John Boyd's Illustrated Guide to Selling You Part 3

John Boyd’s Illustrated Guide to Selling You - Part 3 -The principles of Taking Action and Motivation

John’s book provides a SMART guide to Selling oneself.  While the acronym might be forced in some areas to spell SMART, the principles are still appropriate.  After describing these 5 principles, he provided in his presentation the ABCs of conquering adversity. 

SMART indicates:

S = Speaking (communicating) The subheadings in his book include the magic of human interaction, human connections of trust, making direct contacts with your 10-second elevator pitch, managing and growing your connections, building trust via engaging questions, showing humility .  His examples are helpful in growing relationships of trust and mutual value

M= Move   To be a successful salesperson you have to maintain consistent (proven) activity, staking you claim, taking risks, giving your ego a break, and avoiding some of the pitfalls like playing too safe, learned helplessness, overcoming resistance to change, failing to diversify your portfolio and value proposition.

A = Attract  As mentioned previously, we can’t persuade someone to buy our product without attracting them first.  Develop a crafts person attitude (or as Gerber calls it in E-Myth a franchise-like perspective), create your vision, your value proposition, and create more choices and/or leverage more opportunities.

R = Relax  You’re not in a hurry, humanize the organization & hiring manager, ride out the cycle, embrace change, challenges are opportunities, see the big picture, create solutions, do your best with things within your control, and have patience – stars must be aligned at times.

T = Test  Here is where John provides examples of testing assumptions, searching for solutions, creative problem solving, negotiation.  Never be afraid to ask and always counter offer.   These assumptions and principles are best for those selling a product but they have some application if that product is you. 

ABC of confronting adversity

A = Adversity will always be with us to help us grow

B = Our Belief structure whether tied to optimism or not

C = Consequence of our concerted actions or inactions

D = Dispute – being the lawyer disputing negative thoughts and replacing them with positive thoughts

E = Energy = being in charge of our destiny and getting positive emotional strength from visioning, recognizing when we’re in the flow, relentless resourcefulness and creative consistency.

I liked John’s presentation and book because it was simple to read with good illustrations.  After knowing the concepts, you remember them better when recalling the illustration.  Well done John.  What I found missing was the application of the principle to some job situations.  Some of the examples were too simplistic for those looking for jobs or opportunities in a high unemployment context where employers are not just adding employees without considering the bottom line.  The employee is supposed to be engaged, energetic, loyal but in reality the companies are not reciprocating to train, develop, coach and  inspire.  Reviewing a list of the top 10 jobs with employee discontent was surprising to find so many managers and directors of IT, Marketing, Product Engineering.  If the hiring managers of the teams that are critical in the growth of companies and their profitability are dissatisfied, it’s no wonder employees have a challenge finding jobs.  It seems like the corporate culture needs a jumpstart in some of the employee engagement, purposeful work and growth opportunities. 

My next networking post is to apply these same principles to an opportunity I’m pursuing in talent management.  In preparing for this opportunity, I’ve studied many blogposts and recruiting/headhunting suggestions.  Some are pretty familiar but others need further exploration for the transitioning professional.