FranklinCovey-The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Sales Leaders

THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE SALES LEADERS MEETING THE CHALLENGES OF SALES LEADERS TODAY

THANKS & WELCOME

TABLE OF CONTENTS

THANKS & WELCOME Thanks for taking the decision to download this e-book. It’s my pleasure to talk to you (virtually) through these pages and I hope there is something here of value for you.

Take 5-10 minutes, get a cup of tea or coffee, read this, and then make a simple decision... If what you read resonates, sounds familiar and deals with sales challenges you face in your business, connect with us further and find out more about FranklinCovey’s Helping Clients Succeed™ methodology. If not, you won’t have wasted too much time. There are hundreds of books containing tricks, tips and techniques intended to help people become more skilled in selling. And that’s often when the problems start. Getting better at ‘selling’ in the traditional sense often translates to doing more ‘tricks’ as a result of ‘doing it by the book’. In almost 40 years of selling, I have learned many things the hard way, and I am not unique. The turning point for me in my sales career came from reading a book and being exposed to some sound thinking about myself and how I sold. And it wasn’t even a sales book that I read! The book in question was ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ by Stephen R. Covey published by Simon & Schuster. If you have not read it yet, I urge you to borrow or buy a copy and make it a ‘must read’. Every single principle can be applied to sales effectiveness as well as personal effectiveness.

Habit 1: Be Proactive

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Working with Franklin Covey for over 12 years, first as a client and then as a consultant, I have seen evidence of these principles working to transform sales in a way that challenges many of the old ‘buyer vs seller’ conflicts. The premise is this: the things we do unconsciously, yet habitually, constantly express our character and drive our effectiveness or ineffectiveness in sales, as in life. So, our character as sales people is a composite of our habits as people. Acquiring and applying the 7 Habits (of highly successful people) to sales effectiveness takes us through two key stages of development. Habits 1-3 take us from dependence to independence by taking responsibility for our own sales success. Once independent, we learn through habits 4-6 to succeed with other people, either on our sales team internally, or with customers and clients. The seventh habit makes all of the others possible, by periodical and deliberate self-renewal.

Stop Being So Responsible

Circle of Influence vs. Circle of Concern

Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect

Move Off The Solution

Habit 2: Begin With The End In mind

Declare Your Own Mission

Refresh and Anchor to Your End Game

Intent is an End in Mind

HABIT 3: Put First Things First

Coming to Terms with Day-to-Day Choices

What’s Eating Your Time?

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Getting in the Game is a Priority

Habit 4: Think Win-Win

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Deposits Foster Win-Win

Habit 5: Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood Why do sales people usually get this habit backwards?

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Listening? Oh yeah, I do that

Five Reasons Why We Don’t Listen

How Well Do You Know Your Clients’ Needs?

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Now Seek to Be Understood

Reflect Uniqueness to Increase Credibility

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Be Influential, Not Impressive

Habit 6: Synergize

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What Have You Done For Me Lately?

The Crux of the Matter Go Big or Go Home

Join me on this quick walk through the 7 Habits from the perspective of a sales

The Unintended Cost of Competition

Use Both Sides of your Brain

professional, either a leader or an individual contributor. As you read, challenge yourself to think about how these principles could help improve your sales performance.

Synergy with Clients Give it Another Try

Courage and Consideration

Valuing- Not Simply Acknowledging- Differences

Habit 7: Sharpen The Saw

Are you in?

Addicted to urgent?

Design Deliberate Practice Into Your Sales Endeavours

Create a Culture of Coaching

Time To Reflect

Should We Be Talking?

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HABIT 1: BE PROACTIVE

By proactivity, I mean much more than ‘taking initiative’. Proactivity is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon; it is the awareness that you are the creator of your life, and what you accomplish (or don’t) is your responsibility and yours alone. The foundation for proactivity stems from a very powerful model called the Stimulus Response model. The basic idea is we are conditioned to respond in a particular way to a particular stimulus. If someone mistreats you, then you may respond the way you learned when you were young and it has become the way you’ve always responded. Or, you can choose any other response. The key thing here is to realize there is a space between any stimulus and your response. And in that small space—and sometimes it’s very small—lies our ability to choose and is the source of our ultimate power as human beings. Therefore, we can make or break our habits. We can rise above our moods. We can choose to think and be different. As humans we have the power to control our feelings and impulses and apply them to a higher purpose. Proactivity is personal leadership and mastery at its best; it is the ability to identify what goals are most important, complemented by an unbending commitment to reach those goals. A proactive culture then is one where each contributor takes responsibility for their choices and how they respond to circumstances, even though many are beyond their control. They don’t merely react to the social or emotional “weather” around them. They are “grounded” because they carry their own weather. They don’t point fingers to shift blame to

