While the training you’ve received and the procedures you follow are vital, it is the underlying programs in your mental Operating System that ultimately determine failure or success.
Israel Kamakawiw'ole was born on May 20th 1959 in Hawaii. Ever heard of him? I didn't think so, most people outside Hawaii haven't. However, you may have heard his ukulele accompanied rendition of 'Somewhere over the Rainbow' which you'll find on youtube.com where, so far, it has attracted almost over 14 million viewings and a perfect 5 star rating.
Here's a guy with an amazing talent, the voice of an angel and a devoted audience. Here's a guy who died in 1997 from obesity, leaving behind an adoring wife and thousands of fans. Why? Because he couldn't stop doing what he knew he shouldn't do - over-eating.
I'm not being disrespectful, that's how he died and I have no doubt he struggled. It's a challenge I have struggled with myself and if I had a dollar for every time I've heard "Just eat less and exercise more, you'll be fine!" I'd probably have retired to Hawaii myself long ago.
The problem is that "Eat less ..." is a rational statement, that comes from an intellectual process. And the fact is, intellect has nothing to do with the forces that drive us toward behaviours which go against our own better judgement. Judgement and behaviour are two different faculties. Reason and intellect are controlled by a different physical area of the brain than behaviour and emotion. Logic drives reason, emotion drives action and inaction. And, regardless of any disparity between what our intellect judges to be wise and what our emotions drive us to do, our decisions make sense to us - though not always to others.
Compulsions and phobias are extreme examples of this disparity. A compulsive gambler might put their home on the line even if the odds are stacked against them. An arachnophobe might prefer to risk insect bites or poison ivy rash rather than step past a spider that's in their way. Neither makes sense to another person but to that person it makes absolute sense.
Move that thinking back into the sales arena and it starts to become a bit uncomfortable. Do any of these give you a prickling feeling on the back of your neck?
- It makes sense that if you prospect more you will find more business. But do you prospect more?
- It makes sense that if you ask more people to make a decision you'll get more decisions. But do you ask?
- It makes sense to be comfortable talking about money. It's why where all working, after all. But are you comfortable charging more that your competition?
- It doesn't make sense to let a prospect dictate terms. But do you?
Are you afraid? Are you inhibited? You might say "no" on an intellectual level but what about that other part of your brain that looks after 'emotion and action'? What makes this disparity between our judgement and our actions worse, is how we post-rationalise the situation and try to make some sense of our action or inaction. These excuses are the adult equivalent of the child who claims "The dog ate my homework".
"I'm not prospecting because I'm too busy."
"I'm not asking prospects to make decisions because they'll think I'm pushy."
"I don't talk about money early because I want them to read my proposal first and see the value I'm offering."
"I allow my prospect to dictate his terms because he'll get annoyed with me if I'm too assertive."
How do we post-rationalise not exercising enough?
"I'm in good shape for my age, besides I don’t have time to exercise"
"I work hard and I’m too tired when I come home to exercise"
Or smoking: "I'm only a social smoker. I just socialise a lot."
"I'm smoking lights these days. They seem to burn quicker that's why I smoke more of them."
The seller's excuses become that bit more uncomfortable when you line them up against what are often called compulsive or addictive behaviours. The difference is, being a bad seller doesn't affect your health insurance rating. It's not anti-social or carcinogenic but it is still part of the intellect-emotion see-saw.
Without emotion, there is no action. Without action life grinds to a halt - no procreation, no foraging, no survival. Evolution and emotion are therefore inextricably linked. In fact, in many areas of nature, intellect - the ability to stop, think, rationalise and deduce - would be an impediment. In the wild, it's an animal's reflex actions in response to basic emotions that save it from being another animal's meal ticket.
There are emotions that make us feel good: Happiness, Joy and Contentment, and there are ones that make us feel bad: Fear, Worry, Confusion, Guilt, Embarrassment.
Fear, for example, triggers an emotional discomfort, which activates an immediate chemical change to our systems. Adrenalin feeds the muscles, the heart pumps more oxygen and perception slows down to enable us to see things more clearly. A mammal's bowel and bladder are even designed to empty, to make them lighter and more nimble in a fight or flight situation.
All of these responses are very handy when you're trying to escape from a rabid dog but in a sales situation they are counterproductive.
Fear makes us feel bad, giving us pain. Contentment makes us feel good, giving us pleasure.
But it's important to remember that getting rid of pain also gives us pleasure. In fact, that is what the fear response is designed to achieve: to rid the person of the pain or threat and restore contentment. In human situations, the option that eliminates the pain is too often damaging in the long run.
