The Wisdom of Fusion
1. Sales Riddle: “I can’t work with you until I know that you know what I know.”
We think it’s more important to “get” your customers’ issues, marketplace and challenges first rather than trying to push a product, service or feature. “Pull or Counselor” Selling is all about allowing customers to disclose needs (perhaps fears) and building a relationship (including products and services) to meet those needs. It’s the ultimate Fusion of service with selling.
2. It’s not about you, it’s about them!
Some speakers address an audience and present ideas. The more able, instead converse with their listeners – discussing the subject and allowing the audience to arrive at a mutually satisfactory conclusion. When the work is done; the people say, “We did it!” One Presents not for impact, or impression but for Results with which the listeners have come to truly agree. It’s not about telling them what you want to say, but about helping them see why they should want to do as you suggest.
3. It’s not about telling stories. It’s about getting stories told!
Save us from Rocket Scientists! They “assail us with facts and goad us with information!” They arrive bearing “The Holy Book of the Dissertation” on a bier, and intone the invocation, “Turn to Page One….” There may be a story in there… More likely it’s merely a data dump. When you’re released from the torture, there’s no way you’ll retain – much less repeat – anything. So their “story” – such as it is – dies in one telling.
Under our smoothly polished, civilized exteriors, we retain the ancient tribal hard wiring for stories. “Two families meet in the hospital waiting room as their children undergo surgery after an accident… One Family has insurance, the other…” And then what happened??? A narrative story compels interest, dominates the imagination and will be repeated by each and every salesperson and customer! Make your brand into a story.
4. It’s not an event, but a process.
Changing the corporate culture (and the corporation) isn’t a one-shot deal… It’s a multi-dimensional, ongoing process… Training seminars, weekly e-mails, periodic movies, follow up sessions, forum discussion groups for participants and open lines to the teachers… who endlessly keep the target in sight. Do it once and nothing much happens. Do it forever and the evolution begins.
5. Baby Steps.
Increments. Smooth Gradients… Anything new doesn’t happen instantly but in small, quiet steps… all in the same direction. There was a time when this signified patience…
6. AND!
Appealing to All Communication Styles… and Thinking Styles. Visual, Verbal and Kinesthetic. Logic and Intuition. “Fluffy Stuff” and Steel. Lofty and Low. Pragmatic and Poetic. Work and Play.
7. It’s not a “Training Program” – it’s a “Lifestyle at work.”
It’s how we live, think, act, speak, and believe at work – and we hope, everywhere else too. We have a friend – Buddhist. Quiet, self-effacing – almost a monk. Wears his mala and his TaiChi shirt everywhere. Supports his family and his TaiChi organization with an Insurance Practice. And makes his Insurance Practice calm, warm and beautiful with his Buddhist Philosophy. One feeds the other… “LifeWork.” Separating the two just means fracturing the human being. Instead let’s keep our multi-faceted lives together, and make sure the pieces can co‑exist.
8. Freedom = Confusion.
If every speaker, seller, manager and writer has to face a blank page on their own, even with “Ready, Set, Go!®” as an aide, they will ultimately create themselves into a pile of essentially unrelated and dis-integrated components. Too much feature creep on PowerPoint, and the outcome is a series of dis-similar and convoluted presentations. We don’t require a new screen format for every division, every presentation or every screen – no matter how cool that might seem! “Corporate Cultural Discipline” amounts to setting the standards, establishing the targets and then “holding the form” of what’s been created. It’s important that people be both articulate as individuals and disciplined as teammates. The Objective: “One Story, Many Voices!®”
9. Strategy = Imagining a Better Future
Nobody gets out of bed on a winter morning to enhance profitability in their region by ten percent! But imagine for a moment watching your daughter graduate from a top school. Is that worth pulling back the covers and getting to work? All great strategies begin with a lofty, multifaceted vision – in which we win as individuals, shareholders, teams, families, corporations and communities. VISION deserves to be in capital letters because vision is what powers – motivates – our daily actions. Keeping the vision in sight is management’s chief function.
10. Management: Too critical by Half!
If you hate hanging around with management, take a note: Don’t do it that way when your turn comes. Most managers got their image of management from a mean teacher, parent or supervisor. It’s tempting to let the weight of your perfect future vision cave in a perfectly acceptable present moment by piling up critical assessments and evaluations of yourself and everyone you manage. Stop! Think about your favorite teachers, coaches and parents: Integrity. Toughness. Straight talk. But on your side and encouraging! Start there, we can work out the rest.
11. Body, Mind and Spirit.
We recognize that there’s a divine spark present in all of us. The discipline of creating, evolving and maintaining a successful Corporate Culture requires the alignment of that soulful identity with our messages and practices. Structural Integrity occurs when we line up what we’re here to do with what we have to say and our unique way of saying it. Belief, Speech and Action – Aligned: Fusion.
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