The Executive Sales Coach: Keith Rosen’s Sales Blog and Business Blog On Selling, Leadership, Managing Your Team, Business and Life » How To Sell and Sales Tips

Many of the strategies that we engage in today, whether in our thinking as well as in our actions, are often counterintuitive to what we may believe would be the solution to achieving our goals and objectives; especially as it relates to cold calling and prospecting for new business.

Here’s a sample of the top paradoxes of prospecting that make prospecting so challenging. However, once these paradoxes are woven into your thinking, you’ll notice how these contradictions will provide you with a competitive edge that no other marketing piece, feature or benefit of your product or service could even come close to.

1. You want the sale (appointment, demo) but you must detach from the outcome and have no expectation, since the sale is not the initial goal of prospecting.




2. You want the prospect to say “Yes” to taking the next step in your sales process but you have to qualify them first to see if there’s even a fit worth pursuing.




3. You want the prospect to buy from you but must learn to give value unconditionally, whether or not they buy or meet with you.




4. You want to deliver and push through your presentation but you must get the prospect’s permission even before you present.




5. You need to keep your eye on your objective, set your goals and plan your strategy for the future to determine the path to travel on but you must bring yourself back into the present moment during every prospecting conversation.




6. You want to make more money and achieve greater success in your career but you have to make the sales process about the prospect, instead of you, in order to do so.




7. You want to sell to each prospect you speak with but need to qualify them to see if you even want them as a customer. (Remember, if you want to build a business or career you hate, just find the people to work with who you just can’t stand.)

Lets face it. You and I both know that the ultimate objective of your prospecting efforts is to sell more and boost your income. However, to achieve this goal, it’s just not where you are going to focus your energy and thoughts.

If you can understand and embrace these paradoxes, you now have the opportunity to respond to each prospect in a healthier, more productive, and more enjoyable way.

I hope by know, we’re all painfully aware of the costly lesson this economy has taught us. The skills, the thinking and the strategies that got us here today will not take us where we want to be tomorrow. And these uncertain times have highlighted more than ever, how we have collapsed American Entitlement with the American Dream.

The simple truth is, in order to earn more we need to learn more, especially as it relates to selling, retaining your current customers and leveraging new selling opportunities.

Here’s what I’ve observed over the last six months, how the current marketplace has impacted the way we sell and connect with our prospects and clients. Granted, some of these trends have been going on for a while now. However, these last six months have put more and more companies at this crossroad, face to face with this critical decision: adapt, innovate and change or suffer from corporate inefficiency, rigidity and declining profits. Upgrade your sales and leadership strategy to respond to these times. Here’s how.

1. Yesterday, it was more of a transactional sale. You show up and take an order or worse, you wing your presentation.

Today, you need to redefine your selling strategy and become a consultative sales champion in order to survive and thrive.

• If you’ve only gotten into sales over the last few years, you’ve never sold in tough times. More than ever salespeople need the training and coaching to stay on top.
• Benchmark best practices. What are the stages of the sale you need to move your prospect through?
• Leverage technology to manage your pipeline.
• Focus on key targeted accounts through better qualification and discovery process. (More and better questions.) Research each customer and know their business.
• Order takers don’t always have the strongest relationships. More time must be spent fostering stronger relationships with key clients. This doesn’t mean calling to ‘check in’ but have a better set of timely questions that will help you understand how the current economic times have affected the way they do business and make purchasing decisions.
• Become keenly aware of the lifetime value of every customer using better defined metrics.
• Doubling sales productivity isn’t always the answer. Consider by doing so, you’re also cutting the time you have to invest in your key accounts, in half.

2. Yesterday, you can sell features and benefits.

Today, you must reinvent your M.V. P. (Most Valuable Proposition) and develop core compelling reasons which will then move your product or service from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘need to have.’

