the immersive experience virtual reality delivers to audiences, and about the benefits and downsides of its being leveraged to deliver subliminal messaging?