Technology Transfer Services Blog

Part 2 in a series of posts on leadership and management

Chicken Little is alive and well. The sky is still falling, have you noticed? Chicken Little has effectively influenced newspaper editors and every single NPR reporter. Her tentacles of doom have stretched all the way to television, the Internet, and several parallel universes. Perhaps you have even received a text message from her mentioning the five reasons why America is falling apart.

Maybe the economy and all sorts of things are falling apart. Then again, maybe they’re not. Can you control these things? I can’t. But I can control my thoughts, my perspective, and my actions. So can you – if you choose to. So let’s shift gears and examine something that is truly important: sales skills and selling our goods and services during challenging economic times. The following are some of the sales skills, habits, and mind-sets that will help you thrive in a tough economy. That’s right, I said thrive.

1. Practice your craft. Many of us enjoy participating in sports. All of us love to win. In order to consistently win we must practice. Those tennis guys, Nadal and Federer, practice quite a bit. How often do you practice sales skills such as driving incredible sales conversations?  In the past month, how many times have you practiced the art of making appointments?  
2. Be authentic about your strengths. We improve by enhancing our strengths, not by focusing on our weaknesses. Know your strengths and the real ingredients of your winning formula. Not sure what they are? Ask ten people you highly respect to answer this question: In your opinion, what are three qualities or skills that make me successful? I guarantee that you will learn a few things about yourself.
3. Be realistic about what the market will give you right now. Think way back to the gold rush. At the height of it, the gold rush was giving gold. When the gold ran out, and people continued to pan for it, who made money? The people selling the pans because that is what the market was providing. As a side bar, think about the guys who were making it big during the gold rush. Two names stick out: Levi Strauss and Wells Fargo. Both provided products and services that were much less sexy than gold. However, Levi’s and Wells Fargo thrived, even as the gold rush crashed and burned. The point is this: make certain that you position yourself appropriately for current market conditions. 
4. Be confident. Often times, the difference between selling our wonderful wares or not, is tied to our level of confidence. If you allow yourself to get caught up in the prevalent sociology of a “shrinking economy,” you may very well freak out and not project yourself as the confident professional that you are. Remember that desperate people never get dates. Similarly, desperate professionals rarely get sales. You are good. So too are your products and services. Be confident and exhibit sales skills that help you sell your wares for what they are worth.  
5. Visualize success. Too frequently, people imagine the worst. This is a huge error because it sends a message of failure to your subconscious. Let me ask you a couple of questions (be honest now): Are you visualizing yourself being successful? Do you find yourself visualizing challenges, rather than what could be a happy ending? No matter what you answered, seek to create the following positive visualization habits:

• In the morning, take 10 minutes to picture yourself achieving success with every meeting, task, and activity you are going to engage in that day. While you do this, sit straight, close your eyes, and take deep, controlled breaths.
• Prior to each important sales appointment or phone call – close your eyes for one minute and picture a positive result. Put yourself in a positive frame of mind and then implement your vision. Be positive, be confident, have fun, get a decision.

Author: Doug Van Dyke, Strategic Partner

www.leadershipsimplified.com

Photo: Fieldstone Homes

This is the first in a series of posts on Leadership and Management

Staffing levels go up. Staffing levels go down. Seems like most staffing levels these days are shrinking a bit. And while many of you are striving to right that trend, most of you are clearly faced with doing more with, well, less. As such, it is as important as ever to develop team members so that more of their potential can be employed at work. The challenge is to juggle the myriad of tasks and responsibilities with which you are charged, along with elevating the skill levels of team members. To introduce this topic, allow me to share a best practice I find quite appropriate.

A colleague of mine meets with his operations and maintenance leaders on a quarterly basis. The first question he asks during the meeting is this: “If you are promoted or leave the company tomorrow, who will take your place and why?” He has a great team and usually receives salient responses. Occasionally however, he receives a skittish answer. His response is typically, “by next quarter I expect a solid plan, or unpleasant changes will occur.”

The above mentioned approach is not ruthless. Rather, what this best practice does is place a priority on growing the skills of our people. Better skilled people lead to better, more profitable results – it’s a fact. So let’s look at four areas we can embrace in order to ensure that our team members (and our profits) grow.       

Mindset – As Yogi Berra once said: “Baseball is 90 percent mental; the other half is physical.” The mindset that I encourage you to embrace is to recognize that developing team members is constant. Growing people is not a one-time or annual event. Informal development should occur each day, while formal development should occur at regular intervals. Begin by envisioning outstanding outcomes, and then create a plan to bring these outcomes to fruition.

Catch People Doing Something Right – In so many workplaces, leaders only notice the things that are wrong. Constructive feedback is the low hanging fruit of development. If only (or mainly) constructive feedback is given, the workplace can become slanted to the negative. Team members need reinforcement regarding what they are doing correctly – even if they are executing an expected part of their job. But remember to be very specific about what is correct, AND be sure to describe the positive impact that the team member’s behavior has on other team members. 

Ownership – counter-intuitively, it is the leader’s responsibility to drive team member development activities. While team members certainly have a huge stake in positive outcomes, the learning process should be driven and monitored by the leader. This ensures quality and on-target results.     

Partnership – informal and formal feedback can expand collaborative relationships. Feedback helps to solidify what team members have learned, and serves as a barometer for your effectiveness.  A method I’ve found particularly successful is to request a one-page summary after a formal coaching/development session with a team member. This summary will not only inform you about the team member’s key takeaways, but it will also test his or her level of engagement.

Developing your team members builds a healthy culture, creates positive connections, and increases retention rates for your top performers. There you have it. Now go forth and coach, develop, and quote Yogi!

Author: Doug Van Dyke, Strategic Partner

www.leadershipsimplified.com