A message to experienced sales people…

Do you ever ask yourself, “Am I firing on all pistons?” or “Am I playing the sales game with attention to all of the critical essentials of effective gameplay?”  I think many sales people who are ambitious and excellence-driven wonder this, yet they procrastinate about resolving their concerns.  Avoidance is also human nature, so many deny there’s any need for concern at all.  If you don’t routinely ask yourself these questions, then you should.

Study of adult learning reveals that it is human nature to be drawn to learn new concepts that present themselves with a context or experience of novelty.  We tend to give prioritized attention to new and seemingly uniquely valuable ideas.  Yet as time passes, novelty and prioritization of previously fresh ideas lessens.  We take for granted the value of concepts, and they lose their luster in our field of attention.  It is a false assumption (most everyone makes) that, if we learned a concept before then we “know” it forever…  And since we know it forever, well then, we will always benefit from that knowing and we most certainly apply that concept at every opportune occasion.  Right?  Yeah, right.

What’s more, even important concepts, such as effective communication techniques or productive business strategies, from which we would benefit to re-consider and perhaps implement with a new vigor, are dismissed reflexively if the mind thinks, “oh, that sounds like something I’ve heard before.”  The mind reacts with, “I already know that, I’m smart enough and good enough as it is, and so everything is fine as it is.”

A moment of earnest and honest introspection reveals to us:

• We carry around the false assumption that we we know everything we’ve ever seen before.
• And we keep falling back into living on auto-pilot mode, “good enough and fine.”

If you don’t choose to ambitiously act out extraordinarily on your own behalf, then your mind will live your life for you as “good enough” and “fine.”  I don’t know about you, but “good enough” and “fine” have never been enough for me!  So, I seek-out fresh, bold, concise, and compelling new presentations of fundamentals for effectiveness, productivity, and success as often as I can.  While experiencing a same-old idea that is newly-framed, and so freshly-compelling, we give renewed meaning and newly-inspired attention to the most recent presentation of a concept that we have perhaps previously learned and since let slip away from our active mindfulness.

About how learning works and a message to students of sales, new sales people, and people who merely want to learn to be more effective communicators and be more persuasive…

When you are seeking out resources for engaging your mind to increase your knowledge and improve your effectiveness, some resources are better than others.  The field of educational psychology tells us that we learn more information more quickly and more deeply when the information is presented using generally-conversational language, carefully-chunked concepts, patterns, memory devices, and triggers.  So, whenever I am learning new ideas and concepts, I don’t just look for the book with the brightest colors and the glossiest cover…  I seek out resources that employ information presentation techniques and formatting that I know will best support my understanding of the information and ease the challenge of retaining new information.

THE GOOD NEWS for new sales people and experienced sales professionals…

Dale Brakhage’s book, ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette, is an ideal refresher course for essential sales concepts.  To begin with, the ABC-format of this book is easy-to-read and very understandable.  Readers will appreciate the bite-sized chapters and enjoy the insights and anecdotes featured throughout the book.  Moreover, ABC’s of Selling incorporates techniques to enhance learning.  Readers of this book become engaged in a “conversation” with the authors.  The style of the text is less formal and more accessible to attract and hold the attention of younger readers and those who communicate more frequently via the Internet.  Selling is persuasive communication, a complex process.  ABC’s of Selling breaks the complex process of selling into simple behaviors that readers can easily learn and demonstrate.  Those behaviors, called essential concepts, appear in a matrix, the alphabet, which all readers can easily recall and recite correctly at any time.  Associating the simple behaviors of selling with the alphabet provides readers with an effective memory device, called a trigger which allows them to recall the behaviors easily.

Also a valuable feature of the of the book, acclaimed celebrity chef, author, philanthropist, speaker and advertising industry business woman, Edie Hand, co-authored ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette by contributing the book's "etiquette essentials."  Hand has authored, co-authored, and helped to develop over twenty books ranging from inspirational cookbooks to novellas from a strong woman’s perspective.  Not only does ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette recommend essential “selling” strategies and methods for expressing yourself and your ideas, but the book also emphasizes a dimension of sales that is often neglected, the human-to-human conscientious courtesy of “business etiquette.”  Merging selling tactics and the practice of better human relations through business etiquette will help you learn to listen with intent and empathy, express and demonstrate respect for others with appropriate protocols and manners, better manage and present your ideas, work efficiently to achieve goals and objectives, communicate effectively, and ultimately create mutually-valuable and appreciated transactions of exchange between people.