BUT, if all of this is true, why do people behave differently in the same situations? Why can one sales person comfortably hold their ground on price, while another palpitates and capitulates? Why does one person enjoy bungee jumping, where another suffers vertigo?
To understand why people react differently, we have to understand the basic biochemistry of the brain. The brain is made up of billions of neurons, which communicate via electrical signals that are controlled by chemical reactions. Neurons receive signals through connectors called dendrites and send signals through ones called axons. Axons reach out to dendrites on other neurons but they don't actually touch them, instead the signal jumps across a microscopic gap called the 'synapse'.
In terms of emotional control, the synapse is where the action is. How you react to a situation depends on which of over 50 neurotransmitters the axon chooses for sending its message across the synapse. The one that affects us here is called dopamine, which is the chemical responsible for the feelings of comfort and discomfort.
We are programmed to seek pleasure and avoid pain. We learn about the world by forecasting what will happen and measuring the accuracy depending on a pain/pleasure feedback. If you reach out to pick up a cup, you might predict that it will be cool. If you're right all goes well, if it turns out to be scalding hot, you'll experience a nasty jolt.
Apply that biological reality to sales and see what happens. If you get a 'nasty jolt' from a cold calling experience, the thought of calling will bring up the negative emotions. Those axons call out the dopamine and instruct you to go and have a snack instead.
Or a 'nasty jolt' from public speaking? Sweaty palms, a spontaneous stammer and temporary amnesia, turn your carefully prepared sales pitch into an incoherent mumble. The only person who is convinced of anything is you - and you are convinced you are a bad public speaker so mumbling becomes your comfort zone. All down to Dopamine.
Think about what happens when a small child who inadvertently touches a hot radiator and experiences ‘pain’. The brain, seeking to avoid a repeat performance, needs to create an internal warning system to help it forecast (and avoid) a reoccurrence. It achieves this by taking a ‘snapshot’ of all the sensory (sight, sound, touch, taste and smell) data that is active in the brain at that moment and it assigns a ‘pain’ marker to the snapshot. When the same ‘data’ is present in future, the brain flags a system warning by triggering the release of special neurotransmitters (chemicals) that the child experiences as a ‘feeling’ we label as ‘fear’
The size of the ‘warning label’ that the brain associates with a particular negative event is determined by the level, frequency and expectation of the pain experienced in the first place. The brain seeks to avoid negative surprises and places a larger ‘warning label’ on such experiences. The size of the warning label will determine the intensity of the negative feelings that we encounter.
Another way of looking at this is to say that the brain favours the familiar.
On September 7th 2007, I was driving home from the All Ireland Hurling final (we won!) down a long straight road. Thoughts still on the game, I recall driving though a number of minor crossroads where, having the right of way, I proceeded on my journey without slowing down. You can probably guess what happened next…. I approached another crossroad and, assuming I had the right of way, drove through the stop sign.
I was served up a double dose of surprise and pain when a three day old Mercedes ploughed into (fortunately for me) my rear door. The impact spun my vehicle 180 degrees into a ditch, airbags exploded and smoke filled the car.
Thankfully the only thing that was hurt that day was my pride. Imagine my surprise some days later, when approaching a similar junction I felt a gut wrenching sensation in the pit of my stomach, accompanied by a strange tingling feeling all over my body. It was as if I sensed that someone was again going to come from nowhere and plough into the side of my car - but there was no car in sight. There was no logic to my feelings, but we’ve already agreed that logic and emotion serve to very different purposes.
Something else about that experience at 7pm on September 7th 2007 that surprised me, was the amount of detail I can remember about the day. The snapshot my brain took, of all the sensory data from the incident, has left an indelible imprint on my unconscious mind.
Now, don’t ask me anything about September 6th. That was just a regular Saturday like any other - I therefore remember nothing about it.
So, if we accept that unfamiliarity and negative neurological associations underpin the discomfort that we seek to avoid, the questions that we need to ask ourselves are:
What if we were familiar with the task that's causing us pain? What if, instead of negative associations, we held positive ones?
Remember Pavlov's dogs? Who salivated when they heard a bell because he'd conditioned them to associate it with reward? What if your association with public speaking was one where you experienced the exhilarating rush of another type of neurotransmitter - adrenalin? Imagine if you could get that feeling every time you stood up to speak. Think about the possibilities for your career and your self-esteem.
The most interesting element of Pavlov’s experiments is that brain chemicals were released at the sound of the bell or prediction of reward, not when the reward was delivered - proof, if it were needed, that thinking and emotions are biological processes.
The biochemical features of pain-and-pleasure response are essential to our evolution as a species and our development as individuals because they help us to learn about the world without a teacher. The trouble is, as we have mentioned before, 'seeking' pleasure over pain can have negative effects in the long run. Bingeing on food stores may give pleasure in September but it will result in starvation by January.
