![]() Sales and Marketing - when created by individuals permitted to be more in service to their integrity and to their customers than they are to their sales numbers - are actually the same animal. When at their very most human and intentional best - best for everyone, not as a drive for a desired bottom line - Sales and Marketing connect with the other with authenticity, emotion, consideration and with personal integrity. They are based on communicating the core, human, emotionally palpable message. The most helpful attitudes, emotionally and psychologically, I've found useful in both Sales and Marketing are: (1) asking enough questions about my product that I have no more doubts; all questions can be answered with my confidence and whole-hearted enthusiasm; (2) letting go of the outcome so that no overtones of desperation or pushiness impact me and my prospective client. Of course, this brings up one obvious point: what if you're selling something you have no faith in? Then I figure one must do the best possible to balance the job of bringing in the sale while being just 1% or higher more there for the customer than you are for yourself. An interesting balance. But if you want to be in integrity, it is critical that part of that integrity be your service to the person (as opposed to the potential client) with whom you are talking. In this way I have been able to redefine and rework a manipulative approach into a communicative and more intimate one that really does keep the responsibility in my hands, and the outcome outside of them. This is a Regenerative and human approach to business. And as I see it, this is our only possible future. The top-down, control approach to business has never brought the great successes that span the fullness of the human beings that actually are our businesses: us! We have paid homage to the gods of money and greed and control and so our systems have been built and maintained on this system. But it is ending now. And the answers are all about tapping the endless creativity that comes out of cooperative groups, teams, business structures. The answers are all from dropping the masks and embracing our authenticity and even (dare I say it?) our vulnerability to ourselves and to one another. In Sales and Marketing, the work I have done the most with other solopreneurs has been that of helping them let go of the Mask of Appropriateness, and express their true passion, their true drive, their true mission - and therefore their true voices - through both their sales and their marketing. The results have been magic. Because we human beings - unlike cogs in a machine - are magic. Endlessly creative, truly caring, appreciative of laughter, and indescribably powerful when working together for a high purpose. To chat with Lori about Team Consulting and Talks, click here: https://bit.ly/piconsult.
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Lori KirsteinWomen's Leadership Coach and Speaker Lori is the author of Call Center Crazy and The Human Solution: Human Solutions to Every "Unsolvable" Business Problem, As featured in:
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