“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says ‘I’ll try again tomorrow’.”

This quote more often than not reflects my life as an entrepreneur, business woman, sales person, mother, partner and friend. On those days and nights when I feel overwhelmed and sometimes exhausted by all my responsibilities and commitments that little voice reminding me to ‘try again tomorrow’ keeps me focused on why I am doing what I am doing – it helps me to continue to cultivate my resilience, to continue to put one foot in front of the other, to make decisions and to keep on moving.  If I am ever in doubt, that little voice reminds me of all the other challenges I have mastered and that my track record speaks for itself.  Over the years I have learnt to trust that little voice and I have learnt how to mind my emotions.

However it wasn’t always that way. Beset with self doubt earlier in my career and often searching outside myself for reassurance and validation, I eventually understood that listening to my little voice and working constructively with my emotions, feelings and thoughts were invaluable life skills.  Developing emotional resilience and a deeper self awareness has supported me to better achieve my goals, communicate, work with, and lead people more effectively, as well as spring back emotionally after suffering through difficult and stressful times in my life.

Through much searching, reading, listening, practice, and self reflection I have come to understand that emotions are never right nor wrong, good nor bad, or correct or incorrect.  Emotions are simply pieces of information telling us how we are currently experiencing our world.  However, what we do with the emotions we experience can help or hinder us.

For instance the Cognitive Model is a psychological model that looks at the role of our Cognitions (our thinking) in influencing how we respond to situations in our lives.  Oftentimes, we may feel a situation has caused our feelings. These feelings can be good or bad, positive or negative. However, the Cognitive Model says this is not right.  Rather, it is the way we THINK about a situation and our interpretations of it that cause our feelings and responses. Therefore, it is our interpretation of a situation that triggers how we feel or respond, not the situation in and of its self.   This is not new either here is a quote from    Epictetus, 1st Century AD,  “Men are disturbed not by things but by the views that they take of them.”

Developing Emotional Resilience
The first step to becoming more emotionally resilient is the acknowledgment that there is room for improvement and taking the time to learn more about yourself.  The following behaviours and attitudes are some ways in which emotional resilience can be demonstrated and measured:

• Have realistic and attainable expectations and goals.
• Show good judgment and problem solving skills.
• Be persistent and determined.
• Be responsible and thoughtful rather than impulsive.
• Be an effective communicator with good people skills.
• Learn from past experience so as not to repeat mistakes.
• Be empathetic towards other people (care how others around you are feeling).
• Have a social conscience (care about the welfare of others).
• Feel good about yourself as a person.
• Feel like you are in control of your life.
• Be optimistic rather than pessimistic.

Some Strategies to develop your Emotional Resilience
There are many strategies we can use to help us harness the positive power of our emotions. Here are a few for you to consider:

The Big 4:  7-8 hours of Sleep, Healthy Diet, Regular Exercise, Doing Fun Activities

Relaxation: Learning how to relax takes practice however two ways to start is to 1) use progressive Muscle Relaxation or 2) lie still in a warm, safe environment and play quite relaxing music or be in nature – sit quietly focusing on and experiencing pleasant sensory sensations such as the fragrance flowers or the twittering of birds.

Thought Stopping: As you notice yourself saying something negative in your mind, you can stop your thought mid-stream by saying to yourself “Stop”. Saying this aloud will be more powerful and make your more aware of your habit.

Thought Diary: Keeping a daily diary or journal of your thoughts can be an effective tool for examining your inner process.

Positive mantras & affirmations:  An affirmation is a positive thought or statement that you repeat to yourself and implant into your unconscious mind. A positive affirmation can act as the source of direction and inspiration for your present and future actions.  Once entrenched in your subconscious mind, a positive affirmation guides your thoughts and actions in a desired direction and can be used to overcome negative and habitual thought patterns in order to create shifts in your behaviour and actions at an unconscious level.  Positive affirmations can subtly but pervasively change your self talk from negative to positive.

