In recent months, I have spoke with a variety of companies and I have been dismayed to find that their salespeople always start their sales meetings, appointments and presentations with a corporate monologue. They discuss “who we are,” “what we do” and “who we serve.”

They talk about the awards they have won, the clients they have worked with, how long they have been in business and other self-serving propaganda. Contrary to popular belief, this approach is not effective.

Here are a few points to remember:
  • Prospects don’t really care about you or your company.
  • Decision makers don’t care about the awards you have won.
  • Most people don’t care what other companies you have worked with.
Here is a more effective approach: Open your presentation by discussing your understanding of your prospects’ situation, goals and objectives. Even if you have done your due diligence prior to your meeting and know some of your prospects’ key pain points or potential problems, it is much more effective to review those concerns before you launch into your solution. Here’s why:
  • Things change. Reviewing your prospects’ key issues before you jump into a presentation ensures that the information you were initially given is still valid and relevant. If your prospects’ situation has changed, you can modify your approach accordingly.
  • New people may be present. It’s not uncommon for people who were not involved in the initial discovery conversation to be present at a sales presentation. Starting your presentation with an overview of their situation, goals and objectives brings these individuals up to speed and gives them the opportunity to add their perspective.
  • It changes the dynamic. Rather than launching into a sales pitch, this approach encourages a two-way dialogue and exchange of information.
  • It captures their attention. Most buyers and decision makers are used to passive, one-way sales presentations. And most of them are busy, which means they may be distracted. This approach captures their attention and makes them more likely to pay attention to the entire presentation.
Research has shown that you have 30 seconds or less to make a great first impression. Don’t waste it by talking about your company, its awards or anything else that is not important to your prospects. Use those critical moments to make a great impression and to connect with them instead.

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Actions that are driven by the heart play a big part in our personal relationships. The question is: What role do they have in business?

While the business arena may seem like another world – one that relies on number crunching and tough decisions – it's important to remember that the major force behind any successful business is the level of service it provides to its customers. What you are about to discover is that elevating your company's service also means elevating the intention behind it.

Johnny the Bagger... A True Story
Johnny is a bagger at a grocery store. Not only is Johnny's position considered entry level, he happens to be a person with Down syndrome. It would be easy to look at him and figure the most he can offer his company is the successful performance of his work duties. But, by acting from the heart, Johnny managed to put his personal stamp on his job and in turn, create wonderful memories for his customers.

After clocking out, Johnny would go home and look for an inspirational thought of the day. When he couldn't find a thought that he liked, he made up one of his own. With his dad's help, Johnny printed them on small pieces of paper and signed his name to the back. At work, when Johnny would bag the customers' groceries, he'd include this inspirational thought and then wish them a nice day.

Johnny's actions appear nowhere in his job description. The only place they can be found is in his heart. Through these thoughtful actions, Johnny built a fan base. Customers began lining up at his checkout stand, refusing to switch to a shorter line. They'd tell you they did so in order to read his inspirational message. But the truth is Johnny made a real connection with them. As the store's patronage increased, co-workers caught on and began applying his example to their own job duties. The store became the talk of the town.

Actions from the Heart
We are all human beings and part of the human condition is to feel emotion. So, what role do actions from the heart play in business? They play a very big role.

Many businesses have the ability to put forth a good product along with excellent service. But how many companies do it by way of heartfelt action? The point is that competition in business can be intense. And while the practice of putting forth a top-notch product is important, there is much more to the story.

By connecting in a heartfelt way with your customers and clients, you are showing them that you care about their world as well. The result is great memories for all concerned. It's easy to get caught up in the bottom line. But the simple truth is that by acting from the heart, we improve that bottom line, an inspirational thought of its own.

Just as it's important for you to apply Johnny's example, it is equally important to encourage your employees to do the same. You never know, there may be a Johnny already working in your company.
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Compromise is something we all face at one point in our lives. The government has been facing such a situation recently, discussing whether or not to raise the debt ceiling. While the compromises you'll approach may not be as far-reaching as the one Washington has been facing, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be prepared.

