An excerpt adapted from Shiftability: Creating a Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Selling.
Anyone in sales today faces an uncertain future. We could almost say anyone in any business role today faces an uncertain future. We live in an age of disruption and disintermediation. The business landscape is rapidly and radically changing and it keeps getting harder to predict what lies ahead.
Sales methodologies are changing as well, partly in response to the flux in the business environment. Through the valuable work and research of many in the field we understand the nature of the buying and selling relationship differently.
All of this uncertainty around us raises an important question:
The sales context has changed.
Selling methodologies are changing.
Have you changed?
What we see today is sales professionals responding to all of the movement around them by switching companies, or changing roles, and of course attempting to change the way they do things. Because this is how human beings respond when faced with a problem: Okay, what do I have to do to fix this? We get asked this all the time in our coaching and managing of sales teams: Yes, everything is changing. What should we do?
The assumption is if we just do the right things, we will have the right results and then we will be successful. Perhaps you have thought this way too and tried to change things around you and the way you do things. Likely you have found yourself in the same place, getting the same results, running up against the same frustrations. And we have to ask—what is the common denominator? The answer is you.
You can change your job, change your boss, change your city, and try a new method, but unless you undergo a personal transformation yourself, all of these external changes in context and methodology are not going to get you where you need to go or help you become who you need to be in order to have success in a complex new world
Deepak Chopra said, “I am not a human thinking, I am not a human doing, I’m a human being.” When we try to do the right things in order to get the right results, expecting to then be successful, we are saying that we are “human doings.”
Instead, we need to start with who we are and what we believe. Human beings act out of their beliefs and sense of purpose; what we do is a result of what we believe.
So before you change what you do, first we need to explore what you believe and how much of what you are doing is determined by fear, concern or limited ways of thinking. This is where personal transformation starts.
This personal transformation is necessary to solve the challenge facing every sales professional today: how do I stay relevant in this new world, navigate the shifting environment around me, and deliver value to both my client and my company?
Read more about achieving personal transformation in Shiftability: Creating a Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Selling.
Audiobook now available.
Over the years author Steve Chandler has been a highly positive influence to many of us on the Microchip team. Steve's teachings around the concept of being Fearless were central to the first few years of my weekly message to the team. Steve taught us all that our greatest challenge was overcoming the fear that exists in our own heads about things that may not even be real. We have learned how to become fearless with respect to serving our clients and being valuable to our families. The fearless journey continues.
In Steve's most recent book, Death Wish, he writes about the battle of addiction. Addiction to alcohol and drugs in particular. Steve paints a strong story of the battle itself and the hold that addiction to anything has on one's life. There are many things in his book that apply to life in the selling world. One is a poem by Fred Knipe called Snowfall.
It happened like a snowfall.
It came without a sound.
And when I looked the world had changed.
Everything was new.
This applies to our world, the world of sales and serving clients. Massive, disruptive change has ironically crept up on us like a silent snowfall, and suddenly it seems that everything has changed overnight. While many people are locked in the past and stuck in the what, we have to recognize that the snow has fallen and shift to work in this changed new world.
There is a quote from Steve's book that is particularly compelling:
"The greatest addiction is familiarity.”
And that is what most of us are addicted to – doing things the way we have always done.
It’s so easy to be addicted to what we are comfortable with, but sticking with the status quo is not going to work in today's new paradigm. The great news is it is entirely possible to shift into a new way of doing things and break away from an addiction to the status quo.
Check out Steve's book, Death Wish, you will enjoy the very enlightening read.
Don’t get caught by the snow!
Thinking differently to respond and thrive in a different age of selling requires a different center of focus. It’s far too easy to get inwardly focused on our products, on our features and benefits, on our pitch, on our sales cycle.
Instead our new thinking and new actions that will lead us to developing new clients must all be centered around THEM. What does our client need to achieve in THEIR company and in THEIR lives?
Every message, every action, every idea that we have must be focused on the client and their world. Pure and simple. If not, we will simply sound like every other sales person from every other vendor, and that is not what we are working so hard to achieve.
Not products, not features, not benefits. We will eventually get to all that but much later in the engagement process, when we have earned the right to be heard. And when our message and solutions are aligned with the needs and aims of the client.
Once we fully understand, only then can we seek to be understood.
