Coaching Tip: The Leadership Blog

Consultative Sales Tip

Pushy salespeople know that the crying baby gets feed first.  Persistence is important but an overextension of this strength can become a weakness when the "pushed" people decide never to buy from you.

Learning how to become a "consultative" salesperson will allow you to demonstrate "empathy" to prospects and can lead to a better understanding of hidden needs plus the development of better customer relationships.

It's especially hard for analytically thinking salespeople, in high tech and other engineering-heavy cultures, to get the "empathy" concept.  However, selling smarter, not harder, by using and practicing emotionally intelligent techniques can help them appear (and eventually become) more empathic.

You must first know yourself to know others.  Engaging a sales coach to take you through a series of self assessments and exercises can help to understand who you are and how you believe the world works.  Most people think they know how the world works but they only perceive how the world works.....and their perception is only their individual reality.  Other people have different perceptions and understanding these differences is critical for becoming successful in life and at work.

It's easy to forget that most people don't think exactly like you do when you are deep into a sales interaction.   Yet, being able to step behind a person and look at the world through his or her eyes can help you to better understand the problems faced and buying motives of the prospective customer.

Here are some places to start to become a consultative sales person:

1.  You can't truly know your customers until you know yourself.  Consider visiting the Self Assessment Center at www.SelfAssessmentCenter.com and take some tests to get to know yourself better.

2.  Learn to listen.  Consultative selling is not about talking.  It's about doing your due diligence and listening in meetings with customers to discover what's important.

3.  Once you understand your personality, you can begin to observe your customer's personality and learning style.  This helps you to not "shoot yourself in the foot" by defaulting to your natural personality tendencies.  And gives you the ability to plan your sales interactions, including tailoring presentations and proposals, that best suit the customer's way of thinking.

For more sales tips, visit: www.SalesTip.info

 John G Agno: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge.

 John Agno: Decoding the Executive Woman's Dress Code

Creating Positive Workplace Momentum

Leaders improve their company by instilling confidence in each employee's ability to meet and overcome workplace challenges. 

Experience has taught us that confidence precedes competence.  A person in the office or a player in a game must first believe he or she can succeed by developing a winning attitude reinforced by skill-building practice.

As each person's talents are built into strengths and then merged with others in the team, a positive energy emerges. This energy force builds and reinforces each individual's confidence to create a critical mass which is often referred to as "momentum" or "being in the zone."  It is the coach's job to keep the momentum going; so as not to lose the positive energy flow.

Here is a checklist of ten questions to help you evaluate how well your firm is building a winning attitude and the practiced ability to succeed:

1. As the coach of your team, how much have you spent in the past year on personal development to improve your management and leadership skills?

2. List what time and money was spent per employee over the last year in training and development activities to build on workplace talents.

3. Does each manager have a good relationship with each direct report and know what that person needs to move to the next level in the firm?

4. Does each employee have a clear understanding of what they can to do to increase their value to the company?

5. In the last six months, has someone in the company talked to each employee about their progress in building skills and knowledge?

6. During the past year, how many employees believe they had an opportunity at work to learn and grow?

7. How many employees would say that their opinions at work count?

8. How many employees know the vision or purpose of the company?  Of those who know, how many consider their job important in accomplishing this vision or purpose?

9. How many employees would say that they have a best friend at work?

10. Who would the employee go to with a suggestion, complaint or concern at work?

For your team, the best thing you can do is to demonstrate your leadership through one-on-one interpersonal relationships.  You do this by participating in respectful conversations where you recognize your own feelings and those of others in building safe and trusting relationships.

Executive Communication Style

If you're feeling incapable as a woman in the workplace these days, you're not alone.  A poll by Roper Public Affairs shows that three out of five women working in the high-tech industry want to leave because of a perceived glass ceiling - a perception that they are less knowledgeable and qualified than men.

In fact, the 2005 Women's Leadership Index - conducted by Michigan State University's Institute for Public Policy and Social Research and the Inforum Center for Leadership - reported top female executives earn an average of 49 cents to the dollar compared to men.

The Wall Street Journal reported that women are at a disadvantage when they communicate "like a woman" in a male-shaped corporate culture, and 81 percent of women are now "adopting a style with which male managers are comfortable."

