How do you re-weld your broken world?

The broken places become the strongest points when re-welded. What components do you use to re-weld your life.

Stop Stopping

Most people initially struggle in sales because they’ve been taking orders their whole life.

When you were young, you did what your parents told you to do. Sure, you may have bucked up a time or hundred, but immediately you’d back down from rebelling once they slapped you back with one of those,

“When you have your own damn place and pay your own damn bills, then you can do whatever the hell you want to do…but until then, you better do what the hell I tell you to do!” 

We grow older, but in some ways, we never age emotionally-I mean we pop bottles on monumental birthdays, but we stall out in a fixed wage mindset. Our employer tells us, “Do that and I’ll pay you this,” which traditionally is par for the course, but when you get into the sales, you’ve got to take that decade or more of being an “order taker-” of being told what to do and you’ve got to flip it on its head.

If you were working in fast food as a salesperson,  it’d be as if someone came in and placed an order, and then you turned right back around and challenged that same order.

(Customer): “Yea I’d like a large #6 with a Coke.”

(You, the fast food salesperson): “You know a small cheeseburger with a water would be calorically better.”

You couldn’t do that working at Slap Beef Burger– hell you wouldn’t be there long if you did. You can’t challenge when it comes to taking orders, but you do have to push back when it comes to working in sales.

Selling effectively is about challenging the thoughts of your customers.

Statistically speaking most of your customers are going to buy something different than when they first started looking. Keeping that thought in mind, it’s not that you ignore them or tell them defiantly, “You don’t need that…this is what you need;” it’s more so leaning into their logic with suggestions and notice the patterns that begin to emerge when you ask Past, Present, and Future questions.

What did they like before? What do they wish they had now as opposed to then? Why is your customer in the market in the first place and how will your product fit their needs?

Based on your customers’ answers, you then begin to steer the sale, by adjusting your sails. As the conditions of your customers’ answers improve or deteriorate, you adjust your sails towards the winds of budgetary concerns, options, equity, or the fact that they’ve got a funky attitude thanks to their last 4 sales experiences.

It seems challenging at first-you will get better, but first, you’ve got to stop stopping.

When a customer “places an order-” when they make a statement or voice an objection don’t just pull up short and react, clarify and challenge their thoughts, objections, fears and concerns instead. What do they really mean? Where are they going with this? What’s the intent behind their words? Anticipate and adjust accordingly. Think to yourself, how can I give their ideas fresh legs with a new perspective?

Of course when you’re new, your mind is going to screeeeam at you to stop. This is all new to you-you fearfully get the answers but you’ll never knowledgeably amass the answers nor gain experience if you keep on stopping at the points where you get stuck.

Stop stopping…

Oh…but you thought this post was only about those people in sales?

No, I’m talking to you too.

You may not work in sales, but you sure as hell live in sales. Sales isn’t just a profession, it’s a life skill and you need to stop stopping. You may not have to fill an order, but you do have to fulfill a calling. What’s life calling you to do? What’s that pull…what’s that whisper..what’s that yearn?

Through circumstances and events-some beyond your control, life tries to place an order on your life and I’m telling you that you don’t have to fill that order. Your past is ordering that you aren’t good enough. Your upbringing is ordering that you’ll never get off of assistance. The notice you received; the word you just got, the month that you’re having right now is ordering that you’ll never make it out-that you’ll never move up and that you’ll never get ahead. What you’ve got, where you came from, or what you’re going through, is not a calling, it’s an order. Life’s pulling at you to lift your eyes above your thoughts and present circumstances and stop stopping.

Fu*k that order…take today’s apron off and throw it on the counter and say, “No…you can’t take my order, but you can sure as shit take mine.”  Stop taking orders and begin placing them. Fear left un-pushed, will make you wait for your orders…but fear acted upon, learned from, and put back in motion will make you realize your full potential.

Pull up, place your order, and stop stopping.

Catch the 300+ episodes of The Sales Life w/ Marsh Buice podcast. Find it on iTunes or your favorite podcast app.

 

 

The snowball of Fear

Hear the full 8 min episode right here.