• Less discretionary spending and tighter budgets means less allocation of funds for anything other than what is necessary. “Nice to have’s” Are being cut out of budget. You must position your product as a need to have.
• Saying you’re the best isn’t good enough. You do so by being clear with your value proposition and a faster R.O.I.
• You must focus on the cost of not making changes/ the pain of no change/keeping things the same vs. selling the warm and fuzzy benefits.
• Fewer selling opportunities + increased competition = customers demanding more value for less money.

3. Yesterday, managers were able to tolerate more mediocrity amongst their team.

Today, leaders must transform into coaches and be more fully accountable for their team.

• Get Out Of The Fear Based, Survival Driven Mentality and develop a coaching culture.
• Develop a 30 Day Tactical Turnaround Strategy for Underperformers
• Do Not Be Seduced By the potential you see in others.
• Relinquish Your Role as The Chief Problem Solver
• Stop coaching the uncoachable
• Become less tolerant of mediocrity and underperformers
• More diligent hiring and recruiting practices as companies cannot afford the cost of a mis-hire, especially with time of the essence.

4. Yesterday, you could get away with connecting with your key accounts on a less frequent basis.

Today, you must over-respond and over-communicate to the needs of your customers or risk losing them to your competition.

• Many salespeople are hiding under their desk in fear. A perfect opportunity for you to seize more market share.
• Insulate your key accounts/current customers. Less spending = less sales volume = increased competition.
• Become more than a salesperson, become a valuable resource and a trusted advisor.
• This presents a huge opportunity to mine for additional upselling and cross selling opportunities.
• Help them reach their objectives, save money and increase revenue. Their top goals!
• Retention is the new growth strategy? Doubling sales activity? You need a fine balance between being a great hunter as well as a great farmer. More strategic selling.

5. Yesterday, you could be more lax with your daily activity and do enough just to get buy.

Today, you must refine your daily habits and become a master of your day.

• Many entrepreneurs are willing to do the things they want rather than the things they need to do to drive the growth of their business.
• What are the non-negotiable revenue generating activities they need to engage in every day?
• How are they being held accountable for doing so? That’s were a defined daily routine comes into play.

• Time is your most valuable non negotiable commodity. Invest it in the right activities done the right way.
• You can’t hide anymore.

6. Yesterday, companies had a larger budget to invest in marketing to drive more leads and prospects to the sales team.

Today, more and more companies are shifting to cold calling to generate new prospects and new leads. These were also many of the same companies who used to be resistant to this concept! This is another learned skill set and strategy that needs to be developed and embraced by your sales team.

7. Yesterday, salespeople had larger travel and expense accounts to meet with and romance their prospects and clients.

Today, more sales are happening virtually, online and over the phone. This requires learning and adapting to a new way of selling via new communication channels.

Find out more here.

There were two books I read very early on during my college years that had a huge impact on me and on my career path. One of them was written by Tom Hopkins.

Today, Tom is offering something so valuable that I needed to share it with you. He’s holding a special event next month on November 15 and again on November 20 in Southern California for:

Hopkins says, “We’ve listened to what our students are telling us. In the current marketplace, they can’t take a full day out of the field to attend seminars. So, we’ve condensed these programs to offer just the top strategies that are working now. And the Saturday program is aimed at people who are in sales part-time like many of our clients in the network marketing industry.”

While many programs of this caliber run anywhere from $300 to $1,000 per attendee, Tom Hopkins International is being sensitive to the pocketbooks of today’s Southern California sales forces. These two programs are being offered for only $99.00 per ticket. Both the offer and seating for these events are limited.

Get all the information you need here, as I’m sure this will sell out fast.

Here’s what you can expect to walk away with:

Get all the information you need or register here.

When presenting to a client or prospect, regardless of any steps you’ve outlined in your presentation, there’s a big difference between convincing or ‘selling’ someone and enrolling someone, especially when you’re at the point in your discussions where you’ve identified some specific problems within the organization or with them. Now, you may be at the point where you’re going to share the solution and enroll them in the solution and more so, taking action and making a change.