someone or something else. They regularly assess their own performance and take responsibility for corrective action where needed or apply creativity if necessary. But this doesn’t just happen. As a sales leader you must lead it into existence because if you don’t build proactivity on purpose, you’re automatically saying “Yes” to reactivity. Sadly, it’s far too common that sales organizations have fallen into a habit of reacting to the mass of pressures constantly pushing on them, both from internal stakeholders as well as customers. Reactive sales organizations rely heavily on the “carrot-and-stick” approach that has become the norm to “motivate” salespeople, but it’s more likely to squash proactivity rather than encourage it. Of course that isn’t the intention behind it, but that’s what occurs. Seeing this happen time and time again, I’ve become more passionate about helping sales leaders see how proactivity can fundamentally transform their day-to-day experience, as well as the long-term success of their teams. Of course, being proactive isn’t a new concept— it just doesn’t get very much time or attention in today’s sales environment. As a sales leader, when you choose to consistently build proactivity as a competitive capability within your organization, sales will increase year over year. Burnout will drop. Your people will become more energized and creative. The best part is your own satisfaction as a sales leader goes straight up, along with the satisfaction of your teams and, most importantly, your customers. I invite you to flex your own proactive leadership muscles

Proactivity is the root of all growth, improvement and success for individuals and organizations. That’s a huge statement, but I have no hesitation in making that claim. In the past 20 years, I’ve seen proactivity deliver on it every time. For a sales leader, this concept is the most powerful tool in your leadership arsenal, if you use it.

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HABIT 1: BE PROACTIVE

constantly shift and choosing the best course of action requires judgment. That’s not an inconsequential difference. It makes all the difference! For years, most sales organizations have operated on the premise that giving an extra percent or two in commission, or a bonus here, or President’s Club there, is somehow going to motivate people to work harder. Yet salespeople often don’t need another big-screen TV, and they don’t want another trip, but there is something they do want. They do want to make a contribution. They do want to make a difference. And they do want autonomy, driven by a belief they can reach a level of mastery, and that there’s purpose in what they’re doing. The drive towards self- actualization—and this is backed up by mounds of research—is more motivating than financial incentives. Consider your own experience and see if top salespeople validate this point. They’re the ones who go outside the norms and the rules, and they don’t just coast as soon as they hit their number. They crush their numbers because they’re driven by autonomy, purpose and mastery. With this in mind, how can you move your organization away from a being driven by outside pressure, quotas, measurement and numbers, even while acknowledging that those are still very important? Stop taking responsibility away from your people so you can shoulder the load. Give them the responsibility. They want it. CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE VS. CIRCLE OF CONCERN A very powerful way to boost proactivity is to think in terms of the Circle of Influence versus the Circle of Concern and determine

and do something about it now. Here are five ways you can build proactivity.

where your team is focused. As defined in The 7 Habits, your Circle of Influence encompasses factors you can directly control, do or change, while your Circle of Concern includes all the things outside your direct control, e.g. the weather, the economy or a customer’s actions (or inactions). Many sales organizations don’t achieve what’s possible because too much focus, conversation and effort is targeted at things beyond their control. To make matters worse, they are mired in reactive habits and don’t realize it. As a sales leader, help your teams by asking them to identify factors in their Circle of Concern that slow them down and require time and attention. Take them off their plate as those factors often fall into your Circle of Influence. Tell them you will handle those issues and get them focused on the things they do control. Taking into account the Circle of Concern vs. the Circle of Influence can make a powerful difference in your ability to coach and guide the people on your team to be more proactive. Working together to understand issues and determine what types of resources or actions are needed in a given circumstance—and which ones are within your power to control or influence or not—can help in identifying where you and your team are going to spend your time moving forward. A coaching sequence that begins with questions like ,“How can I help? What do you need from me? What do you not need from me?” invites the Salesperson’s engagement and better results. Similarly, asking “Would you be open to some suggestions from me?” makes a recipient much more open to the suggestions you can make.

STOP BEING SO RESPONSIBLE

As sales leaders, we tend to be afraid that if we don’t use pressure, then results will drop because people won’t work hard to hit numbers. So it’s common to manage results by constantly monitoring daily activity reports, inspecting deals, assessing forecasts, checking up, pouring over pipeline reports, controlling, deciding, directing, and holding people accountable. Let’s assume for a minute that it’s true: No pressure = No results. That means the responsibility for all the numbers is on you. Otherwise, nothing happens if you don’t make it happen. If that’s true, then you have the biggest and most difficult job of all. Indeed, when you use pressure as your primary mode of motivation, you keep all the responsibility for results squarely on your shoulders. It’s exhausting. But when you stop to consider intrinsic motivation as the primary factor of human achievement, it’s clear there has to be another way. The good news is, there is. It’s hard to believe sales leaders haven’t more aggressively pursued proactivity, which is validated by the findings in Daniel Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. As Pink reports, behavioural researchers found that carrot-and-stick incentives do work when there’s a step- by-step process to follow that always results in the same outcome. But that’s not the case with sales. Sales is a profession where there is no set formula for success Instead, there are a variety of factors that

