by Mike Brunel | Nov 6, 2017 | Leadership, Sales
Start a Conversation with Yourself
A successful sales relationship hinges on the ongoing conversation you have with your customer. The dialogue starts, strangely enough, with the conversation you have with yourself.
You can listen to others more effectively when you know how to listen to yourself. I first learned this years ago at that first media company job.
They sent me to a conference in Houston, Texas. I had just come out of a long-term relationship and to be totally honest, I felt a little bit lost.
I remember sitting in a hotel room and coming across an infomercial featuring a very youthful Tony Robbins promoting something he called “Personal Power.”
I was intrigued enough to buy what Robbins was selling. When I got back to New Zealand, there was a box waiting for me with Tony’s signature on it.
Love of Knowledge.
I devoured the material; it re-ignited my love of knowledge and showed me how to improve my outlook and my self-talk.
I did all the exercises and kept a journal. One skill I learned was how to ask quality questions of myself. It started with questions recorded in a journal and culminated in a completely new focus that brought better results. The disparity in the quality of people’s lives often comes down to the difference in the questions they consistently ask.
You prime your mental computer to look for a particular type of answer. If you’re asking, “What’s wrong with me,” your mind will come up with an answer—you are stupid or you don’t deserve to do well.
On the flip side, if you ask questions like “How can I take this experience and use it to contribute to others’ lives,” your brain will come up with much more constructive answers.
You will be able to see the path forward, rather than feeling like you have reached a dead end.
Conversation Questions to help your Self Talk
Here are some examples from my long-ago journal:
• What am I happy about in my life right now?
• What about that makes me happy and how does it
make me feel?
• What am I most excited about in my life right now?
• What makes me excited?
• What am I grateful for in my life?
• What am I committed to in my life right now?
Conversations Matter.
Asking these questions helped me see clearly how positive questions lead to a growth mindset, which leads to better results down the road. When you think in terms of constructive, positive questions, your brain goes off and works on
them even when you’re not thinking about the answers consciously.
For example, consider the difference between “Why does this always happen to me?” and “How can I learn from
this experience?” They are simply worlds apart in terms of choosing your next step.
Develop a pattern of questions that empower you. If you seek a shift in your life, make this part of your daily routine.
Over time, asking these types of questions changes how you question your clients.
Have fun selling your stuff.
Mike Brunel started Mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. His products and services are now sold in 23 countries and in 11 languages generating $250 million annually in sales for his clients. Mike sold the company in 2015 and now spends his time following his passions which include rugby, travel. His promise: “I can find thousands of dollars in your business within minutes – GUARANTEED” TRY ME OUT!
by Mike Brunel | Oct 11, 2017 | Leadership
This week I want to share a story about a father and son and the importance of having an open mind.*
The Newspaper story
A man is busy working at home when his young 5-year-old child comes into his study and with the enthusiasm that children have in abundance, he asks his Dad if they can go to the park.
The Dad in the middle of his work tries to resist his son’s requests but the child persists, and with frustration, the Dad looks around him and lifts up a newspaper and opens it up to double page picture of a map of the world.
A Map with a secret
He then pulls out the map, and tears it up into handfuls of small pieces and gives them to his son.
He then says “after you put together this map of the world, then we will go to the park.” his son took the pieces of the newspaper in both hands and scurried eagerly over to the other side of the room and set to without delay. The Dad knew that his son had no idea what a map of the world looked like, and thinking it would take him ages he got back to his work.
Five minutes later his son ran across to his Dad, “I finished he said, can we go to the park now”
It was Easy
The Dad thought his son was making it up, but on the floor was the finished makeshift jigsaw of the map of the world.
“How did you finish this so quickly?” he asked his son
“It was easy, Daddy.” said the boy as he turned over the pieces of the jigsaw one at a time, and on the other side of the world map was a photograph of a man.
“You see, when you put the man back together the whole world falls into place.”
*The moral of the story is it is how you look at things.
You see what you want to see, sometimes you have to open up (Growth Mindset).
I have to challenge myself every day to start thinking a little differently about this profession called sales.
Have a great time selling your stuff.
