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The Sales Brain – using neuroscience to sell

November 16, 2012 in Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Neuroscience, Neuroscience in Sales, Resilience

The science is clear, our success resides in how we use our brains – our brains can continue to learn, grow and adapt until the day we die. In 2012 and beyond we are seeing neuroscience and neuropsychology become the topics du jour for sales teams.  Learning how to train and in many instances, retrain our brains to incorporate effective thinking and habits will see brain smart sales teams forging new neural pathways leading to greater sales success.  ‘The Sales Brain – using neuroscience to sell’ was voted the 10th sales trend for 2012 from The 12 Sales Trends of 2012 by our readers.

For years, scientists and psychologists have heralded the application of neuroscience’s tools and processes as a pathway to wellness and success. The amount of knowledge we have discovered about the brain in the last decade alone surpasses anything that we knew before.

Now, it’s finally and officially arrived on the doorstep of sales and marketing professionals. If you are not training your sales, marketing, service and leadership teams in neuroscience and neuropsychology you could be left behind in 2012 and beyond.

Why focus on the brain?

focus brainThe brain is known to be like an electro-chemical machine and it’s our thoughts that affect the flow of our neurotransmitters across synaptic connections, especially the likes of adrenaline and dopamine. This in turn affects how we manage ourselves, make decisions and even recover from adversity. The brain is the key to developing our motivation and resilience levels.  

People who achieve their goals and sustain success over a long period of time have learnt how to manage their emotions and energy levels through good times and bad. They learn that it is important to pay attention to feedback and learn how to adapt and adjust to setbacks. By paying attention to their thoughts, feelings, emotions and behaviours they are able to develop in the following areas:

  • Self awareness
  • Social and Other awareness
  • Self Management
  • Relationship Management
  • Motivation & Resilience

All areas which are critical to leading a successful career in sales and sales leadership.

As the world becomes increasingly complex we are seeing people being further challenged to do more with less in the pursuit of productivity and profit – yet our pursuit for more with less is leading to erosions in productivity, poorer sales results, lower margins and more distressed employees.    Research shows that our attempts to multitask are creating performance issues – after all our brains are best designed to focus on one task at a time. An essay titled ‘Recovering from information overload’ from the McKinsey Quartely states “When we switch between tasks, especially complex ones, we become startlingly less efficient: in a recent study, for example, participants who completed tasks in parallel took up to 30 percent longer and made twice as many errors as those who completed the same tasks in sequence.  The delay comes from the fact that our brains can’t successfully tell us to perform two actions concurrently.4  When we switch tasks, our brains must choose to do so, turn off the cognitive rules for the old task, and turn on the rules for the new one. This takes time, which reduces productivity, particularly for heavy multitaskers—who, it seems, take even longer to switch between tasks than occasional multitaskers.5

In practice, most of us would probably acknowledge that multitasking lets us quickly cross some of the simpler items off our to-do lists. But it rarely helps us solve the toughest problems we’re working on. More often than not, it’s procrastination in disguise.”

In short our Conscious Brain is also every easily overloaded. 

brain overloadOne of the biggest detractors from achieving effective long term success in anything including sales performance is being in a distressed state for a prolonged period of time, reducing one’s ability to bounce back from adversity, make effective decisions and manage ourselves. Putting ourselves (or being put) under ‘constant pressure’ to achieve results (e.g. sales targets) with no consideration given to time allocation, preparation and resources can quickly lead to poor quality decision making, poor overall performance and unhealthy life practices. The resulting negative behaviour then probably contributes to the prevalence of poor sales results.

Why is this happening to us?

If we are constantly working under distress with increasing feelings of pressure to perform job related functions at a high level the brain and the body have no chance to return to “normal operations”. The feedback process that stops the fight and flight mode is inhibited.