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HABIT 1: BE PROACTIVE

Productivity is much more than ‘taking initiative’

PRACTICE DOESN’T MAKE PERFECT

phrases or descriptions. This, again, allows the seller to move too quickly to their solution. The disadvantage of all three of these approaches is that we fail to understand what challenges our prospects really face in enough detail. We can often quickly get into dialogue and out of alignment at the very first client interaction. Proactive sellers are aware that they have a choice when responding to requests from prospects or clients. Rather than tell, accept, or guess, they possess the skills and the emotional intelligence

that meets their needs, the chances are that they won’t buy from us, or won’t buy from us again. Similarly, if we don’t get a solution that meets our needs, we’ll also suffer (often financially if we surrender during the process). We need to have conscious awareness right at the beginning of the sales process or pursuit and work on how we can collaborate to discover the solution that exactly meets their needs. There are a number of useful skills required here, but I want to stay focused on the principle of proactivity. Whenever a client or prospect invites us in and says the magic words... “We’re having a problem with_______________, Tell us what you have in this space?” There are three default behaviours I see regularly from reactive sellers: They tell. This means that they recite a monologue of their recent learnings on the features and functions of their product or solution. Perhaps a diatribe on their company, their people, their geographic reach – or a host of other facts about THEM i.e. the seller. They accept. Rather than seek to understand at a deeper level, the seller accepts that ‘the client has a problem’. Rather than becoming really curious and probing deeper, the seller resorts to ‘broadcast mode’ and again focuses on their solution and the rest of the rehearsed diatribe. They guess. What I mean here is that the seller assumes that they both have the same understanding of certain words,

People care enough about the problem to want a solution

Perfect Practice Makes Perfect. It all goes back to the stimulus response model and the principle of proactivity, which says that regardless of where you find yourself, you can choose your response and you can elevate your performance by choice. For example, let’s say there’s a salesperson who is intimidated and “shuts down” whenever a certain “title” joins a meeting. What’s on the line is an important opportunity, and when that person feels the pressure, he or she goes silent. Sometimes they over-react and oversell. Or they may agree to do more for the customer than they should for the price, and margins evaporate. However, simply because that’s how someone has always responded doesn’t mean that’s how they have to respond in the future. As a leader you can help them examine their reactions and start choosing different responses. And you can practice those responses with them so that when that situation comes up in a customer meeting, it’s not the first time the salesperson has said the words they need to say. They’ve practiced them, perfectly. That’s how proactivity can put a sales organization on a different trajectory.

We can measure the extent or cost of the problem

The cost of the solution is materially less than the cost of the problem There is a problem There is only one problem We have a solution There is only one solution ...and so on.

to proactively explore the prospect’s challenges and

Take 2-3 minutes and you’ll easily create a list of 20 assumptions relating to that one simple phrase. Proactive sellers have the ability to stay ‘off the solution’ until they have sufficiently explored the problems to be solved and/or the results or business outcomes the client desires. They organise their dialogue with carefully thought through questions aimed at getting real and meaningful answers to critical assumptions, and they do it in a way that creates confidence and is efficient and conversational (see Habit 5). In summary, solutions must solve something. Proactive sellers understand that value is only derived when a problem that the prospect or client cares about is solved, or when a highly-valued (by the client) business outcome is realised. This can only be achieved with a proactive approach to exploring needs, rather than a reactive ‘prescription’ of a service or product.

ensure they understand them in detail before they even consider presenting a solution. Proactive sellers understand that solutions have no inherent value. Let me say it louder... Solutions have no inherent value! Let’s look at this in two ways. Firstly ‘the solution’ and then what we mean by ‘value’. A number of our clients spend millions on developing solutions. Often, solution or product ‘owners’ show up in our training sessions and workshops and I watch them wince when I say that solutions have no inherent value. What I am trying to convey with this proclamation is that proactive sellers realise that solutions derive value (and let’s not forget that value is in the eye of the beholder) only from the problems they solve or the business outcomes they provide. Reactive sellers often immediately say something like, “The solution to the problem is...” Just think about this phrase for a few minutes and think about all of the assumptions that this simple phrase could contain. Here are a few for starters:

MOVE OFF THE SOLUTION I once heard one of my

FranklinCovey colleagues say, “Consultants or sellers deal in foregone solutions.” Meaning they think everyone needs what we have, and that our solution can be universally applied to a multitude of problems.

