When you think about your last sales training session, how much of the learning and skills did you or your team apply? The statistics around this subject are quite discouraging. 70% of employees report that they don’t have mastery of the skills needed to do their jobs and only 12% of employees apply new skills learne
Read More
Between 1987 and 1991, scientists built a research facility called Biosphere 2 in Arizona. The primary aim was to study the elements of nature’s ecosystems in a closed and controlled environment to understand their dynamics and see if we could replicate our ecosystems in space.
Read More
It was August 15th, and I found myself in the midst of the familiar smells of the locker room, with its sounds of teammates joking around and coaches telling the veterans, “don’t forget, there’s a rookie out there who wants your position”. Yes, it was the first day of football training camp. And no, this wasn’t a Ted Lasso episode.
Read More
There is an ancient fable (from 1500s Persia) where a scorpion asks a frog to help him cross a river. The frog hesitates to oblige as he knows that the scorpion’s sting can be fatal, so the scorpion allays the frog’s fears by stating, “if I sting you, we will both die as I cannot swim.” So, the frog eventually agrees and then halfway across the water, the scorpion stings the frog. As the poison takes hold, the frog asks, “why did you do that?” The scorpion then utters the famous (or infamous) answer– “I could not resist the urge. It’s in my nature.” As I reflect on these words, I am always amazed at how “human nature” seems set in its way and not always with the most productive outcomes. Are we trapped and slaves to our nature? I don’t believe so, but it’s not easy! Unlike the protagonists of our fable, humans do have the capacity to change and evolve due to our unique brains. We have a part of our brains called the neocortex that gives us the ability to override our “instinctual nature.” So as we move into 2023, many of us are trying to adjust to the new reality of a post-Covid world, so one way of doing this is by setting New Year’s Resolutions. The good news is that we can change or control our outward behavior despite our internal and instinctual impulses. Today, we now have a better understanding of the power of habits, habit formation, and implementation. Our knowledge of how our brain works has advanced more in the last ten years than at any time in human history, but we still have a lot to learn. The bad news is that it is challenging to implement a seemingly simple process – setting new goals and focusing on achieving them. To prove this, we can simply look at gym attendance in January vs. February while considering the following ideas. Reward from the process Limbic Friction In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear suggests “forgetting about setting goals and instead focusing on your system.” This does not mean goals are unimportant, as they must be clear and specific; however, they should only be used as the direction of where you will focus your efforts. You then need to figure out how you will achieve that goal by establishing a process and getting your reward (dopamine) from completing the steps of that process. Dopamine is vital to all this because it gives you the energy to push through the discomfort of change. As you “externally” achieve, you start internally changing and creating new neural pathways enabling you to execute your new habit consistently. Habits are vital to changing behavior because habits are the brain’s way of conserving energy. The brain is the largest consumer of energy of any human organ, so it minimizes the use of the high energy thinking neocortex and makes behaviors unconscious and automatic. Notice how many behaviors you do without really thinking about them in the first hour of your day. Wake up Use the washroom Clean up Take a shower Brush your teeth Get dressed Eat breakfast Walk out the door Drive to work, and so on If you had to “think” about all those decisions, you would be exhausted by the time you got to the office. Habits eliminate or minimize a concept called Limbic Friction. Dr. Andrew Huberman describes Limbic Friction as “the strain required to overcome anxiety and lack of motivation or fatigue related to building the new habit.” It is how much conscious override of your current state you must have to execute the habit. In other words, the more you think about doing something, the more challenging and energy it takes to do it. Again, having a good process that helps create motivation, environment, and behaviors (new pathways) will lead to the consistent execution of a new habit. If you found my blog this week intriguing and want to read more from him, or more on similar topics, click www.redpagelead.com/red-media to look through all our published posts.