• Most wouldn’t think of “Iron” Mike Tyson being a fearful guy, but he is-always has been. At a young age he was abused and pushed around.
• At 13 years old, Mike met Cus D’amato and even though he prophesied that Tyson would be the heavyweight champion of the world, Cus first fought Mike’s mind before he’d even let him fight in the ring.

“Fear is your friend, but fear also is your greatest obstacle to learning. Fear is like fire, if you learn to control it, you let it work for you. But if you don’t learn to control that fear, it’ll destroy you and everything around you. Fear is like a snowball on a hill. You can pick it up, throw it, and do anything you want to before it starts rolling down the hill, but once fear starts rolling down, it gets so big it’ll crush you to death. So one must never allow fear to develop and build up without having control over it because if you don’t you won’t be able to achieve your objective nor save your own life.” ~Cus D’amato

• Fear can be your greatest motivator or debilitator. 
•  We all have snowballs in our lives-at one time we could’ve handled them, but undealt with fear barrels down and eventually overtakes you.
• Fear can be used either as fuel to ignite you or you can choose to swallow it and its corrosiveness will kill you. 
• Years ago while vacationing with my family, the front desk called and asked if I had another form of payment. American Express had frozen my ability to charge…I had no other form of payment (my other cards were maxed out), no cash, & was hours from home.
• • What was I to do? We needed to eat and get back home.
• Fear overtook me. I was living a lifestyle I could no longer sustain and had to declare bankruptcy.
• I’ve learned fear, undealt with, will eventually overtake you. Sure you can run, but fear will always catch up with you.
• Turn toward fear, not away from it.
• It’s written, “Speak to your mountains,” for a reason.
• Running toward fear does 3 things: Gives you control back in your own life; shortens the duration of the storm (days instead of decades), and the results are rarely worse than you imagined (if you run at it immediately).

The greatest obstacle to your potential is fear.  

Share your thoughts with me from the podcast.

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Personal.. and your -ity

Actor George Clooney wasn’t always People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive ; in high school he was stricken with rare disorder called Bell’s Palsy which caused his to have partial paralysis on one side of his face. Here he was in high school-the peak age of how we’re worried about how we look to others, and he had to walk around with half of his face drooping as if he’d had a stroke. When asked about how he managed to go through high school with a half dead face, Clooney said that it was hard at first, but it caused him to have to develop a sense of humor. He goes on to say that it’s moments like this that develop your personality. Have you ever thought about where your personality even came from? Your personality is the essential character of You…it’s the embodiment-the sum total of your physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics. Think of your personality as a big ass pot of gumbo & what do you put in gumbo? Everything…whatever you got in the fridge & freezer you throw it in there-shrimp, sausage, tasso, okra, crabs, even eggs-just throw it all in there. That’s you…a collection of everything you are, can be, & has been.

Clooney took one of the most horrific things that could happen to a teenager and owned it-he made it work for him…hiding from it wouldn’t help…acting like it wasn’t there wouldn’t lessen the stares or minimize the sneers…instead of resisting it, Clooney owned it and made light of his situation. And he’s not the only one…you read about others who have faced dire circumstances…some who have gotten shot, lost limbs, become disfigured, and stood face to face with death...they faced loss and found new Life. On the other side of tragedy, they go on to complete Iron Man races and triathlons…they start companies, and become the face of organizations…and when asked if they had to do it all over again, most wouldn’t change a thing, because it was through the pain that they found their purpose. Though in a harsh way, Life awakened them and caused them to break away from the herd & turn inward. To discover the person they truly are today, they had to travail through darkness and developed their personality along the way. They made what happened personal, they didn’t take it personal. See, taking it personal is expressed injustice, but making it personal is making the irrevocable a part of your personality…a patchwork in the quilt of your Life. 

And the “-ity?”

The “-ity” on the end of a noun is an expression, the emphasis of the word it’s attached to. So personality is the expression-the emphasis of who you are…but so is commonality if you allow it.  You may not have the big title or nice ass car…you may live in a 1 bedroom apartment and be barely making it…you may be in school, just starting out, or even fired from your job…you may find yourself bankrupt, 2 months past due, or diagnosed with cancer…but you’re in good company because we all are either going through, coming out of, or heading into another personal battle. How you accept your situation…how you see it for what it is & bend to make it a way for your good makes you uncommon…makes it personal…develops your personality. 

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