“What keeps you going isn’t some fine destination but just the road you’re on, and the fact that you know how to drive.” ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Of course we Ravens fans are disappointed. We wanted a trip to Super Bowl XLVI so badly we could taste it, and the way in which we lost that opportunity really stings. Our guys played their hearts out in that championship game… in fact, they totally outplayed the Pats, yet they fell short nonetheless. The Ravens were unable to accomplish their – and by extension, our – goal of bringing the Lombardi Trophy to Baltimore.

But step away from that sad scene for a moment and ask yourself this: why is it that we, as a society, are so hung up on winner-take-all goals and one-shot outcomes set within arbitrary timeframes? This is a phenomenon not only in sports, but also in our schooling, in our careers, in our businesses – even in our personal relationships and our parenting.

What if we were to turn away from outcomes and instead place our emphasis on the craft – on becoming better at what we do every day as a person, as a partner and parent, as a team, as a company, and as a society? It all comes down to the issue of what’s most important, the journey or the destination. We don’t like to talk about journey because we think it means there’s no reason to strive for excellence, because in the end everybody gets a participation trophy, right? Our capitalistic culture would definitely say that destination trumps journey. But if that’s true, why do we never hear a dying person say, “I wish I’d made more money”?

Back to the Ravens. The Super Bowl was their destination, but unfortunately the team bus broke down before they could get there, metaphorically speaking. There’s nothing to celebrate in that, right? But look what happens when we shift our attention to the Ravens’ journey. We see a group of men dedicated to doing their best work every day, practicing and playing to the max. We see men committed to their teammates, their coaches, their sport, their fans, and their community. We see the superhuman effort that goes into amassing a 12-4 record. We see an entire city united in its passion for football and the hometown team.

Sure, there were mistakes along the way, but there’s still room for improvement. When you’re focused on the journey, there isn’t a dead end like there is when you’re fixed solely on the destination. With destination, you risk running into a big red stop sign at some point. With journey, there’s always a tomorrow. There’s always more road. It’s always first and goal – and it’s always your ball.

Veteran Ravens linebacker, Ray Lewis understands the power of journey. Here’s part of his postgame speech to his teammates following the loss to the Patriots:

 God has never made a mistake. It ain’t about one play.

 This year, we did what we were supposed to do. We fought as a team. There will be one Super Bowl champ crowned at the end of this year, that’s it. So the way we feel, somebody gonna feel like that tomorrow, and somebody gonna feel like that in a week. That’s a fact. And the fact is, we gotta come back and go to work to make sure we finish it next time. That’s all we gotta do.

 … I’m telling you, man, don’t ever — don’t ever — drop your head when it comes to a loss, dog, because there’s too much pain outside of this that people are really going through. This right here makes us stronger. Let’s understand who we are as a team, let’s understand who we are as men, and let’s make somebody smile when we walk out of here. We got the opportunity to keep going, men. Let’s be stronger as a team, men.

 Let’s be who we are.

Yes, Lewis gets it. I believe there are three questions we’ll each ask ourselves at the end of our lives: Did I live? Did I love? Did I give? If you lived (or played football, or worked in business) with journey at your center, you’ll be able to answer each of those questions in the affirmative, just as Lewis did in his speech. In that spirit, let’s reconsider the Ravens’ season.

Did they live? Oh yeah. Nobody could suggest that these guys didn’t live to the fullest.

Did they love their sport… their teammates… their fans? Absolutely. Their passion for all three has been an inspiration all season long.

Did they give it their all? Without a doubt. They left nothing on the field, especially in that final game.

Look, I’m a business guy. I care about my team ultimately reaching its destination and achieving excellent results. But the pressure folks put on themselves toward that end sometimes causes them to botch the essential day-to-day stuff, and when that happens, they risk dropping the ball – and isn’t it a shame when you drop the ball just as you’re about to reach the end zone?

So, here’s to a renewed focus on journey for the Ravens – and for all of us. I predict great success in the coming season as a result.

Joe Mechlinski is the President of entreQuest and has partnered with countless leaders to effectively improve their team’s performance, their clients’ experience, and their company’s profits.

Isn’t it strange that even with an unemployment rate of nine percent, people still feel uncomfortable saying that they are looking for work? It seems to me that people hesitate sharing this information because they think the only way to tell someone they are looking for new employment is to use words and phrases like, unemployed, seeking a new position, and between jobs which have negative connotations. So, often times the approach is to say nothing… but as a recruiter, I can’t help but argue the exact opposite.

Admitting that you’re looking for new employment doesn’t make you any less desirable than everyone else in the job market, especially  if you know what to say, how to say it, and who to say it to. 