Convincing/Selling: Changing someone’s stand on something through the use of force or argument. This often takes the form of a complaint, or reiteration of the problem. If there are people who in involved in your discussions who may have taken a part in creating the problem in the first place, this can be construed as a “Make wrong” and they may then feel compelled to defend their stance. This creates an adversarial posture between you and the other person. Once this happens, people have tendency to further defend their position, which often results in them shutting down their listening for the remainder of the conversation.

Enrolling: Stating the current situation without making anyone wrong while sharing a new opportunity for greater results or what may be possible. Stating the benefits of what a change may bring. For example, the beginning of an enrollment conversation may begin with, “Imagine if…......What if we can create an organization where…..”

Enrolling can also take on the form of asking questions. Besides, what do people believe more, what you say, or what they say? As such, if they voice the problem or a possible solution, then they would be more willing to act on it. Resistance is lowered, and they feel ownership of the solutions and would be more apt to act on it. Here are some questions to use.

1. If I could have your three biggest problems or headaches disappear, what would they be?


2. How do the challenges you’ve shared with me affect you, especially if you do not hit your goals?


3. What is it going to cost you if you don’t make any changes and continue the way you are now?


4. What solution or greater result would be worth changing for?


5. What would your company or division be like if you no longer had to deal with those issues anymore?

Here are a few questions to use when you’re in a situation where you need to acknowledge and respect the other person’s viewpoint, even though you may not agree. Or, maybe you simply need more clarification about their position on something. Instead of making them wrong or creating any confrontational posture between you, add another truth to the situation. Here’s how.

1. Can you please share with me your thinking on that?


2. May I share my view on that?


3. Is it possible that there may be more/other facts to consider?


4. What else is true about that?


5. Is it possible that there is another approach/solution here?

Uncover the specific benefits they want to realize, as well as the cost of not changing. Now, you can be in a position of enrolling them in the idea of actually taking actions to implement change to achieve these new results, without putting anyone on the defensive.

No one likes to be sold. Everyone wants to be enrolled. BTW, look for my new book, The Art of Enrollment, coming to you in 2009.

With all this talk about qualifying and how to qualify a prospect, it’s critical to ensure that, especially those of you who are attempting to cold call for the first time or prospect in a more unique or innovative way than you’ve done before, you understand the difference between qualifying and judging a prospect.

To permanently eliminate any confusion, lets draw a distinction between what it means to pre-qualify and pre-judge someone, such as a prospect. If you read my cold calling book, you know that I’m a strong advocate of pre-qualifying anyone before you invest your very limited and precious time in meeting with or speaking with them. Conversely, pre-judging someone is something you do that shows up in the filter or barrier you have in your listening, which was created out of the assumptions you’ve already made about that prospect.

Here’s another way to distinguish between the two. When you are pre-qualifying someone, you are arriving at a conclusion that determines whether or not there’s a fit worth pursuing based on a defined set of criteria you uncover through the use of well crafted questions. You are solely focusing on the prospect, not yourself and what you have to gain or lose, to determine how you can add value or if there’s a match between the two of you.

Pre-judging said simply, is all about you. Here, you are relying on your faulty and costly assumptions, thoughts and beliefs to determine their needs and whether or not this prospect will potentially buy from you.

When you pre-judge someone, you’re making assumptions about them before you ask any questions or uncover many facts. Maybe you’ve judged them by their appearance, where they live, their type of business or industry, how they sound over the phone or a comment they made. In essence, you’re “already” listening and forming conclusions based on your defined set of criteria rather than the facts.

When you pre-qualify someone, you’re asking questions to uncover their specific needs and objectives, without making any assumptions. You are learning about the prospect based on the responses you hear from the questions you ask. You are being fully engaged and present in the conversation with that person, rather than in your own head forming conclusions or operating off your agenda. This way, you’re making a decision to pursue this prospect based on reliable intelligence instead of your overactive imagination. (Here’s another distinction: authentic fit vs. a pipedream. )

September is Customer Appreciation Month is for Hoover’s. In support of this, Hoover’s has identified a theme for each of the four weeks of the month which I’ll be blogging about. Here’s the schedule.

