Everyone needs a measure of stability and predictability in their lives. It almost seems that we go through a never ending cycle of being confronted by change and the resultant disorder and confusion that comes with it, working like mad to make sense of it and restore some measure of order and predictability and then enjoying a brief respite before the whole thing starts again.

Sounds a little silly, doesn’t it? Yet, just imagine a situation where you knew exactly what was going to happen each and every minute of the day. There were no surprises, no problems to ponder and resolve, no challenges to overcome and nothing new to experience and learn. How would you like that constantly in your life? How would you feel?

BORED

Time would drag on interminably and you would become restless. Just think of the many time we have read of second generation rich kids who are given everything from a very early age and never have to struggle for anything.

How many of them ‘go off the rails’ so to speak. They turn to drink, drugs or even criminality. Why? Because they have no direction. There is nothing to achieve and so have no goals or aspirations. It seems that we humans have a need for direction and focus.

This implies that the current state of affairs is not necessarily ideal and that we must pursue some change in order to grow, develop and evolve.

Here’s a question for you. How do we measure the passage of time? By the amount of change that has occurred. If nothing is happening then time seems to drag. If we are busy doing things then time seems to fly.

Whether we like it or not, it appears that change is an essential ingredient for a full and happy life. In fact, it can be said that change is the only real constant there is in life. I have often said that you cannot master anything you do not understand and you cannot understand anything you are unable to learn.

What is the first step in learning? We must question, we must define and then evaluate the subject. Then we are engaged on the learning philosophy and so gain understanding.

Question 1: What is change?
Answer: Any alteration in time, place or circumstance.

Question 2: What is the best way to analyse change?
Answer: By compartmenting it into the various areas of life. For example:

• Personal
• Family
• Work
• Social
• Society
• World

It can be further compartmentalised into:

• Physical
• Emotional
• Spiritual

Question 3: What is the best way to decide on the impact of change?
Answer:

• Tolerable
• Overwhelming

Question 4: What is the best way to decide on the nature of change?
Answer:

• Positive
• Negative

It seems obvious that, unless you are a hermit and live in a cave on a mountainside you will experience change. That being the case we need to know how to cope with and manage change so that we may benefit and that others may benefit by our actions in response to change. When you stop and think about it, isn’t that the way society and civilisation is supposed to operate?

Let’s go a little further. Everyone needs some sort of focus in their lives. You could call it a goal or purpose; or, more accurately, a goal and a purpose. Now, any goal is a desired state, or circumstance or achievement. That presupposes that you are not “there” yet in terms of reaching that goal. The purpose is the reason why.

Therefore we all must undertake some sort of journey to reach the desired outcome. That then means a change of some sort from our existing circumstances. So, it would be fair to say we all have a journey we undertake as we go through life. It is a necessary function of living.

So, change is an essential part of life. It is through change that we grow and develop. Therefore we could describe our life as:

• We start out
• We experience change
• We learn
• We continue in an altered state towards our destination.

If we perceive our experience as negative we may, if we decide, end up further from where we wish to be than before. That is, we go backwards, we lose confidence and therefore are able to do less. Have you ever given up doing something because you lost confidence? It’s a terrible feeling.

The question is, how do you overcome negative change that threatens to derail your life in some fashion?

Firstly recognise that failure is an event. It is not you, but an experience.

Any experience is an opportunity to learn. How do you learn?

You question.

What questions do you ask?

• What happened?
• What did I want to happen?
• What can I do to accept that what has happened has happened?
• What can I do to change the situation for the better?
• Where do I start?
• Who can I get to help?
• What did I learn from the situation?
• What can I do to make sure I have a positive outcome next time?

Embracing change requires you to adopt a particular set of viewpoints.

• Whilst I may not be able to influence what has happened, I am responsible for my reaction to it.
• If I do not embrace change and do not change and adapt, I will become obsolete.

It has often been said that only the strong survive. In fact, it is those most adaptive to change who persist and win. The dinosaur was amongst the largest and strongest animals on the planet. Where are they now? They couldn’t adapt to climate change and perished. Yet ants have survived since the dawn of time. Why? They adapted.

In a less dramatic way, we must also adapt to whatever changes life throws at us, and continue our journey. If you look at it, we make many journeys in our lives, both personal and professional.