Each of us has countless interactions every day with a wide variety of people. We talk to family, friends, neighbors, the Starbucks barista, the owner of the local dry cleaners – the list goes on and on. But what people forget is that any one of these interactions could result in their next career opportunity. Rather than keep quiet, you should tell anyone and everyone who is willing to listen you’re looking for a new job. You never know, your neighbor might work at a company that is looking to hire someone with your exact skill set, or a family friend may have a great contact for you to interview with. The key here is to get out and talk about it; explain to people your current situation! 

Now, I’m not telling you to go shout it from the rooftop and sit back waiting for job offers to flood your way – you’ve got to think strategically.  Simply telling people that you’re looking for work isn’t enough.  Here are a few tips to help you get started thinking about what to say and how to say it:  

• Be straight forward
• Be specific
• Be Authentic
• Never Assume
• Focus on the positive
• Ask for advice, not a job

Now that you have a better idea of what to say and how to say it, who do you tell? I recently read an article stating that 60 percent of all new hires come from referrals and a recent study conducted by Facebook and researchers at an Italian university found that 92 percent of Facebook’s users are connected by four degrees of separation. So, that means that at any given time you are only three friends away from connecting to the hiring manager at your next job! With statistics like that, what are you waiting for?  

Social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn provide a superb platform for referrals because you can easily keep people in your network up to speed on your current job situation. It is vital to utilize as many of these tools as possible to further your ultimate goal of securing a new position. Additionally, more and more recruiters are using the same tools to seek out new talent.  For them, it’s a cost effective and efficient way to secure candidates and for you it’s a simple change to your profile that will undoubtedly increase your odds of finding you next job.  

So, what are you waiting for? You know what to say, how to it, and who to say it to – tell someone! 

Donal O’Donoghue is an account manager at entreQuest who specializes in expanding work forces by finding the best talent with the ideal personalities to place in a wide range of positions across all types of industries.

Thanksgiving evokes images of football, family reunions, roasted turkey with stuffing, and pumpkin pie; but all too often the true meaning of Thanksgiving is lost in the shuffle of the festivities.

This year, as we think about the true meaning of Thanksgiving, the entreQuest team can’t help but express our absolute gratitude to all the individuals and companies we have had the unique privilege to work with. We are truly grateful for the remarkable opportunity to share in their growth and success.

Without a doubt, each of us is grateful for family, friends, and all that is great in our lives, but in a world that is moving so fast, we often times, become immersed in the “actions” of our day, rather than the “impact” of our day and its effects on others. 

Throughout our nation’s early history, several days were proclaimed national days of Thanksgiving and Praise. In 1789 George Washington proclaimed the 26^th of November to be a day of thanksgiving for God’s blessings. Then, years later, in the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November, “a national day of thanksgiving and praise”.

Surely, our Founding Fathers were immersed in the many important affairs of their day, and yet these men took time to pause and recognize the importance of gratitude and blessings. As we face the ever changing world of today, let us also pause to reflect upon our blessings and to be thankful.

May this Thanksgiving season be filled with peace, health, and happiness for you and your family.

 “Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.” W.J. Cameron

Emily Cosgrove is the Marketing Manager at entreQuest and works closely with all team members to provide employees and clients with remarkable experiences. 

In the movie “Wall Street” (the original version, not the new one with Shia LaBeouf although I’ve heard this is a decent sequel), Michael Douglas’s character – the billionaire broker Gordon Gekko – says:  “The most valuable commodity I know of is information.  Wouldn’t you agree?”

Yes, we would agree although the information we encourage CEO’s to seek for success is legal insider information that doesn’t require hiring a Charlie Sheen to do the dirty work (he’s in enough trouble these days anyway…). 

Growth begins with basic information about your prospects, your sales team and your company itself.  Once that information is acquired, you are ready to act, adapt and achieve.  As it turns out, Gordon Gekko, though ruthless, can provide our economic interests with some good reminders.  

To get information from your prospects, remember that “money never sleeps,” so the time has come to shake up the snoozers in your pipeline.  De-grape them by simply asking them the question that will turn them into a yes or into a no as discussed above.

To give information to your sales team, remember that “if you’re not on the inside, you’re outside.”  Thus, over-communicate your company’s vision, plan or strategy again, again, and again.  Your team can’t win if they’re not amazingly clear on what they are aiming for.  Uncertainty on their end will put them in The Grape Zone of inaction, or worse irrelevant action.  Clarifying vision should be done weekly in 1:1’s, team meetings, emails, a weekly blog and of v-log (video blog) from the leadership in the company.  This is the inspiration, pace and frequency they need.

