Barry Farber: Make the Sale

Want the Sale? Bring the Energy

Discover the correlation between the aura you project and your sales success.

By Barry Farber | August 6, 2010

How important do you think your attitude is to the sale? And I'm not just talking about a positive attitude alone. I'm talking about a presence that's fired up with enthusiasm and passion for what you do. It's having the physical and mental energy to keep on going after many people would give up and go home. It's how you move, how you approach another person, it's in your handshake and how you stand and face the person. Your energy can make or break the sales call.

When you call on a customer with energy and enthusiasm, it means that you believe in your product or service, and are excited about what you have to offer your customer. This isn't bravado; a sincere belief in yourself and your product can't be faked. You don't have to take my word for it; these are comments from real customers:

• "A sales person needs to stimulate me into buying his products. He needs some energy, some enthusiasm, some pizzazz."
  
• "My favorite rep is incredibly energetic and enthusiastic. She does her job really well and she makes me feel good at the same time."

Here are some key points to keep in mind about the correlation between energy and your overall success:

• Energy = motivation: William Clements, the former governor of Texas, told me, "Energy is the secret to everything. You can be a person of great integrity, character and all these other wonderful things, but if you don't really put your shoulder to the wheel, so to speak, and start pushing, you're not going to get to first base."
  
• Top sellers are pro-active, not reactive: When you look at high achievers in any field, the first thing you'll notice is their high energy. They are pro-active personalities; these people make things happen instead of sitting back and waiting for things to happen to them. They have a positive attitude--based on a belief in themselves and their abilities--which keeps them going even when they encounter rejection and setbacks. If you're wondering how you can maintain your positive attitude, try these energy action steps:

1. Appreciate the good. We need to remind ourselves to focus on the positive. Sometimes we get so bogged down by the things that are "wrong" in our lives that we forget to be grateful for the things we have that are right. Every so often, take a step back and look at everything you've achieved so far. Celebrate how far you've come, without worrying about how much there still is to do. As the late, great Earl Nightingale said, "We become what we think about all day long."
   
2. Increase your physical activity level. Physical activity--whether it's a sport, a workout at the gym or a brisk walk around the block--revitalizes and regenerates us in body and mind.
   
3. Fish for compliments. When you feel like your attitude needs a check up from the neck up, and all else has failed, call some of your satisfied customers to hear their positive comments about their experience. This not only keeps you pumped but keeps the relationship strong by staying in touch.

Energy, enthusiasm and a positive attitude can go a long way in forging long-lasting customer relationships. We sometimes underestimate the power of our attitudes and energy level when making sales calls. And your customersappreciate your positive approach more than you realize.

Pixar Creativity

How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity

Key ideas from the Harvard Business Review article by Ed Catmull

The Idea in Brief

A robot falls in love in a post-apocalyptic world. A French rat sets out to become a chef. A suburban family of superheroes defeats a power-hungry villain. Unexpected ideas, all—yet Pixar Animation Studios is turning these and other novel ideas into blockbuster films.

How? As Catmull explains, Pixar’s leaders have discovered potent practices for structuring and operating a creative organization. For example, they give writers, artists, and other “creatives” enormous leeway to make decisions. They make it safe for people to share unfinished work with peers, who provide candid feedback. And they conduct project post-mortems in ways that extract the most valuable lessons for mitigating risk on subsequent projects.

The effort has paid off. Pixar’s has racked up a unique track record of success: It’s the leading pioneer in computer animation. It has never had to buy scripts or movie ideas from outside. And since 1995, it has released seven films—all of which became huge hits.

The Idea in Practice

Catmull suggests these principles for managing your creative organization:

Empower your creatives. Give your creative people control over every stage of idea development.

Example: At most studios, a specialized development department generates new movie ideas. Pixar assembles cross-company teams for this purpose. Teams comprise directors, writers, artists, and storyboard people who originate and refine ideas until they have potential to become great films. The development department’s job? Find people who’ll work effectively together. Ensure healthy social dynamics in the team. Help the team solve problems.

Create a peer culture. Encourage people throughout your company to help each other produce their best work.

Example: At Pixar, daily animation work is shown in an incomplete state to the whole crew. This process helps people get over any embarrassment about sharing unfinished work—so they become even more creative. It enables creative leads to communicate important points to the entire crew at once. And it’s inspiring: a highly innovative piece of animation sparks others to raise their game.

