SalesUnlock Superstar Potential
When you have someone on staff who is a natural salesperson, put away the rule book and stash the scripts, say marketers Rich Baker and Gary Levitt in a column at MarketingProfs. “Encourage creativity, boldness, and authenticity. Tell them you have made a choice to embrace the soft science of human interaction over the hard science of metrics — come hell or high water,” they write. “With this lofty mindset in place, every customer interaction will be a slam-dunk and crackle with the intangibles you need to transform customers into loyal friends.”
SALESRead the body
Sales trainer David Richardson calls it one of the most common mistakes he sees on the salesfloor: not paying attention to the customer’s body language. “So many times, I see salespeople looking at the diamond, not at the customer. You’ve seen this diamond in the case for months. You need to look at him, see if the color changes in his face, see if his eyes start to dilate, look at his facial expressions, see how he positions his body, see how he holds the jewelry, etc. These are all signs that will help direct your sales presentation,” he says.
MOTIVATIONReframe Awkwardness
It was commencement season recently. And among the many wise bits of advice offered, we liked this one from business author Dan Pink: Reframe the way you view awkwardness. “Awkwardness is not an excuse. It’s an opportunity. It’s a signal from your brain that you’re about to learn, grow, and experience something novel. So, talk to new people. Try an unusual sport. Awkwardness is a paper tiger easily slayed.”
MANAGEMENTAsk How They Do It
You may have wondered why your staff hasn’t figured out the way you like to work: how you like to receive and give information, your best hours, your strengths, what small things are important to you, and so on. The reason is likely because you never told them. They, too, likely have their own way of getting things done. If you haven’t yet, ask them at their next review or during onboarding. Peter Drucker, the OG of management studies, called taking responsibility for relationships in this manner an absolute necessity to achieving an effective workplace.
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RECORD-KEEPINGBack Up Like a Pro
In most things in life, good enough is just fine. But that’s not the case when it comes to backing up your files. “Be a pro when it comes to storing and saving your data. Back up your backup,” says Kevin Kelly in his book, Excellent Advice for Living. Kelly recommends you have at least one physical backup and one backup in the cloud. And if you really want peace of mind, keep more than one of each. “How much would you pay to retrieve all your data, photos, notes, if you lost them? Backups are cheap compared to regrets,” he says.
MOTIVATIONMake It Easy to Show Up
There’s something in the phrase “showing up” that seems to demand grit and buckling down. But it doesn’t have to be that way, says James Clear, author of the bestseller Atomic Habits. “One of the things I recommend in the book is called the two-minute rule,” he told the podcaster Tim Ferriss recently. “Just take whatever habit you’re trying to build and scale it down to something that takes two minutes or less to do. So ‘read 30 books a year’ becomes ‘read one page,’ or ‘meditate five days a week for 30 minutes’ becomes ‘meditate for 60 seconds.’ You’re just trying to master the art of showing up. So, make it easy to do.”
PROBLEM SOLVINGWhat Could You Do?
Faced with a problem and not sure what to do? Instead of asking yourself, what should I do, make a small linguistic adjustment and ask yourself, what could I do? According to a study by researchers at Harvard Business School, the “could” question widens the possibilities, generating more and better potential solutions, whereas “should” tends to limit the possibilities to what comes to mind first and what has often been tried before.
CREATIVITYWrite Down Your Ideas
Don’t think you have great ideas? Thiago Forte, author of Building a Second Brain, recommends you do a 30-day test. “Once or twice a day, when you have an idea, write it down in a digital notes app. At the end of 30 days, open it up and look at this treasure trove of knowledge and try and tell me that that some of the total collected information is not going to be valuable for all your future projects and goals,” he said on the Dan Pink podcast.