When we live a life under constant pressure (stress) we are unable to engage the frontal cortex, because our emotional energy levels are drained away from our conscious brain and the unconscious part of our brain will run the show. We live on auto pilot and in a constant state of distress. If the hippocampus is damaged through such prolonged stress, the attribution of positive or negative events in life might be disturbed, we can become even more negative in our view of the world – a vicious cycle can begin.

And the really scary news which is backed up by huge bodies of research is that staying stuck in these flight and fight fear states can also lead to heart disease, strokes and brain disease. Not good for anyone and definitely not good for sustainable performance of any sort.

With business expecting us to do more with less, organisations are inadvertently setting themselves up for sharp declines in productivity and performance, leading to business decline and additional OH&S issues as distress becomes the norm.

Smart companies, leaders and individuals are taking charge of their destinies

Smart businesses are creating working environments where we can operate in the prefrontal cortex (the front part of the brain) with the time and value given to thinking and reflecting and working at more manageable pace (not operating on high intense speed all the time): this space for thinking and reflection allow us to think more clearly, make better decisions, listen more attentively, see other people’s points of view, come up with better ideas to problems and work together more effectively and more efficiently.  Overall the paradox of slowing down and taking time to think and act rather than panic and react will actually make us more productive in the short and long term leading to better outcomes for all – clients, sales teams, staff, leaders included.

Happy Sales Team

Happy Sales Team

The benefits of a healthy functioning brain

Smart companies, leaders and individuals are recognising that maintaining healthy levels of motivational energy (raw physical energy) and developing our Emotional Resilience is vital to our well-being and our overall functioning as human beings.   They are making time to educate and encourage their teams to use their brains more effectively with the following becoming a reality:

Increased Self Awareness & Personal Growth 

  1. Experiencing more positive emotions & less distress in their lives
  2. Increased desirable (wanted) behaviours & decrease unwanted ones
  3. More effective as leaders, sales people, partners, parents, friends, team players, etc.
  4. Managing the effect of emotions on personal level as well as at a team work, client engagement and leadership level.
  5. Feel happier more often
  6. Feel fitter, healthier and better able to handle challenging situations.

For more information on how to train your brain to healthier and more profitable outcomes take a look at our Functioning Brain Workshop, The Optimistic Professional workshop  and our Brain Science page contact us on 03 9533 0000.

For further reading on the Brain you may find these articles useful also:

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au 

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How Meditation Can Make You a Better Salesperson

May 17, 2012 in Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Emotional Intelligence, Life Skills, Neuroscience, Neuroscience in Sales, Resilience, Sales Results, Self Development, Success, Wellbeing

In this increasingly complex world emotions such as empathy, compassion and benevolence are emerging as critical qualities of highly successful people, teams, companies and communities. Even in the highly competitive world of business and selling, those sales people and leaders who are able to incorporate these qualities into their daily work and personal lives are finding greater levels of success. This is coming in the form of better sales results and healthier, more prosperous client relationships as well as better personal health, resilience, and overall job and personal satisfaction.

Not on the usual business checklist of qualities to be proactively developed and mastered, neuropsychologists have demonstrated that emotions such as compassion, empathy, and benevolence can be trained. What’s more, as soft as it may sound, a growing number of companies are buying into the notion that developing these qualities through meditation can alter the brain in ways that drive important organizational outcomes.

connected brain to the surroundings

brain connected to its environment using empathy, compassion and benevolence

So how do you develop these qualities – empathy, compassion and benevolence – and incorporate them into your daily life? And why should you bother?

Leaving behind the energy draining need of ‘striving for perfection and approval’, competition at all costs, and focussing on obtaining status via material possessions and power, all potential hallmarks of a 20th century ‘me’ focused culture, many people are coming to realise that practicing empathy, compassion and benevolence is allowing them to accept themselves as they are which in turn is allowing them to free up energy to accept others too. They are finding that practicing ‘self’ and ‘other’ acceptance is the basis for all healthy and productive relationships – at work and home.

