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by Rick Baker
On Mar 2, 2010
Thank you folks who read my blogs.
And, thank you for the feedback you have provided…the criticism, the pats on the back, the suggestions, the questions, and the requests.
This blog is a response to a specific request, a request to provide a sample of a sales lesson. Over the years I have been honoured to participate in some terrific email exchanges with sales people. During these exchanges, I strived to share sales philosophy laced with content-value, wrapped in humour.
The following is an introduction to these email exchanges…a gentle sample.
*****
“Dear ____ __
The key is: are you prepared to choke down all your pride, be comfortable knowing next to nothing while giving ‘our technical geniuses back at the office’ all the credit, and make the customers feel like winners?
Get Columbo1 down. Get that role learned. That’s a real good first role to play.
Have fun learning that Columbo role. Then, as you get it, you will have a solid, strong base-character in your sales repertoire.
Why push on ropes when you can quickly ‘noose them’ around your own neck and let the customer hang you quickly and get it over with or .... save you? When you noose your own neck the customer has to do something: hang you, save you....or, on those real special occasions just break up in laughter.
People want to feel powerful. People want to feel smart. People want to feel in control. People want to laugh and relieve their stress.
Why smack your face into brick walls when you can role-play them to not exist? Do like Mr. Magoo2 used to do. He feared nothing. He saw no obstacles. He always got to where he wanted to go. Danger couldn’t get him. Now, that guy would have made a great salesman.
The traps are only real if you allow them to catch your mind.”
*****
Footnotes:
My next blog will be about public speaking…
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Sales
by Rick Baker
On Feb 25, 2010
Have you ever suspected there is no such thing as constructive criticism?
Here are some words from Professor James Harvey Robinson’s essay 'The Mind In The Making’
“We sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without
any resistance or heavy emotion, but if we are told we are
wrong we resent the imputation and harden our hearts.”
William James said,
“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”
Both of those quotes were used by Dale Carnegie. The William James quote appears in Carnegie’s 1936 classic, ‘How To Win Friends & Influence People’. [The title says it all.]
The key Dale Carnegie message is – Every human being wants to feel important.
Carnegie teaches we should not criticize because it will be received as an attack on the person’s need to feel important. And, that need to feel important is a huge, consuming need.
Some argue that same need is the thing that causes people to criticize. That is, we act like a mirror perceiving in others the faults that actually are our own faults.
Perhaps it is as difficult to refrain from criticizing others as it is to accept criticism from others.
I have a saying…work at having thick skin and a thin skull. To the extent we can thicken our skin we can tolerate criticism. Thick skin allows us to contain in safety our self-image and our self-esteem. It protects ‘our importance’. To the extent we can have a thin skull we can be open-minded. We can, as Stephen Covey recommends, “seek first to understand then to be understood”. A thin skull allows us to be tolerant and to appreciate the differences in people.
Considering all of this, is there no such thing as constructive criticism?
My next blog will be a sample from a series of Sales Lessons, written a few years ago.
by Rick Baker
On Feb 23, 2010
Here’s a quote from an article titled ‘Does Corporate Culture Matter? The Case of Enron’, written by A.J. Schuler, Psy.D.
“Enron’s corporate culture best exemplified values of risk taking, aggressive growth and entrepreneurial creativity. These are all positive values. But these values were not balanced by genuine attention to corporate integrity and the creation of customer - and not just shareholder - value. Because the Enron corporate culture was not well grounded, a single scorecard - maximized price per share of common stock - became its reason for being, and even its positive values became liabilities.”
Why was I reading about Enron?
2 reasons…
- We were having a discussion about corporate values and culture.
- During my energy career we worked with many Enron and ex-Enron people: many personal experiences are still vivid in my memory.
Here’s the gist of our discussion…our conclusion.
We agreed, over our business careers many of our failures were consequences of opposed values. We had one set of values. The other folks had a different set of values. And the two sets of values were in [unspoken] conflict.
Expanding on A.J. Schuler’s point, the corporate values reported by Enron appear to be positive. The fact is to those values are only positive when they are guided and bounded by certain attributes of character.
