Growth Dynamics Get Down

At 35, Rachel built a nice career for herself, and she was enjoying the benefits of that success. There was a nice house in an upscale neighborhood, the vacations in all the places she ever dreamed about and a luxury set of wheels sitting in the driveway; all of it earned through hard work and commitment to Rachel’s goals. Her life looked like the epitome of success, and Rachel was very proud of it all. There was, however, one thing Rachel didn’t have, and it seemed the more successful she became the less of this one thing she had at her disposal. Rachel hated to admit it, but all the success cost her time to enjoy her life with friends and family. To Rachel, it became obvious that success had a price and she wasn’t sure it was worth it to raise the bar and experience even more of it. She found herself admitting that being more successful just meant giving up most of what was left of her personal life.

Charlotte and Eleanor are twins, and their mother signed them up with a local Brownie troop when they turned seven years old. The girls loved all the fun craft activities that were part of the troop’s weekly meetings, and their parents loved to see them make new friends and socializing outside the family. As the year went on the two girls’ personalities became more and more apparent. Charlotte’s outgoing nature and willingness to take on new adventures was very different from Eleanor’s shy and less bold demeanor. Never was it more apparent than when the annual ritual of selling the famous Girl Scout cookies took place. Eleanor was upset and cried when her sister constantly was recognized for the most sales, and well, Eleanor’s reaction was to ask if she could be excused from selling cookies. When her mother told Eleanor she had to either sell or drop out of the troop, Eleanor was devastated. After her first few attempts to sell to people going past their stand at the grocery store failed, Eleanor was ready to head home and quit the troop as well.

How many times have you seen a highly successful salesperson get to the point of total frustration over not having any personal time? Nothing is sadder than someone making lots of money but never having a day off to enjoy the things they can now afford. From the outside it seems as though their success has created a new world of problems; stress, feeling like they can’t stop, endless calls from customers and a sense that being highly successful has a very high price. It doesn’t have to be that way.

I Just Lost a Client, A Love Story.

If you are near my age 60+ that line might remind you of the classic television show “Dragnet.” Sgt. Joe Friday, the lead detective, was constantly reminding the people (suspects, witnesses, victims) that he interviewed to just give him the facts, nothing but the facts while he interviewed them. Friday didn’t want any of the emotional debris these people would try to add to their account of what happened. “Just the facts” was all Friday could work with, and none of the emotions could change those facts.

I am annoyed, but there is an upside to this annoyance. They are constructing a natural gas pipeline right outside my office, and I mean right outside my office, like 20 yards from my window. The noise is constant, and despite all the sound barriers they’ve constructed the noise is still annoying. And to make things worse, they don’t know when it will end. So, yes, I am annoyed.

At Growth Dynamics we offer our Talent Selection Services to many companies that are worried about picking the right person for that open position. We also have a fair number of clients that have asked us to help them pick the right employer out of the vast number of companies they might apply to for their next professional stop. Whether you are looking for the ideal candidate to add to your team or you don’t want to end up working somewhere you can’t wait to leave, please consider the title of this blog directed at you.

I often debrief sales calls with my clients and hear of the great opportunities they’ve just uncovered, but the longer we discuss what happened the reality about the greatness of the opportunity changes dramatically. One particular part of a successful call tends to be missing when the salesperson shares the details of the call. That missing element more often than not is that no deadline of timeline has been agreed to or even discussed. And for my money, when you don’t have a deadline for a decision there is not much of a chance of completing a sale.

Grow the Person to Improve the Performance

I can’t claim the original thought on this powerful acronym, but I admit I use it quite often in Growth Dynamics’ sales training programs. There is never a shortage of conversations that lead to a client/student that hears a sales tactic that makes him or her uncomfortable and blurts out a sentence that begins with these two words; what if…