Alongside a growing body of research, and a couple thousand years of anecdotal evidence (see Buddhism, Yoga, Sufism, and other spiritual practices), neuroscientists Antoine Lutz and Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison demonstrate that meditation can help with “positivity” training since it stimulates the area of the brain associated with emotions such as empathy or compassion. To verify this, Davidson mapped the brains of employees at a bio-tech company where more than half of the group completed 3 hours of meditation training. After meditating, participants noticed an elevation or boost in their mood and a decrease in anxiety. Davidson was able to vividly show that meditation produced significant increases in activity in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for positive characteristics like optimism and resilience, as well as “higher” executive functions as decision-making, judgment, and planning.

When we operate in the prefrontal cortex (the front part of the brain) we are able to think more clearly, make better decisions, listen more attentively, see other people’s points of view, come up with better ideas to problems and work together more effectively and more efficiently.

By contrast, staying stuck in the amygdale -the primitive, reptilian (hind) part of the brain- where our Flight & Fright response resides, we risk jamming our senses, limiting our thinking, and end up creating personal and work settings revolving around constant fear and distress. It is not to say we should avoid the amygdale at all costs – that is unrealistic too. The Amygdale is an important part of the brain, designed to help us deal with ‘life threatening’ situations which, under normal circumstances, only occur in short bursts. However the 20th century’s ‘Me’ focused culture has inadvertently set up ‘lifestyle threatening’ situations and management-by-fear business cultures leading many people to operate in the amygdale for sustained periods.

I want

... possessions, status ...

Worried about holding on to their possessions, status, and jobs, this striving for self preservation has led to many to experience a sense of entitlement (without responsibility) which, sadly, breeds the opposite of empathy, compassion and benevolence. The pressure of ‘keeping up with the Jones’, and striving for external validation of one’s worthiness is leaving many people suffering from sustained distress – not a condition of general life contentment.

And what’s worse, medical research is confirming that living in a constant or sustained state of fear – flight or fright, is leading to adrenal fatigue, lower immune responses, dramatic increases in heart disease and early onset dementia. In addition to the stark medical news, if we operate from a constant state of fear we see a reduction in feelings of empathy, compassion and benevolence across all walks of life. This can in turn lead to outcomes such as increases in road rage incidents, alcohol and substance abuse, relationship breakdowns, depression and other mental illnesses to name a few.

A recent US study estimate suggests that distress; operating from a place of constant fear, costs companies about $200 billion a year in increased absenteeism, tardiness, and the loss of talented workers. Not good for anyone, any family, business, or community.

What this study also revealed was that practicing meditation can increase job satisfaction and productivity. Rather than coming down hard on employees and sales people pressuring them to produce more or sell more with less with constants threats and fear of job loss, a number of companies are encouraging employees to take up meditation practices. This in turn is reducing distress and increases wellbeing which ironically helps people be more effective and productive. Working from a ‘can do’ approach, more leaders and their teams are finding better pathways to successful outcomes in this complex, busy world and rewiring their brains and their lives to suit.

office meditation

office meditation

Some MBA programs are even jumping on the meditation bandwagon as well. At Arizona State University, for example, Meditation in a New York Minute by Mark Thorton is on the required book lists for leadership electives. It also offers a ‘Neuroscience of Leadership’ course in its Business Masters degrees. Their challenge is to move beyond ‘fad’ status. As a practitioner of meditation and yoga for more than 20 years I can attest to the effectiveness however like anything it requires regular practice and attention.

So instead of living in constant fear of achieving our sales budgets, keeping our businesses afloat, and all that goes with it, maybe we could take some time out of our busy days and, at the very least, start to meditate, finding space in for reflection and contemplation – giving our brains and bodies space to be at rest and clear the daily distresses. By practicing meditation we can train our brains to start working in the prefrontal cortex and tap into our creativity and quality decision making, as well as our empathy, compassion and benevolence which clears a pathway thus allowing people to work together and co create, finding better more effective and efficient ways to be successful.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

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Why leading an examined life is good for sales

October 20, 2011 in Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Coaching, Mindful selling, Neuroscience in Sales, Sales Results, Wellbeing

‘Leading an examined life’ was voted as the Number 10 of Sales Trends for 2011. For many years you could lead an intuitive sales life because your product was your edge, but not anymore. With products replicated in minutes, the spotlight is well and truly on the specific ingredients of being an effective sales person and sales leader and managing oneself in volatile times. This all begins and ends with neuroscience.