*Chicken Soup for the Soul- Jack Canfield- Mark Victor Hansen
Mike
PS. Why not open your mind and take the 7 Day challenge.
by Mike Brunel | Jul 30, 2017 | Leadership, Sales
What makes great sales people great? The common misconceptions about salespeople can be tough to get over because they are so ingrained in our culture. It helps to see what successful salespeople actually look like. Most of the great salespeople aren’t all that slick on the surface, but they are great at discovering and solving problems. What makes them different?
I think there are 11 traits that make a successful salesperson here a 7 from my book.
Beliefs, Traits, and Habits of the Best Salespeople:
Desire. The desire to be successful is the number one feature of excellent salespeople. Folks with a strong drive to succeed usually have built upon a history of success.
They may have been good at sports, or bringing up a family.
They know what it means to care deeply about the goal and really go for it.
Desire leads them to find out everything they can about their product and their competitor’s product. In fact, their knowledge is one of their strongest assets.
Motivated salespeople will compete against themselves, not others. They strive to beat their own last target, cultivate additional clients, and achieve business.
2. Self Belief. Effective business people have a very strong self-belief. When they experience rejection, they understand that it is situational. A single loss does little or damage to their core self-esteem.
Instead of getting down on themselves, people with high self-esteem draw on all their knowledge and past mistakes to correct their course and move on.
Anyone in sales can achieve strong self-belief by developing a passion about their product or service. If you can turn your passion for your business into a core belief, you can sell your product to anyone. That is a sales mindset guarantee.
3. Persistence. Persistent folks do not give up easily, if ever. They see problems not as dead ends, but surmountable obstacles. How many rejections can you weather?
Numbers coming out of the Dartnell Corp. in the United States show that a sale in today’s market often goes through only after the tenth “No.” You read that right. The tenth “No.” We are up against a tough economic environment, and unless we are persistent and believe in what we sell, we will give up after about the third time someone tells us “No.”
Learn when to back off and not overplay the persistence card, but do not ever roll over and give up. In this brave new world where the power is increasingly in the hands of the buyer, we have to create marketing and sales strategies to overcome our reluctance to try one more time.
4. Purpose. Many great salespeople find greater purpose in their work than simply completing the job at hand. They might want to help their clients, fellow workers, and teammates build a great business environment to work in, or they may find value in training others by passing on their knowledge to employees.
Motivations can be as basic as feeding the family, affording that extra vacation, or getting the kids through college.
To folks invested in these kinds of outcomes, money and success are by-products of the efforts they make.
This is an important distinction, for finding meaning in your work will keep you balanced in your business. Work cannot be your sole purpose.
We hear too many stories about business people burning out by dedicating themselves solely to their businesses, day in and day out. In the long run, this approach provides diminishing returns. Remember why you are working so hard.
5. Goal Orientation. The best salespeople are people who set real, attainable goals, weekly, monthly, and annually. They measure everything they do, and believe strongly in revisiting and setting new goals all the time, not just once a year
A goal might be as simple as beating the business turnover from last year, or building some training and sales goals in the company for the next six months. Many people I work with struggle with goal setting. I advocate aligning your goals with the problems you are trying to solve.
6. Accountability. Great salespeople do not participate in what we call “the chicken run.” The “chicken run” happens when the salesperson disappears from the buyer’s sight as soon as the deal is sealed.
Successful salespeople never seal the deal and then fail to follow up with service.
If the product does not work, they are not too “chicken” to go back and make it right. If things do not work out well for the client, they know they need to jump back in there and help the client realize his or her expectations.
These folks always work it out and fix the problems that come up.
7. Willingness to Learn. Strong salespeople seek help and guidance from people they admire and trust.
They may work with a coach, confide in a colleague, or consult a manager. They need someone they can feel comfortable with so they can talk through their fears and doubts.
Take The Sales Mindset Challenge here and discover how you rate with your sales mindset you might be surprised. Its a simple list of questions that rate your beliefs and traits. Have fun.
Good Selling.
P. S. Are You Utilizing The Most Profitable, Up-To-Date AND Proven Sales Lessons To Grow Your Business Right Now, In Today’s Market?
Changing your Sales Mindset coming soon.
