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Mindset

New Habits

Now that you have picked an imperfection to work on (and if you haven’t, please do…tardiness is clearly one that can always be addressed if it’s an issue for you), how is it going?

What are the structures you put in place to help you? Did you put alerts on your phone to remind you to do something (practice a new action, get out the door!) or recurring actions in your calendar to start to build a new skill? 

Building habits takes intention, prompting, repetition, patience, adjustment…and celebr…

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Identifying Pitfalls and Traps

Are you good for the first three days into a new initiative and then start to slip?
When do you stop doing the actions that you committed to?
Do you start to tell yourself: “It’s not that bad” or “It’s not that important?”

Rather than avoiding these natural tendencies, include them in your goals. Consider them BEFORE they happen so that when they pop up, you will be prepared for them.

For example, if you know that you start the month strong, make your first week goals and miss your thi…

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Setting Goals

Happy New Year! (How long can we say that…all the way to the end of January…or the first time you speak with someone in the new year?)
If your goals aren’t completed yet (of course you have started them!), not to worry. Get busy on them so that you can start planning your strategy and actions. Here is a structure that works:
Always articulate your goals as a RESULT. Example: Write $1.2m in 2023. This example is the first rule:

S - Specific - Not vague or ambiguous. - [Write $1.2m] in 2023. …

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GRATEFUL GREETING

This is where gratitude matters most…when we welcome clients, customers, and prospects into the showroom and collectively and individually create an environment that is warm and inviting.

Our thinking and conversations internally impact the experience that we create for our ‘guests’ 
and when we understand the impact that we have, we can be responsible for it and be
intentional with it.

What do you do to prepare yourself to be welcoming and grateful to incoming guests?
What do you do to rem…

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GRATEFUL THINKING

In the season of Thanksgiving, I thought it might be helpful to bring gratitude to every element of the sales process and to see where we can expand our effectiveness. And since thoughts impact words and words impact deeds, it’s a great place to start.

Grateful thinking is a process and a practice that starts with prompts and reminders to begin building the practice. Personally, I notice that when I let my practice and structure lapse, my thinking follows, and I am not ‘operating’ from a place of…

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Practice – the rewards

I need to bring the topic back around to selling.

Ah, the practice of selling. It is a practice. There are so many elements: the practice of setting goals, the practice of connecting with strangers, the practice of asking discovery questions, the practice of presenting solutions to customer priorities, the practice of handling objections, the practice of asking for a commitment, the practice of being silent and still, the practice of follow up and outreach, the practice of organizing your bus…

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Practice - the practice

It sounds funny…but practice is a practice. Medicine is a practice…as are yoga and meditation.

Practice practicing. Some of that is thinking of practice as a repetition to develop a skill. Or through practice, to develop an understanding of the nature of practice…the emotions that are part of it, the stages to be experienced, the discomfort and awkwardness that is PART of the practice and of development.

Practice allows us to build a relationship to discomfort so that we can see it for w…

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Practice – the concept

Most of us would agree that to achieve excellence or to be good at something, we have to practice. Right?

We may have natural talent in an area of interest, but talent alone will only get us so far. To go beyond our innate skills, we’ve got to practice.

Conceptually, practice equates with something of interest. To invest the time to practice, we would need the desire to improve…to learn beyond what we know…to discover and expand our limits…to experience ourselves beyond who we know oursel…

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Asking for the Commitment…are you asking enough?

Here’s a question…when you KNOW that the solution you presented is spot on, and the customer agrees…and yet they have a question or a concern – which you overcome, do you then ask for the sale?
And if they hesitate or say: ‘I want to think about it,’ do you manage it and ask for the sale again?
And if the sale is not forthcoming, do you ask for and get an appointment – to ask for the sale again?

Okay, this might seem like waaaayyyyy too much for you. You may call it too aggressive. Too inse…

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Asking…enough… Questions

How do you know if you have asked enough questions?
What is it you want to know? And are you asking the questions that will find that out?
As salespeople, we can all expect to learn more and ask better questions as we continue to develop our skills.
One of the clues that you are not asking enough questions is that objections arise when you try to close. What are the objections that consistently come up for you?

Or equally important, do you know where your buyer is in their buying process…

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