FOCUS! Finish up 2011 Strong!

The name of the game for the remainder of 2011 is, focus!  To successfully negotiate the current economic rip tides, focus on finishing up strong.  If you have been doing your job as a leader, whether leading yourself or others, you already have a set of goals you’ve been working to achieve this year.  A leader’s challenge is how to remain focused and not sabotage your organization’s efforts by getting distracted.  It sounds easy to do but, if you are like me and you listen to the news, you are being bombarded with negative input.  Thousands of people are succumbing to the widespread negativity.  You don’t have to be one of them.

With effort, you can learn to pay more attention to the positive information while prudently disregarding the negative.  Just as an athlete mentally trains hard on what she is doing right, not wrong, to perfect a vault or a three-point shot, you must learn to ignore the distractions that derail your progress.  A multitude of useless diversions await you each day.

Excessive e-mails are at the top of my clients’ time-wasting list of supremely distracting detritus of working in the electronic age.  The attention-getting e-mail notifications are notorious for enticing even the highest performers away from their critical job functions!  Once you open that e-mail you become ensnared in responding to the message creating a series of actions that pull you further and further off your intended task (=goal)!  This is self-sabotage!  Yes, sabotage, both personal and business.  Caroline Myss asserts, “all distractions are self-sabotage.”  Once you veer from your path, you exhibit symptoms of  The Atalanta Syndrome™.

Three Dysfunctional Styles of Leader Self-Sabotage

Entrepreneurs and business leaders can, unwittingly, put the brakes on the success of their own businesses!  It is not intentional.  It is more of an unconscious desire to retain control of the changes which occur at different stages of organizational growth.  For an organization to successfully transition to the next larger size, the leader must personally grow and change first. While the stages of growth are predictable, the speed at which it occurs is not.  Some companies skyrocket from the start.  Others grow more gradually, taking years, or even decades.  The market demands and economic conditions impact the organization’s growth and viability, but the sustaining factor is the leader.  If she perseveres and adjusts, the organization follows.  If she stops growing and changing, so does the organization.  A business that stops growing eventually dies.  Depending on the company, it could close up “overnight” or it may slowly ride out the final wave of its existence.

If we assume the business has a viable market to offer its products or services, it has the potential to grow in revenue and in profit.  To grow, the leader needs to “allow” it and embrace the inherent changes.  Considering that the overwhelming percentage of businesses in our country are small, we could conclude that there are millions of owners who like it that way.  Or, they do not know how to overcome the growing pains.  Or, they are resisting the natural growth of their company.  If you are choosing to stay small.  Kudos to you.  You know what you want and are pursuing it.  It is not an easy task.  As with all choices, there are the consequences and challenges to face.

The 5 Step Process Sale

It never ceases to amaze how so many business people over complicate the sales process!  In doing so, they make it intimidating.  Conversely, most small business owners have little or no sales training, even though they probably sell every day! It’s hard to get good at doing it when you don’t even know the basics.  To help you get started, I’ve outlined those steps below.  This 5 Step Process Sale applies to most selling situations whether it is for a product or a service. The length of time it takes to successfully complete all 5 Steps differs based on many factors.

The 5 Step Process Sale

Step 1- Develop Rapport.  You must establish credibility and belief in YOU, first! The products and services come second. Your prospects need to know they can depend on you and believe what you share with them.

Step 2- Fact Finding. Your goal is to determine what the PROSPECT wants/needs and WHY!  You want to make a sale, but what do they want?  Be patient.  This may take time.  It may take several phone calls and meetings.  It also depends on how effectively you ask questions to identify THEIR needs.

Step 3- Prepare your Presentation/Proposal.  Your goal is to determine which product/service best meets your prospect’s needs/wants.  This is NOT about how you can force your way through to close the deal.  Think of THEIR needs first!

Step 4- Presentation.  Present your solution to your prospect and answer their questions.

Step 5- Ask for the Decision.  Get the order signed. Make financial arrangements, if appropriate.  Thank them.

Yes, there is a lot to do in each of these steps!  Yes, you can make it more complicated because you have special circumstances; but, if you strip sales down to its bare bones, you end up with this 5 Step Process.  Think of basketball.  The pros still dribble, pass, run, shoot, and rebound.  They must do the basics or they cannot play the game.  Whether you are a starter in high school or a professional star, you still have to do the same things.  It is the same with Sales.