Change Self-Limiting Statements to Questions: Self-limiting statements like “I can’t handle this!” or “This is impossible!” are particularly damaging because they increase your stress in a given situation and they stop you from searching for solutions. The next time you find yourself thinking something that limits the possibilities of a given situation, turn it into a question. Doesn’t “How can I handle this?” or “How is this possible?” sound more hopeful, and open up your imagination to new possibilities?

Meditation & Mindfulness: The purpose of meditation is to heal and transform.  Because meditation is a skill you can practice meditation anywhere at any time. In every moment you can chose to meditate.  The energy that crafts and guides the practice of meditation is mindfulness.  Mindfulness allows us to look deeply and move beyond the busyness of our mind.   It allows us to focus on an object with single pointed attention.  When mindful, we are focused and not distracted.

For ongoing emotional distress: We suggest people consider seeing a professional in psychology, medicine or nutrition to get a correct diagnosis and appropriate treatment.

Sadly, most people have never been taught how to positively harness the power of their emotions, feelings, thoughts and behaviours, however many of the tools we can use to do so have been with us for at least two thousand years.  And for too long business has ignored the positive power of emotions so here are some reasons why you should mind your emotions.

Five business reasons to Mind Your Emotions®:
1.    Healthier, more productive business relationships
2.    Better staff engagement, alignment and retention
3.    Healthy conflict management strategies which address the issues and don’t attack the person
4.    More effective leadership, team work, sales and service outcomes
5.    Less sick leave, stress claims

Five personal reasons to Mind Your Emotions®:
1.    Greater self awareness, insight and personal growth
2.    Ability to experience more positive emotions and less distress in our lives
3.    Ability to develop more productive attitudes, feelings and behaviours that help us achieve our goals
4.    Ability to be an effective leader, colleague, partner, parent, friend, team player, etc.
5.    Ability to better manage the effect of our emotions on personal / team performance, workplace well-being and personal happiness

Learning how to mind my emotions has allowed me to become more emotionally resilient and strengthened my resolve to achieve my goals and live the life I want to live.

If you want to discuss how to develop strategies to enhance your emotional resilience and make the most of your capabilities and the situations your find yourself in, let us know and we will see if we can help you directly or refer you to the best person for your situation.

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

As the saying goes, “If you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen”.  Once again MasterChef has served up some great life lessons.  Last year I wrote about the great leadership, coaching and mentoring we can learn from MasterChef.  Again Garry, George, Matt and the other guest chefs showed us how to excel in this area of leadership.

On this occasion, I want to comment on ‘Resilience’ and dealing with setbacks and challenges, and how MasterChef gave us a window into how people handle stress and demanding situations.  The time pressures and increasingly difficult tasks set for the contestants showed us how well they were able to manage themselves under pressure and produce the goods.  You could often see the demands of a given situation getting to a number of the contestants.  It was unrelenting at times.  Those who were able to hold it together and ‘manage’ themselves on every level when under added strain performed better.  The constant practice enhanced their skills for sure, but it also taught them how to deal with pressure which is just as important.  Prior to the final episode, we saw Adam, Claire and Callum put under pressure and it was Adam and Callum who held it together better than Claire.  Claire is an extremely talented cook but got rattled more than the others thus affecting her performance.  Unlike Jonathon who survived eight out of nine elimination challenges, Claire had only been in one before and you could tell.  She wasn’t ready for it.

Luckily for the MasterChef contestants they were only subjected to this for about three and a half months.  Working chefs are required to take the ‘heat’ everyday albeit in environments they can control.  This got me thinking about those professions where every action and the outcomes of those actions are scrutinised every day, placing pressure on those to perform at their best.  Professional Chefs and Sports People, Air Traffic Controllers and Surgeons come to mind and I am sure there are several others.  With the exception of weather for both the Air Traffic Controllers and some Professional Sports People, for the best part, all of these professions allow their people to work in environments they can directly control and influence.