The latest scientific research into neuroscience confirms how we manage our brain. The brain is known to be like an electro-chemical machine and it’s our thoughts that affect the flow of our neurotransmitters across synaptic connections, especially the likes of Adrenaline and Dopamine. This in turn affects how we manage ourselves, make decisions and even recover from adversity. Living under the feeling of constant excessive pressure is not good for us on any level, particularly for sales teams who are often subject to achieving under the demands of sales targets and tight timeframes.

Avoid the Brain Drain

Avoid the Brain Drain

One of the biggest detractors from achieving effective long term sales performance is being in a distressed state for a prolonged period of time, reducing one’s ability to bounce back from adversity, make effective decisions and manage our self. The scientific research is showing that putting sales people under ‘constant pressure’ to achieve sales targets with no consideration given to time allocation preparation and resources is leading to poor quality decision making, poor overall performance and unhealthy life practices. This leads to negative behavior such as excessive alcohol consumption, and poor eating and sleeping habits which all contribute to the prevalence of poor sales results.

So how is your team holding up in these challenging times? Could they benefit from knowing how to manage their emotions?

In 2011 smart companies are now taking the time to uncover and develop the essential personal knowledge, skills and mindset needed to be resilient under pressure in their sales and leadership teams. In particular, there’s a focus on helping people develop a ‘mastery mindset’ and accompanying body awareness where self reflection, self awareness, compassion, candor, caring, learning agility and developing resilience are key.

Far from being self indulgent, neuroscience combined with personal insight and continuous learning is helping salespeople and leaders take control of their careers, manage their emotions, harness their energies, reduce their distress and sell more effectively than ever before.

Neuroscience, psychology, the brain and sales, the science of selling if you like, go well together. Think about it, it makes sense. Understanding our brains, how they work, what works well for them and what doesn’t work so well, and the skill of selling our business’ product and services all tie in together. If you understand what is happening at a brain level, you can further understand your responses and behaviours, the way you’re feeling, and in turn why you’re getting the results you are getting. Furthermore, if you’re not performing at your best as a sales professional, why wouldn’t it make sense to understand what is happening at a brain level or what neurotransmitters you’re creating to be responding and behaving in a certain way?

Chemical messengers that transmit a thought from one cell to the next allowing brain cells to ‘talk to each other’ are neurotransmitters. What is most fascinating is how you experience emotion and how you feel is dictated by certain neurotransmitters.

Everything going right
Everything going right

Kelly Rothwell, Barrett’s organizational psychologist and neuroscience expert explains, ‘Think about a time when you were successful, when everything was going ‘right’think about it for at least 30 secondshow do you feelwhat are you doing, are you smiling, do you feel good? I am going to assume you’re at least feeling good. This is the power of your thoughts and neurotransmitters. You have a ‘feel good’ thought and you release certain kinds of neurotransmitters such as, endorphins, norepinephrine, dopamine, acetylcholine and PEA. The flip-side is that if you have ‘unhelpful’ thoughts in an environment where you think you are ‘failing’ and ‘unable to make change’ the epinephrine (or adrenaline) neurotransmitter is released.

Epinephrine or Adrenaline as a neurotransmitter is imperative for our ‘survival instinct’. The challenge is our brain does not know the difference to a threat to our lives or a threat to our lifestyle unless we manage our thoughts and mindsets appropriately in the ‘stressful’ situation. It just responds to a threat as it would when our lives are at stake. if we leave it unmanaged, this is where the challenges occur.