If the client perceives that they’re not getting a solution

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HABIT 2: BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND

HABIT 2: BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND Imagine yourself stepping into the crowds on Rio’s Copacabana Beach with an easel and a canvas, and inviting everyone you see to pick up a brush and paint whatever they want onto the picture. It might make for an interesting afternoon, but would you expect such a random process of individual contribution to result in a masterpiece?

A creation that shows mastery and results in something considered as a masterpiece typically requires vision, planning and coordinated action. It’s no different when it comes to leading a sales organization. Rather than allowing outside factors and others’ actions to determine what you create, or executing someone else’s vision, you can take control of what you ultimately accomplish. Begin by asking yourself exactly what you want to achieve and how you want your organization to operate. Beginning with the End in Mind—having a clear vision of your destination—and then executing around that vision is far more likely to ensure you get where you want to be. The habit of “Beginning with the End in Mind” was introduced 25 years ago by Dr. Stephen R. Covey in his ground breaking bestseller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Here’s how this principle of leadership can help you take charge of what you create and make you more likely to achieve it. DECLARE YOUR OWN MISSION I’ve talked with hundreds of sales leaders who’ve said, “I wasn’t trained to be a sales leader. I was just a good individual contributor hitting my numbers, and someone asked me to take on this role. I didn’t get the role because I was already a great leader.” A powerful first step in becoming one is to define your End in Mind by developing a mission statement. Whether you’ve just been promoted to sales leader or you’ve been one for many years, the habit of beginning with the End in Mind involves setting your own goals and intended

accomplishments, identifying the roles you play, fixing your priorities, and then sharing those frequently with your team. This is a best practice for success whether you’re leading a small salesforce or a larger regional organization, or you’re in a more senior sales executive role. Then periodically re-centre to your mission to make sure you’re still on track. Why have a mission? It seems so old-school. But as Dr. Stephen R. Covey pointed out in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the inarguable fact is there are always two creations to everything you see or experience. The first creation happens in your mind—it’s where you envision what you want to accomplish. And the second is when you align your actions to your imagination. Nothing happens without those two creations. If you ignore this principle, it’s essentially the same as passively letting everyone and everything else around you decide what you will be and what you will do. REFRESH AND ANCHOR TO YOUR END GAME Stephen Covey used to teach the principle of Beginning with the End in Mind every week. No matter where he was in the world, he would review his goals each week in the context of his mission statement. He set goals for each of the roles he played. And he reviewed his mission statement periodically to make sure his day-to-day actions and decisions were aligned to his mission. He also occasionally and purposefully changed his mission as the context of his life changed, sometimes affected by major events. Don’t hesitate to update or change your mission statement.

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HABIT 2: BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND

INTENT IS AN END IN MIND If you’ve taken part in any of FranklinCovey’s sales performance training, you’ll know that the first thing we ask salespeople to fill out on a Call Plan is, “What’s the End in Mind for this meeting?” Beginning with the End in Mind isn’t just about building a mission statement. You can apply that concept on a smaller scale. Remember, all things are created twice, first in your mind and then in reality as you align your actions to your vision. Can you envision a perfect meeting before you have the meeting? Can you anticipate questions and/or concerns your customer is likely to have? Can you anticipate your responses and practice them? What questions do you want to ask? Even though this is a best practice, very few do it well or consistently before a meeting. More than anything, it’s a question that encompasses your intent. FranklinCovey’s Helping Clients Succeed™ methodology focuses on advancing your client’s goals first and foremost, because when you’re focused on helping the client succeed, everything else becomes easier, including claiming value for your own company. In this commercial endeavour that we call sales, trust is a function of reliability, credibility, plus intimacy, divided by self- interest— that’s the equation spelled out by the authors of The Trusted Advisor. This equation means that as soon as you put your needs ahead of a customer’s needs, it’s going to cost you something. It’s very likely it will cost you some relationship capital and it almost always will cost some cash (or margin) in the form of a

discount. Chances are you don’t have the relationship where occasionally your needs as a sales professional get to come first—it just never is. The question in a customer’s mind is always, “How can you make a contribution to what I care about?” Not the other way around.

A masterpiece typically requires vision, planning and coordinated action. It’s no different when it comes to leading a sales organization.

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HABIT 3: PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST

HABIT 3: PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST Have you ever heard the expression, “It’s better to have a ‘B’ strategy and an ‘A’ execution than an ‘A’ strategy and a ‘B’ execution”?

