Selling Power Blog

How to Be a Feel-Good Millionaire

Many people say that one of their goals in life is to leave the world a better place than it was when they entered it. The thought of improving the world may show lofty ambition – but also hints at arrogance. Good salespeople don't aim to improve the world; instead, they work at improving themselves. If self-improvement is the first step to improving society, what would be the next logical step?

We bring to the business of selling more than just the knowledge of the product, people skills, and the motivation to win. We also bring to our customers our own set of personal and ethical values, values that communicate who we are and what we stand for. Good salespeople know that real champions are not measured by how much money they can collect but by how much meaning they can contribute. Real champions know that laughing all the way to the bank loses its appeal when you realize that, on a gloomy day, a fat checkbook won't hug you back.

Within the last decade, value-added selling and ROI selling became a key ingredient in generating more business. Given the increased complexity of our changing world, I believe that the next wave of progress will be value-added meaning. Sure, business will always demand that we produce profit, yet our minds always demand that we find meaning. Sensible business leaders help their sales teams understand the basic human need for creating both.

For example, the White Dog Café, a Philly farm-to-table restaurant formerly owned by Judy Wicks, used to hold Table Talk programs, during which interesting speakers shared ideas with the patrons. Anita Roddick, the late founder and CEO of The Body Shop, was invited to speak to a wall-to-wall Table Talk audience. Her talk was called, "The Socially Responsible Business: Where Profits Meet Principles."

The idea of “food served with thought” caught on quickly, and Wicks won the Business Enterprise Trust Award for building a greater sense of community. She created value-added meaning for her customers, and business boomed.

Technology giant Google routinely invites authors, musicians, innovators, and speakers to their offices for talks, interviews, and conversations designed to explore the zeitgeist of the day. Examples include Stephen Colbert, who discussed his new book, America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren’t (October, 2012).

While value-added selling creates dollars that we can take to the bank, value-added meaning creates a different currency, one we might call "feel-good dollars." While it takes a long time to become a millionaire in real dollars, we all can become overnight millionaires by earning "feel-good dollars." How? By adding meaning to our customers' experiences.

Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff has found a way to sell software in the Cloud while adding meaning to communities around the world. He does good because it feels good. He said in a speech he delivered recently, “Philanthropy is the best drug I ever took.” His Salesforce.com Foundation has contributed more than $40 million in grants and more than 440,000 volunteer hours.

You don’t have to be a billionaire like Benioff to feel good. We can increase our feel-good worth by how much meaning we contribute. Good salespeople ask themselves, “What can I do today that will help my customers feel good about doing business with me and my company? How can I bring more meaning to my customers and community at large? How can I add value to the profession of selling?”

Add to your treasure chest of values by getting better at doing good because it feels good when you do it. Become a feel-good millionaire, starting today.

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A Sales 2.0 Conference Q&A with Andy Zoltners

At the recent Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, Selling Power caught up with Andris (Andy) Zoltners, who was there to present “A Top 10: Insights that Lead to Sales Success.” In addition to being one of the founding directors of ZS Associates, Zoltners is a Frederic Esser Nemmers Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He has personally consulted for more than 200 companies around the world and taught thousands of executive, MBA, and PhD students about sales force strategy; sales force size, structure, and deployment; sales force compensation; and total sales force effectiveness. For more insight based on ZS Associates’s research and expertise, download the first chapter of Building a Winning Sales Management Team, by Zoltners and coauthors Prabhakant Sinha and Sally E. Lorimer. (Note: This interview has been edited for style and clarity.)

Selling Power Editors (SP): At the Sales 2.0 Conference, you said there’s not a sales force in the world that doesn’t have topline revenue opportunity of at least 5 to 10 percent. How can companies tap into that?

Zoltners: First, they have to find where the opportunity exists. That’s different in every sales organization. You have to look at the drivers of success. You have to hire the right people, train them, and manage performance. You have to size and organize the sales force, get the right compensation plan in place, and align territories. The problem for most companies isn’t that opportunity doesn’t exist, it’s that they’re sometimes reluctant to do the things necessary to take advantage of it.

SP: Like what, for example?

Zoltners: This goes back to one of the questions I asked the audience: would you rather have a stable sales force or an adaptive sales force? With an adaptive sales force, I would come in and say, “We’re going to change account responsibility.” Will they ask salespeople to adapt? Are they open? 