Wk 1: Prospecting (9/8-9/12)
Wk 2: Qualifying (9/15-9/19)
Wk 3: Presentation Skills and Closing the Sale (9-22-9/26)
Wk 4: Overcoming Objectives (9/29-10/3)

Now that we’re in week two, below are some qualifying questions you can use during the next conversation you have with a prospect. Remember, it’s not just any question but defined, well crafted questions that are going to act as the conduit to more qualified prospects and more sales.

While many salespeople would use questions that qualify their prospects to determine whether or not they are a viable candidate for their product or service, uncovering a true fit between you and your prospects goes much deeper.

There are actually two distinct types of questions: First, there are fact finding questions. These questions relate specifically to your industry and product or service. These fundamental questions provide you with the information you need to uncover whether this prospect is even someone who would purchase what you sell. These questions would uncover the following information. Do they currently have a similar solution you offer. Is your solution a complement or replacement to what they are currently doing? Is the company the right size, offers the right product or service, is the right industry, has the right type and number of employees?

Second, there are those decision oriented questions that move the sales process forward and motivate your prospect to make a decision or want to buy from you. These discovery questions will enable you to uncover how they go about making a purchasing decision, the cost of not making any changes as well as create the urgency for the prospect to make a decision.

Keep in mind when executed correctly, these questions will facilitate a natural conversation, rather than a “pitch.” As you read the questions that follow, remember, it’s a give and take. You’re not interrogating them, but having a conversation to learn how you can best assist them based on their goals and objectives, uncover the process they honor when making a decision and whether or not there’s even a fit.

Finally, look at these questions like a big buffet. Take what you like and what works for you and leave what you don’t.

1. Tell me about your goals and what you are looking for. What would make this relationship successful for you?


2. What are some of the benefits you are looking to gain as a result of (changing venders/providers, equipment, etc.)?


3. What is the most important factor to you in making this decision?


4. Since all of my customers have their own unique needs I want to make sure I tailor the information that I will share with you around what is appropriate for you. Just so I don’t sound repetitive, what do you already know about our company? OR How familiar are you with the types of products and options that are out there in the industry?


5. Is what you are currently doing/using generating the results you’re looking for? How is it working for you?


6. What else are you looking to accomplish if you were to change venders/providers?


7. What would you need to know about us that would confidently make us your first choice? What are you looking for in the company you choose to work with? What is important to you? How do you decide on who to use? Based on what criteria?


8. What information can I provide that would give you the peace of mind in knowing that we are the right company for you?


9. Did you have a good experience with (your current service provider, etc.)? Any bad ones?


10. Is that the only other option you’re still considering?


11. I want you to know that whether or not you choose us, I want to make sure that you have all of the information you need to make the best decision. So how this decision is typically made?


12. Who else is typically involved in this decision?


13. When are you planning on making this decision?


14. How long have you been thinking about making this change?


15. How do you normally go about making a decision like this? What’s the process?

Decision Oriented Questions

1. If you could eliminate three of your biggest problems, headaches, or stresses as they relate to [STATE SERVICE/TASK] what would they be? (If there were three problems that you would want to see resolved with your current service provider what would they be?) (Ineffective solution, frustration, stress, etc.)


2. How does this (current problem, headache) affect you and your life? (Tie in the challenges they are experiencing to their position. What’s their personal cost as a result of these challenges?)


3. If you don’t make any changes, then what do you think it’s going to cost you over time? (What is it going to cost you by not changing? What additional opportunities do you think you’re letting pass by? How will this affect your bottom line?


4. Do you think there are opportunities you may miss out on by not changing? What cost do you incur by keeping things the way they are?)

Earlier this summer, I was interviewed by Inc. magazine on the how to keep salespeople motivated, especially when they miss their numbers. Business owners and sales managers need to focus on specific parts of their sales process rather than just hammering on the overall sales goals.

In this Inc. story, entitled, Fighting the Sales Force Blues, read about two of my clients (Joe and Michele) who have taken a proactive stance to adjust to the current market conditions, rather than playing the victim or taking the ‘wait and see’ attitude.