What attributes of character?
A.J. Schuler used the words ‘genuine attention to corporate integrity’.
That captures it…as long as we have a common definition of ‘corporate integrity’, we have a common description of ‘genuine attention’, and we communicate our views about integrity accurately.
That’s where the devil really does hide in the details.
A few years ago, we did a real-life, SouthWestern-Ontario-CEO study of Integrity. If you would like to know the results of our study…email me and I will send a little report to you. Contact Rick
My next blog will be titled To agree or not to agree, that is the question.
by Rick Baker
On Feb 18, 2010
People only do 3 things: (1) Good Habits, (2) Bad Habits, and (3) New Things.
This is the final blog in a 10-blog series about Habits, doing New Things, and Change.
In the last blog, I wrote: Business people continuously face Problems. Some people handle the Problems quickly and effectively. Some do not. There are many reasons why some people do not handle Problems as well as other people or as well as they could if they themselves could do if they were operating at their best.
The same applies to Change.
Most people struggle with or resist Change some of the time.
Many people struggle with or resist Change most of the time.
Business is about People and Process.
And, since People design the Process…when you boil it down, business is about People.
We can help People succeed at Change For The Better when we:
(1) understand the basics of psychology and physiology and
(2) provide ideas and tools [New Things] to create Good Habits
Good Habits are one key to Change For The Better.
In this blog series, I presented some facts, all samples of things we can do to help people create Change For The Better.
My next blog will be about Corporate Values.
by Rick Baker
On Feb 16, 2010
A New Habit, P=2S+O© and Change For The Better
This is the 9th blog in a 10-blog series about Habits, doing New Things, and Change.
Now, P=2S+O© will be discussed in terms of Good Habits and Change For The Better.
P=2S+O© means: for every Problem [P] there are at least 2 Solutions [S] and possibly one or more Opportunities [O]. Be alert for Problems and, when you find them, replace them with at least 2 Solutions.
This philosophy/tool can be embraced by most employees. So, when employees encounter Problems they can, on their own, replace them with Solutions and perhaps also identify an Opportunity.
I created a P=2S+O© template, a tool people can carry with them as a constant reminder of our desired approach to Problems.
Business people continuously face Problems. Some people handle the Problems quickly and effectively. Some do not. There are many reasons why some people do not handle Problems as well as other people or as well as they could if they were operating at their best.
P=2S+O© can help.
When people start to useP=2S+O© it is a New Thing.
If they keep using P=2S+O© then it becomes a Good Habit…a Change For The Better. Most experts say it takes 30 days to create a habit. So, working with P=2S+O© for 30 days should create a new Good Habit.
The next blog, the final blog in this series, will summarize and wrap up this sampling of things that can help us create Change For The Better.
by Rick Baker
On Feb 11, 2010
Human Strengths & Weaknesses and Change For The Better
This is the 8th blog in a 10-blog series about Habits, doing New Things, and Change.
When we request Changes, make sure those Changes align with people's strengths.
While New Things can be the bridge between Bad Habits and Good Habits, sometimes it doesn't make sense to cause other people to do New Things.
In general, we do not want to cause Change that makes a person work in an area where they are not strong.
That may sound trite.
"Of course we would not, in general, ask people to do New Things or make other Changes if the Change caused the person to work at things they were weak at."
The challenge is:
How do we truly know another person's weaknesses and strengths?
More basic:
How does a person truly know his/her own strengths and weaknesses?
And, more important:
Often, for many different reasons, people refuse to share their personal 'secrets'.
As mentioned in a prior blog, there are assessments to help us better understand our human strengths. Marcus Buckingham advises we, in business, will achieve much more if we help people gain full advantage from their areas of strength while reducing, where possible, the amount of time they spend trying to fix their weaknesses or work at things that do not align with their strengths.
So, aligning Changes with people's strengths is something we can consider when we request Changes For The Better.
The next blog in this series will cover another practical tool - P=2S+O© - a tool designed to help people make Changes For The Better.
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