In sales, for example, the methods of selling have evolved and changed over the years. It used to be that a salesperson had to present, present, present and virtually bludgeon the customer into buying.

Not so today. Today we see the emergence of ‘consultative’ or ‘relationship’ selling. It is almost the opposite to present, present, present. Consultative selling recognises that customers are better informed and cannot simply be bullied or bamboozled into buying something. You have to explore what is important to the customer to establish their needs and wants and then try to match our product to those needs and wants.

There is finally a recognition that you cannot make up a person’s mind for them with any permanency and that the way to ongoing success relies on establishing and fostering relationships. A big change from the past sales thinking.

A great example of a sales organisation not adapting to change was a retail chain called Waltons. They had a large team of travelling sales people who would call on homes and present ‘specials’ to the housewives. They would also collect the account payments.

The stores themselves only accounted for about 40% of the revenue. Over the years more and more women went to work and sales decreased due to this social change. Waltons poured more and more time and effort into the travelling sales force and didn’t realise until too late that they had been made redundant by social change that they had not adapted to.

On a personal level you must recognise that your environment is continually changing on every level. Just look at the internet and the phenomenal growth of recent years.

As a sales professional, or in any occupation, you must continually upgrade your skill, knowledge and ability if you want to keep up, must less progress in your life.

You must be prepared to experience change willingly, be prepared to change what you do and continually learn to be successful in life and living. No longer is change simply a sequence of events. It is almost an avalanche as the rate of change increases almost daily.

Be flexible, be willing to learn and experiment. Above all, be willing to experience.

Life is, today, a journey to be experienced, to reset your journey in the light of changed circumstances and to press on to success. Your success will be determined by your willingness to be flexible and determined.

If you look at it, no change is negative. Certainly you will experience losses in life. It is inevitable. But no great achievement has ever been attained without challenges and losses. I don’t subscribe to the word loss.

Whenever life kicks me in the teeth I pick myself up and try to recognise the opportunity to learn that has just presented itself to me. Every experience, positive or negative is an opportunity to learn, to grow and progress. Successful living is about making progress towards your goals.

It is interesting to note that the best way you can achieve your goals is to help someone else achieve theirs. As you give, so shall you receive. That sounds almost like a religious sermon. It isn’t, it’s just an observable fact of life and living.

You expand your sphere of influence to the extent you assist others. You win respect, admiration and you will evolve into a leader.

Embrace change, you may even grow to like it. You will certainly grow and develop as a person as you do.

Not buying

One of the most misunderstood and feared aspects of life is rejection. No one wants to be rejected. It feels terrible. It feels like failure. It feels as if we are being judged as not good enough.

Think back to a time when you were rejected. Was it a positive time in your life? The answer is no. Rejection implies that we are a failure, particularly if we really wanted to be part of whatever we were reaching for. To be rejected is so closely related in our minds to failure that we will do almost anything to avoid it.

Therein lies the problem. Whenever you try to avoid a negative you first attract it in order to know what to avoid. This is a self-defeating action. You will attract and achieve what you focus on. Focus on negatives and you will achieve negatives, always. So, the question remains, how do you deal with rejection so that the outcome is positive?

You focus on the positive. So you need to look at what you really want. That is connection and a good relationship. Rather than trying to avoid rejection you must look at establishing rapport, gaining agreement and good communication.

Almost no one really understands what rejection is. If we are to successfully deal with rejection we must fully understand it. To understand rejection we must define it, we must recognise its origin and the implications of rejection whenever we experience it.

In order to understand anything we must learn and to learn we must question. First question:

What is rejection?

Rejection is:

Non acceptance of a circumstance, communication or person.

Second question:

Why does rejection occur?

The major reasons rejection occurs are, the person rejecting can see no benefit to themselves from the circumstance, communication or person or they see another alternative that is better for them. They either

• Misunderstand
• Regard it as unimportant
• Regard it as not relevant
• Don’t like it or the person
• It is not real to them
• It conflicts with their personal values
• They don’t want it

In summary whatever they are rejecting does not match their needs and wants as they perceive them. In life we focus on satisfying our needs and wants. How do we decide on what our needs and wants are? That’s an interesting question that could take hours to analyse. One useful way to look at it is that we adopt a viewpoint on everything we come in contact with in our lives.