I was recently enlisted to edit Brakhage’s ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette, and I felt so strongly about the value of the book that when I was invited to do so, I enthusiastically contributed the foreword to the book.  Most people find it difficult to sell their ideas.  Even more people struggle when trying to sell products or services.  People everywhere want to succeed in business and need to know how to be persuasive and behave appropriately.  Everyone should learn how to sell!  ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette can help you communicate more effectively, persuade others to accept your ideas and agree with you, and get more of what you want out of life.  ABC’s of Selling with Etiquette reinvigorates our focus on the fundamentals of communication, persuasiveness, and sales principles and tactics.

Buy "ABC's of Selling with Etiquette" now!

~   ~   ~
Achievement Coach Greg Kilgore
360° Achievement Coaching
Providing a 360° Perspective for
Creating Awareness, Accountability,
Action, and Extraordinary Achievement 

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To experience your greatest fulfillment and to achieve your best, you must set "peace of mind" as your first priority, and then create your personal life (and your worklife and workplace) to support it.  This is true at an individual's level of responsibility for self.  As well, this should be an on-going personnel-maintenance/support issue for management and executive leaders within companies and organizations.  It's not default human nature to achieve and thrive with this approach, so it requires extraordinary intention, commitment, and efforts to apply this methodology:  First priority, peace of mind...  All other priorities follow that priority.  It is amazing how individual performance becomes extraordinary and organizations become authentically powerful and successful when this commitment is adopted within the organization's mission and is honored by the individuals embracing it.

Get a 360° perspective, and take action now!

GREG L. KILGORE, Achievement Coach
360° Achievement Coaching:
Creating Awareness, Accountability,
Action, and Achievement 

We all have our weak suits.  And some of them may be moving into the area of mission-critical or values-critical.  And there are things we all need to learn to give us the edge we want or to unlock the potential we strive to fulfill.  One of the two greatest values of a coach has always been the consultant's role:  to give us new and useful points of view.  Perspective is the slipperiest and most valuable commodity on this planet.  No matter where you are, no matter how low you go, your viewing point about where you are and where you want to go and how you could get there will be a priceless commodity.  We need to see "outside the box." We need to hear non-invested opinions about what we're doing and how we're doing it.  This is, and always will be, the value of consultants.

But if we want it to happen now, and we want it to stick, we need to put ourselves in the hands of a coach who coaxes and coaches us through the new behaviors in real time in the real world.  We often need professional help in real time to install new behaviors and to get and keep us at the enhanced levels we want to function.  It's about consistently applied high-leverage responses and activities that happen on cruise control.  It's about what we can be trusted to be doing, by others and (most importantly) by ourselves, when the pressure of the real world is at hand.  To rapidly make those kinds of permanent changes and enhancements to our life-styles and work-styles, we need models, mentors, and most importantly, personal coaches, whom we spend real time with, getting us to do the real things we really need to be doing, from now on.

We need to groove new grooves in our patterns. The fastest way is to commit to a coach whose job and contract is to hold a focus and a format that helps us retread.  It could be a new way to think, a new way to feel, and/or a new way to act and respond.  But if it's a "new way" at all, it's unfamiliar territory to the unconscious part of us, and it needs to be made much more friendly to our basic nervous system.  We want to become "unconsciously competent."  We know that ultimately we need to be just doing it ourselves as a way of life and work. But we have to acknowledge that the path to that freedom is not free.

This conventional behavioral model identifies four stages of moving to permanently changed conduct:

(1) Unconscious incompetence

"I don't even know that I don't know what I don't know."

(2) Conscious incompetence

"I know now how to make it happen, and I know I can do it, but I have to keep reminding myself to do it, and I fall off the wagon regularly."

(3) Conscious competence

"I know now how to make it happen, and I know I can do it, (but I have to keep reminding myself to do it, and I fall off the wagon regularly.)"

(4) Unconscious competence

"I just do it.  I only think about it when I don't do it, and I then just go do it."

Coaching is a high-leveraged way to get from stage (2) or stage (3) to stage (4).

Professionals must master critical personal behaviors that are required in the new world of knowledge work:  how to collect, process and organize all the inputs, ideas, information and commitments that are potentially relevant to their life and work.

The challenge is to frame and address the more subtle behaviors, the ones that limit or expand our effectiveness in the world. We need to do this in the same way many of us have identified physical exercise as a strategic behavior to install in our lives, for which we have found the coach we needed and wanted to have, to make it happen at a new cruising level.  To commit to a hands-on, real time coach is not a sign of weakness.  It is rather the indication of a sophisticated awareness of the effectiveness of leveraging the best tools to restructure our automatic response systems in ways that create ever greater opportunities.

Adapted from The David Allen Company 2002. All rights reserved.

Get a 360° perspective, and take action now!

GREG L. KILGORE, Achievement Coach
360° Achievement Coaching:
Creating Awareness, Accountability,
Action, and Achievement