Sales people also have the scrutiny of performance in common with these professions however, they are often working in environments that are not of their own making or design.  They need to be able to deal with, and adapt to things outside of their control, i.e variable conditions and new environments, meeting new people, going to new places, uncovering new issues; variables of many kinds.  And unlike recipes, which if executed correctly should turn out like they were intended, sales people are often presented with the ‘Mystery Box’ (same ingredients different outcomes) on a daily basis several times a day.  They have to be able to think on their feet, and create outcomes their clients need and want.  They need to know how this goes with this to that.

How do they handle the stress?  How do they develop their resilience to perform at higher and higher standards every day without cracking?  How do they pay attention and make sure every client feels like they are special and important when you have listened to 5-25 people already that day?

As sales people, our actions are assessed by ourselves, our managers and our clients.  We deal with acceptance and rejection of our offering every day.  Our activities are tracked and mapped.  There are league tables, etc.

Any self respecting, self managed, self aware sales person would be able to tell you where they are at each day.  They will also tell you that they have learned not to take ‘No’ as personal rejection – that’s a fatal mistake made by many a new sales person.  Selling is the ultimate ‘thinking on your feet’ and ‘doing’ job.  Like athletes, we need to be continually exercising and getting fitter, developing our skills, knowledge and mindset all at the same time.

Why don’t we teach ‘How to Build Resilience and a Healthy Mindset’?

A healthy mindset is just as, if not more, important as product knowledge and selling skills.  However, most businesses usually only train their people in business skills, product knowledge and processes.  What we need to do is help people become more emotionally aware, intelligent and resilient in a number of ways.  We need to work with the whole person and provide people with access to a range of tools, processes and techniques which give them insight and teach them how to manage their emotions. We need to teach people how to develop healthy and resilient attitudes so they can take the heat and really excel.

We can’t all go on MasterChef to have our resilience and cooking skills tested, nor do all of us have the opportunity to be elite athletes and learn what it is like to work under obvious performance pressure however, we can learn how to develop resilience every day in small ways.

Higher performers, unlike many other people, have searched for and found tools, processes and techniques that help them develop strategies to enhance their self awareness and emotional resilience, and allow them to make the most of their capabilities and the situations they find themselves in on a daily basis.

Developing a Healthy and Resilient Attitude

The first step to becoming more emotionally aware, healthy and resilient is the acknowledgment that there is room for improvement and taking the time to learn more about yourself.  It’s about honest, constructive feedback and learning not to take things personally.  That is what MasterChef is all about – continuous self improvement and self awareness.  That’s what MasterSelling is about!

Next week we will look at some of the tools, behaviours and attitudes that help build self awareness, health and emotional resilience.  If you want further information about this, please contact us directly.

Thanks to MasterChef for another excellent season – truly inspiring stuff!

Finally, Mary Anne Radmacher’s words sum up for me and probably many sales people and entrepreneurs our lot: “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says ‘I’ll try again tomorrow’.”

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

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

Many sales cultures are traditionally based on respect for authority, status and success, and encouraging competitive, challenging and achievement-oriented atmospheres. Although this is not true for all businesses, especially in the 21st Century! There are a growing number of businesses adopting more collegiate, lead team approaches. However, despite different types of cultures, sales performance and results are usually derived from the efforts of individuals. Harnessing those individual efforts to achieve synergy (the sum is greater than its individual parts) is a key task of management, yet so many get it wrong. Let’s take a look at one case study and see why.

What is wrong with the following scenario?