For a long time, I thought this made sense, until it occurred to me, why can’t you have both? Why can’t you have an “A” strategy that is deeply meaningful to you and inspires you, and also have an “A” execution? The options are usually presented as mutually exclusive, but Habit 3—“Put First Things First”—is about giving you both. As Dr. Stephen R. Covey wrote in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and as I’ve been discussing in this document, the essence of Habit 1 (Be Proactive) is to realize that you are the creator of your life and you are solely responsible for what you accomplish (or don’t). Habit 2 (Begin with the End in Mind) is about creating that clear vision in your mind’s eye, and it results in a written document—a mission statement or a constitution—that will help keep you on course as you bring it into being. When you have invested the time in developing the habit of proactivity and envisioning what you want to accomplish, then Habit 3 is how you execute on your mission at an ‘A’ level. While the first two habits are habits of leadership (the “first creation”), Habit 3 is a management habit. It’s what Covey calls “the second creation,” where things get real. The key mindset Habit 3 teaches is to schedule your priorities rather than to “prioritize” your schedule. COMING TO TERMS WITH DAY-TO-DAY CHOICES I love the first line of Jim Collins’s book Good to Great: “Good is the enemy of great.” It’s a key reminder that the enemy of great isn’t “bad,” and it’s not “horrible.” It’s all the “good” things we get done. Most of us are good, and that is precisely

why there are few that are great. It’s easy to fill a schedule with good meetings, good activities and good projects. But what you lose sight of in all the good you accomplish is that this puts your most important priorities on the back burner. As a sales leader, you’ll find Habit 3 helps conquer good as an enemy in your day-today choices, which includes your responses to unplanned events, by making sure you’ve blocked out time first for those activities that contribute to your mission. What good are Habits 1 and 2—the habits of personal vision and imagination—if they’re unravelled by the day-to-day press of things that demand your attention? The principle of “Putting First Things First” is to execute on your priorities and take responsibility for accomplishing them by proactively planning your time, your day and your week. Instead of coming into the office on Monday and looking at all the emails waiting, the people wanting answers, the meeting invitations to accept, and trying to prioritize your schedule around them, you use time management differently. As Stephen Covey suggests, the phrase “‘time management is really a misnomer—the challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.” This is an important discipline to build as a sales leader, especially since there’s no end to the list of internal meetings, visits with important customers, proposals to prepare, reports that are due, and decisions that need to be made to fulfil your role. Absent this skill, your most important priorities end up not getting done. But if you’re already overwhelmed with more than you can possibly get to in a day, how can you start to take control?

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HABIT 3: PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST

WHAT’S EATING YOUR TIME?

GETTING IN THE GAME IS A PRIORITY I’ll often ask a group of salespeople: If there is one thing that you could do consistently well that would make the most significant difference in your ability to get results, what would it be? The answer I most frequently hear is: “We need to spend more face-time with our clients.” That makes enormous sense. And in my experience, most salespeople overestimate the time they do spend with clients. Then I ask sales leaders, “What one activity could you do that would make you more effective as a sales leader with your team?” The answer is usually along the same lines: “I need to spend more time with my people.” It’s likely that one of the things that made you successful as an individual contributor was the amount of time you actually spent with customers, not back at the office building engaged in “good” meetings. If it’s mission-critical for you to get out of your office and be with your salespeople and with customers, so that you can observe your team in action, hear them and coach them, then how will you do it? It’s my direct observation that most coaching is done in the office and not in the field, and isn’t regularly scheduled. It’s more a matter of random happenstance. It turns out, often the reason why sales leaders don’t do this is this issue we’ve been talking about: There are lots of things that require their immediate attention, which may or may not be important. As a sales leader, you need to block out time proactively. Schedule your priorities, rather than prioritize your schedule.

“Time management is really a misnomer— the challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.” Stephen R Covey

Say ‘No’ to these activities in order to steal time for Quadrant 2. This ability to judge is like a muscle and can be developed and strengthened. I’ve found that other people habitually invite you to Quadrant 3. A quick example: I was on the phone in my home office and one of my kids appeared in the doorway. It was obvious he wanted to ask a quick question. But since I didn’t look at him and allow him to distract me he stood and waited. Sensing I wasn’t going to be done with the call for longer than he was willing to wait, he wrote me a note and handed it to me. I turned it face down on the desk so I wouldn’t be interrupted. Finally, he tapped me on the shoulder. I waited for an opportunity in the conversation and said, “Can you hold on a moment? Someone’s just walked into my office.” I turned to my son and asked, “What do you need?” He replied, “Do you know what happened to the potato chips?” I allowed this trivial interruption because it seemed urgent. Similarly, our attention may be interrupted by colleagues frequently throughout the day. A good exercise for a sales leader is to look at the Time Management Matrix in the context of one of your typical weeks, and estimate the amount of time you spend in each quadrant. The ones above the line are important—they fall into the two categories of urgent or not urgent, and you should focus on these because they’re important. The ones that fall below the line are not important, even though some of them may be urgent. It also might be a good idea to identify who or what pulls you most into Quadrant 3 and take steps to reduce it, which could be a Quadrant 2 conversation with someone.