Increased adrenaline production causes the body to step up its metabolism of proteins, fats and carbohydrates to quickly produce energy for the body to use. The pituitary gland increases its production of andrenocorticotropic hormone which stimulates the release of the hormones cortisone and cortisol. These have the effect of inhibiting the functioning of disease fighting white blood cells and suppressing the immune system response. Moreover, we have elevation of blood pressure, acceleration of the heartbeat and greater tension in the muscles. Digestion slows or even stops. This complex weave of physical changes is known as the ‘fight or flight’ response which is helpful when our lives are at threat. It’s not so helpful when we are in potentially long-term ‘stressful’ situations as trying to reach sales targets, for instance, that have not been strategized as well as they could be.’

Kelly highlights a fascinating yet tragic true story about the life threatening aspects of prolonged stress: ‘What we know is that a continual stressed state such as what has just been described eventually wears out the body. Think about it this way – only a few veterans who fought during the siege of Stalingrad (both Russian and German soldiers) lived to the age of 50. Few even lived to the age of 45 and most died soon after their 40th birthday. All of these individuals suffered extreme stress 24 hours a day for more than six months.’

We may not personally be fighting in a war, yet our brains and bodies can respond in similar ways if our stress or neurotransmitters are unmanaged. Within the 21st century marketplaces, leading an unexamined life is not only detrimental to your health, it can be detrimental to many results you are seeking. If we’re unable to learn about ourselves, how we work and in turn our strengths, how are we to help ourselves excel at the work and profession we have chosen?’

Some very simple tips on managing perceived ‘stressful’ situations or even days are as follows. What needs to be noted here is being aware of what is actually going on within yourself and to yourself. The tips include:

  • Take control of your breathing – be aware of your breathing rate and take slow deep breaths
  • Take command of your muscle tension – be aware of which muscles are tense and let go of that tension
  • Take control of your cognitive processes – be aware of that internal ‘self-talk’, your thoughts, and be honest about the situation (our brains are very effective lie detectors, don’t sugar-coat the reality) and change your focus through asking helpful questions of yourself -it’s amazing what answers you can be provided.

So avoid the brain drain. Those who lead an examined life know that we can’t know another if we do not know ourselves first. Ultimately you need to take the time to build awareness of yourself, how you are feeling and behaving. What is going on in your brain? Are you engaged and consciously aware of yourself and what’s going on? Without awareness and giving yourself an opportunity to lead an examined life through learning about yourself, you’re not likely to be able to do something about it if you don’t like the results you are getting. If you aren’t achieving your goals at work (or at home), knowing yourself and what you’re doing to influence situations is key. Take control of what you can control. There is no need for unconscious or disengaged selling in 2011. Smart companies will make conscious, mindful selling a part of their daily working lives. To achieve sales mastery we will need to lead an examined life in 2011.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.
Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

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Avoid the Brain Drain – Why Brain Fitness Equals Better Sales

August 11, 2011 in Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Neuroscience, Neuroscience in Sales

What does neuroscience and increased sales have to do with each other? It seems more than we would think. The latest research into neuroscience reveals that how we use our brain does make a huge difference to our long term sustainability, our overall wellbeing and our success in sales and other professions.

The world of neuroscience proves what high performers have intrinsically done all along – by engaging in effective self appraisal, continuous learning, a healthy lifestyle and a mindful approach to work and one’s personal life leads to clearer thinking, better decisions and much better outcomes overall – short and long term.

Kelly Rothwell, Barrett’s neuroscience expert says the choices we make, the view we take of things, how we process and manage information and how we take care of our overall health and wellbeing can all be learned. She says that “there is a lot of information about how to lead a physically healthy life style, i.e. diet, food, exercise but very little on healthy mental habits that can lead to enhanced performance.”

Mindfulness is the practice of being in the moment. Mindfulness training, even a short amount has been found to increase attention span, increase cognition and reduce stress, and even increase our immune function.

So how can we make our brains fitter generally, more practiced in ways so they can work for us in ways that help us achieve better results in sales and in our lives?