In an upcoming series on successful selling, I’ll delve into more detail. I’ll discuss the Traffic Light system to help you analyze when you have a Green Light allowing you to successfully move forward to the next step; a Yellow Light cautioning you to move slower; or a Red Light signaling you’ve raced ahead without achieving the goal for that Step.   For now, begin applying the 5 Step Process Sale to your activities.  Identify where you are in the Process with each prospect you have. Keep it simple.

Happy Selling!

Nancy

The Next Level

When discussing personal development, we always talk about “taking ourselves to the next level.”  Until a few years ago, this inferred, undefined hierarchy of behavior or mentality begged the question, “what are the levels?”  How do you know when you have “moved up,” if  you don’t even know what the levels are?  One day I bought the book, Power vs Force, by David R. Hawkins, MD, PhD and found the answer!

Dr. Hawkins cataloged 17 Levels of Human Consciousness via an extensive research process over decades! Voila!  I had more information than I dreamed possible.  I’ll let you comb through the book as I did (and have returned to often over the years) to familiarize yourself with the detail.  I won’t try to summarize the book in this brief blog as I couldn’t do it justice, but what I will do is share the significant points that struck me.

First, he defines Power as energy which is derived from noble, dignified, and positive meaning.  It gives, not takes. In contrast, Force consumes and moves against its opposition thereby draining itself and creating conflict.  Power is endlessly motivating.  I equated this to Maslow’s highest level of motivation, Self-Actualization.

Second, Hawkins stratified the levels based on the strength of Power/Energy attractor patterns.  Yes, he described Attraction like electromagnetic fields.  Each Level progresses upward logarithmically, NOT arithmetically.  So, Level 10 is not simply twice as powerful as level 5, making incremental increases result in major advances in Power! -YES, those small actions COUNT!!!  THEY MATTER!

Third, because what each of us does matters, the little steps included, not everyone on the planet needs to be at the top to produce an improved world!  We can relax and accept people for where they are and support them there.  We can stop pushing and struggling to try to get us all on the same Level!  Maybe that will be a realistic goal in the future when we’ve evolved more spiritually.  Hawkins states that the few who attain the highest Consciousness Levels absolutely “make up for” the masses at all the lower levels (see Chapter Four).

Fourth, he posits that everyone gives off an energy pattern on a specific frequency and that a permanent record is made of everything we say or do.  “There are no secrets; nothing is hidden, nor can it be.  Our spirits stand naked in time for all to see – everyone’s life, finally, is accountable to the universe” (p. 149).  Wow!  There is justice, but we may not see it in our lifetime.  That doesn’t mean we stop holding people accountable here and now, but it gave me reassurance that those notorious criminals who victimized humanity will be reconciled within the spiritual universe.

Finally, I saw the Levels  applied to business cultures!  After 30 years of working with a multitude of companies, this helped me quantify or classify their varying organizational personalities! I further superimposed Hawkins’ 17 Levels on my Transformation Continuum(TransCont17Levels) allowing me to link the consciousness of leaders to the cultures of the organizations they create!

A bonus he provides is a list of energetically positive vocabulary words for us to communicate better messages as we send our ripples out to the world.  Hawkins published this book in 1995, 10 years prior to The Secret.  Guess what the first word is on his list?  ABUNDANCE!

Gratefully,

Nancy

Twitter

I bit the bullet and ventured out into Twitterland! It’s been a good experience. I’m enjoying the exchanges I’ve had with a wide variety of people across the nation and the world! I’ve “met” some really nice, helpful people who are genuine in their communications. The topics range from business to music to personal development to human interest! I started out with the intent to focus exclusively on business, but it’s been more than that because your own individuality and interests come through naturally.

I’ve found my eclectic passions emerging in the dialogues that ensue 140 characters at a time. Twitter teaches you to be brief and clear in your message. That would be good practice for my clients who wrestle with their habit of talking too much!

The biggest challenge is, success! Yes, success. Success at making good contributions to other people’s feeds and lives. Success at finding and attracting those who have similar interests and needs. Success at drawing followers and trying to keep up with all of the comments that pop up when you’ve been away from T-land!
All-in-all, I’m enjoying Twitter – using it and learning how to master this new technology. I’ll keep you posted, but less than a month into it, I am pleased with the results.