Developing a sales business mind - The Comfort Zone (Part 4) - Day 492

If you haven't already, I suggest before continuing reading this blog, to firstly go through the first 3 blogs the series "Developing the Business Mind""

• Understanding the energetic cycle
• The WHY
• The Numbers Game

From my previous blog post:

"…I often hear people that are in the process of giving up that they have done everything in their power to make their business work yet, they keep on failing. When opening the point with them, there are underlying currents of excuses, justification and projected blame as to why they are not making it in sales. This has primarily to do with the main 2 components that we discussed thus far- the 'WHY' and 'Effective Numbers game' application.

I looked at this point and the process that I've walked and I found that there is one more primary component that needs to be realized and applied in one's process of developing a sales business mind - the Comfort Zone - this will be discussed in the next blog post."

An interesting thing that I found with regards to the 'Comfort Zone' is that in many cases, the comfort zone is not necessarily a physical place that we feel comfortable at - Fascinating enough, the comfort zone is primarily inside our own MIND. Let me explain:

As a sales person, 80% of your time should be allocated for lead generation, to ensure a consistent flow of the business where new clients come on board on a regular basis. Once they have leads, the next step is to call these leads and schedule appointments and afterwards, make the sale. Some sales people would develop a resistance to lead generations, others would create a resistance to scheduling appointments, others would have resistance to make the appointments - but all sales people at some stage or another would experience a resistance, even if it is just a slight resistance. 

Resistance has usually to do with fears or beliefs about ourselves like: "I don't want to make mistakes", "I feel that I am not ready", "I need to perfect myself before I meet people", "I don't know what to say" and so forth.

Resistance can also be due to difficulties with following a strict routine like for instance, having to do the same thing every day can create the experience of boredom inside of ourselves and we would want to rebel against our strict schedule with saying to ourselves, for instance: "I don't want to do it today, I will do it tomorrow" or "I made enough sales this month, let's just chill out".

Another type of resistance that a salesperson may face occurs just before they go out for an appointment, here I found that the resistance is mostly undefined, very slight, not so many thoughts around it - it is primarily an experience - this I will open up in one of my next blog posts.

In this blog post, I would like to share about my own experience that I faced in relation to scheduling appointments and how I supported myself to step out of the resistance and apply that which I needed to apply:

What I found for myself in my previous work place is my tendency to pick up the phone and call people BUT 90% of my calls where towards my old clients, aiming to give them a service, follow up on them, maintaining my relationship with them - though, in self honesty - it was an escape from having to deal with new people; I felt much more comfortable talking with my existing clients rather than recruiting new clients.

I remember a time where my boss asked me why am I not scheduling new appointments - I looked at him and said - "you have no idea how busy I am with giving service to my clients - it takes up most of my day to give them the best service that I can". And I mean, with me saying that in the tonality that I expressed myself as - no one could argue with me, I sounded so confident in my words as if giving service to my existing clients is the most important thing in the world.

So - my justifications/excuses were validated by my work environment which for a moment, I actually believed that I must only focus on existing clients and get referrals here and there, instead of aligning my schedule in such a way where I do give service to existing clients BUT, spending most of my time to lead generation and scheduling appointments so that my business could grow effectively.

The resistance that I faced was with contacting new people, with creating a relationship with new people opposed to feeling 'safe' with the clients that I already know. To me, contacting new people met with great effort on a mental level - this part of the business was not yet natural to me in the sense that I could just do it without having to think about what to say or how to act. By allowing myself to resist this part of the business instead of supporting myself to master the application as a living expression of myself, I compromised my business by going into my comfort zone in the mind, accepting my resistance to interact with new people (prospect clients).

What do I mean by 'Comfort Zone' - the mind keeps on bringing excuses and justifications that at times, seem so real and right. By accepting these resistances as validated thoughts, justifications and excuses, we allow ourselves to not follow through with what we planned to do, but instead we fall back to what we naturally good at. In my case, I was naturally good in giving services to my clients, maintaining my relationship with them, making sure that they are happy with the product and/or the company. In this, there was no mental effort on my side - it was an easy application - this was my mental comfort zone.

When I investigated my resistances to do lead generation and/or call to schedule appointments - one of the dimensions that I found was the idea that I was bored with this type of routine; meaning, this was the excuse that I primarily used inside myself to not step out of my comfort zone. When opening up the point of boredom, I found that I haven't effectively integrated the concept of the numbers game so every time I was about to call a new prospect clients I had this thought: "No, not again, I don't want to do it". So what I then did to support myself in physically stepping out of my comfort zone was to find ways to make it entertaining when contacting a new prospect client. I would, for instance, give myself challenges like: "while calling this client, stand on one foot" or " while calling this client, stand on the chair" lol. Another method that I found was to change my script and every time pitch differently - In this, I transformed the boredom experience into something that is fun and entertaining, not allowing the mind to have any justifications and excuses such as boredom.

