Meditation required?

I attended the South Jeffco Business Alliance Meeting recently.  One of the presenters was Lisa Moore.  The other was Dr. James G. Wellborn from Children’s Hospital of Colorado.  The theme was “Work-Life Balance”.  The top half of Lisa’s handout reflects positive moods; the bottom half… well… we already know those, true?  

Both presenters discussed how stress at work and stress in our personal lives are so intertwined that each impacts the other and both impact our mood.  Each presenter emphasized what happens to us is less important than how we react to what happens to us.  As Charles Swindell put it: 

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. 

I was reminded of such a reaction recently when my wife, obviously frustrated and exasperated said, “I have to call Amazon support.”  A simple situation?  Calling support?  Well, it definitely put her mood in the bottom half of Lisa’s card. 

My wife sells personalized dog and horse products on Amazon (Thriving Pets International).  She qualified several years ago for their special program supporting small businesses called Amazon Handmade.  It has been great for her business, but it comes with a price. 

Of course, lots of companies sell on Amazon.  According to Wikipedia: 

Amazon is the world's largest online retailer and marketplace, earning the moniker “The Everything Store”. 

Selling on “The Everything Store” for those other companies comes with a price, too.  Oh, it’s not just the Amazon fees; their price is not merely monetary.  The price I’m referring to today pertains to accessing service and support.  Amazon is big and it shows, LOL!  (I wonder if they sell medication to help before we call their support?) 

My wife’s grim mood made me wonder instead of medication she might do a little meditation before calling Amazon support.  What do you think?  Do you hate calling a vendor’s support line?  Of course, vendors have been constantly changing their support lines; from on-shore to off-shore; from telephone to online; from humans to chat bots.  I can’t wait to see what Artificial Intelligence has in store for us all!  Can you spell Rx? 

I can only imagine what the mood is for those human client support people still providing the best service they can.  We clients are demanding:

After exhausting every possible way to assist an irate client for the past 45 minutes, and then concluding her phone conversation in the professional manner she had been trained for, the client service representative was heard to let out a pent-up, rhetorical question of frustration, 

“What does this customer want me to do about their problem, perform magic”??? 

Gary A. Pokorn 

We have many daily opportunities for a spoiled mood.  Self-control; now that seems to be the ticket.  Others we listen to can make self-control sound so simple.  It must be me; I must be a slow learner because I struggle heeding their straightforward advice : 

            If things go wrong, don’t go with them. 

                        Roger Babson 

During the meeting Dr. James G. Wellborn presented this questionnaire about hassles and uplifts.  The Top 10 hassles for middle-aged people wasn’t a real surprise.  However, it does seem to indicate that for all the negative talk we have about our jobs; our workload; our boss… calling customer support… its what’s happening outside of our occupation that’s dominating our mood. 

Maybe Lisa has it right – meditation (vs. medication) is a salvo to ease our mood. 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

Often overlooked…

I enjoyed reading about sales enablement on LinkedIn recently.  Did you see Cassandra Mingus’ article? 

There are 3 reasons why I enjoyed it.  First, I happen to know Mike Demmert (always great to read about our friends’ success).  Second, the topic is near and dear to me because I’ve been in the sales enablement field for over a decade.  Third, Cassandra Mingus did an excellent job of covering the “levels of success” required for effective sales enablement.  Especially the “often overlooked” level. 

In the book, Sales Enablement 3.0 ©, Roderick Jefferson offers examples of leading practices in the sales enablement field from his long and experienced career.  To be successful Roderick says  sales enablement leadership needs to get all constituents to come to agreement on a unified, strategic definition of the sales enablement function.  Cassandra writes that Mike does this well. 

Mr. Jefferson continues that once the strategic level is established, the tactical level of sales enablement (e.g. tools, documentation, metrics, etc.) will fall into place.  Well OK, but... 

            A little experience upsets a lot of theory. 

S. Parkes Cadman 

I noticed in his book, Roderick overlooked the “often overlooked” level of successful sales enablement.  Thankfully, Cassandra did not. 