Read about what they have done in response to the changes in their marketplace which has resulted in keeping them on top of their game and on top of their sales. Here’s what CEO’s, managers and business owners need do to stay on track and, most importantly, keep salespeople motivated in an uncertain economy.

Here’s the link to the full article on Inc.

Do you have a sales team of fearless prospectors? There’s not a company out there who can afford to have their top prospectors, hunters and rainmakers become a little gun-shy when looking to attract and develop new business.

So, are you aware of the limiting thinking you may be harboring towards cold calling and your prospects? When salespeople resist cold calling, a typical response from many sales managers is to provide additional training, role-playing, a revised presentation, or more qualified prospects to call on as the solution to improving cold calling results and productivity.

Granted, salespeople do report an increased level of confidence and a decrease in call reluctance when they have been provided with the right tools, processes, and systems. Unfortunately, these tactics don’t always eliminate the anxiety or level of resistance that salespeople experience when cold calling.

Perhaps the real issue is not tapping into the source of cold calling reluctance. Fixing the symptom without understanding the true source of the problem only results in a temporary solution.

Instead of focusing on strategies that only address the symptom, explore the source of your anxiety to permanently overcome the fear and resistance to cold calling; your beliefs surrounding cold calling.

Cold Calling Isn’t a Dirty Word

When I ask salespeople about their feelings or attitude towards cold calling, I hear the following responses. Compare your list to the following common responses:

Conversely, when I ask salespeople what they love about cold calling, what I get is complete silence.

Whatever you assume or believe about cold calling, your prospects, yourself, selling, and your career is exactly what you’ll manifest in your life.

I know this may challenge traditional wisdom and your current beliefs as well as stretch your perception and point of view. However, if you’re looking for extreme results, then it calls for extreme thinking and not just a change in what you do and how you do it. With the business community continually evolving, change is critical.

Salespeople have tendency to exploit all of the reasons why they don’t like cold calling or why they won’t succeed at cold calling. However, have you ever taken the time to develop the reasons why you will succeed?

To make this real for you, if you believe that cold calling is, “Forcing someone to accept something they don’t want, intrusive, annoying, manipulative, a waste of time, intimidating, scary, something I hate being subjected to myself, and so on,” that’s exactly what you’ll continue to experience every time you cold call.

If you believe that all prospects are a certain way (uninterested, shoppers, rude, are only concerned with price) then how do you think you are going to approach cold calling and deliver your presentation, whether you realize it or not?

Think about the type of prospect that you are going to be attracting and the kind of objections you’ll be hearing? Based on your current assumptions surrounding cold calling, prospects and selling, every new experience will now become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Joy of Cold Calling

To combat this, consider challenging these assumptions and replacing them with healthier ones that would better serve you. For example, I love (or like) to cold call because:

1. Cold calling is informative. It lets the prospect know where they can locate the best product/service they need.


2. Cold calling is beneficial. I can share all the incredible advantages of my product/service with the people who can benefit from it most.


3. Cold calling is a way to genuinely deliver value, educate my prospects, serve people, and improve people’s lives, regardless of whether or not I make the sale.


4. Cold calling enables me to become a prospect’s trusted expert or advisor so that they can make the best purchasing decision.


5. Cold calling is a way to prevent people from making potentially costly mistakes that result from purchasing the wrong product/service or using a company that may not effectively fill their needs.


6. Cold calling makes it possible to earn the business of more prospects who I wouldn’t have the opportunity to connect with otherwise. The more I cold call, the more I sell. The more I sell, the more happy customers I have.

When working with different sales teams, I always find it interesting that some salespeople attract the difficult customers. They then find themselves in a position where they have to negotiate price, have more cancellations or returns, or have to deal with prospects that want to review three separate proposals before making a purchasing decision.

Conversely, there are other salespeople who seem to effortlessly generate the best leads and get the desirable, loyal customers and repeat business.

This is not a coincidence. At some point, you need to ask yourself, “What role is my attitude playing in this? How is my thinking affecting my performance?” Once you can identify your current limiting beliefs surrounding cold calling, I’m sure you will see the answers to these questions staring you in the face.

