I have written about FEAR on occasions and it is a topic worth digging into a bit again, as these times we are in can be fearful. From my commitment to being “short and sweet” in my messaging, I will aim at that with this.
Courage is not the absence of fear,
but rather the judgment
that something else
is more important than fear.
Ambrose Redmoon
Our fear freezes us from taking action in the service of our clients.
Our fear limits our thinking and creativity.
Our fear stops progress, ends change, kills revolution.
However, fear is ours to embrace or ignore. Our choice to act in the face of fear is courageous. You choose!
This week take a moment to face the fear of something difficult in serving your clients that you have been putting off and choose to be courageous. Then, do it! Take the decision to just do it! Define it, share it with your team, plan it, DO IT!
Be courageous as you…
Care deeply…
Understand greatly…
Serve endlessly…
with Purpose!
OK, LET’s ROLL!
- Mitch
PLAN EVERYTHING!! Really….. YES!
Ok now that is said, where am I headed with this thinking? Well, in the vein of “keeping it simple”… I will focus on just one perspective of planning. We all know that planning every conversation with every client is a LOT of work. AND if you want to optimize the narrow time now spent in client conversations, it IS the only way to excel in serving them.
So for this week I suggest that you take a bold step forward, get specific, narrow the planning challenge, and only PLAN TO UNDERSTAND… your client needs in every conversation you have. Don’t try to get YOUR message across. Simply take one easy step forward in the planning process and as Stephen Covey would say “seek to understand, before being understood”. PLAN TO UNDERSTAND your client’s business shifts that are happening, UNDERSTAND the impact that working from home is having on their product development plans, UNDERSTAND what they have personally learned about themselves in these last 4 months of WFH. Do all this and more, plan the conversation, plan the thoughts that you would like to explore. PLAN the call, the email, the video, the text… whatever it is, PLAN TO UNDERSTAND….THEM!
Because you CARE, you take time to UNDERSTAND…..
Then you SERVE… with PURPOSE!
CUSP
U
S
P
Serving YOU with PURPOSE!
OK, lets roll!
- Mitch
When I look at the most significant shifts that will come from our journey over the last months and those yet ahead of us, my view is that the role of everyone, not just leadership, needs to take a big move towards what Andrew Carnegie, in the late 1800s, early 1900s, defined as the capability of the MasterMind.
Napoleon Hill studied Carnegie and his wisdom and wrote this about Carnegie’s MasterMind approach. Hill defines the principle as, "Coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose.”
I am a mechanic and electrical engineer by education and trade. I like the battery concept that Hill relates….
Hill/Carnegie writes …“To better illustrate the concept, he compares the human brain to a battery.
Just as a group of electric batteries will produce more energy than a single battery, a group of coordinated brains will produce more thought energy than one, single brain. And just as different batteries will provide different levels of energy depending on the capacity of their cells, some brains are more efficient than others.”
The MasterMind perspective is not a Carnegie creation, it has been around for a VERY long time.
In the Post Graduate Survival Guide, Sinem Gunel gives some further definitions of the MasterMind…
Per definition, a Mastermind Group is a mentoring concept through which individuals can form groups to learn from each other and grow together. The intention of a Mastermind Group is that peers can help each other solve problems and develop themselves together through input and advice from each other. The core value of a Mastermind Group is the synergy of energy, motivation, and commitment as well as the willingness to learn and grow together.
“No two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third, invisible intangible force, which may be likened to a third mind [the master mind].” — Napoleon Hill
The beauty of Mastermind Groups is that participants raise the bar by challenging each other to create and implement goals, brainstorm ideas, and support each other with total honesty, respect, and compassion.
At the start of any MasterMind gathering, Carnegie would read the following…
I RELEASE… I release myself to the mastermind because I am strong when I have others to help me.
I BELIEVE… I believe the combined intelligence of the mastermind creates wisdom far beyond my own.
I UNDERSTAND… I understand that I will more easily create positive results in my life when I am open to looking at myself, my problems, and opportunities from another’s point of view.
I DECIDE… I decide to release my desire totally in trust to the mastermind and I am open to accepting new possibilities.
I FORGIVE… I forgive myself for the mistakes I have made. I also forgive others who have hurt me in the past so I can move into the future with a clean slate.
I ASK… I ask the mastermind to hear what I really want; my goals, my dreams and my desires, and I hear my mastermind partners supporting me in MY fulfillment.
I ACCEPT… I know, relax, and accept, believing that the working power of the mastermind will respond to my every need. I am grateful knowing this is so.
Recall this was his thinking in the late 1800s. In this perspective specifically, Mr. Carnegie was extremely progressive. While the intro above is a bit too “my” centric for “our” world, the beliefs are the same. And that leads us to my perspective of what we are learning about our world today.
I believe that every one of us is a leader, perhaps not by title, but absolutely by role. The “old” perspective was a title in nature and implied that you were at the top of some org structure. (another outdated topic for an upcoming blog). What is coming to be is the need to shift from leading “people” to lead “thinking”!