And for the most important information on the inside, focus directly on your company’s mindset.  Mindset is where winning sales and building sales teams starts.  Putting mindset before process is what we call The Achievement Model.  The Achievement Model establishes that, with the right mindset, almost any set of processes aimed at developing new business will work.  Think in terms of enrolling clients, as opposed to closing deals.  Be a client’s partner instead of their vendor.  Provide value because you have worked to understand your partner’s ends needs rather than just their immediate problem.  Staying true to the winning mindset of your company can be a grueling routine that requires daily, if not hourly, adherence and discipline.  But it pays off.  Mastering mindset propels the right action which ultimately leads to growth in sales.  And when it comes to new business, don’t be shy. 

As Gekko said: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” 

At least we think so in terms of growth for CEO’s in 2011.

Happy New Year!

Joe

Returning to that question we asked earlier:

Are you willing to let your business grow, shrink or die?

In 2011, more businesses will fail than survive.   If you are unwilling to adapt, overcome, make tough decisions, work twice as hard and reinvent yourself and the company, then… die.

It’s okay if you choose to die.  It gets you out of the middle of the road, mentally, and that’s where your mindset is being squished.  Celebrate the fact that you are moving on and know that you might follow in the footsteps of some legendary geniuses. Thomas Edison is acclaimed for failing to invent the light bulb nearly 1000 times before he hit the mark.  Even Winston Churchill had something to say on the subject with: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

If you choose to shrink, then settle for status-quo at the risk of just getting by and at the risk of the economy eating away at more of your business.

If you choose to grow, then waste not another moment in The Grape Zone with your prospects, your salespeople, or even your company itself.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s last part of the series,

Joe

Thankfully, the global economy appears to be heading out of recession.  For CEO’s, business optimism is sure to rise with such news as history as shown a healthy correlation between a strong economy and increased spending (and Groupon better hope so after declining Google’s offer – WOW!).

That said, skepticism is sure to linger among all enterprises no matter what the financial analysts forecast for the future.  We are readily seeing companies vocalize their uncertainty in asking questions such as:

What does 2011 hold for our industry?

Are corporate IT budgets going to increase in other industries?

Should I hire more salespeople?

As a sales growth firm that has experience working with many companies  across the country, we at entreQuest find that these questions to be completely appropriate as we approach a new year of business in a new economic environment.  However none of them are the most important question to which we turn our attention towards now.  Bluntly stated:

Are you willing to let your business grow, shrink or die?

Everyone talks a lot about change.  President Obama won his presidency on a platform of change.  Tupac and David Bowie both scored hit songs titled “Changes.”  And my personal favorite, Charles Darwin had an exceptional quote on the idea:  “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives.  It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Since change went from being the constant of our economic environment to the culprit of it in this recession, business leaders must decide how they will adapt to its mysterious nature as we enter 2011.  So again, we ask:

Are you willing to let your business grow, shrink or die?

Before the recession, it was often said that some 90% of all businesses failed.

And yet your doors are still open.

In the current state of the recession, the unemployment rate is reported at over 9%.

And yet you still have a job.

These facts in themselves prove that you have what it takes to survive even if you did so just barely.

Regardless of your corporate strength or staff intelligence, in the spirit of Darwinism you must decide if your company has what it takes to adapt for survival in the upcoming year.  Make no mistake about it for this is not a time to waver.  It’s a matter of thrive, strive, or say good-bye.

If you have yet to make this decision and truly resolve, you are in what we call the grape zone.

Wait for this next week… and GO RAVENS!

Joe

The essence of building a remarkable sales team can be encapsulated in the classic “stonecutter short-story.”

There are several versions of the story, and several ways to interpret its timeless lessons. It powerfully illustrates the importance of perception in your approach to your business, relationships with your team and clients.  Do you see yourself as busting rocks, earning a living, or leaving a legacy? And what difference does your view of things make?, this story demonstrates that there is great value in seeing the bigger picture.

One day a traveler, walking along a lane, came across three stonecutters working in a quarry. Each was busy cutting a block of stone. Interested to find out what they were working on, the traveler asked the first stonecutter what he was doing. “I am cutting a stone!” Still no wiser the traveler turned to the second stonecutter and asked him what he was doing. “I am cutting this block of stone to make sure that it’s square, so I can make a living.” Still unclear, the traveler turned to the third stonecutter. He seemed to be the happiest of the three and when asked what he was doing, he replied: “I am building a temple.”

So what’s the point here?

That your experience depends on how you hold things in your mind – and it’s one of the keys for going from good to great.

The current economy is tough; there’s just no question about that.