SP: So you’re saying the culture has to be open to change. 

Zoltners: Yes. But the other side of this is that management has to make intelligent changes. Eighty-five percent of sales forces have changed their sales-comp plan in the last year. What does that tell you? Getting it right can be a struggle.

SP: Why is that?

Zoltners: Well, [ZS cofounder] Prabha Sinha, Sally Lorimer, and I wrote a book about this years ago [The Complete Guide to Sales Force Incentive Compensation: How to Design and Implement Plans That Work].  But it’s a big book, and some people have told us you need a PhD to read it. (Laughs.) [Incentive pay] is complicated. But if you want to design and implement a plan that really works, you need to get this right, and you need to have alignment among the entire organization. For example, if you have an aggressive finance team that sets unrealistic numbers, that’s going to reduce the effectiveness of your comp plan.

SP: You mentioned during your presentation that there is no magic number when it comes to setting quotas at the territory level. Why is that? 

Zoltners: Companies may set goals too high, too low, or they don’t allocate the numbers appropriately across the entire sales force. The secret is that the goal should not be a single number. A single number is too rigid. There should be a range.

SP: And why is that?

Zoltners: Flexibility. Think about it at an individual level: if a big account moves from Milwaukee to Atlanta, then the sales rep in Milwaukee is saying, “My VP of sales is telling me that 40 percent of my territory just went away, and he still wants me to make my number.” Meanwhile, the rep in the Atlanta territory gets free incentive money. If the goal number is meant to give reps something to strive for, then you’ve just made it meaningless.

SP: ZS Associates has been conducting research since 1983 on sales leadership. If you had to pick, which group is more important to a strong sales team, excellent reps or excellent managers?

Zoltners: You really need both, no question. The issue is that we’re generally more careful at selecting reps than [we are at selecting] managers. We see more training for reps, more coaching. It’s an issue of scale: if you have only five new managers, it’s difficult to put together a training course just for them. But an excellent manager is going to end up hiring excellent reps. That’s why the link between sales force productivity and the quality of frontline sales managers is so strong. Because the manager selects, develops, manages, and leads the team.

SP: What’s the definition of an excellent rep?

Zoltners: They know their products, [and] they have empathy for the customer. They execute the selling process well. To me, success in selling is not about the numbers or the hard metrics. It’s about the soft stuff – people. Revenue comes from people. Some of the best sales forces in the world haven’t had the best products. And some of the weakest sales forces I’ve seen have had great products. You might be making your numbers, but you have an average sales force.

SP: Can you elaborate?

Zoltners: Look at insurance companies. Many insurance companies make their numbers but have as much as 60 percent turnover among the sales force.

SP: Is turnover in this case a sign that there’s room for improvement?

Zoltners: High turnover is usually an indicator of a problem. In this case, existing salespeople do not share their accounts, and new people do not have enough opportunity to be successful.

SP: In your research, you’ve said that many companies tend to retain poor or under-performing managers for “too long." What constitutes "too long"?

Zoltners: One day is too long! Evaluate and replace sooner. 

SP: Sounds simple. Why is it so difficult?

Zoltners: Because they’re buddies. The company says, “He’s done so much for us. We should give him another chance.” They don’t want to make their valued employees sad.

SP: So what’s the solution?

Zoltners: You make ’em sad.

SP: What role does technology play in creating a successful sales culture?

Zoltners: I’m a meat and potatoes person. The precedent that sales can really sell better with all this technology needs to be established. You have to be smart about how you use technology. If you’re overzealous, it can end up costing you money.

SP: Would you say technology alone isn’t the answer? That it’s more about how people use technology?

Zoltners: It’s about getting the best people to engage in the right activities. You can’t ask for anything better than that.

For more insight based on ZS Associates’s research and expertise, download the first chapter of Building a Winning Sales Management Team, by Zoltners and coauthors Prabhakant Sinha and Sally E. Lorimer.

The Persuasive Power of the Zeitgeist

No, I’m not an economist, but I do have a theory about what influences financial decisions, and it has nothing to do with anything Wall Street ever discusses. It’s called the zeitgeist.

This is a wonderful German word for which there is no English equivalent. It denotes the collective thoughts and feelings that dominate the era we live in. While the word zeit means “time,” geist has two meanings: “spirit” and “ghost.” Loosely translated, it means “the spirit of our time” or “the ghost of our time.”