I believe the “often overlooked” level may be THE level that determines the success (or failure) of a company's entire sales enablement program. It is the "street level" aka "street credibility" aka “street cred”.  IMHO, who delivers the content is more important than what the content is.  Mike Demmert being who Mike Demmert is, makes THE difference at Signifyd. 

We all know that clients and prospects are a tough and demanding audience.  Ultimately, they have the final word.  Yet, many companies have sales enablement content delivered by those who have not been “on the street” very long; have limited experience; overly reliant on theory. 

Beyond tough clients and prospects, young salespeople are also a tough audience because they have limited practical experience to relate sales enablement to (along with a limited attention span, LOL!). 

Senior, experienced salespeople are the toughest and perhaps even the most cynical audience.  They have been hardened against “sales theory” and company “party lines”.  They’ve been burned too many times trying to apply content directly from a sales enablement program without additional directions about what to expect once on the street. 

The opening to my slogan, “When life gets tough we could get a helmet…”  comes from street  experience.  Our Unknown Sage put it this way: 

     Good judgment comes from experience. 

          Experience comes from bad judgment. 

Mike and I were both “on the street” before moving into sales enablement roles.  When I work with salespeople (young and old) I find myself adding directions that can stray a bit from a company’s “party line”.  You know it’s coming when I say, “Now if I were you what I would do…”  and then I offer additional directions based on my experience. 

This “street cred” level is not a guarantee of sales enablement success.  Skilled sales enablement professionals must be careful not to assume just because they know the tools, tactics, and techniques; just because they have experience; that their enablement efforts have been properly absorbed. 

Afterall, we have all been in this situation: 

Winfield's Dictum of Direction-Giving: 

The possibility of getting lost is directly proportional to the number of times the direction-giver says, “You can't miss it." 

Unknown Sage 

Yes, even with street cred, we have to be mindful.  I know Mike is. 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

Facing our daily fears…

Where do you find the courage to face your day? 

In these “modern times” there is much fear, uncertainty, and doubt surrounding us, true?  Fear-blaring headlines!  The shrinking of our 401k; global warming; job insecurity; what our children are exposed to online.  It has been this drum beat of fear that stimulated the creation of my slogan at the bottom of this post.

I was reminded of my fears recently when I was asked what took so long to publish my book The Peace and Power of a Positive Perspective.  Originally granted a copyright in 2010, I finally published it and made it available on Amazon.  The past 13-years?  Well, I fretted; over-thought; and found other imaginative ways to avoid publishing it. But why? One word – FEAR! 

My son shared one definition of fear with me, courtesy of our favorite, Unknown Sage: 

            Forget Everything And Run! 

I had several fears in 2010. Fear I couldn’t figure out how to publish the book. Fear if I did no one would like it. Fear no one would buy it. Fear it would fall into oblivion.  I ran!  All of those fears may yet turn out to be true. Except fear #1 – I published it! 

To celebrate my son shared this second definition of fear: 

Face Everything And Rise! 

Rise – I finally did!  Our favorite Unknown Sage continues to help.  He or She helps by reminding us: 

            Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is. 

                                  German Proverb 

You should consider yourself very lucky if the size of the wolf in your mind’s eye has not grown “bigger than he is”. 

There are other ways to face our fears.  Perhaps modern man can learn from earlier societies.  Take the ancient Greeks, for instance.  They believed their gods inspired man to approach the unknown without fear.  Imagine what life would be like if we could approach the unknown without fear. 

Imagine more faith; less control; more peace of mind; less fear; more courage, in the face of less certainty.  Is it possible that the affliction modern man has is we prefer “knowns” while fearing “unknowns”?  Where the ancient Greeks emphasized faith and inspiration, are we emphasizing antacids and high blood pressure medication? 

One would expect that the advancement of modern science and the higher level of thinking by modern man would serve to lessen the fear, uncertainty, and doubt in our lives.  David Ben-Gurian suggests that knowledge and courage are linked: 

Courage is a special kind of knowledge; the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how to not fear what ought not to be feared. 