We all have the same amount of time in a given week. How can you allocate yours to achieve the things that are most important? FranklinCovey’s Time Management Matrix helps identify what activities eat up your time. “Urgent” matters require immediate attention. As Covey writes, “Urgent things act on us… They press on us; they insist on us. They’re usually popular with others. They’re usually right in front of us.” “Important” matters have to do with whether something contributes to your mission, your high-priority goals and the results you want to achieve. The danger is they don’t act on you, they wait for you to act on them. They require your proactive attention. Given those descriptions, you can see that Quadrant 1 is “urgent and important”— this is the quadrant of crisis. These are things that must be done because they are first “important” and second they are “urgent.” Many people live their lives in a constant state of firefighting because they have put off doing something until it is a crisis. Beware though, this is an addictive quadrant and when you’re done with Quadrant 1 activities you typically move to Quadrant 3. Being addicted to Quadrant 1 is dangerous because we don’t often judge well between activities that fall into Quadrant 1 and Quadrant 3. The difference is big because Quadrant 3 represents those things that may be good to do, but they eat your time and don’t contribute to your mission. It’s easy to fall prey to this quadrant because it still is laced with a sense of urgency. But by definition they are not important, just urgent.

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HABIT 4: THINK WIN-WIN

HABIT 4: THINK WIN-WIN The Habits I’ve discussed previously in this paper have been focused on developing mastery— mastery of self. The result is true “independence” and deep character, leading to an increasingly more effective and truly powerful individual. Self- mastery is the hardest earned and most valuable of all victories!

Since the first three Habits are deeply personal and private in their effect, you might not appreciate how vital they are as the foundation to success in the public arena. They are the power source that makes our interactions with others effective. For both sales leaders and individual contributors, success with self (Private Victory) is the only way to realize sustainable success with others (Public Victory). Habits 4, 5, and 6 are Habits of interdependence. While independence is an achievement, interdependence is a choice. And it’s a choice only independent people can make and live to. In the long run, you can’t be successful with other people if you haven’t paid the price to master yourself. Many try, but it’s impossible to sever public life from private life. Indeed, the most important offering you give to others is not what you say, what you think, or even what you do; it’s who you are down deep. “Win-Win is not a technique, it’s a total philosophy of human interaction,” Stephen Covey writes. “Win-Win means that agreements or solutions are mutually beneficial, mutually satisfying. With a Win-Win solution, all parties feel good about the decision and feel committed to the action plan.” Sales people need an approach that allows them to leapfrog beyond a traditional, resistant, or guarded interaction—or one that’s often only utilitarian at best—and truly connect as business partners. The primary mindset is based on Win-Win. In this section, I’ll share some points related to “Think Win- Win” that are highly applicable to sales leaders. Some are focused within the sales

organization and some apply externally with clients. An important note: If, as a sales leader, you look across your team and see individuals who aren’t truly independent—who are frequently overreactive to outside stimuli (what others do or say, or don’t do or say) rather than proactive, who don’t have their own deep purpose they’re committed to, and who aren’t executing around their life’s priorities—how will they have the maturity to buy into someone else’s mission, execute around those priorities, and proactively respond to all the disappointments and challenges that inevitably come? It seems unlikely. I suggest you focus on helping them see the importance of building deep sources of personal security before asking or expecting them to change in their public life. You can encourage them to Think Win- Win, you can train them in Habit 4, and you could even model it in your own behaviour, but without a strong character ethic and the foundation of Habits 1, 2, and 3, they won’t be able to think and apply “Win-Win.” It will be practiced as a manipulative human-relations technique instead of the profoundly powerful principle it is. At best you will only get compliance, which won’t likely unlock Win- Win.

DEPOSITS FOSTER WIN-WIN Stephen Covey uses the metaphor of an emotional

bank account to describe how “making deposits” with another person builds trust. The concept of an emotional bank account is significant as an indicator of the strength of the relationship. The more frequent the interaction