To escape them, we must use the same mechanisms that created them - to get our neurotransmitters working for us instead of against us. Pavlov's further experiments went on to show that a similar dopamine experience can be had even when a negative trigger precedes the reward. In other words, we can accept pain if we are convinced it will be followed by gain.
So, if cold calling, public speaking, networking, negotiation or any other factor of sales are among your 'Discomfort Zones', the key is to remember: Nothing is forever - To change the unfamiliar to familiar just add practice. If we have a reason and purpose we can overcome any resistance.
Like a rocket trying to overcome gravity and leave the Earth's atmosphere, you need to anticipate the reward at the other end, this will help to incentivise you - or make the pain worthwhile.
Essentially this means creating a new comfort zone. It's not as easy as it sounds, you may need a coach to help you. Someone who will make ‘not sticking’ to your commitments more uncomfortable than overcoming your own natural reluctance. Someone who can be hard like water, offering equal or greater resistance to your reluctance but as you struggle will support and nurture you.
We can also complement this process with a series of repeated messages that focus on our new comfort zone. The brain is an incredibly complex organ. It’s also quite simple and as long as its defense shields are down, it will believe anything it is instructed to believe. This is how hypnosis works. This is why you hold many of the beliefs you possess today. It’s no coincidence that children raised in Christian households typically hold Christian beliefs or children raised in an Islamic household hold Islamic beliefs. At a physical level, beliefs are little more than neurological constructs. Gigantic in their complexity, these neurological pathways are our internal representation of the external world. They are our internal map to an external territory. However, the map is not the territory, only a representation of it. It was constructed from remnants of our parents' maps, and our distorted experiences of the world.
You’re probably wondering how I can say that our experiences of the world are distorted? Have you ever wondered how two people who have witnessed the exact same event can have two totally different experiences?
Put an extrovert and an introvert in the middle of a large party and they will report two very different experiences. It’s as if they both attended different events. In many respects they did because we never experience the world as it is. Instead we process the sensory data we collect, which then passes through our internal filters - assumptions, biases, prejudices, prior experiences and so on - in order to give meaning to the event
The wonderful thing about the brain is that it is not a static object. It's incredibly dynamic. Every new experience you have creates new neural pathways. Have you ever changed your opinion on a subject? All you did was stick a ‘true’ label on the data in place of the old ‘false’ moniker.
It’s important to point out here that a belief does not have to be true for the brain to believe it’s true. For a long time people believed that the world was flat and rotated around the sun. I won’t even touch the fertile field of religion or politics.
A journal where you repeatedly record positive messages such as "I am the best thing to happen to my prospect today, he just doesn't know it yet" or " I only have to make cold calls, I don't have to like them" or "Every cold call earns me money and personal freedom, regardless of the outcome". Do this often enough and frequently enough and you'll develop a different attitude to any activity that is uncomfortable for you - good bye 'Discomfort Zone', welcome to the Familiar Zone.
During his 27 year incarceration on Robben Island, it was a few simple words read over and over again that kept Nelson Mandela unbowed, unafraid, the master of his fate and the captain of his soul.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Finally, are there negative influences in your life that help keep your negative associations alive? Do you have friends who deride your success? Do you have a colleague whose success intimidates you? Do you persist with activities, even though you're bad at them, just because you feel you should?
All of these things can be changed. Politely tell your friend how unhelpful their comments are and if they won't listen, avoid them. Look at your colleague's success as an incentive not an inhibitor. Give up activities you don’t enjoy and find something you actually get a kick out of. It's that simple. Find new activities and influences that support and encourage your goals, rather than ones that undermine them. Gradually, you'll find yourself capable of much more than you ever imagined and comfortable in situations that previously made you uncomfortable.
Rational thought may be what separates us from other life forms but it's a double-edged sword. Where other animals operate with a reflex - fight, run, jump, stand, eat, mate - we add thought into the equation. It's still a biological process but it adds in factors - mights, maybes and possibilities - for which there may not be any actual evidence.
We all have extraordinary abilities and talents. It's our emotions and actions that either imprison them or promote them. Emotion is the captain and first officer of the battleship 'You Inc' so regardless of how 'intellectual', 'Qualified' or 'skilled' you are, it's emotion, action and behaviour that help your achieve your goals. Harness your emotions, harness the dopamine and you can take the 'Dis' out of 'Discomfort Zones' and unpick the stitches of your non-selling personality.
And speaking of extraordinary talents, may I point you to Israel Kamakawiw'ole on http://bit.ly/G0hFp
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