For example, the zeitgeist in the Y2K era was paranoia about computers crashing on January 1, 2000.

The zeitgeist of the dot-com boom was marked by euphoria caused by the illusion of growth without limits. It was a Pied Piper that invited people to join in a happy parade celebrating greed.

The zeitgeist of post-9/11 was like a fire-breathing dragon that attacked at dawn, killed thousands and vanished into an invisible cave, which left us in a cloud of fear and anger. It was marked by severe disappointment. We paid a heavy price for harboring the illusion that our financial, economic, and military power would make us invulnerable.

Today’s zeitgeist is dominated by the bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon, the nuclear saber rattling of North Korean leaders, the political debates about gun control and government spending.

Today’s zeitgeist is also influenced by mobile technology, social media, cloud computing, big data, a shift to an interconnected world that sets the expectation that delays are a thing of the past, since we want to do everything in real time. While technology mixes excitement and hope into the zeitgeist brew, the failings of humanity -- such as killings in schools and at marathons and other threats to our safety -- add a taste of futility and despair to the mix. HG Wells once described the character of civilization as a race between education and catastrophe.

The pendulum of time keeps swinging, and so does the zeitgeist. Psychologists tell us that people who suffer disappointment tend to retreat and rediscover their true strength. What feeds the zeitgeist in the month of April is fear -- fear of acts driven by human insanity or natural disasters. What will change the zeitgeist of our time is courage. It takes a lot of courage to objectively appraise who we really are and what we truly want to get out of life. Upon closer reflection, we begin to realize that the zeitgeist does not really control our lives, we do.

History tells us that periods of disappointment are always followed by periods of going back to basics. For CEOs, that means trustworthy and responsible leadership. For managers, it means that their actions must inspire trust. For salespeople, it means more genuine face-to-face contact and more handwritten thank-you notes instead of hastily punched out texts, tweets, or emails.

Visionary leaders know that the zeitgeist is really a composite of the past that often ignores future possibilities. While today’s zeitgeist urges us to examine the past, we may elude its grip by envisioning and consciously planning a brighter future. Progress demands that we accept the basic insight that’s been taught time and again: our inner strength comes from hope, progress springs from our imagination, and greater meaning comes from building a better future for the generation that follows.

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Why Sales Leaders Should Champion B2B Demand Generation

Today's blog post is by Jeff Ogden, award-winning B2B marketing expert, president of the sales lead generation company Find New Customers, and creator of the popular syndicated online TV show Marketing Made Simple TV. Follow him on Twitter at @fearlesscomp.

Salespeople are having a tough time nowadays. It is getting harder and harder to crack into accounts. The time has come for sales leaders to say to top management, “We need a best-practices B2B demand-generation program here ASAP!”

A very recent study by Crain’s BtoB magazine found four areas of concern:

1. The marketing mix is still not meeting the needs of the sales pipeline.
   Less than half of respondents in BtoB’s study say that their online marketing mix is addressing the needs of sales, and it has been the same for two years.
2. Brand differentiation is becoming increasingly important, but marketers struggle to achieve it.
   Sound-alike products are a huge problem for sales. If customers cannot see the differences, then sales cannot protect margins.
3. B2B marketers are not able to effectively target and engage decision makers.
   Only slightly more than 1 out of 3 believes their company is effective at engaging decision makers. So the vast majority are poor at it.
4. Marketers need better visibility into the value of their marketing programs.
   Measurement continues to be a big issue for companies. They struggle to measure the effectiveness of marketing channels, clarify the need metrics at each state, and are plagued by poor data quality.

Our conclusion is that, in many companies today, marketing is doing a poor job for sales. This is why the time has come for sales leaders to stand up and say in unison, “I’m mad as hell, and I won’t take this anymore!”

Data from a large automation-software firm showed that 1 out of 5 leads closes, whether or not you are lead nurturing; however, what about the other 4 out of 5? The data showed that you can achieve a 300 percent increase in close rates when you nurture these leads. Three hundred percent -- yes, you read that right! Don’t you want a 300 percent improvement on win rates? Would it be nice to get a lot of sales-ready leads from marketing?

It’s time to walk into the CEO’s office and tell him/her, “I want a best-practices B2B demand-generation program in this company!”

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Are You Selling at Every Level?