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HABIT 4: THINK WIN-WIN

with that person, the more attention you should pay to whether you’re making deposits or taking withdrawals. Here are six respectful behaviors that make deposits with your team and your clients. #1 Understanding the Individual With the Team: Sincere, persistent effort to understand another person is one of the most important, worthy deposits you can make. And it is the key to every other deposit. Otherwise, if you try to make a deposit that shows you don’t understand what’s important to them, it can turn into a withdrawal. As a sales leader, do you truly understand the priorities of the people on your team and why those are important? Do you

have a relationship that invites team members to share their mission and personal goals or ambitions with you? Do you know what they really care about, or are you guessing? If you do, what opportunity could you extend that would challenge them in an area they’re passionate about and, at the same time, indicate how much you trust and need their contribution? With a Client: Understanding a client’s needs is the first priority. Salespeople and teams often get it exactly backwards—they passionately promote their company’s offerings, intending to help, but they often do so with little more than a shallow understanding of what’s important to a client. When you first meet someone, if all they

talk about is themselves for most of the time you’re with them, what do you think after that interaction? For nearly 20 years, no matter what country I’m in, I’ve heard clients complain that salespeople don’t listen. What are they busy doing? They’re too busy talking, too busy ‘establishing their credibility’ by pushing a point of view, too busy ‘educating’, and too focused on their own need to ‘sell’ something. Ironically, they hurt their credibility and lose trust in the process. Stop talking and start listening to understand. Adding to that problem, on internal deal advancement templates I’ve seen within sales organizations worldwide, about 90 percent of the questions used to qualify opportunities are

focused on internal concerns, such as: “How much revenue is this deal worth? Did you consider throwing this asset into the mix? What’s our margin? When is this going to close? Who do we have staffed on the project?” Very little of it, and certainly not the upfront part, asks the salesperson to lay out what’s going on for the client—what’s the client’s situation and how well do you know their story? Perhaps you should create a policy that the first 20 minutes of a deal review is on making sure everyone is clear on the client’s situation.

#2 Attending to the Little Things

With the Team: Little kindnesses and courtesies are so important.

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HABIT 4: THINK WIN-WIN

“The sequence matters, think their win first, then your win”

Expressing gratitude for specific contributions they’ve made, even small ones, can brighten their day. Conversely, small discourtesies, little unkindness’s, and subtle forms of disrespect make large withdrawals—often more than we realize. Sarcasm, joking at another’s expense, and ingratitude are a few of the more common withdrawals we make. An important deposit that’s especially needed in today’s hectic world is to remove interference in conversations. In other words, stop multitasking. If you were talking with me about something important to you— whether you were on the phone or you walked into my office— and I kept getting distracted by emails, texts, phone calls, and other people interrupting, in spite of my good intentions to listen to you the interaction turns into a withdrawal. Instead of doing a juggling act to help everyone with some need, the more effective path would be to completely hear and understand one person deeply. That means put everything down and rivet your eyes on the person in front of you, even if you’re on the phone and you can only do it figuratively. This is an important habit in internal face- to-face meetings, too! Too many people wander in and out of a conversation as they multitask. With a Client: If you were in a one-on-one meeting with a client, you would never think of reading emails or replying to texts on your phone while they were talking. You wouldn’t allow any distraction to get in the way. So why do that when we’re on the phone with them? We read emails while they talk, we glance over reports as they share, and we text our boss or another client while they complain about something that’s not right in how we’re serving them. The more

familiar we are, the sloppier we tend to be. Give them your undivided attention. It conveys how important the relationship is to you. Be prompt. That means be early. Yes, it is a small thing and yes, it gets noticed. If you’re late and then make excuses, it’s easy to assume you’ll make excuses for why you didn’t do what you said you would do later on the project.

to misunderstanding, disappointment, and withdrawals of trust. The deposit is to make expectations clear and explicit in the beginning. This takes a real investment of time and effort up front, but saves time and effort down the road. Then, when you have an accountability session, a balance of courage and consideration in your conversations is often required, because you may not agree with the other person’s self- accountability. Use Win-Win Performance Agreements: The underlying objective, discussed at length in previous articles in this series, is not to take responsibility away from people, but to keep them engaged and responsible. So much of the scripting in a sales organization is Win- Lose—from President’s Club to compensation to competition. Win-Win agreements keep responsibility squarely on the individual contributor instead of on you. With a Client: A simple and very helpful tool to strengthen client relationships is to have a meeting whose sole purpose is to clarify expectations before you embark on a project. Talk about what’s important to the client in a relationship. From their perspective, what would qualify someone as a strategic partner rather than a vendor (even a preferred vendor)? And in the spirit of Win-Win, what would you ask for? The second half of Win-Win is being clear about what you need and asking for it. What would make this client an enviable client to have and one you would never want to lose? #5 Showing personal integrity With the Team: Lack of integrity will undermine any other effort to create high-trust relationships. Integrity includes honesty,