Read More
I was recently doing some shopping at a local “big box” store and while I was there, they were giving out free samples of various food items. Being one of those people who lives to eat (as opposed to those who eat to live), I usually do not miss an opportunity to stimulate my palate, especially if the food is free. As I came closer to the little table, I noticed the little oven was open, as the warm sweet smell of spices wafted in the air in my direction. It was then I found myself doing something I did not expect: “Would you like to try a sample?” the welcoming employee asked me. “Thanks, but no thanks,” I replied. As I reflected on my answer, I was initially curious as to why I said no to free mouth-watering food, but I then remembered that I had decided to focus on my health and had decided to cut out certain foods in my diet. I had been doing this for quite a while now, so I had formed a habit of saying “no” to this particular category of food. This got me thinking, why do people say “thanks, but no thanks” to an offer, even when there is no cost involved? Well, the answer is rooted in neuroscience of course. What we now know to be true, scientifically, is that all decisions we make are initially recruited emotionally and then justified rationally. What we also know to be true is that all our behaviors are rooted in a particular emotion and it’s that emotion that is driving those behaviors. Why are these two “facts” important to understand when you are having a sales conversation? The reason it is important is that people “buy” when you are offering something that satisfies the emotion that will initiate the buying behavior. If the emotion is thirst and the salesperson is offering water, then that emotion will drive someone to buy the water. The water is solving a “meaningful” problem. Meaningful is defined as “something serious, important, or useful in some way (Colins). We also know that the brain spends twice as much energy avoiding pain than seeking gains, so here’s the important take-away: When you can solve someone’s meaningful problem (emotion) which is causing them some form of “pain”, the brain will spend a lot of energy wanting to solve (behavior) the problem to avoid or eliminate that pain. It will also be motivated towards a gain, but with less energy. So in circling back to my big box store, the lovely and friendly employee was offering me something that at that moment, was not meaningful to me as it did not solve any problem I currently had. This is a valuable concept to remember. As sales leaders, we need to understand and put into practice these scientific principles combined with skillful questions, to help our customers identify the meaningful problem that we can help them solve. Once the right emotion is recruited, then the brain will be motivated to want to solve the “painful” problem or acquire the “gratifying” gain.
Read More
Early in my career, I had the privilege of living in Europe allowing me the opportunity to travel to parts of the world that I had always wanted to visit. One of these locations was the country of Tunisia. I distinctly remember a trip to one of the local village markets, and the best way to describe the experience was “organized chaos”. The smells were pungent and the volume of human voices was deafening. I would watch as patrons would be negotiating and haggling the price of an item with the vendor. It all began with the customer asking “how much?” It was an emotional and almost theatrical display of disgust at the initial asking price, which led to the vendor becoming angered at the then counter-offer. I watched this continue for sometimes up to 5 minutes and inevitably an agreed-upon price would almost always be arrived upon. (By the way – it never ended with them just splitting the difference.) How much? Why does this question create so much emotion? Let’s explore both sides of the transaction and what you need to do as the seller before you answer the “how much” question. From the customer’s perspective, any purchase transaction first: creates a cascade of thoughts (memories), then generates a cascade of emotions (all memories have an emotion attached to it), which triggers a cocktail of neurochemicals that finally will drive a particular behaviour. One of the brain’s primary functions is to protect itself so it will always look at any situation through the lens of self-preservation which means, thinking through worst-case scenarios. This is the primary driver of a buyer’s anxiety. As sales professionals, we need to understand that this deeply rooted dynamic is always in play and the good news is… It can be minimized through the buying conversation. A second factor to consider is the anchor point. This is the price/value the buyer has in their head as to what the items or service should be priced at from their perspective. I speak to this decision-making bias in detail in a past blog. So, what is a sales professional to do when you have both biology and psychology seemingly designed to work against you? You begin by changing the emotion attached to the buying experience and ensuring the proper anchor point, we can move the conversation from negative emotions and thoughts of “how is this salesman going to take advantage of me” to creating a deeper relationship by solving the customer’s meaningful problem. Here’s the rub: you truly must care about the customer’s problem more than how the customer can fix your problem (quota and $$). To accomplish this, part of the process is to learn why they are interested in your product or service from their perspective, we call this the Prospect Story. By taking the time to understand the customer’s goals and challenges, you are having them participate in the conversation allowing you to gather information and language to use later in the conversation. From there it’s a matter of asking insightful questions allowing you to vacillate between the validation part of the brain (neocortex), where judgment and skepticism live, to the emotional part of the brain (limbic system), where all decisions are actually initiated. By helping the customer realize why their problem is meaningful, they consciously attach an emotion to the problem (usually negative) that the brain is now motivated to solve or eliminate. Once you help them identify the solution (your product or service), they go back to the validation part of the brain to justify it. We buy emotionally and justify the purchase rationally. Finally, you need to help the customer discover the cost of not solving their problem through a monetary or identity lens – what will it cost them in their pocketbook or how will this affect their identity (good person, smart person, successful person, etc.). The assumption is that your product or service is priced lower than the cost of their problem. This contrast now sets the anchor point to a value proposition that they can clearly see, which makes the price of your product or service beneficial and valuable to them. One final thought around an additional benefit of focusing on these steps. You will be building trust and authentic relationships with the customer that will move you from a vendor with products and services to a trusted advisor that will be helping your customers solve meaningful problems. Not only will you differentiate yourself from most salespeople, but this becomes a vocation of helping others in a meaningful way.
Read More