We obviously have things in our lives we ought to fear.  We can’t think those things away; or will them away; or gain such tight control over every aspect of our life that we never have to fear another unknown.  

We have to face our unknowns.  (I feel that wolf getting bigger!  Where is an ancient Greek when we need one?) 

Can the remedy for the fears we face each day be as simple as having the type of faith that prevailed in olden times? 

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary.  To one without faith, no explanation is possible. 

                        Thomas Aquinas 

Thomas Aquinas was a 13^th century theologian and philosopher.  He may not have ever been on Facebook, but his advice along with the ancient Greeks’ beliefs can help us all avoid buying helmets. 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

Just for the fun of it…

How about a little ditty today just for the fun of it?  Actually a collection of little ditties.  Here are a few that have caught my eye – and my sense of humor – over the years.  I attribute all of them to that favorite Unknown Sage of ours.

I have read some of these in a book; some I have seen online; many I have seen on something as simple as a T-shirt, coffee mug, hand towel, or bumper sticker.  I bet you see quips, quotes, and pieces of positivity every day, too.  Hopefully, you’re paying attention:  

Always…when there's a scenic route, take it.  Arriving late and nasally challenged because you've mistakenly driven by the septic plant is still better than being punctual and bored. 

Robert Fulghum 

From time to time life’s nicest pleasures come from simple, old fashion, off-line sources, true?  Admittedly, I’m leveraging social media to share this post with you.  I don’t have enough room in my closet for all of those T-shirts I’ve seen, and I don’t have a big enough bumper for those bumper stickers.  I guess there really is a place for the online world in our lives today. HaHa! 

Here we go: 

            Love, Marriage, and Family 

I told my wife she should embrace her mistakes... so she hugged me. 

Retired: Free to do whatever my wife wants me to do. 

Murphy's Paradox: 

Doing it the hard way is always easier. 

Children enrolled in ski lessons are required to wear a location beacon in case they get lost.  We find most of them. 

“Adulting”? 

The officer said, "You drinking?" I said, "You buying?" We just laughed and laughed... Now I need bail money. 

You know that little thing inside your head that keeps you from saying things you shouldn't?  Yeah, I don't have one of those. 

Nothing is easy to the unwilling. 

Labor Rates:

     Regular        $ 24.50

     If you wait    $ 30.00

     If you watch   $ 35.00

     If you help    $ 50.00

     If you laugh   $ 75.00 

Masters of the household 

A dog accepts you as the boss...  A cat wants to see your resume. 

Welcome to my kitchen where many have eaten here and few have died. 

Billings' Law: 

Live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so. 

From a Father’s Day card: 

Dad, you taught me to always keep going and to never lose sight of my goal or my sense of humor along the way.

Technology 

It’s commonly referred to as “technology”.  I trademarked it as Dark Ages Computing ® 

Just once, I want a username and password prompt to say, "close enough". 

Never let a computer know you're in a hurry.    

The New Math Version of Murphy's Law: 

If there is a 50/50 chance of something going wrong, nine times out of ten it will.     

“Modern” Medicine 

My doctor asked if anyone in my family suffered from mental illness.  I said, "No. We all seem to enjoy it." 

I told my wife I wanted to be cremated.  She made an appointment for next Tuesday. 

Cirino's Law of Burnt Fingers: 

Hot glass looks the same as cold glass. 

          Young's Handy Guide to the Modern Sciences: 

If it is green or it wiggles -- it is Biology.

If it stinks -- it is Chemistry.

If it doesn't work -- it is Physics. 

I hope you enjoyed today’s little compendium.  Please share those you see while traveling life’s highways, OK? 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

Corporate (fill in the blank)…

Ah, “Corporate”; aka “headquarters”; aka “home office”; aka “staff”… all words of stimulation, true?  How do you fill in the blank “Corporate X”?  How do you respond when you hear someone from headquarters is coming out to meet with you?  Does it bring to mind a mood of celebration?  Or doom, HaHa! 

