Never Forget

A Manager Should Never Forget 

 One small change creates amazing benefits.

Never forget how powerful your words are.

          Be blamed for playing favorites.

Find the core motivation for each of your team, as well as for yourself.    

     Did you have any real training to become a manager?

We all—or at least most of us—were given our positions because we were good at selling and letting our managers know it, or we were slaves to them.

How often did you agree with your manager only to do what you thought was right anyway (the opposite of what they said to do)?

You hold the keys to creating a great sales staff.

What makes a great salesperson?

overwhelming knowledge about your product a key to a great sales person?

What are you doing to help them achieve these?

Have daily private one-on-one conversations with each member of your staff. We all say we are doing it, but we are not.

 There are two things that every great salesperson wants more than sex and money: praise and recognition.

Salespeople are your most valuable asset.

Make a chart that includes all the traits of a great salesperson. Think outside the box. When interviewing, rate the person in each category from 1–10. Do this with your current staff; it may surprise you.

We all know what to do; do it.

Throw off the yoke of preconceived notions.

We see things regarding what we know.

We see things regarding our personal perceptions.

We manage the way we were managed.

We do not know how to truly motivate our personnel when they are not performing.

All salespeople have the same training. Why do they not perform the same?

Process training, tracking, product knowledge, etc. are all important. But they are not the most important.

We are reactionary.

What does attitude mean? It is the pure science behind selling.

Our current training focus is misplaced at best.

Keep your staff from discussing the things they have no control over.

Create a training calendar that is fluid. Spend an inordinate amount of time on attitude, perception, focus, and belief.

This is not feel-good, kumbaya training. Do not fool yourself. It is vital.

What are the key traits of great managers?

Your attitude is more important than facts.

If you force your system on salespeople without their buy-in, they will go through the motions with no commitment.

We do not like change; it makes us uncomfortable.

We do not like to have crucial conversations.

We do not like confrontation; when it occurs, it spirals out of control.

The bandwagon effect or herd mentality will make you seem like a genius.

Give your team an identity; we all want to belong.

Do not allow senseless complaining.

Is the traditional salesperson dead? How much work is sales the traditional way?

Stay consistent. If it works, it works.

We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are.

First impressions matter; they are hard to change.

Do it with love; it is a four-letter word.

Do you need to be the expert?

Most good salespeople are better at it than we were.

We did not always do it right.

Never forget your roots or how difficult a role salespeople have.

Listen, listen, listen.

Admit your mistakes. The person who is interested in success has to view mistakes as a healthy and inevitable part of the process of getting to the top. If you are not progressing, always look to see if it is a mistake you are making. Telling others about your mistakes and admitting to them frees them to quit worrying about whether you know or don’t. It uplifts you in their eyes.

Ask your team, “What are we missing?”

The Tartar Tribes of Central Asia had a curse they would use on their enemies: “May you stay in one place forever.” Have a personal growth plan.

Invest in yourself, be a continual learner, and create a growth environment for all of your team.

You cannot lead people if you need people.

People quit people, not companies. Sixty-five percent of the people who leave because of a manager.

When a salesperson has a problem with almost everyone, he or she is usually the problem.

Make sure a hammer is not the only tool in your box.

Management is as much relational as it is positional. Knocking down others to keep yourself on top is too much work and too stressful.

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This is your day

As we journey professionally and personally we will never understand the miracle of life fully. Until we allow the unexpected to happen. Perhaps it’s time to grab the old glove, run back on the field, embrace wholly the life you have and believe again that the best is yet to come.

This is your day. Play ball and Live Inspired.
John O Leary

What if you are the worm?

The early bird gets the worm. The advice we have heard our whole lives. Great advice if you are not the worm. If you are, should you procrastinate to live another day? Do we take the opinion of almost every self-help genius and perpetuate the existence of the bird, at a deep sacrifice for our selves?

Is the worm not significant as well? Eric Thomas tells us we need to out grind our competition. Get up earlier than them and work harder. Adam Grant says the opposite, procrastination can be good.

Martin Luther King wrote his most famous speech at 3 o’clock the morning before he addressed the crowd. Studies have shown that we do better work when the pressure is on. We think of the same old ideas when it is not. Put that pressure on us, and we start thinking out side of our usual box.

Where in the clutter do we find our answer? Out grind our competition. Yes, we do. Procrastinate and come up with better ideas? Yes, we do. Take risks and succeed. Yes we, do. Be careful and succeed.  Yes, we do.

If you are the worm, by all means, procrastinate. If you are the bird, out grind the next bird.

There are times in our lives when we are the bird, other times, we are the worm.

Clear the clutter and live your life. Find a balance. Too much of a good thing is still too much. 

Remember, it’s always the right time and place if you have the right attitude.

What do you plant in your Garden?

Our mind is very much like a garden. We have a choice what we may plant in it. We can plant whatever we choose. Our garden does not care what is planted. It is our decision. Our mind like the garden does not care what ideas we plant in it. If we plant two ideas, one poisonous to our well-being, one vital to our growth and attitude, (remember, our mind does not care.) It will cultivate the poisonous thoughts just as well as the vital ones. With this can emerge two attitudes, woe is me or nothing can stop me. Our mind is far more incredible and mysterious than our garden, yet it works the same way. It doesn’t care what we plant, success or failure. Concrete, worthwhile goals or confusion, misunderstanding, fear, anxiety, and so on. The laws of nature tell us, “What we plant it must return to us.”

Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman Emperor, said: “A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.”

Disraeli said this: “Everything comes if a man will only wait … a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and nothing can resist a will that will stake even existence for its fulfillment.”

William James said: “We need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and it will become infallibly real by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.” He continues, “only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.”

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale put it this way: “If you think in negative terms, you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms, you will achieve positive results.”

George Bernard Shaw said: “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”

What do you plant in your Garden?

Wrong floor elevator

Last Sunday I got off the elevator on the wrong floor. I went to room 326 and tried my key a few times before I realized my room was 15026, not 10026. As Brian Regan said, “I hate getting off the elevator on the wrong floor? Anyone ever do that, and then you have to turn around and face those people. I feel like I owe everyone in there an explanation.”

Subconsciously we go thru life without thinking. Have you ever pulled into work and remembered very little about how you got there?

Imagine the power over our lives we would have if we harnessed the subconscious thought. We could create our own institutional habits and react to our day subconsciously. The power would be incredible. We could accomplish whatever we choose. We would own our reactions to the world. What we have no control over would not control us.

Remember, it is always the right time if we have the right attitude.

Don’t ask yourself what you want out of life

" What do you believe and what are you willing to struggle for?"

I believe I am a great manager and I will avoid situations that could contradict that belief. I believe I am an amazing sales person, I seek out opportunities to prove that to myself over and over again. I believe I am a motivational speaker. Again, I seek out opportunities to prove that to myself over and over. Belief always takes precedence. We seek out every opportunity to prove to ourselves that we are right.  If we think of ourselves as a failure, our curious mind will find proof.  Whatever we believe ourselves to be or circumstances that put us there, we are.

What we want and what we are. It is up to us.

In his book, Mark Manson tells us,  

“Don’t ask yourself what you want out of life. It’s easy to want success and fame and happiness and great sex. Everybody wants those things. A much more interesting question to ask yourself is, “What kind of pain do I want?”

What you are willing to struggle for is a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.”

" What do you believe and what are you willing to struggle for?"