If we are experiencing whatever it is for the first time we must learn about it in order to make sense of it and fit it into our body of knowledge. During the learning process we develop an attitude regarding whatever it is and then we behave consistent with our attitude.

One logical context to look at this is in terms of SURVIVAL. That is, we look at things in terms of benefit or otherwise to our personal survival in the first instance. We then evaluate whatever it is with a broader frame of reference, still using survival as the criteria. Does it benefit the survival of our loved ones, friends, society in general or mankind as a whole? Thus we arrive at a conclusion regarding whether it is a benefit or whether it satisfies our needs and wants.

Having developed an attitude our behaviour develops as a logical outcome of viewpoint and attitude. We will always behave in a manner that promotes our survival and is in line with what we believe to be true, our viewpoint.

Rejection is a two way street. Either you are being rejected or you are rejecting. Now, I have stated earlier that the feeling you get when you are rejected is mainly negative as it represents a loss, or failure.

We need to look at the action of rejection very carefully. In order to really understand rejection we must also look at the corollary of rejection, and that is acceptance. Whenever we make a choice we both accept and reject simultaneously.

We choose to buy a particular item of clothing at a department store. As we choose we also reject those items we examine and fail to buy. Does that make the items not chosen inferior to the item we purchase? No, it simply means we selected one that was most appropriate to our PERCEIVED NEEDS AND WANTS.

It may be that we didn’t like the item not chosen, or that we thought it was inferior to what we did eventually choose. But the important fact remains, we chose according to…

OUR VIEWPOINT

Our viewpoint is simply that which we believe is true for us. In other words, it is our reality. It is not necessarily the same reality that others see, it is just the way we see things.

Every day we are faced with choices we must make. Now, it is not possible to make a choice without rejecting some alternative. It is also not possible to live without making choices. Therefore acceptance and rejection are a natural and essential function of life and living.

Now, in order to establish any connection it is necessary to develop rapport, a relationship of some kind. That means establishing agreement in some fashion. For example, when we first meet someone we, depending on the circumstances, seek to establish a measure of agreement. That is, we share a common reality. If we start out disagreeing it is unlikely either person will accept the other. That means rejection. It is neither bad or good. It simply means an absence of shared reality, or agreement.

If we encounter rejection in our professional lives it doesn’t mean you are a failure. It means you have not yet achieved sufficient agreement to be able to share viewpoints and, ultimately, behaviour.

The question is; what can we do about it?
Let’s look at it logically. I know you have heard it all before and familiarity breeds contempt. Bear with me.

Obviously you have to BE THERE. We all know what that means, but few of us are able to achieve it for more than a few minutes at a time. Why is that?

So many of us are so busy with self talk that we scarcely have time to really look at and listen to the other person. We are busy working out what we are going to say next rather than simply being there and placing all our attention on the other person. It’s as if we are afraid we will forget what we want to, or need to say, so we ‘hold it in our minds’ and wait our opportunity to get it out.

Every time you do that you miss an opportunity to really find out what the other person’s viewpoint really is. So many times we try to impress with our viewpoint before we know the other person’s viewpoint.

Remember, nothing will change in the other person’s universe until their viewpoint changes and it will not change unless they have an opportunity to communicate and look at their viewpoint. It is really all about them.

Just a word on why being almost totally absorbed in the other person reduces rejection and promotes good relationships. It is  your subtext. If you are absorbed in the other person you will physically and emotionally reflect this. You may not necessarily be completely aware of it, but it will happen.

The other person will pick it up and feel good about. In effect you are saying to the other person, “You are the centre of the universe and I am vitally interested in you and what you have to say.” They will feel accepted and important. If they feel that way they are loath to reject you.

In effect you are allowing the other person to be as they are. Another word to describe it is tolerance. As people always look for equilibrium they will tend to reciprocate your attitude and accept you.

Life is a two way street and if you make life pleasant for others, it will come back. This obviously applies to all life, not just your professional duties.

In the present economic times people are facing possible rejection in many aspects of their lives, so any time you reduce that you are doing the other person a favour and enhancing your own chances of having a positive experience, both personally and professionally.