Sound like some ridiculous regression of feminism, catering to male-chauvinism?

Not to John Agno, an Ann Arbor-based executive coach. To him, acting more "like a man" is savvy business sensibility.

Talking like a man matters

"A woman needs a male coach," says Agno. "Otherwise she won't have a good idea about how the other gender thinks and feels.  It's still a man's world in business.  Women need to learn how to talk like a man.  They need to learn how to brag. They'll get what they want out of the situation by molding to the environment."

Women have, characteristically, been conditioned to speak a certain way, according to Agno.  "They tend to end sentences on a high note, which implies, 'We really want to talk this over,' instead of a low note, which is more of a command."

Along with shaky vocal inflections, Agno says women aren't specific enough about their contributions to the company.  They use too many words, downplaying their abilities.  In the male mind, this behavior creates doubt.

Communication styles rooted in childhood training or unconscious beliefs can be tough to change.   A first step is becoming aware of how you talk at work.  Here are some pitfalls that women especially can encounter in the workplace: 

--using too many words to deliver serious messages
--downplaying your contributions
--using vague language
--phrasing statements as questions
--using an upward inflection at the end of statements, which indicates doubt.

Working with an executive coach can help you to be clear on the communication style at your level within the company and to confidently practice this style so you will be heard at work.

Source: Lansing State Journal, June 22, 2006, www.LSJ.com

To reclaim your time and life: "When Doing It All Won't Do: A self-coaching guide for career women" by Barbara McEwen & John G. Agno.  

Purchase and download for the Nook eReader at Barnes & Noble  (.ePub Format for Nook and iPad) 

Purchase and download at Amazon for the Kindle Edition -(.mobi format for Kindle)    

Purchase and download all eReader formats at Smashwords  (Various Formats, except the pdf Workbook Edition, are available) 

 Barbara A. McEwen: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women--Workbook Edition (paperback)

  John G Agno: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge.

 John G. Agno: Women and Time

 

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Your Wealth Myth

The myth: Americans don't need to save because they are wealthier than ever.  Just look at the roof over their heads and the cars in their driveways.

Most Americans believe that if they can afford the monthly payments for a house mortgage, the house will appreciate over time and the larger the house, the larger the appreciation.     This real estate appreciation belief is one of the main reasons, the U.S. savings rate has fallen sharply since the mid-1980s.  In fact, last year, it was negative for the first time since 1933.

This may have been true during the recent housing boom with the increased building of McMansions---but it isn't likely to be true over the long run.  Since 1975, home price appreciation has been modest, averaging just two percentage points a year above inflation.

Americans don't save in favor of increasing their housing and transportation expenses.

Our housing expenditures have climbed fairly steadily over the past century, and our homes now claim a third of our spending.  More families are buying houses, more folks are purchasing second homes, and houses are getting bigger.  According to the Census Bureau, over the past 25 years, the number of second homes has jumped 95% and the size of the typical newly constructed single-family home has ballooned 40%.

The number of passenger vehicles has leapt 270% since 1960, far ahead of the 86% increase in the adult population.  We now have one vehicle for every adult.  Transportation spending jumped sharply in the 1960s and has remained high ever since, accounting for more than 19% of spending in 2002-03.

"The trend has been to buy the most house you can afford, rather than the amount you need," notes Sophie Beckmann, a financial-planning specialist at A.G. Edwards in St. Louis.  "It's the same thing with cars.  You see a lot more luxury cars on the road.  While you can get by with a $20,000 car, people buy the $40,000 vehicle with the leather seats and the TV.  There's a lot there that's discretionary."

The bottom line: By reducing what you pay monthly for your houses and cars, you could amass far more wealth by sinking the extra money into your 401(k) plan.  This strategy may be critical to fund your retirement years.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2006

Quantum Leadership

We have difficulty in contemplating events of our everyday lives as quantum phenomena.

Way back in 1900, physicist Max Planck wrote a mathematical formula, on a postcard to a friend, that introduced to the world the notion of tiny, discrete bundles of energy, which behaved both as waves and as particles, and came to be known as quanta. 