Ludwig Erhard, a German politician and the Chancellor of West Germany from 1963 through 1966, once noted that, "A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece." Here are a few suggestions to help you learn the art of compromising.

Invite a third party to attend
Having someone else in the room to monitor the conversation can avoid some of the traction an intimate conversation brings. A neutral person doesn't give a side an unnatural advantage or outnumber the other. Think of this person as a referee, someone to make sure everything goes smoothly. Encourage this person to give you his or her thoughts–it's always helpful to get a fresh perspective on a situation you're familiar with.

Listen to the other side's argument completely
Just because you're there to present your views doesn't mean you can't listen to what the other side has to say. Perhaps they have another approach you weren't aware of, or they see a flaw in your plan that you didn't see. Recognize their concern and points before listing yours so that first, it proves you're willing to listen and conduct this compromise in a civil manner and second, that you aren't there to attack or discredit their argument. Show them the courtesy and respect of acknowledging their argument and they should respond in kind.

Don't go in expecting to win
Unless you have specific data that proves that their solution will not work, do not walk in expecting to win. If you walk in to the meeting thinking you've already won, then why go? There is a difference between confidence and arrogance, and your opponent can tell which attitude you have.

If you do have this data, simply present it without malice–don't rub it in. Remember, you're not there to attack them. Give every opportunity to show that you can conduct the conversation in a civil manner, and future conversations will go smoothly.

Don't get defensive
It's important that you take the emotion out of the meeting in order to stay impartial. Just because your position isn't as attractive as the other option does not mean you lost. When presenting your position, honestly list out the pros and cons to your solution–think big picture. If you can't accept your way, flaws and all, your opposition won't either.

Set goals and a deadline for the meeting
The last thing anyone wants is to have something like this dragged out or delayed indefinitely. Set a timetable for this issue to be solved or "Plan B" goes into effect. It's reasonable to think that both parties would like to avoid Plan B, so as long as they are aware of when the negotiations stop taking place they can reach a solution before the deadline.

Hopefully your future compromises will go smoothly with these tips. Remember it's not your way or the highway–there's more than one path to a destination!
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Once and a while, a good idea comes along. You're sitting in traffic, shaving, staring out the window in a coffee shop, and BAM! an idea strikes you. It might be for your marketing plan, your book club, or a brand new business... suddenly it appears, shining in your mind.

Sometimes you think your idea is so ground breaking that your instinct is to keep it to yourself. "This could change my business, my life, the world!" "And it could. Provided you share it with others.

You see, there's a funny trend in revolutionary ideas: They generally don't become revolutionary until other people have improved them. Your good idea is probably one half or one third of a great idea. In order to reach its full potential, it must cross-pollinate with others.

Great business minds often say that their most successful businesses aren't the ones they set out to create. What happens? A good business idea gets into the market and the forces there challenge it, change it. Partners, clients, friends, family... they all contribute and inspire changes which take the idea to the next level.

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   How many times in your life have you met someone who knew what they were doing was destructive but couldn't admit that there actions were wrong, immoral or unethical ?

  How many times have you encountered a person who was doing the wrong thing but yet when you approached them they would justify their actions and blame it on other people or circumstances ?

  How many times have you met someone who knew that smoking, drinking, cheating or doing something was not good for them or the people around them ?

 This is called Denial - Are you in Denial ?
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Self acceptance is being loving and happy with who you are NOW. Some call it self-esteem, others self-love, but whatever you call it, you'll know when your accepting yourself cause it feels great. Its an agreement with yourself to appreciate, validate, accept and support who you are at this very moment, even those parts you’d like to eventually change. This is important...even those parts you'd eventually like to change. Yes, you can accept (be okay with) those parts of yourself you want to change some day.