A study published in the first NeuroLeadership journal found that there was a 30-50% improvement in the stress levels in a group of people trained in mindfulness, that is from just 100 minutes of training in one week.

From the psychical sense of the brain, it is understood that practicing mindfulness thickens a specific set of neural circuits regarding our focus, control and attention. By practicing focusing and switching your attention, you increase your ability to do so – and the benefits are multiple – for example, several studies talk to the stress and health benefits that appear to come from practicing mindfulness. You also increase your self-regulation capacity, which is the ability to control what are known as our automatic neural functions – self-regulation has been closely linked to personal productivity, and even success in life overall, in long term studies by Walter Mischel.

So how can we make our brains fitter generally, more practiced in ways so they can work for us in ways that help us achieve better results in sales and in our lives?

Some important Brain facts:

  • Our Brain uses up to 30 per cent of our entire body’s energy supply
  • Our Brain uses about 20 per cent of our body’s oxygen supply
  • Our Brain wants to conserve as much energy as possible
  • When we expend energy from our Brain, it is from our Conscious processing part – our thinking, our focus i.e. problem solving, decision making, creating, etc. Thinking and focusing use up more energy which is not the main goal of our Brain, yet we need these functions to succeed and thrive. Ever wonder why you feel so tired after really concentrating on something?
  • The Conscious part of our Brain is our computer programmer (what we think). It is where all our thoughts, our ‘self talk’ takes place – whatever we think drives how we feel, which in turn drives what we do or say, and is then etched into our Subconscious
  • Our Subconscious is our hard-drive, with all the programming (our thoughts) in it. The subconscious part of our Brain manages 99.7 per cent of everything we do. Therefore if what we think is faulty or toxic we are programming our subconscious to be faulty or toxic
  • Interestingly our Brain does not recognise what is helpful or unhelpful to us, it just does what we tell it or ask of it. If we ask unhelpful questions or feed it unhelpful information, we are likely to get unhelpful answers when our subconscious retrieves it
  • The quality of our thinking in the Conscious part of our Brain can really affect our ability to perform well and if we do not recognise unhealthy programming that resides in the subconscious

This information is important if we want to work out how we can perform at more optimal standards with fitter brains. Finding ourselves in a more complex world requires even more considered thinking and focus. This means using the conscious part of our brain more often requiring more energy. Unfortunately the brain, by nature, wants to use less energy.

Kelly Rothwell points out that one of the reasons we make assumptions is that from a simple brain perspective, we ‘assume’ to save energy. If we operate off old memories and experiences which are etched in our subconscious, rather than creating or writing new ones, it helps us save energy which is the main goal of our brain.

Saving energy is a very important function, yet it does not help us in situations where we really need to pay attention and listen with focus and without prejudice. This is why, even with the best intentions, we are not always helping people or clients the best way we could or should.

There is however some good news. As before, we can train our brain habits to improve the quality of our performance such as listening, questioning, processing, focusing, etc. Purposefully training our brain to the standard we want and need in turn improves our sales results and customer experiences. The good news is we can program in better capabilities by first consciously, deliberately making them important and practicing them until they become automatic, part of our subconscious. This way when we need to access these skills, they are easier to retrieve and fulfill the brain’s main goal; to consumer less energy.

So which subconscious programs are currently serving us well and which are viruses causing us to derail?
Every thought we have is either health enhancing or health depleting, so how are you programming your brain and is it able to give you the performance you need?

We need to take care with our thoughts. We have a saying at Barrett ‘watch who you let near your mind’ for good reason. Thoughts are very contagious and passing on the wrong ones to others can have disastrous consequences. Just think how most people feel about prospecting – most people are scared of it even if they haven’t had to do it themselves. Most of their perceptions are formed from hearsay not actual experience. This is why all of our programs include Mindset as a critical component so people can reboot their subconscious hard drive with better quality content and habits. It’s also why Barrett recommends interval training for all our programs to provide opportunity for people to apply their new skills, behaviours and mindset bit by bit so they create new and better habits in their subconscious.