After that we will be moving onto a subject dear to my heart; change. Hence the title of this blog.

The financial crisis engulfing the planet may well herald a change so fundamental that society will never be the same again. As I see it we, as a race, are at a crossroads. On my other site, ollielind.com I have posted comments and a poem that gives some perspective on what is happening. Have a look.

Either the world will descend into chaos and recession will sweep all before it, or what?

Perhaps we, as a society will realize that instant gratification is not the way to happiness. Material things, purchased with future income is a sweet trap that brings only what we see before us today.

What can we do? I suggest we all take a good look at our current situation, begin to retire debt as soon as possible, and only purchase what we have the money for NOW. I realize this may well lead to hardship as our fearless leaders believe the only way forward is to stimulate demand.

But think about this a moment. If demand cannot be paid for, what use is it?  Would you sell something to someone if they didn’t pay for it? Of course not. So, if we took a good long look at ourselves and saw that our desire for short term gain has mortaged our future to an impossible level, we must see that each of us has to do something.

I suggest we, as I said, pay our debts, invest in the future by way of self education and development and increase our contribution to the general good. How do we do that? The little extra things we can do for others. Helping those less fortunate where it is needed and refusing to be drawn into craving more than we have earned.

I don’t begrudge those who are successful and have all the material gains we all admire. Providing they have earned what they have, I say more power to them. Let us all strive to have what we earn and deserve.

We might just make the world a better place.

Live well,

Ollie Lind

PS Do you know when you deserve something?

When you can pay the price without sacrificing anything else positive in your life.

For example, the sales person may see what they do as reaching quota to hold onto their job, or as a means to increase commission and enhance their survival. Some customers may even see the sales effort as a threat to their survival. You know, if the sales person wins, everyone else loses.

Voltaire

Maybe we should, as the renowned French Philosopher Voltaire was so fond of doing, define our terms to reach a common understanding, Once this is achieved, then some sense may be made of the subject. Let’s look at the term ‘Sales.’

It could be termed “A method of exchanging goods and services for money or kind where both parties achieve a particular benefit that is balanced.”

That sounds pretty reasonable, wouldn’t you agree?

Aha, there I go, selling to you. How? By eliciting agreement. A sale is achieved by achieving a continuing and growing number of agreements. If you look further you see that the agreements must enhance the survival of both parties. Once achieved, you have an exchange that both parties are happy with.

How does this translate into a sales tip?

EASY

All you have to focus on when you approach a prospective client is that your concern must be to provide a benefit that is recognised by the prospect as such. That’s all.

If you focus on how whatever you are selling provides a benefit for the client, and make sure you receive fair exchange, you will sell.

People are intuitive beings and they will pick up on any lack of ethics or uncertainty on your part. People buy from people they trust, not necessarily those they like. If you honestly believe in your product you will sell. If you do not you will find ways to fail.

Be honest, firstly with yourself, then in all your dealings and you will be successful. The degree of your success will depend on you.

Live well,

Ollie Lind

I read a great deal. There is a great deal of wisdom in the world and I try to avail myself of as much of it as I can. I find the best material is that taking a holistic approach to training and development.

You notice I said “Training AND Development”?

I believe that, if you are training someone in any skill, knowledge or ability, you must train the WHOLE PERSON. What do I mean by that? I believe in viewing life as a pond of still water. If you make a change in one area (toss a pebble) the effect ripples through the entire pond.

So, if you are training sales consultants (as I do so much) you had better make sure that what you teach can be applied to the person’s life as well.

For example, developing rapport. Much has been written on the subject and I won’t try to go into it here. Suffice to say that effective rapport training is not about fiinding engaging things to say to put the prospect at ease so that you can now present, present, present.

It’s about being there for the prospect, it’s about actually caring about what they are saying, it’s about being interested in just THEM. In a nutshell, it’s about being yourself and being honest and genuine.

What is the result of all the above? A relationship based on truth, honesty and credibility begins to emerge.

Let me ask you this, doesn’t that sound like making a friend? Who, in this world couldn’t do with more genuine friends?

So, when I train sales consultants it’s about making them more effective beings in all of their life.

That way, everyone wins.
Not a bad way to live. What do you think?

Regards,
Ollie