While many companies promise to build their organization around the needs of their customers, few companies can claim that they organize themselves around the needs of their salespeople. Yet the two are inevitably linked: in a sales-focused culture in which the entire company (not just the sales department) is involved in selling, salespeople are more successful and customers are more satisfied. Highly successful companies not only create customer-focused organizations but also back up their commitment with sales-focused cultures.

What are the elements of a sales-focused culture? Ideally, a company sells at three distinct levels. At the C-level, top executives set the tone for the organization by clearly articulating the company's mission, vision, and values. While the company's mission describes the noble purpose of the organization (selling meaning), the vision statement induces people to aim their effort toward greater future achievements (selling inspiration). The description of the company's values provides a sensible guide for creating relationships (selling trust). For a true sales culture to exist, C-level executives need to continuously sell meaning, inspiration, and trust to the company's employees, customers, suppliers, and shareholders. Research shows that companies whose employees understand the mission, vision, and values enjoy a greater return than other firms.

At the middle level, sales and marketing departments create messages that are in sync with the company's mission, vision, and values. While marketing creates the brand promise, sales delivers by elevating the customer relationship to a branded sales experience. The key to a true sales-focused culture is to align sales and marketing.

At the street level, salespeople act as company ambassadors who are fluent in two languages: the customer's language and the company's language. They are able to diagnose the right problems and deliver the right solution. Ideally, the sales team's internal and external relationship skills will build a competition-proof connection between the company and clients that will ultimately extend from the mailroom to the boardroom.

To borrow an analogy from the world of music, C-level selling is like an overture that offers a preview of imminent excitement and drama. Midlevel selling engages people with a catchy tune that resonates pleasantly in the customer's mind. Person-to-person selling is more like jazz, which is the art of the moment. Good salespeople can instantly improvise and hit the right note at the right time to turn the right prospect into a happy customer.

Very few companies are able to act in concert from top to bottom. It takes an enlightened CEO and highly talented sales and marketing teams to create a sales-focused culture with all members of the organization playing their part in a symphony that inspires the customer’s delight. It's easier said than done, but the results can be magic for top-line and bottom-line growth.

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Why You Should Step Up Your Sales 2.0 Investments

Sales 2.0 isn't a buzzword; it's become a professional discipline. It's not a passing fad but a massive shift in the global business culture. It's not about sales or marketing tools but a business transformation that delivers better results.

Today, Sales 2.0 plays a vital role in selling. And as the old ways of selling are fading away and salespeople and sales managers are educated about the increased risk of becoming victims of change, I want to reassure old-school salespeople that the core of selling will never change. That core is the ability to create, expand, and enhance relationships, face-to-face and online.

The good news: Sales 2.0 has not made B2B salespeople obsolete. In most cases, it has made them a lot more productive and effective.

What is Sales 2.0? It's the use of best-practice sales processes enabled by technology to improve speed, accountability, collaboration, and customer engagement. Sales 2.0 is a more efficient and effective way of selling and buying.

The economic pressures in our business environment demand that sales organizations become ruthlessly efficient. But Warren Buffett reminds us that efficiency is not enough: "We are tempted to see where the arrow of performance lands and then draw a bull's eye around it." We need greater effectiveness, which means we need to stop trying to improve processes that don't deliver value.

It means that we deliver greater value in the context of the sales rep's world. The equation is simple: deliver more value to the sales force so that it can deliver more value to the customer. Sales 2.0's mission is to create the right results in the most economical way.

As more ROI reports emerge, business leaders sit up and take notice. Last year, Brainshark reported that its $3,600 investment per sales rep in Sales 2.0 tools was instrumental in a 35 percent year-over-year increase in sales. Just last week, Ken Powell, VP of sales enablement at SunGard stated, “In 2013, our investment in Sales 2.0 solutions is over $4 million, and we project that this will translate into an additional $100 million in revenues.”

With the right set of Sales 2.0 tools, science can become part of the sales process, allowing companies to create a culture of measurement in which value takes center stage. Sales managers can enjoy productivity gains and increased sales while making fewer decisions based on hunches and more decisions based on science. Salespeople benefit from a level playing field, where their professional sales talent pays off in greater dividends.

In its latest Sales Performance Optimization survey, CSO Insights found that Sales 2.0 companies actually overachieve compared to less efficient organizations. In Sales 2.0 companies, a higher percentage of salespeople make quota, and more salespeople close the deals that they forecast. If you want to explore how your peers are leveraging Sales 2.0 tools, check out our new site, www.salesopshop.com, where more than 1,000 sales leaders and sales operations managers collaborate to win. 