That is where we now go. It is the companies, groups, and organizations, of all kinds, large and small, that will shift, again, into high gear, and mobilize the mass good that MasterMinds can help us all co-create the global goodness that we all desire.
No easy feat, as every part of our world fights with all of its might to hold on to the status quo, and not become irrelevant. My perspective is that the ONLY way to remain relevant and thrive is to recognize that the world has changed and make sure YOU change to complement and LEAD the thinking.
Just maybe, what was once old, is actually new again. AND more relevant than EVER! Go out and study a bit, about Master Mind, and form your own perspective…… Please learn and choose your direction!
OK, lets roll!
Mitch
There are a number of truly brilliant folks out there in the world today writing about all things needed to thrive in current times! I read most of them and am often challenged to myself write about something unique and different that adds value for you. I find that much of this work…INCLUDING MINE…can perhaps be too much. By the time a few days have gone by I most certainly am not working into much of these brilliant writings. Not a problem with the material or the author. I believe that our challenge is input overload. I am an engineer/mechanic by education, trade, and passion. The challenge of input overload is easily visualized by watching what happens when you pour WAY TOO much water into a funnel trying to fill a glass. A lot of the goodness flows over the edges onto the floor. So, what, again you say?
Well, I have decided to change what I write…. to “mostly” simplify my messages. And that is not an easy thing to do for me. So please forgive my rambling as I explain my simplification!
A quote attributed to many different people is… “If I had more time I would have written a shorter letter”.
Simplification. And that is what is needed. So I will tackle it. Let me know how I am doing. From time to time I may come back and blather on a bit. Oh well.
So from there… here we go.
Simple thoughts drive powerful actions and they are more easily remembered, put into action, evolved, and socialized.
One of the most powerful traits that a human can possess is a natural sense of HUMILITY. It can be in your DNA, it can be passed from others, and you CAN develop it yourself. My thought for this week then is…
BE HUMBLE!
My friend Hendre Coetzee tells me that humility “is having power under control”! Think strong take action.
How to start with caring about the other person! Listen closely. Take action in support of THEM.
CARE greatly
UNDERSTAND deeply
SERVE endlessly
with PURPOSE
SERVE with PURPOSE!
Ok, let’s roll!
Mitch
The new tactical selling approach… there is one…. It's here.
Ok, so we have had tons of different strategic and tactical selling anchor thoughts over the years. Things like an elevator pitch, the assumptive close, the cradle to grave close, or the overall thought… ABC.. always be closing. While those are a bit dated perhaps here is a list that I just saw published the other day….
10 effective sales closing techniques:
Now, in reality, when you dig a bit into what they were saying about each of these they made pretty good sense. My issue with all of this is that in a statement made in many places of our trade is the concept of “sales closing techniques”. Is that what we are really trying to do? Close the sale?
I believe that approach is ok for the convenience store clerk and the transaction with a few hundred folks a week. But then, maybe not. What if even in that case you were treated like somebody that mattered to them. Would your experience at that moment be better? Might that morph into a better afternoon? Would that little moment where someone cared enough about you to NOT try to close the sale, and instead ACTUALLY look to help you… might that make a difference in your world for that moment and beyond. You bet it would. It’s called the law of reciprocity. Good things do get paid back or on, and typically at a greater level. Great marketing people understand this law very well.
So what… where am I headed? Well, I am here to put a thought on the table for all to consider. And it is this….
I believe that the anchor selling thought, the thing that moves us forward in client engagement. The thing that makes a difference more than all else. And the thing that we can deploy starting tomorrow in our first conversation…is EMPATHY.
From the Greater Good Science Center comes the following…
The term “empathy” is used to describe a wide range of experiences. Emotion researchers generally define empathy as the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.
Empathy is the ability to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings of another person, animal, or fictional character. Developing empathy is crucial for establishing relationships and behaving compassionately. It involves experiencing another person’s point of view, rather than just one’s own, and enables prosocial, or helping behaviors that come from within, rather than being forced.
From Roman Krznaric, he writes…
But what is empathy? It’s the ability to step into the shoes of another person, aiming to understand their feelings and perspectives and to use that understanding to guide our actions. That makes it different from kindness or pity. And don’t confuse it with the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” As George Bernard Shaw pointed out, “Do NOT do unto others as you would have them do unto you—they might have different tastes.” Empathy is about discovering those tastes.
My good friend Hendre Coetzee and Dave Brock have already touched on this in what they have been doing lately. Bless them both. Where this finally sunk into my brain was that this is in fact the new cornerstone for ALL of our selling thinking. Empathy is it. It is everything.
In full support of my simple way of thinking about how we need to proceed as a profession to make a difference with our clients and in the world is…
Care greatly
Understand deeply
Serve endlessly
with Purpose
And we do all of that with an anchor of EMPATHY.
SERVE FROM EMPATHY!
Go have some virtual conversations with your team about what that can look like in your space and the impact that it might have with your clients as they discover that you actually care about them and their challenges.
OK, lets roll!
Mitch