To be fair, I spent most of my career in the field.  I can’t really relate to HQ with any meaningful, personal experience.  As an outsider to headquarters, when I was informed of a visit from the home office it usually wasn’t cause for a celebration. 

I remember my first exposure to a “corporate review”.  The Chicago office had finished our fiscal year under quota; definitely not a cause for celebration. HQ sent a senior executive to interview each sales rep individually to see if there was a people problem or a leadership problem.  I had just started as a “National Account District Manager”, one of the first eight people in this new role at the company.  When my corporate review started I thought it was a good idea to explain to the senior executive how my national account sales process differs.  He cut me short, “Gary, we know what you do…”  Ouch. 

Fortunately, I survived that review and the next twelve months turned out to be a break-out year for me.  Was the HQ visit a catalyst for my success?  Well, it probably didn’t hurt: 

But all things finally began to move when the threat of help from headquarters was received. 

Norman Augustine 

In the sales profession we have pursued a variety of strategies when selling to big companies; tops down; bottoms up; access through their consulting firms, accountants, bankers, etc.  In some cases, selling to corporate begets us a competitive advantage with selling to their business units.  That was the catalyst to my break-out year following that visit from corporate back in the day. 

Brunswick, a Chicago corporation, was fending off a hostile takeover (popular in the early 1980s).  To raise capital and fund an aggressive stock buy-back, they sold their medical division.  The problem (for them) was their medical division was running payroll for all the other divisions.  The advantage for my company (ADP) was we processed their “Corporate Payroll”.  I leveraged that access to sell all of their divisions a payroll solution, my first “big deal” as a NADM. 

Throughout my career, I also experienced the other end of this corporate-field spectrum.  Rick Page in his book Hope is Not a Strategy wrote about that side of the equation: 

Having business at one business unit not only doesn't help me at the next one, it can actually hurt me.  They hate each other so much that if one business unit is for me, the others will be against me.  But they are all united in one value:  They all hate corporate. 

Yes, there have been many battles over the years between business units, aka the “field” and headquarters aka “corporate”.  Which one “breaks” things?  Which one “fixes” them?  Paul Dickson offers: 

Question: How many executives does it take to change a light bulb? 

Answer:   Two. One to assure the staff that everything possible is being done, while the other tries to screw the bulb into a water faucet. 

I may not have always “hated” corporate.  But when staff showed up from headquarters to conduct a review I always made sure our lights were operating properly. 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

Tough times?

I understand.  Your team missed their number; your company did too.  As a manager, you had to "lay off" a sales rep; maybe two; maybe more.  Now what? 

It's the new fiscal year; quotas are bigger; territories are smaller; and compensation plans were changed... your people have to sell more just to make the same.  You too.  Now what? 

Companies want employees to return to the office (at least a few days each week). Employees have become accustomed to working from home aka remote, aka online, aka virtually, aka in their PJs. Your sales people are resisting.  They think it’s a waste of time to show up just to show their face.  Now what? 

Are we working, managing, and living in tough times?  Yes.  Managing people remotely is tough. Maintaining a sense of camaraderie and culture is tough. Staying up beat in the face of adversity is tough. And people are realizing that "working from home" has morphed into "living at work".  Now what???

Well, if you are leading a team, "now what" is why you were selected to lead a team: 

Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition, such as lifting weights, we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity. 

Stephen R. Covey 

Recently, enjoyably, I’ve chatted with several sales people, sales managers, and sales VPs on the topic of leading during tough times.  Each of them responded to the question, “Now what?” by phoning a friend.  IMHO, that was an excellent, first step.  Why?  Because sales is a team sport.  More on that in a minute…  Back to your today.  Difficult day?  Yes: 

Life is difficult.  This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.  It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.  Once we know that life is difficult – then life is no longer difficult.  Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. 

M. Scott Peck  

OK Captain Obvious… easy to pontificate but what do we do about it?  Here are a few ideas I shared in my recent conversations.  I thought you might find value in them, too. 