The Motivation Behind Your Lack of AcceptanceIf acceptance feels so good and is so good for us, then why don’t we accept ourselves? The answer is motivation. We use our lack of acceptance (punishment - cause it feels bad) as motivation to get us to do, not do, be, and not be what we think we should. Many  people believe that if they accepted themselves as they are, they wouldn’t change or that they wouldn’t work on becoming more of who they want to be. Typically, we judge ourselves unfavorably  with the hope it will motivate us to change. We hope if we feel bad enough about  ourselves, that maybe that will motivate us to change. Does this work?  Sometimes, but only short term. Most times all it does is cause us to feel bad  which saps the energy you might have used to make changes. It can be a vicious  cycle. It works exactly counter to what you wanted to do. 

“Acceptance allows change. The 'acceptance mode' includes everything, even my judgments. It allows me to be okay now, even before I reach my goals.”

“When you begin to accept yourself the way you are right now, you begin a new life with new possibilities that did not exist before because you were so caught  up in the struggle against reality that that was all you could do.”

So if it doesn’t work, why do we keep doing it? Because we hope it will work. And if you don’t know any other way to change, what options do you have? We’ve been trained to believe that in order to change, we need to first feel bad about  it. That if we’re accepting and loving of that particular quality, that we won’t  do anything to change the situation, which is not true! You don’t have to be  unhappy with yourself to know and actively change those things you’d like to change about yourself. Acceptance is actually the very first step in the process  of change. For more about this, see “an  interview about acceptance

Think of acceptance of yourself like being okay with where you live now. You may want a bigger house one day. You may dream about that new home. But there ARE advantages to living in a smaller home if you only took the time to think about it. It is possible to be happy with the home you're in now, while still dreaming and working to make your new home a reality.

 Process Of Acceptance
Acceptance exists at the core of your being. It is your default status. In order to reach this base level of acceptance, you need only remove the items laying on top. To do this, you must first identify all the things you do not accept about yourself. Then, one by one, eliminate them by examining and questioning your beliefs around that issue.

http://www.selfcreation.com/acceptance/index.htm 
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Over the last 20 or so years I have met people who come from all different occupations and backgrounds. As I get to know these people better to find out what they do for a living I am always amazed at how important some of these people that I have met REALLY are important.

These people are company executives, presidents of corporations, founders of non-profit groups and people who " on the outside " look like they have it all together.

What I am more amazed about is the lack of existence with their own families. These executives are so married to their status that they have lost touch with their spouse or even more importantly the relationship that they are missing with their children.

About 10 years ago I heard a speaker from Bill Glass Ministries talk to our church. This ministries group takes volunteer men to prisons to minister to other men who are in jail. They told us that 95% of the men who are in prison have one thing in common and that is the lack of a Father figure when they were growing up.

So my question to you is this:  Which do you think is more important to your kids - the title that you have at your job or the amount of time that you spend with your kids ?

Bottom line is your kids don't care how important you are. All they care about is how important you make them feel.
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Here’s your call to action: together we can end voicemail. Maybe that’s a bit ambitious, but at the very least collectively we can reduce it.

Despite advents in technology there is no getting around the fact that text is easily the most efficient content format there is. It’s scan-able, easily transferable, distribution scales and the processing of it can be archived or even automated. Even creating it is easier than other forms of content.

Which gets to the title of this post: why is voicemail still used?

My theory: it’s a habit of the older generation, so they keep using it. That’s the only thing keeping it alive. My generation uses because we have to (for context, I’m 28) but we don’t really enjoy the process. The generation younger than me is going to balk at it because they’ve always been networked and had phones with text messaging.

With this in mind, I think voicemail should be added to the list of living artifacts.

Voicemail is the worst kind of inbox because it’s terribly inefficient (similar to a regular mailbox) and there is no native way to implement an organization or filtering approach. The fact that we’ve created tools to transform voicemail to text says it all: text is the superior format for transmitting time-shifted messages.

