More Effective Selling

Most of us need to get better at using our time efficiently and we can do this by spending more time being more effective.

One way is to build better connections with people. Finding out what they want from your product or service, before we tell them what you think is so great about it.

Rather than telling them the benefits of your product or service straight away, why not ask them what they are looking for in that sort of service or what they’re looking for in that sort of opportunity or product.

Then match their criteria to the good points in yours that can be matched.

There may be ten good things about what you do, for instance, ten real strong strategy points and you may think that four of them are the key ones. Somebody else may think it’s a completely different four of the ten so you could be doing yourself a disservice even by getting all enthusiastic about the wrong four!

If we know what people are looking for, we know where people want to go, if we know what their destiny is with the product or service or their business or whatever, we can build quality connections by just taking the time to find out what it is they’re looking for? What would make things better for them? and then see what we have to offer we can match to their needs.

Emails can be dangerous, make sure it doesn’t happen to you

Emails can be dangerous, but so many people don’t realise that until far too late after the damage has been done.

So why are they so dangerous?

I’m sure there has been a time when you’ve done something amazing, or had something amazing happen, or perhaps learnt a real bit of juicy gossip, and on relaying this to a friend they say to you in amazement “Get out of here!” – You then smile and say “no honest it’s true” and the banter continues.

There may also have been a time when as a child you got involved in something you should not have and a parent or teacher said sternly “Get out of here!” – You probably didn’t smile, and quickly your emotional state changed to very negative.

Now in both situations the words “Get out of here” are the same but you reacted differently, the reason is that it’s not the words that define the meaning of the communication – it’s the tonality – how it is said.

So how do you get the tonality right in an email? – You can’t – there is only one tonality for an email – and guess what, as the sender it’s not yours.

The tonality that will be applied by the reader of the email will be their own tonality based on their emotional state at the time, their beliefs about themselves, and beliefs about the world around them and what you have written. You could be saying something in jest and they may get really hurt and think you are serious, because they are sensitive about this subject for some reason and applied a serious tonality to it.

My first suggestion is if you are replying to something you’ve had land in your Inbox that has wound you up then please save your email response as a draft, wait 15 minutes and go back and read it as if you’d received it – is this the best way to respond, in fact is it a response, perhaps it’s a reaction? A response is a considered piece of communication driven by logic and sensible thinking. A reaction is an emotional response driven off your own fears or emotional reactions.

Taking time to calm down and reconsider your approach is the best way to handle such situations, well third best really – first best is face to face, then phone, then this calm email method coming in as third best, but far better than an over passionate over reaction email response that usually happens.

Perhaps you are just composing an email and not responding to something that’s really emotional, still don’t just hit send, go back read it as if you had received it, read it again from a neutral perspective and how the receiver may read it. Is there anything that could be misunderstood? Your brain is running with what you want to say faster than you can type, so you know what it means when you read it again, so try and read it like someone would just receiving it, how can it be read incorrectly? What needs clarifying?

Make sure as much as you can that people getting your emails are getting the message you want them to get!

Oh and I wonder how many have noticed that most people can only answer one question per email, so if you put two or three questions in an email very often they only answer the first or last question and ignore the others and then you have that dilemma of going back and asking the same questions again without knowing if they missed them or ignored them on purpose……..

Mark Rhodes

Communication: Reacting or Responding?

This time I thought we’d have a look at the topic of communication and how we can try and manage our rash instinctive reactions before we respond – this applies to verbal communication and written communication – especially email – I’ll discuss email communication in a future post.

One of the questions we need to ask ourselves just before we respond to something someone sends us or something someone says to us is this:

Am I reacting or responding?

You see all too often we “react” rather than “respond” – there can be a key difference.

Reacting is emotionally driven – usually someone says something or writes something and we let fly, we feel that emotion well up inside and it drives us into a state where we usually end up over-reacting, all too often 15 minutes later when we calm down we start to think more rational and wonder if perhaps we did over react.

You see that explosive emotional reaction is driven from your beliefs or fears, something said has struck a chord that you feel has reflected on your identity, standards or abilities, and your fight/flight response kicks in and the adrenalin drives your over passionate response.

This all seems very justfied at the time, but like I said earlier we often realise afterwards there probably was another way we could have handled it – we could have responded rather than reacted.

So whats the difference? Well, if before we let fly we take a minute to check in and see if we are reacting or responding and calm ourselves down a little, take a deep breath and decide to get clarification of what they mean – perhaps it is a simple misunderstanding.

A response will always be calmer, more considered and in the end you will come across as far stronger and more sure of yourself than any mad outrage. After all its only your body you are putting under excess strain in that situation.

Someone who can stay calm, get clarification and set the record straight in a calm but firm way is a far healthier, constructive and respected person.

Now, this is going to be a little hard for some of you to accept but you see the simple fact is this – no one can ever really upset you, our emotions are a process we do to ourselves, it’s how we process and take on board what someone else has said or done.

The first step though is to stay in control, not let what someone else has done or said upset us more than it should, because all too often we do get upset or annoyed far out of proportion to the “crime” so to speak.

Yes, people do and say horrible things, its always happened, always will. One of the most stupid sayings ever is the one we all learnt at school “Sticks and Stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me” – like thats true!

Words are powerful, words people say to us, and also the words we say to ourselves….we need to be careful with words…

Just because someone says something though does not mean it’s true, something someone does, does not mean they have considered how you would feel and gone ahead regardless, most of the time people don’t think at all they just do on autopilot.

We can be different though, and we can be healthier and have far less stress if we develop the habit of staying calm, looking for clarification, collecting the facts and then responding.

“What makes you say that or think that?” is often a good response to something to hold your position before you react and change gear down a notch or two from reacting to responding.

Have fun with it, get curious about why you react the way you do sometimes.

Mark Rhodes