Are You Playing To Win? Or Playing Not To Lose?

This week, I had the pleasure of speaking on 'Conviction Driven Selling' at an event where I decided to incorporate a fireside chat into my presentation, open the floor to questions and effectively group coach from the stage—something I absolutely love doing.

The first question from the audience was:

“How do we keep our clients engaged through the quiet season?”

A very relevant question in today's economic climate.

So, I asked the young lady who posed it to play along with me and imagine. She agreed.

“Pretend you were a marketer, what might you do?” I asked.

She suggested 'checking in on them and hoping for a response'.

Something so many sellers are familiar with.

I prompted her to imagine another strategy.

She suggested 'inviting them to upcoming events'

“What's ONE MORE IDEA you could imagine?" I asked.

She proposed meeting with them. Bingo! We are now on a different trajectory.

At each question the answers took longer and longer - because her brain was searching for a deeper answer. And the reason she was no longer giving me the usual default, rote, 'I will tell her what she wants to know' answer, was because I wasn't asking her for an opinion.

I was asking her to pretend, to imagine. I was tricking her brain to go creative, and it did. I was making her THINK DIFFERENT.

Only then could I shift gears!

“What would be the purpose of the meeting?” I then asked.

Her answer:

"It would give me an opportunity to tell them about my company."

(Stick with me here)

So, in this interaction, what just happened?

?? She came up with her own solutions.

?? She thought they were great ideas.

?? She did all the heavy lifting for me!

?? I said nothing but contributed so much value.

I knew nothing about her business, so how could I have even begun to tell her what to do?

Yet how often do we shoot from the hip, people nod out of politeness, and we pat ourselves on the back thinking 'YES!' It's in the bag!

But because I had taken my time and asked my three 'thought shifting' questions, I was now in a position of authority to 'give' her advice that had meaning and relevance.

“How about flipping the purpose of the meeting from telling her all about you to asking if she would like to contribute to some research and therefore help you prepare for what the community needs next season?” I suggested.

Her face lit up. We now had purpose and intention.

“Does that help the rest of you?” A collective YES!

Sometimes, we need to be braver, curiouser and smarter!

It gives us that resounding belief behind what we are doing and why we are doing it.

We need to ask more questions, deeper questions, different questions, rather than default to the comfort of telling others what we think we know, diving down rabbit holes, or being on automatic pilot without questioning what else, where else, who else, how, why or when.

We've seen this play out on social media this week with the opening of the Olympic Games.

So many people have jumped on the criticise France bandwagon, not even questioning the concept behind the Greek Bacchanal, thinking it was the Last Supper and as a result, our feeds are filled with incorrect assumptions contributing to even more negative energy.

Just like athletes in the Olympics play a bigger game by challenging themselves and pushing beyond their limits, we can do the same by challenging ourselves, our teams, and each other by asking the right kind of questions instead of drawing conclusions too soon.

We don't always need to fill the silence, the gaps or the space with noise.

So, if you're anything like me, learning to be OK with taking a little longer to think before asking and answering questions is quite an interesting journey ?? but very doable and quite enjoyable.

Courage, conviction, and choice are three essential qualities for leadership and sellership, and I believe we all need to start deliberately disrupting the way we think about thinking - just like my amazing audience showed up for each other earlier this week!

Happy to take 10 minutes to talk to you about how big your team are playing when it comes to the way they think about asking questions or even answering questions - is it to win or not to lose?

As Always,

Be Brave, Bold, and Brilliant!

Bernadette

I bring an extremely powerful and relevant message to the front of the room or to the wider market designed for leaders and sales teams with my Signature Keynote - 'Deliberate Disruption'.

Because if you are not disrupting yourself in the way you think, feel and act - then something or someone else will!

My message is designed for business owners, leaders and salespeople to shift from uncertainty and hesitation, to a mindset of courage, conviction and choice, enabling you to drive growth even in tough times.

Message me this week to speak at your next sales meeting, SKO or Association meeting.

Visit my speaker site BernadetteMcClelland.com and check out my new speaker reel there as well.