• Sales team has great products and service proposition and is part of an international business
• Sales team is made up of individuals who are measured on achievement of individual sales targets
• Each sales person is given a base retainer but earns the vast majority of their income on commissions made from sales converted
• There are a couple of high achieving sales performers, some average performers and some new sales people yet to prove themselves
• Annual staff turnover of sales staff has been about 30-40%
• Average tenure is 18 months
• The sales team is a state team all working in the same city
• Sales performance is purely measured on sales revenue results
• Sales League Tables are on public display showing who is ‘top sales dog’ each week
• The sales culture is based on respect for authority, status, success and competition
• The workplace atmosphere is competitive, challenging and achievement-oriented
• The sales people do NOT work to specific territories/markets or customer segments to manage and grow, instead it is ‘first in best dressed’
• The competitive environment encourages sales people to fight over leads that come into the business leading to ‘bullying’ tactics, attempts to ‘outdo’ each other, squabbling and fighting over who got to that client first
• Sales people ‘sand bag’ lists of clients just to make sure that the other sales people do not get them even if they themselves are not working on those leads at present
• Management provide no selling skills training, no sales coaching, no sales support, no CRM, no documented sales strategy nor a ‘go-to-market’ plan
• There are no formal sales management practices in place except for the weekly sales meeting which deteriorates into an ‘I’m better than you are’ bun fight

This is an example of lazy and ineffectual management. Only focused on outcomes with no regard for strategy, team structure, performance quality, clear leadership, staff retention, values or culture, this sales team is not geared for high performance and continues to lag behind its true potential.

Why create competition where it doesn’t need to be?

Why make selling harder than it needs to be?

‘Old school’ sales management said that you had to have sales people competing with each other or they wouldn’t sell. You weren’t a legitimate sales team if you didn’t have league tables. They said that internal competition would motivate people to sell more. Well they are wrong. The scenario above is not uncommon. It reflects an actual real life situation – happening right now.

This archaic approach doesn’t work. It’s outdated and old fashioned. If you want to generate real sales growth, try harnessing the energy, talent and ambitions of your sales people in a constructive way where they can all achieve their individual goals along with those of the company without trying to ‘kill’ each other in the process. Remember the old saying ‘a team of champions will not beat a champion team’?

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

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

After thousands of hours of study and many years honing technical skills to be a competent professional in your chosen field, it can come as a rude shock that you now need to sell your services and capabilities as well.  In today’s busy market, a competent selling capability isn’t a nice-to-have it is an essential business and life skill.

Interestingly, the topic of selling and growing a business often doesn’t feature in those university lectures does it?  In fact, selling is in many cases covered over and, if spoken about at all, was only mentioned as an unsavoury aspect employed by the desperate.  ‘We don’t have to sell because we are …’ are the famous last words of many failed professional or small business owners who focus only on their domain of expertise as the distinguishing factor.  Well those days are well and truly over.

This myopic view of the essential life skill of selling has often left people feeling vulnerable, confused and financially worse off.  No longer can you rely upon only your technical competence to guarantee your success or wait around for passive referrals.

The bad press that often accompanies the profession of selling doesn’t help either.  Often the only ‘selling’ stories we hear or read about in the media are those about shonky operators exploiting anyone they can, especially the vulnerable and weak. For instance, the plethora of insulation businesses and telemarketing firms exposed as fraudulent and incompetent has done nothing for the PR of selling.  This type of behaviour is labelled as ‘selling’ by the media which I argue is incorrect.  The type of behaviour and intentions exhibited by these operators and other ‘shonk merchants’ is actually fraud and deception, and in some cases bullying and intimidation. That is not selling.  This is one reason why many people don’t want to be in sales.  Who wants to be associated with ‘shonk’?

There is another issue too, the old Australian legacy of the ‘tall poppy’ syndrome.  Heaven forbid that you take proactive control over your destiny by getting out there and promoting your business and your capabilities so others may benefit.  Heaven forbid that you actually make a name for yourself.  ‘Who do they think they are?’ or ‘They’ve got tickets on themselves’ are some of the catch cries from people who begrudge those who get up and make what they do visible to other the people.