In my last post I shared the concept of "limiting beliefs" which has really been resonating with the readers of Shiftability. A central theme of our book is what we believe is at the center of any potential for transformation. Our ability to shift into new ways of operating in the new sales paradigm depends first on what we believe. Limiting beliefs are the things that hold us back from making that shift. Here is a further discussion of the different forms limiting beliefs can take. I encourage you to get a copy of Shiftability for the full discussion on identifying limiting beliefs and how to break free from them.
Our limiting beliefs can roughly be organized into a few broad categories:
Fear-based beliefs. These beliefs are rooted in our fears. We might be afraid of hurting people’s feelings or damaging a long-term relationship with a client so we are reluctant to have tough conversations. Or we could be afraid of hearing no, so we never ask for the business. These limiting beliefs are generally easier to identify.
Misguided or false beliefs. This can be as simple as believing things that are not true, or it can be holding on to “conventional” wisdom without questioning it. For example, it is a common belief that tension in a relationship should be avoided, but tension is actually a vital part of the sales process that you must leverage, and not avoid.
Misjudgment or overconfidence. This is when we are disconnected from the reality around us and not reading the situation accurately. We might be under the belief that we are really in control when we are not. Our loyalties can be misplaced and not aligned with our business objectives. We can confuse our business relationships with our personal relationships. We might believe that the way we have always done things is the best way and the only way to be successful.
Experience-based beliefs. These are the hardest limiting beliefs to identify and counter because they are often true. Or we at least have experiences that would verify these beliefs. Our competitor has a better product. We know our company has supply constraints and we are not confident we can deliver. We know we do not know all the answers. These things can all be true, but that does not mean we cannot find a way around them.
Many successful people and experienced sales professionals have come to a point where they believe that what they believe about the world of sales is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We are suggesting that whatever you know about your sales experience, whatever experience you have had, and whatever success you have had, is limited, because the future includes new variables, new truths, and new opportunities. Innovation and disruptive opportunity will start with saying, “What if?”
What if I could reach the customer?
What if I could break through?
What if the customer would buy anyway?
Opportunity is always afforded to the person who recognizes boundaries that exist and decides to go beyond them.
One of the big ideas from Shiftability that is resonating with readers is the concept of limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs are the things that keep you stuck where you are, that get in the way of moving to a new level, that block your path to greater success - the things that you believe that keep you from transformation.
I don't know about you, but when I hear the term "limiting belief" the first thing I think is that I was wrong - I believed something that wasn't true or I was deceived. This is not actually the case. Here is an excerpt from the book that explains what a limiting belief really is:
"A limiting belief is any belief that holds you in your current way of doing things. We all have limiting beliefs, every single one of us. They are internal frames and ways of thinking that keep us from what is possible and what is available out there for us.
Limiting does not necessarily mean that a belief was bad or that it didn’t work, or was wrong or untrue. Limiting means it was fixed to a certain frame or to a certain set of variables.
For example, everybody who’s been successful in selling has had a winning strategy that has led them to the place where they are right now. That is fantastic. But that winning strategy may not be what is needed for the future. Even though it has been successful, even though it has worked, it is still limited, because it may be irrelevant for the current environment even though it may have been relevant previously.
Or perhaps you have reached a ceiling in your sales performance and you simply have never been able to sell more. What will it take to get you to the next level?
In the future where we are headed the variables have changed. We cannot limit ourselves to the way we thought before, or limit ourselves to the winning strategies that worked in the past. Instead, we get to adopt new strategies; we get to explore new ways of going about things. We get to transform ourselves in order to be relevant for the future.
So, a limiting belief is not always something negative or that has been unsuccessful. A limiting belief is something that may have been relevant in a certain time but in the current context is losing its relevance. It is limited in its capacity to produce results in the future. To uncover our limiting beliefs we have to look at both the things that have been successful for us, and the things that have held us back. And then take a look at what is needed for the future.
The moment we are able to recognize the beliefs that we have had up until now and have carried us to now, we arrive at a place from which we can then develop new beliefs. Those new beliefs will be rooted in curiosity, the willingness to investigate and explore, the willingness to shift and transform, and the willingness to contribute and create value. Once you are able to or willing to engage these new beliefs, you will do new things that will improve your results."
Adapted from Shiftability: Creating A Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Selling