This formula has become the basis of quantum physics, the strange new science that tells us reality is discontinuous and deeply paradoxical---a reality that doesn't follow the cause and effect rules of our ordinary empirical science.

"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts, and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."  Albert Einstein

The principles of quantum physics are an essential component of what is happening around us.  We still tend to see our world operating within the empirical science that is based upon seventeenth century, Newtonian cause and effect, mechanical physics and the Cartesian split of mind and body. 

The question, "What is your notion of leadership?" was asked of Ralph Kilmann (http://www.Kilmann.com), author of the book, "Quantum Organizations", by Russ Volckmann, editor of the Integral Leadership Review (http://www.LeadCoach.com).

For Kilmann's response, click here.

The Congeniality CEO

Many chief executives talk about being "servant leaders" and team players.  They care openly about everyone from employees to Mother Earth.  In short, they're more likeable.

With greater transparency in business, there's no place to hide.  Now that everything from retirement perks to personal emails are circulated on the Web, being a CEO can feel like running naked.  In today's wired world, how you treat workers and the planet can quickly come back to haunt you in a blog or I-hate-your-company Web site.  And a new breed of executives has started to talk more about the concerns of "stakeholders" who feel the impact of a business, instead of just shareholders.

A recent study in the Harvard Business Review found that people tend to choose work partners based on likeability.  Professor Kim S. Cameron at the University of Michigan's Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship also cites studies showing that likeable people--those at the hub of what he calls "positive energy networks"--are four times more potent on the job than those who have influential jobs but are less popular.  "Positive energy is the Holy Grail of business right now," he says:

Optimists and team players trump "experts" in business when it comes to getting things done.

Because they unleash energy in others, positive energizers are critical to improvements in both individual and company performance.

Focus on your organization's highest potential and emphasize its abundance of opportunities.

Try to build a culture that focuses on "virtuousness"--institutionalized compassion, forgiveness and integrity.

Rarely has there been more attention paid to personality in getting ahead.  Mountains of leadership books and hours of coaching greet most high-potential executives.  The recurring themes?  Trust, inspiration, teamwork, authenticity.  Jerks who deliver results are usually shoved into somebody's hands to learn a little tenderness before rising to the top job.

Bottom Line: The most important fan base is the one within your own company.  Younger staffers simply won't stick around to work for idiot bosses.  Their reaction to a command-and-control leader who blasts off mean missives or ridicules customers?  Post the comments on a blog.

Source: BusinessWeek, June 26, 2006

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The X Factor

Genetically informed research helps us not to be fooled into believing that a certain experience leads to a certain outcome but to probe whether a genetic predisposition leads to the experience and the outcome.

Take the conventional wisdom that their parents' divorce increases the risk that children will develop depression.  "It turns out that the increased risk of depression in these children reflects a common genetic liability in the parents and kids," says Brian D'Onofrio of Indiana University, Bloomington.  Since depressed people have more trouble getting and staying married, this genetic risk of depression raises their risk of divorce, he finds in a study submitted for publication.  Parents pass that risk of depression to kids through DNA, not a failed marriage.

In cases of divorcing parents, smoking moms and pregnant teens, genetically sophisticated studies show that what was thought to be the causal factor isn't.  Instead, something inherent in the children affected by divorce, smoking or pregnancy is at work.

Living with a father who steals, brawls and can't hold a job raises a child's risk of similar behavior.  But children also inherit genes from dad.  In principle, either the experience or the genes might push them to follow in his antisocial footsteps.  The longer a child lives with such a father, the greater the risk of a similar fate.  That suggests that keeping families intact is not always in a child's best interest.  As Jenae Neiderhiser of George Washington University says, "the strength of genetically informed studies is that they are just as useful for identifying the effects of environment."

Source: The Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2006

Engaging Customers

A blended marketing approach maintains a high frequency of touches and provides enough content to keep customers engaged. The Internet is where most customers choose to engage with you because they are increasingly reliant on the Internet. 

Customized landing pages provide a complete company message, but one that is slanted in favor of the topic most relevant to the arriving customer.  The Internet has made it possible to reach out to an almost limitless market, at any time, and usually for little cost.  Yet sometimes, reaching out to one very important customer becomes more important, more effective, and more manageable than trying to reach 1,000 average prospects.