But the question is this:  Are you struggling in a lousy economy (chipping away at a large block of stone) or are you searching for ways to be as nimble and flexible as possible to adapt to new realities? Are you resentful of customers and clients who now seem to have the upper hand because they hold the cards, or are you upping your game to a whole new level of authentic relationships (building a temple)?

Even in the toughest of economic times, people don’t stop spending money, which means businesses don’t have to stop making money.  They may, however, have to do some things differently and be willing to make some fundamental shifts in the way they view what’s going on.

Willingness to Adapt

The traditional vendor-customer relationship is a thing of the past. Buyers have unprecedented access to Information, and the next vendor is just a click away.

Things are also being automated at an unprecedented rate.  According to Dan Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind – Abundance, Automation and Asia (outsourcing) are turning the business landscape on its head.

Many companies have failed to make the necessary adaptations to successfully compete in the new world order and the new economy.

As it turns out, Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” theory is not confined to biology. Some of the most valuable lessons can be learned from the companies that made the endangered species list during past times of economic strife in America. .

Great companies  adapt to the current climate,  They evolve, and they continue to grow for generations. They prepared properly by making wise but difficult decisions – where to focus, what to sacrifice, who to empower, how to leverage what they have, and how to maintain a winning mindset during a period increasingly characterized by failure.

So which is it for you?

Joe

the psychology of sales

Many traditional sales training companies have made their millions focusing on the process of sales. On the contrary, the best way to unleash a salesperson’s true potential is to focus on the psychology of sales first. When psychology is mastered, then and only then, does process matter. We have spent a good bit of time over the past decade discussing this topic. Because it is so critical to the success of sales organizations and because I am still perplexed and amazed at how few in sales understand this concept, I thought it would be a good opportunity to revisit.

Let’s dig a little deeper. Sales is ultimately about results, wouldn’t you agree? Good. But there are many different kinds of results that one can achieve, so let’s talk about two simple types of results. The first is results that are sustainable and last through the test of time. The other is results that are attainable, but fade with time. Companies will pay big money to send employees through sales training, yet too often their happiness with the initial spike in results erodes when those results are not sustained through time.

So what then differentiates a sales training that yields sustainable results versus merely attainable results? If you said training that is focused on the sales mindset, you are right. Very simply, training that focuses on the sales mindset first and keeps with basic principles will generate sustainable results. Complex training is useless unless it can be understood and remembered. Socrates said, “Learning is remembering.” How many of you can recall coming out of training and feeling like you learned some pretty cool stuff? You learned some trendy new acronyms, some one-liners to use when overcoming objections, a step by step process to achieve closing. Now, how many of you can remember what those acronyms are today? Who remembers what those one-liners were? And who can remember in order all the steps of that “scientific” process to close the deal? AHAH! My point exactly. You were trained on process and formulas, but your mindset never changed. After three weeks most of you reverted back to old habits and were right back to being that same sales professional who entered the training.

So, stop and think about it for a moment. What part of the Paredo Principle (the 80/20 rule) do you fit into? Are you part of the twenty percent of people who achieve eighty percent of your company’s results? Why would you still be as successful if you changed companies and sold something completely different? The answer is because you have something that the eighty percentors don’t have. You possess the better sales mindset. We all have a variety of mindsets that we go through every day; but each of us has a prevailing mindset about our sales ability. The top 20 percentors simply believe they can sell anything. They have a superior mindset to the rest of the pack—the 80 percentors.

Mindset will always trump process over the long haul. With the proper mindset, any system, process or technique can yield outstanding results. The evidence is in the fact that the same people who are in the top twenty percent of one company continue to stay in that bracket when they switch companies and learn new techniques. Their process and techniques change. Their mindset stays the same. I am in no way discounting the need for an effective sales process. A process is critical once it has the foundation of a superior sales mindset.

So why aren’t all sales training companies or mangement consulting firms focusing on psychology first training? Why isn’t it talked about more often? Simply put, it’s just not as pretty. It’s too simple. It’s plain. We are in a society that believes in a quick fix; a society that wants a roadmap and process for everything we do. Psychology first training embraces the notion that sales is an art, not a science. It forces a sales person to look squarely in the mirror and admit that his or her results are solely dependent on who is looking back at them. The second reason we see so few organizations giving anything but lip service to the psychology of sales, is that it is more difficult to effectively train. Anyone can regurgitate a new technique or a new process that will temporarily increase results. But changing a mindset and creating new habits is a much more sophisticated, yet rewarding journey. And at the end of the journey all companies want—sustainable results that lead to serious profitability.

Be Your Best,

Joe