The top-performing sales professionals consistently engage in prospecting, recognising the necessity of maintaining a consistently full and active sales funnel. As they view themselves as CEOs of their own lives, income streams, and deal pipelines. I think the key to ensuring flow and momentum within the pipeline lies in continuously filling the top with potential opportunities. By prioritising the influx of prospects, salespeople can mitigate closing challenges and approach sales from a mindset of abundance, refusing to yield control of the sales process to prospects. A full funnel enables smarter selling strategies and empowers sales professionals to navigate negotiations with confidence and resilience.
Intention vs. action
I've always been drawn to communication, driven by a desire to convey messages, and my exploration of human behaviour began with observations of those closest to me. I often wonder why people find it challenging to change their behaviour. Is it due to entrenched habits? I believe it's not solely the behaviour itself that dictates its practicality, but rather the energy that fuels it. For example, consider someone who consistently procrastinates on tasks. It's not merely the action of procrastination that matters, but the underlying energy driving this behaviour, such as fear of failure or a lack of motivation.
““We judge ourselves by our intentions, but other people by their actions.””
Think before acting
Cultural intelligence (CQ) is an essential capability for inclusive leaders and in building successful relationships. Those who learn how to connect and become connectors will prosper in a connected economy.
““Cultural intelligence: an outsider’s seemingly natural ability to interpret someone’s unfamiliar and ambiguous gestures the way that person’s compatriots would.””
What are the 4 components of cultural intelligence?
The framework for cultural intelligence consists of four parts: knowledge, strategic thinking, motivation, and behaviours.
CQ Drive: The motivation to learn about new cultures.
CQ Knowledge: Understanding how cultures influence what people say and do.
CQ Strategy: Having a plan to respond to cultural differences.
CQ Action: Behaving in culturally sensitive ways, including handling any difficulties that arise.
Identifying your brand metrics
What goals should brands be focused on?
It’s a combination of enhancing your brand, building up your credibility and cache and lead generation. There are several other goals that may be important as well, such as the sense of accomplishment. I’d strongly suggest that you don’t let the more intangible goals get in the way of the tangible ones as you can do both – it just takes planning, discipline, and focus.
Here are some action goals:
⁃ Add value
⁃ Make it work for them
⁃ Know your business goals
⁃ Make it actionable
⁃ Stay flexible
Contact me via e-mail for an overview of your brand goals.
Journey of discovery
How does purpose drive performance?
Your purpose will be the foundational base for driving strategy, so sharpen and tweak it continuously, and this will also help to implement it. Purpose is not a statement, it’s an ideal. Purpose is a sense of what are my goals and ambition, purpose also asks what my duties are and why I exist. Writing the words is the easy part, the hard part is how you translate a set of words into a plan of action. And when you think long-term it forces you to think about the stakeholders you want to serve.
Solid foundations
Image c/o Liz Fosslien ©
I think that when you place a milestone in the path to action, it is more likely that people will complete that action. Truly skilled consultants and coaches start by asking themselves:
1) How can I shorten my clients’ path to their desired outcome?
2) How can I accelerate my clients’ speed to getting big results?
Contact me via e-mail for a discovery meeting.
Traditions are hard to change
Goal setting involves the development of an action plan designed to motivate and guide a person or group towards a goal. We are fast approaching that time of the year where your New Year’s resolutions begin to fade. Remember that as long as you are doing something to achieve your goal, you are making progress. It’s easy to become caught up in routine, but sometimes all you need is a small change of perspective to get the ideas flowing and feel motivated again.
The F.O.C.U.S acronym = Follow > One > Course > Until > Success
Action comes before motivation
Nowadays so many lives revolve around instant gratification and dopamine addiction, and this control stimuli are the breeding ground for bad habits. Are you aware that your morning habits sets the tone for the day? Your discipline, faith and perseverance in your vision will give you the energy and drive to execute as habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.
Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. Good habits become easy habits when you learn to find joy in delaying gratification. The delaying is all the joy, and the gratification is just the consequence. Your habits shape your reality. I think the price of your good habits are seen in the present and the cost of your bad habits will be revealed in the future. Systems are simple habits as small, daily seemingly insignificant improvements done on a consistently over time, yields staggering results.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals you fall to the level of your systems. ”
Going through the motions
Now we are in the first week of 2022 and after the festive season many people are struggling to get back into the work rhythm. I think human behaviour is driven by our attitudes, and our attitude is based around the beliefs that we have. Maybe if you understand at a deeper level what you really want then you will really want to act. What’s your passion?
When you develop that something that’s bigger than yourself, it will help you to stay focused and stop your subconscious mind from hijacking your thought process. I think that if you learn to sell and share information, then selling products and services will become as natural as positioning yourself at an interview or on a date. When you are in a leadership position, you must be able to sell the organisation’s vision, goals and your ideas with enthusiasm and energy if you want your team to follow without protest.
“When it comes to developing your style, listen to other people and absorb what is useful, discard what is not and add what is uniquely yours.”
Lock arms with the right people
© McGill Media
After watching the football yesterday evening, I had a long discussion with my friends, Sophia and Oscar about the masculine and feminine roles in society. We concluded that biologically women are nurturers and men are providers, like it or not this is programmed within our DNA. Traditionally, women were seen to be soft and men were perceived to be hard, tough individuals. The big question is why is society communicating to men that they should be more feminine, and at the same time telling women to be more masculine?
Throughout my career I have worked with inter personal communication, whether it be sales, marketing or branding. I love the concept of writing to the voice in your audiences head. Broadly speaking, I learned that relieving pain is what we want and maximising pleasure is what we crave. It’s all material and it makes sense to turn over the worst moments in our lives into great lessons, not only for ourselves, but also for the people we seek to guide along their journey.
The second habit Stephen Covey covers in his wonderful book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is “Begin With the End in Mind.” According to Covey, before you can live a good, meaningful life, you have to know what that looks like. When you know how you want people to talk about us at the end of our life, you can start taking action now to make that scenario a reality later. As I do not chase people anymore, I have learned that I am here and I am happy, and I am not going to run after people to prove that I matter. So, what do I want you to do after reading this, what is my call to action? I think the the end product isn’t as important as the process, contact me in confidentiality via e-mail to arrange a meeting about your processes.
Time for change
When you need information that you don’t have, you are usually not aware that you need it. If you only have partial information, you will make the best story possible with the information you have - and your confidence will be determined by the coherence of that story.
Marketing is what we do when we want things to be different, for example, to change the culture or to change the behaviour of our target audience. When you are comparing brands with each other, you may have generated external preferences by association or memory, not only because of what you see in the given moment. What you see in the moment may make you think of the other brand, therefore, you be aware that the influence of context is really powerful and extremely easy to exaggerate.
I think marketing is the work of telling a story that is true to someone specific. And this story will help them to see the world differently and/or take a different action. This is because the only purpose of marketing is to make a change. Nowadays marketing should be a generous act of leading people towards the change you want to make. Contact me via e-mail for specific guidance on:-
a) Who’s it for?
b) What are the changes you seek to make?