Don’t Strain Yourself

When talking with salespeople who have prospected for a while, it seems that they remember how challenging it was to take that first prospecting step. This is still a common theme amongst salespeople who have to learn how to prospect to build their business. They tell me that taking the first step and making that first cold call is exactly where they freeze or get stuck.

Many salespeople define the first step as the first cold call they make. That is, the first time they are picking up the phone and attempting to connect with a prospect. However, the first step isn’t what you may think.

If you’ve ever honored a workout regimen, getting on the treadmill or hitting the weights probably isn’t the first thing you do. Instead, you ease into your workout by first stretching and warming up your body. Why? To avoid injury. Warming up lets your tight muscles know that they are about to be torn down, exercised, and challenged. Stretching and warming up your muscles makes you more limber and your body more responsive and open to what you’re about to put it through. It’s a great way to ensure you’ll get a good workout and most important, avoid an injury that can lay you up in bed for weeks.

The same holds true for prospecting and cold calling. Imagine that your pre-call planning phase is when you take the time to warm yourself up before the big game. View pre-call planning as your warm up for cold calling or other prospecting activities. The only difference is, the primary muscle that you are stretching and preparing for prospecting is your brain; that is, your mindset and the activities that require your focus and attention.

Pre-call planning encompasses the activities you engage in before you begin prospecting that involve action and intellect in order to achieve the maximum return on your prospecting efforts.

Pre-call planning is an essential step in your prospecting system that will enable you to plan effectively, get into the prospecting mindset, eliminate any fear or reluctance, boost your confidence, learn about your prospects, tap into your drive and motivation, and target who you are calling. Finally, pre-call planning will enable you to become limber and hyper focused on your objective. All of these activities are the preliminary steps you take to avoid injury or challenges during your cold calling, I mean, warm calling efforts.

The Five Degrees of Pre-Call Planning

Ken, a client of mine, called me the other day and told me that during the one-hour timeline he allocated each day for cold calling over the phone, he was only able to make a few calls. When I asked him to break down exactly what he attempted to accomplish in that hour, he shared with me the following tasks:

1. Getting into the prospecting mindset.


2. Reviewing his action plan and approach.


3. Compiling, reviewing, updating, and developing his prospecting target list.


4. Calling back customers, prospects or other people that returned his call.


5. Making calls to new prospects.

Without realizing it, Ken identified the five degrees of pre-call planning. Ken then shared with me that during the one hour he put aside for prospecting, it was taking him forty-five minutes just to prepare his targeted list of prospects to call, not leaving him much time for actual prospecting.

In other words, Ken was collapsing several other activities into one and calling that “cold calling.” In actuality, he listed five distinct activities that need to be managed independently.

The jewel here is be sure that each task or activity you engage in is broken down into its most simplistic and measurable form. In other words, if prospecting is one of the activities you engage in, it is not enough to simply list “prospecting” as an activity. As we’ve discussed, prospecting involves a variety of distinct activities. Therefore, prospecting, as defined by Ken, needs to be broken down even further.

Mapping your prospecting strategy, getting into the prospecting mindset, compiling your call list, returning or taking phone calls, and cold calling for new customers are five distinct and measurable activities that need to be managed separately when creating your schedule. If you find that you need to handle some of these activities at the same time, then make sure you have allocated enough time for each activity.

Additionally, each one of these activities calls for a different mindset. You’ll know if the activity you are engaging in needs to be broken down into other activities if it requires a different level of thought, skill, and focus.
You’ll know if the task is broken down into the absolute smallest denominator when asking yourself, the following questions. “How am I going to achieve that?” “What steps do I need to take to finish that task?” “What specific outcome will be produced?” If the answers to these questions open up another task, process, or strategy that would generate a unique end result then you’ll need to narrow down that activity even further. For example, compiling your target-prospecting list not only produces a different outcome than when you pick up the phone and make cold calls but it requires a different thought process, strategy, and skill set.