These syncs often confuse proactive, ethical self promotion, prospecting, and selling practices with self- grandiose, boasting or big noting.  Sure there are a few people for whom this is true; it’s all about them.  While these people can be highly entertaining in some instances, people often tire of them if there is nothing of real value and substance to support them.  The truth is one can lead a very successful sales career without becoming a boastful, self-absorbed git.  In fact, the research into highly effective sales professionals shows they are often humble, highly self-aware, collaborative, see the big picture and details, effective at what they do, and have a ‘we’ not ‘me’ focus.  They are very capable, resourceful, and engender trust on all levels.  They are worth knowing.  Is this what most of us want for ourselves?  Don’t we want people to know that if they work with us they will be better off as a result?

Despite the overexposure of those shonky operators by the media or the cringe factor brought about by the ‘tall poppy’ critics, there are a lot of good untold stories about ethical selling practices out there.  They often don’t make the mainstream media or general conversations because they are happening everyday in millions of ways.  It’s a bit like IT, we never celebrate or talk about the fact that our IT system hasn’t crashed we only hear and complain about it when something goes wrong.

Yet many people struggling with the concept of selling pay good money to go on selling skills courses to learn how to sell and yet they never put it into practice.  So before you pay money for selling skills, examine the state of your mind; the beliefs, feelings, and intentions you hold about selling.

Your beliefs, not your abilities, could be holding you and your career hostage. Before you can dedicate the energy to become skilful and masterful in something as complex as selling, you need to want to sell.

So let’s cut to the chase, for those of you who now need to consciously include the capability of selling in your business mindset and skills here are a few things to consider:

• Why do you need to sell? Who will benefit from you being able to sell competently?
• How will ethically and proactively promoting and selling your capabilities help you and your clients?
• What is your current view of selling? Do you hold onto a view that makes you feel ashamed of selling?  How is that view affecting your ability to keep your business healthy and viable?
• Can you reframe your thinking about selling? See it as a way to make what you do visible to the people who need to know about you so they can benefit from your skills and talent?
• How do you feel about the statement ‘everybody lives by selling something’?
• How can selling be incorporated into your business and align with your ethical values and desire to run an honourable business?
• Do you feel worthy of being able to earn what you are worth?

Sadly limiting beliefs about selling are a significant issue for many people and something that can be overcome with patience, clarity, and persistence. If this is an issue for you please feel free to contact us to discuss this further. We would be happy to help you get started on your sales career.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

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

Who wants to work with accountable, responsible, and self-directed sales people?  Of course we all want these types of sales people in every sales team.  Yet, most businesses do not support this by setting up their sales team to clearly measure and manage their sales performance.

Sales performance management begins with accurate role descriptions and perception, data collection, and measurement in line with set goals and strategy, however many organisations measure only one variable, sale results (outputs measures).

This type of approach leaves businesses and sales teams in the dark about how they arrived at their sales results making it hard to replicate good results and eliminate poor results.

What is needed in sales teams are clearer measures of what constitutes good sales performance and we need to be able to measure and manage the right things.

So, what is performance and why measure it?

Performance can be equated to behaviour, as it involves what people actually do. It is observable, measurable, and can be changed through the learning and application of new behaviours.  It is, however, important to select the right measure in a performance management system as performance measures can influence behaviours and attitudes within the organisation. A good performance measure will reinforce desired behaviours, while a poorly selected or incorrect measure can encourage behaviour that is unproductive and inappropriate.

An effective Sales Performance Management System measures sales results (output measures) and two additional critical variables, input and behavioural measures. The framework means this is done in a consistent and structured way.  The following diagram illustates examples of Input, Behavioural and Output measures for sales people.

By giving sales people access to explicit performance information about how they need to do their job they can begin to align themselves to organisational expectations.  With adequate training and coaching to support them we will now have sales people working consciously in their roles and on themselves to achieve greater, more competent performance.

Take this opportunity to check if, or how well, your sales people know their performance measures and are they on the path to being accountable, responsible, and self-directed sales people.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Sue Barrett is Managing Director of BARRETT