being loyal to those who are not present, treating everyone by the same set of principles, and confronting (when necessary) rather than taking the course of least resistance to “be nice” or because you’re avoiding an uncomfortable situation. Never sacrifice integrity. With a Client: Sometimes ‘standing up’ to a client with courage and consideration is the most powerful way to strengthen your relationship with them. It also makes a huge deposit with your own team. #6 Apologizing sincerely when you make a withdrawal With the Team: Sincere apologies make deposits; repeated apologies perceived as insincere make withdrawals. And the quality of the relationship reflects it. While an apology doesn’t have to be public, don’t avoid making one in public to protect your image. With a Client: Clients deserve our best efforts, including sincere apologies when warranted. We often hold back for fear we will be taken advantage of or blamed for more than is fair (or possibly sued). This is a scarcity-mentality problem at its root, and it keeps us from rich relationships that are productive. Take responsibility for what you are responsible for and ask others, including clients, to do the same. Think Win-Win is a powerful way to shift your thinking before any interaction happens. But taking a Win-Win approach will be hard to achieve if you haven’t built trust with others first. The willingness of others to engage with you in a Win-Win way is directly affected by the balance in the emotional bank account you have with them. Simple, consistent steps increase trust and make Win-Win easier and more likely.

#3 Keeping Commitments With the Team: Keeping a

commitment or a promise is a major deposit; breaking one is a major withdrawal. In fact, there’s probably not a more massive withdrawal than to make a promise that’s important to someone and then not to come through. You should be careful about what commitments you make. If you’ve made one and broken it, see #6 below. With a Client: The same is true for clients. Make commitments and keep them—all of them. Get clients used to the fact that they can count on you; that if you say you will do something you do it rather than frequently give excuses for why you didn’t do it when you said you would. Even if you get it done, being late with a commitment tarnishes the relationship. If you knew clients could see the ‘GoPro’ footage of your day, how many of your excuses would suddenly be useless? Small things done repeatedly and well can form habits and lead to patterns of your life. Patterns build chains of strong character. #4 Clarifying Expectations With the Team: As Stephen Covey points out, every production problem or performance problem is an opportunity to enhance production capability. Unclear expectations lead

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HABIT 5: SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD

HABIT 5: SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND, THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD The previous section focused on Habit 4, ‘Think Win-Win’, a powerful platform for guiding your thinking and governing your interactions with clients and others. Habit 4 consists of two parts: Think their win first, then your win (and the sequence matters).

If Habit 4 is about getting your head and heart right, then Habit 5 is about putting this mindset into action. There are also two distinct parts to Habit 5: Seek First to Understand—Then to Be Understood. The first half involves enquiry or ‘diagnosis’— deeply listening to the person you’re interacting with (seek first to understand). The second half involves advocacy— sharing your point of view (then to be understood), which sometimes requires doing so courageously. Both halves are required and both are equally important. Again, sequence matters a lot. Habit 5 focuses on enquiry first for a very compelling reason— it makes our advocacy much more influential! But when it comes to sales, all too often we get it backwards—we start our interactions by “credentializing,”

Somewhere along the way, when executives aren’t seeing the sales numbers they want,

they believe it’s because salespeople don’t know

enough about their products or services. So they roll out more product training or revamp the marketing collateral, all designed to help you tell more (and do a better job telling it). Of course, clients rightly expect salespeople to have a point of view. They might say, “We need to build a social media strategy. We’d like you to tell us about your experience. Which companies have you worked with? How would you approach social media for a company like ours? What are the pitfalls we need to be aware of?” They’ve set you up for a brag session about your company and you think, “Aha, this is an opportunity! I’m sure I can get through 54 slides in 60 minutes. I’ve got this down cold.” There’s no doubt that for a client to pay attention and ultimately buy from us, we must be credible. And it seems we believe credibility comes from what we say, not by what we ask and how well we listen. So repeatedly, we pull out the pitch deck and drone on. It seems like everyone does it. For all of these reasons—social, cultural, personal—we’re wired to focus more on advocacy. This behaviour isn’t entirely wrong. Normally, you do need to advocate before you’ve earned the right to do deep inquiry— but it doesn’t take much more than three to five minutes, especially in early meetings. The problem is we tend to go on and on, rather than sharing the smallest amount of information needed to get someone to be open—not to be impressed, but to be open. The impressive part can come later.

sharing our point of view, telling someone about our

company’s products & services and our track record of stunning successes with other clients. We focus on the second half of the habit first. Why? We’re deeply scripted that way and conditioned to do it. The companies we work for and even our clients expect us to do it. Adding to the problem is the fact that we’re trained more in speaking than in listening, more in advocacy than enquiry. WHY DO SALES PEOPLE USUALLY GET THIS HABIT BACKWARDS? It starts even before you’re hired. Chances are, in your job interview someone said, “Tell me about a time when you…” It sets you up for a brag session. Nail it and you get the job. Then your initial training is almost always focused on the company’s products, services, and its successful track record.

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