Another symptom that will let you know whether or not you can narrow down the task into a smaller denominator is this: If you block out a certain amount of time for an activity and you find that you are not completing it, there’s a chance that you have collapsed more than one activity into that block of time. Identifying each distinct activity that you engage in will enable you to be more realistic with the time lines that you allocate for each activity, making your prospecting efforts highly effective and more easily manageable.
In addition, this exercise will strengthen your ability to think in terms of detailed, measurable activities and tasks, rather than in vague, broad strokes. So, if you’ve ever been in a position where you have underestimated how much time a certain task or project would take, this process will also assist you in establishing more realistic timelines around your daily activities so that you can “get it all done” rather than constantly leaving tasks incomplete or overbooking and overcommitting yourself.

Just got back from my interview with Becky Surran at News 12 in Connecticut. (What an amazing, state of the art studio.) Below is a summary of what we discussed. And here’s the news clip for your viewing pleasure.

Watch the video here.

For many companies it’s a battlefield out there and the battlefield isn’t limited to the marketplace but the workplace. And again, all roads lead back to the manager or the business owner because the manager is the one who has the power to affect the environment and culture within any organization and as such, the one directly responsible for it.

Many managers don’t realize they have this power and the power to turn their people’s performance around. And it all starts with the realization that what got you here today won’t be the same skills and strategies that are going to get you where you want to be tomorrow. One strategy to stay away from is to simply wait it out and weather the storm. Not a good move. I see many companies today waiting themselves right out of business.

With all the layoffs and decrease in customer and corporate spending that many businesses are experiencing now, one of the top questions I’m hearing is, “How do I get and keep my people motivated and productive?” Here are several strategies that any business owner or manager can do today to better motivate their people and make that fundamental shift from surviving to thriving again.

1. Overcommunicate. Many business owners and managers are hiding under their desks in fear, avoiding their clients and employees. Instead, take a proactive stance and overcommunicate with them. For your employees, let know they are going through this together and not alone. Spend more time each week speaking with them to uncover what their fears and worries are. After all, if your employees fear a possible acquisition, company sale or the loss of their job, what do you think they’re spending their time doing each day? Everything except working to improve their current condition! This holds true for your customers as well.

2. Become a Hunter and a Farmer: Whether through natural attrition or your competition’s efforts to grab more market share, organizations are losing their customers. As such, many companies are telling me they are shifting their efforts from growth to maintenance. I say need a healthy balance of both of these activities. Over service your existing client base while focusing on new opportunities to attract more customers. and while your overdelivering on value, you’ll be able to create new selling opportunities with your existing clients as well as potential referrals.

3. Reinvent Your MVP. Your MVP is your most valuable proposition. It’s what makes you unique rather than the same. Many companies still rely on antiquated and often uncomfortable selling strategies. They no longer offer a competitive edge that separates them from everyone else and promotes a healthy, winning relationship with their customers. As a result, they find themselves in the costly and undesirable position of relying on price as a competitive differentiator; thus diluting their true value offering. If you find yourself selling on price you’re already in trouble. Rather than change their approach, they work harder and longer, only to produce the same results as before. What makes you unique? What makes you a client’s first choice? What additional value can you deliver that would make you stand out from the rest? More boutique and hands on customer service or even a better guarantee are just a couple of things you can do to reinforce value in your customer’s mind. And why they should keep buying from you.

4. Change The Fuel That Drives You: The rising cost of the fuel we’re all experiencing isn’t limited to what you may think. This also includes the fuel you’re using to motivate and drive your team. Change the fuel that’s driving you and your people. Make the shift away from being driven by fear, scarcity and consequence to a healthier energy source. And that would be using abundance and pleasure to motivate your people. Focus on their dreams and goals. Motivate using people rather than using consequence. Informing people that they won’t have a job unless they turn their performance around is a toxic strategy that doesn’t reinforce the changes you want them to make. Instead, focus on what they are doing well and what you want them to do better. Reinforce positive behaviors and take a stand for them, rather than tearing down their confidence.