Consider some scenarios:

The “need to chat with someone in real-time”

Scenario: you call someone and they don’t pickup. But you don’t want to leave them a message, you wanted to actually chat with them in real-time to say what you need to. This happens a lot. You could leave a voicemail where the message content simply asks the person to call you back, but that wastes both your time. For the caller: have you noticed how absurdly long the process is to get to through to a cell phone voicemail? For the recipient: it is obnoxious to receive a voicemail where the only message content is “please call me back.” No one finds that useful.

Solution: modern phones have a “missed call” feature for exactly this purpose. Seeing you have missed a call from a contact should be sufficient information for us to know to call someone back. As a society, can we come together and agree on that? If it is really important, at this juncture the respectful thing to do is text your contact saying please call me back ASAP. A text message is as far as you should go – texts are high priority (and efficient) ways to transmit a quick bit of information. It is never appropriate to leave a voicemail that just says “call me back” the correct answer here is a text.

The “can you please do these 3 things?”

Scenario: you call someone to review a list of 3 things you need them to do and ensure clarity on all of them. Except the person doesn’t pick up. At this point, you could leave a voicemail outlining the 3 things you need done, but there is no accountability here and you’re really trusting someone is going to listen to the whole message.

Solution: in this case if you’re assigning tasks, skip the phone call all together and assign the task within your project management system. Note in the task if there are questions or what you’re asking is unclear, please call or email you for clarification. This minimizes the need for phone discussions and keeps your team focused on execution vs. meeting. If you’re not using a project management system you probably should be, but even still email is a superior format to assign tasks than a voicemail.

Let me demonstrate:
Easy, right? You can scan all of that in a few seconds, quicker than I could say it to you on voicemail. It’s also faster for me to type it than to wait to reach your voicemail.

The “never responded to my email”

Scenario: you’re trying to reach a prospect or team member that never responded to your email. It’s important enough you’re calling them, but you get their voicemail so you decide to leave a message sharing in great detail what it is you need from them.

Solution: if it’s a prospect they probably received your email. If you follow up with a phone call and get their voicemail they are most likely ignoring you. Sure, they might be busy on both accounts but if you allowed sufficient time between communications and they never got back to you, wake up to reality: they’re ignoring you. The lead is cold, recycle back to marketing to nurture until deemed qualified to try again. If a team member, try re-forwarding your email and flagging with a higher priority. 99% of the time this works. If it doesn’t: this is likely a systemic issue, your processes are broken and you need a better system to manage your team.

The one time leaving voicemail might make sense is if you’re in a place you can’t quickly write an email or add a task to your project management system and you absolutely need to deliver time sensitive information to someone. Of course, this is not ideal because most people don’t place a priority on checking voicemail messages anyway due to the time-intensive nature of doing so. Instead you should work to equip your team for success ahead of time so you’re not put in a situation like the above.

Anyway – in these cases if you absolutely, positively need to deliver information to someone right now you should probably try people’s cell phones rather than leave a voicemail. If they know you’re in a situation you might need to deliver information in real-time, they’ll pick up.

I guess I’m struggling to find a use case for voicemail. It is easily my lowest priority, highest time cost inbox and really one I would rather just see go away. I’ve even thought about replacing my personal voicemail with a message such as “I am sorry but I no longer accept voicemail, please email or text me if you’d like a response” and then listing my email address.

What do you think? Voicemail: about as relevant as a fax machine?