Free up communication. The most efficient way to resolve the numerous problems that arise in any complex project is to trust people to address difficulties directly, without having to get permission. So, give everyone the freedom to communicate with anyone.

Example: Within Pixar, members of any department can approach anyone in another department to solve problems, without having to go through “proper” channels. Managers understand they don’t always have to be the first to know about something going on in their realm, and that it’s okay to walk into a meeting and be surprised.

Craft a learning environment. Reinforce the mind-set that you’re all learning—and it’s fun to learn together.

Example: “Pixar University” trains people in multiple skills as they advance in their careers. It also offers optional courses (screenplay writing, drawing, sculpting) so people from different disciplines can interact and appreciate what each other does.

Get more out of post-mortems. Many people dislike project post-mortems. They’d rather talk about what went right than what went wrong. And after investing extensive time on the project, they’d like to move on. Structure your post-mortems to stimulate discussion.

Example: Pixar asks post-mortem participants to list the top five things they’d do again and the top five they wouldn’t do. The positive-negative balance makes it a safer environment to explore every aspect of the project. Participants also bring in lots of performance data—including metrics such as how often something had to be reworked. Data further stimulate discussion and challenge assumptions based on subjective impressions.

This HBR In Brief presents key ideas from a full-length Harvard Business Review article.

HBR: MANAGE YOUR ENERGY, NOT YOUR TIME

Extract from HBR:

MANAGE YOUR ENERGY, NOT YOUR TIME
Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy

Time is a finite resource, but energy can be systematically expanded and renewed. Build energy in four key dimensions: the body, emotions, mind, and spirit.

• For instance, harnessing the body's ultradian rhythms by taking intermittent breaks restores physical energy.
• Rejecting the role of a victim and instead viewing events through three hopeful lenses defuses energy-draining negative emotions.
• Avoiding the constant distractions that technology has introduced increases mental energy.
• And participating in activities that give you a sense of meaning and purpose boosts the energy of the spirit.
  

How You Sleep Is Who You Are

How You Sleep Is Who You Are

Being a morning person or a night owl doesn’t just determine when you start or end your workday; your internal clock may help define your psychology as well. A Spanish researcher found that our preference for engaging in activities earlier or later in the day shapes both our perceptions and our interactions. The author gave personality tests to 360 university students, whom he describes as a “proper sample,” noting that the circadian rhythms of students “are not much under the influence of time schedules and social patterns.” (Despite the occasional all-nighter, students presumably can follow their preferred sleep schedules more easily than working adults can.) His results offer new evidence that morning and evening types think differently. Early risers prefer to gather knowledge from concrete information. They reach conclusions through logic and analysis. Night owls are more imaginative and open to unconventional ideas, preferring the unknown and favoring intuitive leaps on their way to reaching conclusions. Social behavior diverges as well: Morning people are more likely to be self-controlled and exhibit “upstanding” conduct; they respect authority, are more formal, and take greater pains to make a good impression. (Earlier research also suggests that they are less likely to hold radical political opinions.) Evening people, by contrast, are “independent” and “nonconforming,” and more reluctant to listen to authority—which suggests that teachers may have several reasons to prefer those students who wake up in time for class.

—“Morning and Evening Types: Exploring Their Personality Styles,” Juan Francisco Díaz-Morales, Personality and Individual Differences


from: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/primarysources?wtID=33.3czt.11.3lcx

100 Fastest-Growing Tech Companies

Interesting Article for those in between jobs, this is a fantastic opportunity!

100 Fastest-Growing Tech Companies from CNN. They ranking leaders of the tech revival.

And the winners are...

Despite talk of froth and bubbles, the tech sector continues to surge. The 100 companies on our annual list are all posting impressive results. (more)
1. Akamai Technologies
2. iMergent
3. Palomar Medical Technologies
4. InterDigital Communications
5. CyberSource
6. Perficient
7. Lam Research
8. Ceradyne
9. F5 Networks
10. Armor Holdings

Top job growth
Want to work at a B2 100 company? Camera-chip maker Omnivision Technologies boosted its staff by 89% last year. Find out who else has been on a hiring spree. (more)
• Apple
• aQuantive
• AMD
• Red Hat
• Netflix

Best stock returns
iMergent's stock returned an impressive 334% in 2006. See who else saw their shares spike. (more)
• Digital River
• Akamai
• Nvidia
• Priceline
• Garmin

Article: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/b2fastestgrowing/2007/index.html