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How Well Have You Adapted to the Global Changes in Selling?

To survive in the sales world, global executives must be adaptable. Studies show that there are three ways people commonly adapt to foreign cultures.

The first is unconditional acceptance of the foreign culture with a critical view of home. For example, a VP of sales marveled that in Japan cab drivers wore white gloves and the hotel staff always welcomed her with friendly smiles. She complained about the lack of courtesy in American business and scorned the negativity of American workers.

The second approach shows a strong loyalty to "back home" culture and a critical view of foreign culture. A manager who went to France complained that everyone was rude, griped about the French taking too much time for lunch, and felt that the French were too slow to understand new business ideas. He concluded that the French could benefit greatly from American know-how.

The third approach is to selectively adapt and integrate the best characteristics from all cultures. A successful adapter will patiently sip green tea with a Japanese executive and refrain from drinking alcohol during a meeting with Arab investors while remembering to make specific notes for a board meeting back home.

Many salespeople don't realize that they need to adapt their sales strategies, as well.

The first style of sales adaptation is to cling to the past while being critical of the present. A seasoned sales rep told me, "I will not bring up the subject of business unless the client brings it up." This salesperson believes that social media is a waste of time, thinks that CRM is a hindrance to belly-to-belly selling, and refuses to leave voicemail messages.

The second adaptation style is to embrace new ideas unconditionally while categorically rejecting old practices. One salesperson I met declared that face-to-face selling was a thing of the past. Believing that the future of selling would be exclusively in electronic commerce, he built a Facebook page, tweets six times a day, started a blog, and built his own landing pages to attract prospects. After two years of hard work, he is still struggling yet scoffs at people who still travel to see customers in person.

The most successful style for adapting to the ever-changing present is to rely on those practices that continue to work well while searching for more effective ways of doing business. The well-adapted executive still writes thank-you notes and personally extends special offers to valued clients. Successful salespeople use social media to engage customers in conversations on their terms while not ruling out lunch meetings. And they know – executives and sales reps alike – that keeping up with what’s current is a demanding job. They realize that if they cling to the past they won't be free to seize new opportunities.

Conversely, people who think of only the future tend to live in their imagination. The best way to adapt is to constantly learn more effective ways to manage the present and be receptive to new possibilities. Adapting to the present demands receptivity and the desire to move into more successful ways of being in touch with reality.

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A New Way to Think about Customer Manipulation

Many books, blogs, and online sales videos suggest a non-manipulative, synergistic, consultative approach to uncovering a prospect's needs. These resources all advance the idea that manipulative selling is a thing of the past. But is it?

The word manipulation has many meanings. Its definitions range from "artful skill" to "to change accounts to suit one's purpose." Today, we seem to give the word one meaning: to make someone do what we want him to do against his will or better judgment. Of course, this is counterproductive in any selling situation. But does this mean that manipulation should not have a place in selling at all? Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging; it is the skin of a living thought that may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances in which it is used."

Words are the tools of the selling trade, and their meanings change according to the circumstances in which they are used. Tone of voice, facial expressions, emphasis, and emotion are all in play when a salesperson uses any series of words. How we say something is often more important than what we say.

Consider this simple question: "What is it that you would like to think about?" Read it aloud three times, each time emphasizing different words -- "what," "is it," "you." Can you hear and feel the different meanings when you change the emphasis from one word to another? What impact would those changes have on your customer? Selling superstars can deliver the same sentence 10 different ways, depending on the customer and situation. They manipulate language in a way that harmonizes with the customer. But they never manipulate the customer!

Manipulating customers only antagonizes them. But manipulating yourself to suit the situation will bring you closer to your customer and the sale. Salespeople who try to manipulate customers break the rules of ethical conduct and violate the rules of professional selling. Salespeople who skillfully manipulate themselves break only sales records.

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The Side Effects of Technology

The technology industry suggests that we all can win by out-innovating our competition. That’s a bold promise; however, in reality, technology is like medicine: it often has side effects.

For example, in the year 1900, automotive companies produced 4,200 cars, of which 28 percent were powered by electric motors. While electric cars could run efficiently at about 30 MPH, gasoline-powered cars could reach higher speeds and travel longer distances.