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All of us have chapters we wish we could rewrite. Dr Harold Bloomfield says, ‘Unresolved emotional pain wreaks havoc on your immune system, cardiac function, hormone levels, and other physical functions. We must make peace with our past because our life may literally depend on it.’ To get over your past you must, first, start looking at it differently. Reframe it. Ask, ‘How did it make me stronger? What do I know now that I didn’t know then?’ Don’t focus on what you lost, but on what you gained. Second, understand the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is feeling bad about what you’ve done – it’s healthy; shame is feeling bad about who you are – it’s toxic and debilitating. All of us have things we’d like to change about ourselves, but when God created us He said, ‘… it was very good… ‘ (Genesis 1:31 NKJV), so start seeing yourself as He sees you. Third, stop punishing yourself with the ‘if only’s’. After stumbling badly and having God pick him up, David wrote, ‘Happy is the person whose sins are forgiven… whom the Lord does not consider guilty… ‘ (Psalm 32:1-2 NCV). Forgive yourself; God has. Because He sees you through the cross, you are ‘accepted’ (Ephesians 1:6 NKJV). Finally, move from pain to gain. Healing takes time, so expect some anger, fear and sadness. Don’t disown them; they’re part of the process. But don’t adopt them either; know when it’s time to move on. You can’t walk backwards into the future, and the future God has in mind contains more happiness than any past you can remember.

Your past can either be an albatross around your neck, or the wind beneath your wings. So, run on and accept what happened. If you don’t, you’ll keep reliving it. While working in the Congo as a missionary, Helen Roseveare was brutally raped. Writing about it she says, ‘I must ask myself, “Can I thank God for trusting me with this experience, even if He never tells me why?”‘ The secret of trust doesn’t lie in answers; it lies in acceptance. It’s knowing that in the midst of whatever has happened, is happening or will happen, God is in control. Either you fix your mind on that and determine to live again, or go through life feeling like you never got a fair shake. Then, you must bury the past or live with its ghosts. Rehashing old hurts is like watching the same movie over and over, hoping for a different ending. It’s not going to happen! Learn from it and move on. You don’t drown by falling into the water, you drown by staying there. Get out of the blame game. Blame is a waste of time. When you blame yourself you multiply guilt, chain yourself to the past, and increase your already low self-esteem. When you blame God you cut yourself off from His power, doubt replaces trust, and you put down roots of bitterness that make you cynical. When you blame others you add to the distance between them and you, and lose the only option that works – forgiveness. Instead, trust the One who promised to ‘make all things new’, and move forward.

My mission is to help people overcome their past and live for today - Robert J Russell, Speaker

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Social media and the new way people interact with each other on the web has changed the way businesses market themselves - or at least it should have.Today people want to get to know you before they buy. They want to understand you, get to trust you and then they might want to do business with you.

Let's go back in time for a moment. It wasn't that long ago that your daily sales routine involved sitting by a telephone and cold calling a list of numbers.


Did that work?  No.

How often are you glad that your day's been interrupted by a cold caller? We all hate it so why do it?

I'd like to say those days are long gone but sadly there are a few companies out there that haven't realised that that's not the way it works anymore.

Why use resources so inefficiently?

All those people you have on the phone could be used in other ways - such as interaction through social media and enhancing your customer service.

What are the chances of one of those people on your list sitting at home (or in the office) thinking "I wish someone would call and offer me life insurance because I really need it and have no friends to ask for a recommendation of where they got their policy from"?

Probably zero.

And should you strike it lucky and get a bite from one of your calls, is that one customer really worth alientating yourself from the other 1999 you called that week?

I think not.

Today's marketing is about building relationships and having conversations - and that's what makes social media such a powerful marketing tool.

You may be shaking your head right now and saying "but how can I measure ROI?"

The truth is you can't, but that's not what it's about. It's not about a return on your investment, it's about a return on the relationships you build.

Using platforms such as Facebook or Twitter will show people you are a company who cares about its reputation and its customers. More and more people are using Twitter to vent their anger when something goes wrong. If you're a company that monitors it, picks up a problem and deals with it straight away you're going to be seen as a caring company.

But if you're not part of the conversation and their vent goes unanswered, it will probably lead to more dissenting voices until they become so loud you'll be seen as a company that couldn't give two hoots about your customers.

Forget the old sales methods - they don't work anymore. Embrace social media, have conversations and listen to what your customers are saying.

Be open, be approachable and above all stop the cold calling - no one likes it.
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