As I stated first and foremost, sales is a team sport.  Foster your team; conduct team meetings… but… don’t focus on the “usual” stuff aka forecasts; month end deadlines; tough times; misery!  Instead:

• Invite a client to address your team and share their experiences with your company’s products/services.
• Read a business book and discuss how to apply tips & tricks to your team’s daily routine.  (I recommend Inside the Magic Kingdom by Tom Connellan.)
• Watch a Ted Talk or a LinkedIn Learning module and have a team discussion about ways to apply lessons learned to their routine. 

Why that book and why the daily routine?  Well, successful selling (and the “secret” to Disney) is executing all of those little things each day with excellence: 

Focus on having a good day; every day; and the year will take care of itself. 

Gary Givan 

The third piece of advice I offered in our conversations was the importance of maintaining a positive, can-do, mental attitude.  James Reston put it best this way: 

Stick with the optimists.  It’s going to be tough enough even if they’re right. 

If today’s tough times are getting you down, don’t try to go it alone.  Phone a friend.  Not sure who to call?  Give me a call.  I’ll fly with ya. 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

Techno-speaking…

OMG! What do you get when you combine Artificial Intelligence (AI) with artificial English (AKA made-up, social media-driven, acronyms)?  Is today’s techno-speak creating communications confusion?  I mean the English language is complicated enough.  Add in BAM, BOOM, and God knows what else, and at the EOD are we SOL? 

IRL I can’t tell if it’s FOMO or the machines that are driving us towards some new language.  Perhaps it’s just the IOT that we, our children, and our door bells are acclimating to.  It’s not new:

Maybe we’re saving our thumb muscles while operating those tiny little keyboards on our phones that’s behind the emergence of a short-hand slang.  I mean banging on our devices throughout the day (especially while driving our cars) can be strenuous, yes?  Maybe we’re witnessing (i.e. creating) a new “Modern English” for Google: 

Modern English is widely considered to be the lingua franca of the world and is the standard language in a wide variety of fields, including computer coding, international business, and higher education. 

“Lingua franca”, indeed.  Should I say, “LF”?  I see a whole lot of creativity these days with our technology-driven approach to communication.  BTW - who exactly is (or are) the SoMeIn that’s coming up with this stuff?  I wonder if such creativity is essentially costing clarity?  The Digital Transformation Playbook © by David L. Rogers written way back in 2016 offered: 

As technology journalist Alexis Madrigal has observed, “It turns out that our creativity is good but our judgement is lousy.” 

Lousy judgement – that’s not new.  David S. Pottruck told us even longer ago; 

E-mail and voice-mail have, of course, exacerbated the problem in the last ten years.  Unfortunately, for all their convenience, these innovations have made it much easier to believe we are communicating when we are merely informing; if I have e-mailed you, you know it. This presumption frequently escalates from knowledge to understanding, then to consent, and finally to the delusion of wisdom. 

Ah yes, “… if I have e-mailed you… you consent ...”  How many times have we had that delusion of wisdom? 

IMHO, electronic, one-directional, techno-speak-based messaging frequently leads to erroneous assumptions.  For instance, I assumed BAM was a word.  You know like, “I was driving to work and bam I realized today is our wedding anniversary and I haven’t bought a card or a present for my wife yet.”  But nooo; as it turns out, BAM stands for Business Activity Management. 

Then there’s BOOM, which again, I thought was a word.  As in, “When my wife realized I bought her anniversary gift at the 7-11 on my way home from work that night, boom, there went any chance for a romantic evening.”  LOL!  Silly me; BOOM stands for Business Opportunity Optimization Management. (Who knew?) 

Call me kooky, but BAM sounds a lot like what my manager wanted to talk to me about during those sales forecast reviews (which seemed to be the only time he actually wanted to talk to me).  And I think I witnessed BOOM the other day when I was ordering a pizza and being up-sold extra toppings and side dishes by the restaurant’s AI chat-bot! 

I guess we all have to adapt to the evolution of today’s “New English Language”.  We’ll need to pay attention though… what we assume was written by the writer may not actually be what the writer assumed we would understand he wrote. 

Wait… WHAT??? 

GAP (oops – my bad!  I meant GAP) 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.