In 1908, Henry Ford began mass production of the Model T with a gasoline engine. The decision prompted Thomas Edison to stop the development of a longer-lasting battery for electric cars.

During the last century, automotive engineers designed more than 10,000 automobile innovations, such as the electric starter, the automatic transmission, the car radio, the electric turn signal, the electric window, power steering, cruise control, cassette and then CD players, ABS brakes, GPSs, heated seats, massaging seats, solar-powered cooling fans, and more.

Then there are related innovations such as traffic lights, speed bumps, detours, radar detectors, speed traps, traffic courts, and more. Today’s cars are designed to drive more than 120 MPH, but traffic conditions slow us to an average speed of about 30 MPH. It is ironic that after more than a century of innovation, we’ve only doubled the speed of a horse. But slow-moving traffic isn’t the only side effect of technology.

Imagine what would have happened if Henry Ford had decided to build the Model T with an electric motor. Charging a battery might cost only $5 per week. Global warming and dependence on foreign oil might not be pressing issues.

dan/freedigitalphotos.net

Information technology creates different side effects. We’ve accelerated the speed of information and increased the volume of information, and every day we master a smaller fraction of what there is to know. Surveys show that with all the computing power at our fingertips, neither business productivity nor customer satisfaction has increased. That’s because information is moving quickly and growing exponentially. Consequently, our days vanish in a blur of emails, conference calls, and insane travel schedules. Information technology tends to subdivide our time, which dilutes our overall focus and often prevents us from thinking harder and deeper.

digitalart/freedigitalphotos.net

Technology allows us to communicate with a lot more people a lot faster. The side effects are that we miscommunicate more often, and we often miss the chance to communicate with honesty.

What does innovation and technology teach us? First, all innovation has hidden side effects. Second, technology does not eliminate complexity.

Managing complexity is one of the toughest leadership challenges. The solution is not to blindly eliminate complexity but to embrace it where it drives up revenues and value. We need to eliminate it when it just adds to waste. Today we need an intense curiosity about how to win without allowing complexity to strangle our humanity or sabotage our hard-earned progress.

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What about That Myth That Selling Is Getting “Tougher”?

Talk to sales managers about their jobs, and chances are, you’ll hear four common “complaints” about how they perceive today’s selling climate:

1. Selling is tougher than it has ever been.

2. Selling is more competitive than it has ever been.

3. Selling is more complex than it has ever been.

4. Selling is more stressful and not as much fun as it used to be.

How true are these statements? That’s a trick question. Believe it or not, these four responses don’t always reflect the state of the economy. More often, they reflect the state of mind of the responder.

I know a group of successful sales executives who say, “Selling has become more exciting than it has ever been.” These are the top performers who make things happen. They think differently because they see things differently. They know that it takes only a small shift in perception to achieve a big shift in performance.

Managing perception is what good selling is all about. A great salesperson is able to offer the customer a new perspective on an old problem. That, in turn, leads to a shift in attitude, a shift in the customer’s decision-making process. And that leads to a shift in the salesperson’s performance curve.

Top performers seem to be more effective when it comes to managing the selling’s “inner game.” While average salespeople unconsciously allow their fears to grow, top performers consciously challenge themselves to outgrow their fears.

Top performers don’t wish for less complexity, they learn to master more complex challenges. Like mountain climbers, they know that they won’t get better by seeking out gentler slopes. They have to find new ways to master greater degrees of difficulty.

Great CEOs don’t complain about the tough competition. They revel in the challenges that confront them. They meet those challenges head-on and no holds barred. Top sales leaders don’t wish for easier customers, but they build a better process for hiring more “A” players and helping them develop greater skills.

While average sales achievers automatically think that selling is getting harder, top achievers habitually take a harder look at reality and discover new ways to make selling easier for them and more authentic and enjoyable for their customers. They relate to their customers without pretense, and they don’t wear masks that prevent people from knowing who they really are.

When there is a crisis with a customer, the top performers rely on their inner reserves to see the opportunity within the difficulty, and they use a crisis to develop a more rewarding relationship with the client. How do top performers stay calm in a crisis? They take a half a step back and tune into their zone of productive awareness.

Top performers know that we can’t change reality, but we can choose to change our perception of reality. While average achievers know this as a fact, top performers live by this fact. Top performers are always aware of the secret to high achievement: as soon as we change our perception, we change our performance.

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