For decades, I have been a proponent of, and keynoter in the field of, Spirituality in the Workplace. In my work life, I have focused on the sales profession, as I believe (as the very foundation of business), it offers the capability of making each person, each interaction, and each company, based on true service.

Unfortunately, with the focus on profit, solution placement, timelines, and commissions, the potential for true servant-leadership has been overlooked.  Indeed, it’s possible to make money AND make nice.

SELLING AND SERVING

The sales job focuses on needs assessment and solution placement. Of course this is necessary – but only as the final stage of issues buyers have to address. Sales overlooks the off-line, behind-the-scenes decision issues that buyers must face privately before they get the buy-in to make a purchase.

But this is where the true servant-leader connection is: imagine having the capability to serve folks by first helping them discover all of the internal, values-based decision issues they must address, and being a support for them in the process. And once this is done (and it makes the sales process about 600% more efficient), then we can sell.

But we can’t continue to use our positions merely to influence others. Let’s look at what we’ve been doing until now.

Sellers, unfortunately, have a belief that if by offering the right data, in the right way, to the right demographic, or use the right incentives/push/pitch/influence, that people will buy, or acquiesce, or agree. Yup: I’ve got the important data that you need - now let me tell you about it and explain to you why you need it.

But that premise is false: sales only close 7% of prospects. And that’s an average. Why doesn’t this model work? Because it’s based on information push, and ignores the underlying values that people must match before they are willing to buy anything.

People don’t make decisions based on data: all decisions are made according to our internal values/criteria/beliefs (There is no such thing as an emotional decision, even if it looks that way to an outsider.). We do not choose to do something that goes against our values, so all behavior is a rendition of our beliefs in action, even thought it might be unconscious.

When we create data-driven vehicles for marketing and sales, we have no idea if the mode, the message, the presentation, or the actual verbiage, go against someone’s internal criteria. As a result, we have no idea how our message will be received. That means, we’re either lucky or we’re unlucky. Bad odds: with the best solution in the world, we are dependent on luck for our results. Not to mention that we are missing opportunities to connect with, and serve, another person.

THERE IS A WAY TO INFLUENCE WITH INTEGRITY

But there is a way to help buyers discover how to make the decisions and manage the change (and every purchase – indeed every decision – is a change management issue) by using their own values.

It’s possible to help buyers:

1. assemble the appropriate Buying Decision Team members.
2. define the criteria they must ultimately meet.
3. explore every opportunity to resolve their issues with familiar resources (like current vendors or by fixing current.
4. get necessary buy-in from whoever, whatever touches the final solution.
5. operate with the new solution without facing major disruption.

Buyers need to accomplish all of these things anyway, with us or without us. Sellers sit and wait while they do them. We can continue to wait to make a sale, or become a true Servant Leader and lead our buyers through these decision points. It’s not sales – it’s change management – but it will afford an opportunity to serve, and buyers will fold the seller in to the decision, with no objections.

I’ve developed a new type of question (Facilitative Question) to help people uncover their unconscious criteria to make new decisions, or re-weight old beliefs. It works alongside my Buying Facilitation™ model as a decision facilitation tool to manage change. Questions like:

How would you know when it was time to add a new skill set to the ones you’re already using successfully?

What would you need to trust to recognize that by facilitating buying decisions and entering the buying journey earlier that you can close more deals and make more money?

How would you know that adding a change management skill set would be good for business, and enable a true collaboration of trust and respect?

Until or unless people choose to reconsider all of the elements within their status quo, and can find a way forward that doesn’t disrupt their status quo irreparably, they will do nothing.

Start the buyer/seller relationship by helping buyers manage the idiosyncratic decision issues they must address internally. Then, once they’ve determined their route, you can sell. It’s a good way to help people get to the very core, the very heart of the matter and create real change. And it gives us the opportunity to truly serve by leading the change.

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Read about: The Heart of Business & Leadership Involves Helping Others Buy. Gain new skills with the  Learning Accelerators and hear Sharon Drew use the Morgen Buying Facilitation Method®.

The Heart of Sales is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

With a group of about 15, I sat with my Martin Rutte as he played with ideas, tried out phrases, took feedback. Being my normal pushy, aggressive (and asperger’s-suffering) self, I fearlessly entered the fray with alternative ideas, bold opinions, and a continuous stream of what I thought was agreeable dissent. I thought that we should not use the ‘s’ word and instead use the stealth method of putting spirituality into skill sets without announcing what we were doing. Martin disagreed. He wanted to use the word, find those people who would join the movement  and start changing the business world. I thought he was naive. He thought I was obnoxious.

We became instant enemies. Indeed, when he moved near me to Santa Fe, we didn’t speak for years.

Eventually, we ended up friends of course. We were continually showing up in each other’s lives as we both were keynotes at several of the emerging ‘Spirit in the Workplace’ conferences springing up in the early 90s; I was a contributor to his book Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work; we lived relatively near each other and attended the same parties and had the same friends. I went up to Toronto to see his wonderful wife Maida in a Neil Simon play; one cold morning in Santa Fe we sat at 5:00 a.m. in our robes and argued and plotted how to change the world, like we’d done for lifetimes. Finally we learned to adjust to each other as kinfolk eventually do.

But somehow, over the years, with my move to Austin, we lost touch. And, now we’ve found each other again! Martin has showed up better than ever, with a new book, How to Achieve Heaven on Earth: 101 insightful essays from the world’s greatest thinkers, leaders, and writers, and a new initiative: The Center for Spirituality in the Workplace – part of the Sobey School of Business at St. Mary’s University in Canada.

Amazing! Martin actually created his dream: He not only made the word ‘spirituality’ an accepted, acceptable term in the world of business, he’s made spirit-in-business a recognized curricula, with PhD students! He’s actually put his money where his mouth is and got a university to develop a business school that “… has given people the potential to live a life authentically and with integrity in accordance with their deepest values and longings.” The paper about the center says:

Because workplaces are where many people spend a large proportion of their time, more and more people wanted to have conversations about spirituality and faith at work, but either didn’t know how, or were afraid to. They needed ways to talk about spirituality in a manner that was respectful, dignified and useful to both individuals and their organizations.

One of the alarming things is that many people who have had tremendously successful careers suddenly step back and say, ‘Why have I done all this?’ And it hits them, if you like, in the soul. And then they start to ask these questions, and they find that other people are asking these questions too.” Colin Dodds, President, Saint Mary’s University

Because of Martin, there is now a vocabulary, a school, and books in the world that give interested folks a place to think, discuss, and gather the tools to bring their souls with them to work each day. This world is indeed far better off with Martin in it. I am so pleased he is my friend and brother – to know him and recognize the huge difference he’s made in the world, to recognize and admire his journey. And I certainly hope that we don’t lose each other again – we’ve got work to do!

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Here is a link for those interested in learning more about the Center for Spirituality in the Workplace

The Center for Spirituality in the Workplace

Martin Rutte: the man who put spirit into the workplace is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com