By changing the dynamic when calling new people, I started to enjoy contacting new people and the resistances that I faced before, started to fade away. Essentially, as I pushed through and applied the techniques of contacting new people, I perfected the skill within myself and eventually it became a normal living expression of myself that didn't require any mental effort.

Will continue  with the comfort zone concept more in the next blog post

Developing a sales business mind - understanding the energetic cycle (Part 1) - Day 489

The start of a new business is like Energetic roller-coaster ‎with ups and downs - there are periods where everything seems to be working for us and then the next moment comes and we feel that everything is wrong. Obviously, as long as everything is in order, we indulge in the positive experience and hold on to it as long as we possibly can because deep inside, we know that this positive energy would eventually fade away and we would either experience neutral or negative energy before the positive energy emerge again.

In the business world, the Energetic Roller-Coaster is primarily seen at the beginning phases of the business. For instance, in sales businesses, it takes time for a business to take off the ground. One has to first understand how the business works, what is the value of the product or service that the company sells, who are the target clients, how to reach these potential clients, how to advertise your product/service, how to present your product/service in the most effective way, how to create attractive payment plans, how to manage the cash flow and so forth.

In the beginning, the sales person would invest a lot of money, time and effort into the business with little to no return as there is a process to walk to get the wheel turning on a physical level. Unfortunately, most people do not understand in sales, the actions that one take now, WILL bring result in the future ONLY if they continue driving themselves/business consistently and therefore, most sales people would access energetic cycle through which they would either step out from or give up.

The Energetic cycles that I faced in sales functioned as follows:

In the first month of work, I was super motivated, excited and I pushed myself beyond my own expectations though, I kept forgetting that what I am walking now will only bear fruits in the future. Inevitably, reality knocked on my door and reminded me that the physical reality is moving way slower than how I move myself in my mind and, with forgetting the basic physical principles, I accessed negative energy of frustration, impatience by the end of the third month. This was the breaking point where I had to make a decision - to continue pushing myself and the business or to give up. With the support of my sales mentor, I decided to push myself and the business. Later I realized that it wasn't just me that went into the breaking point at the end of the third month - anyone that came after me to the company faced exactly the same thing where initially they were motivated and slowly but surely their energy level declined and they gave up. I investigated this point further and I found that the 3 months breaking point is a pattern that most sales people face no matter what and where they sell.

Making the decision to continue walking the business wasn't the end of the energetic cycle - after the breaking point phase came the next phase which I call the 'promises phase'. The promises phase is when I started seeing the movement but it was not yet tangible, touchable - it was definitely in the future but not yet completely here. In this phase, I would normally find myself accessing the positive energy of excitement, anticipation and sort of relaxation, as if I can breathe again. This I found to be a dangerous phase - this energy feels so great, you want to stay in it for as long as you can.

On a business level, what I found within myself was a slacking phase wherein, instead of consistently moving the business, I would hold onto the promises that were made, calculate the future income as if the money was already in the bank and thereafter allowed myself to lay back for a moment and do nothing. Obviously, this had to fall because not all promises matured to actual sales and I had to start everything from the beginning because during the slacking phase, I didn't make sure that the movement was constant and so, with starting again, I found myself again in the braking point cycle which could have been detrimental if I would choose to give up at the end of the cycle.

For myself, I realized that I cannot allow myself to cycle through these phases again and again and again - I must apply consistency no matter what the mind is telling me. I realized that Promises is not something that I can work with and I must continue moving myself to source more clients, have more appointments and more sales to ensure the success of my business.

How did I apply consistency as a living expression of myself?

In sales, there is always a pattern of success that one can identify and categorize into a daily living application. For instance, as a sales person, you must generate leads, schedule appointments, make appointments, close the sale, get referrals and support your client with your product/service. As a sales team leader, you must follow up on your team, open opportunities for them, coach them, train them and so forth. Each person must identify the specifics steps that they must walk to ensure their individual success and thereafter, schedule these steps into a daily living application. So with the example of a sale person where you know that you must generate leads every day, schedule appointments, performing appointments, follow up on your clients - place each step as a time frame in your daily schedule. For instance, plan 2 hours of your day to make phone calls wherein, 1 hour is to schedule appointments and another hour to follow up on existing clients.

Each step needs to be pre-defined as to how many hours a day will you devote for the task and thereafter, all you have to do is discipline yourself to commit to the schedule that you created for yourself.

In creating structure in your day to day living, there is no place for energetic fluctuations as in every moment of the day, you know exactly what needs to be done to make your business a success. Though, if you are not clear on WHY you are doing what you are doing and/or, you do not understand the number game principle of sales, you will very quickly fall into the energetic ride even with having a structural schedule to follow.

This will be discussed in the next blog