For example, influencers are people whose opinions may cause important customers to stay loyal, and even spend additional dollars.  Creating unique brand-related experiences that the influencer will then report on to peers communicates your competitive advantage.  Engaging influencers ties closely with conventional concepts of market segmentation.

Reconciling customer success across various touchpoints means counting a customer win as a win no matter where or how the transaction is completed and using every available tool to identify who your customers are through every channel.  Kim Collins, research vice president of Gartner, says, "Customers may never agree to buy via email--they may drive to a store, use the contact center or the Web site, but it may never be clear that the email is driving the sale."

Source: Mastering the Complexities of Internet Marketing, 1to1 Magazine, May/June 2006

Not-Invented-Here Syndrome

Many critical thinkers in industry consider themselves the best source of new ideas and this "aura of excellence," if not checked, can allow arrogance to lead to a not-invented-here resentment of ideas emerging from outside the organization.

When you are leading a costly research organization where blockbuster innovation matters in today's global economy, you can't afford to be blinded to new concepts from outside the walls of your enterprise.  Such is the case in the pharmaceutical industry where blockbuster products generate global sales in excess of one billion dollars a year.

As leaders embrace innovation, along with flexibility to find and apply the best minds to the research project from both the outside and inside, they begin to break down the walls of arrogance and not-invented-here mentality within the enterprise.  A more entrepreneurial culture emerges where people feel more comfortable sharing knowledge and building social capital in order to improve the productivity of the organization.

Merck & Co.'s research chief Peter Kim, who spent most of his career in academia, must have learned about Bristol-Myers Squibb's Pharmaceutical Research Institute (PRI) transforming itself to compete in the new millennium by building social capital to boost its ability to identify, develop, and commercialize blockbuster drugs.   Dr. Kim has made it clear he thinks Merck & Co.'s own labs aren't sufficient to replenish its pipeline and the company needs to turn to other companies, both for new drugs and new means of discovering them.

Merck's new strategy is common in an industry where many big companies with aging blockbusters have turned to biotech firms and smaller drug makers to refill their pipelines.

PRI's president, Dr. Peter S. Ringrose states, "We looked at changes likely to occur in the external environment that would impact the pharmaceutical industry and its ability to develop new medicines."  These changes include new technologies such as genomics and informatics, as well as societal factors such as better-informed consumers, an aging population, and the potential of more government intervention and control.  Dr. Ringrose says, "There's a clear correlation between the ability to create innovative blockbusters and the ability to grow and to move into new areas of therapeutic opportunity."

Building inter-corporate alliances happens from the top down.  Without corner office involvement, the not-invented-here syndrome's immunity to change will prevail.   "This is a high-risk business and you have to place your bets," Dr. Kim says.  "Sometimes you're going to lose."

Sources: The Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2006 and Achieving Success Through Social Capital by Wayne Baker (Jossey-Bass)

Leadership Transitions

Leadership transitions get riskier the higher up the organization they occur: two out of every five CEOs fail in the first 18 months (Harvard Business Review, January 2005).   

The cost of failure is high.  Estimates of the cost of a single failed hire range from 14 to 28 times base compensation, the higher figure reflecting more senior hires.  Unfortunately, the more senior the executive, the less consistent performance feedback s/he receives.

Recent corporate bankruptcies reveal that some CEOs fail on such a scale as to bring down the company with them.  Even the most honored, effective and acclaimed leaders go through periods of uncertainty, frustration and failure.

These periods can be triggered by both professional and personal events: coping with a bad boss, going through a divorce, taking over a demanding new assignment, living abroad with minimal headquarters contact and many others.

However, this time can be one of great personal growth and learning in developing the executive's leadership style and effectiveness.  Predictable and intense life passages pave the way for moving to the next level in a successful leader's career.  Successful transition is a result of guidance from an outside executive coach that covers not just how to meet the unique requirements of the job, but how to build and maintain business and social networks while influencing senior management and external audiences.

Leadership onboarding coaching can reduce this rate of executive failure.


Sources: "Leadership Passages: The Personal and Professional Transitions that Make or Break a Leader," by David L. Dotlich, James L. Noel and Norman Walker (Jossey-Bass) and The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins