Discover your Inner Genius

July 6, 2011 By 2 Comments

 

Have you ever watched a comedy improv show? The actors on stage aren’t working off a memorized script. In order to be really funny, they have to use their wits and fly by the seat of their pants, deeply tuning into their fellow players and the situation onstage. I recently read about an improv company in Chicago whose director said, and I paraphrase, “Make others look good and the whole company and scene will look good. Focus on yourself and the troupe looks bad.”

Comedy improvisation is highly competitive and collaborative; the same could be said about selling. Great selling is about doing your best to make the client or prospect look good. You can make them look good by helping them sort, distinguish, select and chose what will work well for them. Helping others make smart decisions and avoid stupid ones might mean you may not sell as much or as fast as you wanted or hoped for, but only in the short term.

Improvisation is intuition in action. Practice first and it becomes a habit. You become so tuned in that you can easily respond in any moment with what you feel is needed or right. You’ll  know what to do with that customer, who to call or visit, or what to focus on today. Even if you work in a structured way, you can begin to invite in miraculous surprises. What if— you listened to your hunches? What if—you responded to information as if there were nothing to lose or gain? You’d begin to flow better, connect the dots easier, make interesting choices. You’d begin to notice you already have a guidance system that is quite accurate. You begin to sell and live like an artist—expressing your voice and coming from your heart.

Know your stuff very well, then throw away all your preconceived ideas of how things should unfold. Keep your formulas in the beginning, but throw them away as soon as they start to feel like straight jackets. Then you can begin to “play jazz, ” and amazing alchemy  will happen. Do what feels right, right in that very moment and you will not only amaze yourself but also interact with others in ways you couldn’t really plan.

Filed Under: confidence, good on your feet, honest, improvisation, small business women, women entrepreneurs, women sellers Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Maybe Balancing is Bunk

June 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

I am in a crunch right now. The intensity of rolling out a new product has cranked up the number of hours I sit at my computer (which doesn’t thrill me). I am a people person. But I am noticing how I’ve changed in the last year, since I am willingly and joyfully breaking away to grab more yoga classes to cool off my nervous system. This is a breakthrough because although I’ve read so many articles about balance, I’ve often failed to take total control over my time and have put my well-being last on the list.

Who hasn’t? We hear and read about balance; there are tons of tools available to make us more efficient too. Yet, we are spinning out more than ever. Every woman I know is either striving to be better or postponing. Vowing that once we clean we will vacation, exercise or have drinks with friends. Balance seems like bunk.

Maybe we need to manage better, like my husband says. Or perhaps, like my meditation teacher says, it’s about flow. How about self-regulation? Here’s a practice that takes all my might, and when you do it you can be in control more than usual. It’s what I’ve been playing with.

  • Push and than back off just a little.
  • Engage fully and later let go and surrender.
  • Honker down and trust the universe, spirit, light beings, God to intervene; let go and receive.

In spin classes, you do interval training and pump really hard until the teacher says “Release the tension of the road.” For a brief moment, your legs are being pulled in circles effortlessly. Life is like that — there’s a force there to assist if we let it.

Life doesn’t have to be a 24/7-spin cycle. You can willfully regulate it, vary the intensity and length of stress and relax. But the idea of equal proportions of Zen and crazy busy can make you nuts. Some days will be more demanding and you will be able to do more with greater grace and clarity if you give yourself the gift of downshifting. Forget the balance B.S—it’s too annoying.

Filed Under: balance, self love, stress reduction, women entrepreneurs Tagged With: ,

Customers are Gifts

April 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

What’s it like to do business with you? Ever ask? How often do you imagine what it’s like to be in your customers’ shoes? Not often I bet. Instead, and we’ve all done it, we complain about them. Their indecision, repetitive questions, and struggles frustrate us. When we try to help and they don’t return calls, our patience wears thin. If we are tired or wired we might even feel justified and unloved. If it’s a really bad day, we vent with friends and talk about how hard business is.

This is all normal. Human interactions are complicated. How can we bless customers and their imperfections when we aren’t feeling it? What gets in the way is our fantasy about the perfect client. They should be easy, never doubt you, pay early, always be on time, be super grateful and tell all their friends about you. But it’s not like that all the time.

Last night as I sat at Maria’s Kitchen getting to know a super-successful businesswoman who has a number of employees, she brought it all home. Her reps and designers gripe when the customers are impatient, need an overnight turn-around, turn in material that is sized wrong and needs tweaking. While it’s frustrating, she reminds them to be grateful for the annoyances. If they didn’t have those needs, they’d do business with an on-line company with no customer service. Those customers pay their salaries.

I am not suggesting that you endure abuse. I am saying that you are needed. You are a midwife of change. It’s your job to listen deeply and take people from indecision and fear and make it simple and easy for them to get through it. That’s what you are paid to do. Besides that, customers can be a great personal growth class. Stalk yourself and notice how you act with customers and would be clients. Do you go cold when they get needy? Are you compassionate and understanding? You must be able to go into the eye of the storm with people and lead them through chaos to calm. Customers are great mirrors and teachers. The irritants provide the greatest lessons and the hardest to satisfy teach you to disqualify and disconnect faster or love them a bunch more. And when the rare easy one comes along, I call it grace!

Filed Under: customer service, trust, women entrepreneur, women entrepreneurs Tagged With: ,
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