If you want to develop or improve your brain fitness take a specific look at our Optimistic Professional program on our Mind Your Emotions website. And for more information on neuroscience and sales culture please contact our head of Consulting and neuroscience expert, Kelly Rothwell on 03 9533 0000.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, MD of www.barrett.com.au

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The Entrepreneurial Sales Person

June 12, 2009 in Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Emotional Intelligence, Neuroscience in Sales, Prospecting, Resilience, Role Clarity, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Relationships, Sales Talent, Self Development, Success

As part of my ongoing professional and personal development I belong to a CEO leadership group where we meet monthly and discuss a whole range of topics to stimulate our thinking and decision making.

Recently we discussed the concept and qualities of Successful Entrepreneurs. Besides making the obvious comparisons with ourselves as to whether we met the criteria of successful entrepreneurs I found the content translated extremely well into what I and other research is seeing in successful sales people today.

It seemed to me that successful sales people had a lot in common with successful entrepreneurs who are often the main sales people in their own businesses anyway.

I thought we could use this information to help us find and cultivate Entrepreneurial Sales People for our businesses, especially to help we entrepreneurs who need to grow our businesses beyond our own capabilities and personal time constraints.

Here is a summary of my notes:

1. Successful Entrepreneurs are calculated risk takers note gamblers.

Unlike risk adverse people who avoid stepping outside their comfort zone and trying anything new or gamblers who seem to act before they think and often stake everything on one risky deal, Successful Entrepreneurs and successful sales people will step outside their comfort zone but not too far at first. They will stretch themselves check for evidence of success and recalculate their actions to try and step out even further. Good sales people do this with their clients all the time. They will trial different options and gauge the interest and suitability of these options with their clients. This is how new products or service emerge.

If you want to test someone’s entrepreneurial tendencies here is one way. Play the game of Coits. Ask anyone to try and get all six coits on the stand and see what they will do:

  • Conservative, non risk takers will stand right over the top of the stand and not move dropping all six coits on the stand from above.
  • Gamblers will stand far away and just throw hoping something will stick.
  • Successful Entrepreneurs and successful sales people will take a few steps back throw 2 coits, get them on and then step further back and throw again always checking their accuracy. If they miss one they will step in a bit throw again get the coit on and then step out again and so on. They are engaging in self testing and feedback which is why they keep getting better.

2. Needs
They also found Successful Entrepreneurs have 3 fundamental needs:

  • need for achievement
  • need for affiliation
  • need for power or influence

It was found that the need for achievement was by far the most important, with successful entrepreneurs marshalling the need for affiliation and power to support their need for achievement. This coincides with the research on successful sales people.

3. Questioning

Non Entrepreneurs specialise in ‘Social’ Questioning’ which revolves around their need for affiliation and not much else. Which is why I get annoyed when sales training over emphasises ‘building rapport’. You hear it all the time, sales people being told that to build rapport by asking about people about their personal lives, footy teams etc. This is very old fashioned and not as effective as people think it is. In fact for many first time client encounters it can be a real turn off for the client. It often comes across as fake. You will build more rapport by focusing on what you are really there to do – and that is work with clients priorities and address their issues.

Successful Entrepreneurs and Successful sales people specialise in ‘Opportunity’ Questioning. Here they are looking for evidence that opportunities exist for them to work on effectively with others. They are inquiring, curious and ideas oriented.

By looking at these qualities you can see you don’t need to start a business to have entrepreneurial tendencies. Entrepreneurial qualities, in my opinion, can be applied in many roles, especially in sales roles and more people have them they we maybe recognise.

  1. Who in your team, especially your sales team is showing these qualities?
  2. How can you and they capitalise on this, especially in these markets?

With the world presently in a major transition we need more people taking calculated risks, being prepared to ask ‘opportunity’ questions and look to achieve great and positive things by marshalling affiliation, influence and power.

Your advocate for selling the right way.

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