Month: June 2017

Confidence: How to Feel Comfortable in a Crowd

Confidence:  From time to time, everyone feels insecure.  Our feelings turn inward. Here are five tips for turning insecurity into poise and confidence.

Confidence: Only You Can Deny Yourself Permission to Feel Comfortable in a Crowd. ~ www.jaywren.com

Confidence: How to Feel Comfortable in a Crowd

I have a fair amount of confidence in a crowd.  I meet people easily.  However, sometimes I feel uncertain about how to start a conversation with people I don’t know.

I have become aware of these insecurities when I am walking the floor at trade shows.

You may have similar experiences in your own life.

First, relax.

Isn’t the inability to relax the source of insecurities of all types.

I find that taking a couple of deep breath helps me relax before meeting people.  Other times, I pause before entering a room and think of things I would like to discuss.

Before a meeting, I may use caffeine in one of two ways.  Caffeine can create a case of the jitters.  On the other hand, caffeine can boost your energy and lift your spirits.

When I am hungry and my blood sugar is low, I avoid caffeine before a meeting.  Instead, I eat a lite snack.

However, if my energy is low, a little caffeine boosts my energy and makes me feel more confident.

Second, say the name of the people you meet.

People love to hear their own name–myself included.

When I introduce myself, I must focus to hear another person’s name when they introduce themselves.  The only name I am sure that I will hear is my own name.  However, the best way to hear another person’s name is to repeat it back to them.  Saying another’s person name stimulates an awareness that you are listening to them.

Also, before seeing people I have not seen for a while, I go over the names of the people I will meet. My wife is especially helpful when I am seeing members of her extended family or families of her friends.

Third, ask questions.

You can find countless lists of small-talk questions on the Internet.

However, the questions that I find most helpful are the ones about a person’s interests or their families.

On the other hand, the questions I avoid are about stressful subjects like politics or work.

Fourth, smile and nod.

This simple gesture encourages other people to speak when you are at a loss for words. Furthermore, it is difficult to focus on your insecurities when you are smiling and nodding approval.

Fifth, speak with your eyes.

Look at people’s face when they speak.  Of course, look at their eyes. But also, let your eyes look at their nose and their mouth when they are speaking. Staring into people’s eyes can make them feel insecure.

Allow your eyes to express your feelings and to show that you are listening.

Sales: How to Stop Selling and Start Helping People

Sales: Why is it that some companies have return customers and continue to attract new customers?  Does the way they sell make a difference?

Sales is About Helping People Get What They Want. ~ www.jaywren.com

Sales: How to Stop Selling and Start Helping People.

The most important thing a salesperson can do is to help without getting in the way.

When salespeople make everything about closing the sale and not what the customer needs, they risk losing the sale.  Furthermore, they risk ever seeing the customer again.

Buying customers do want to buy things.  Great salespeople make the purchase easier.

Helping:  Buying Customers Need Information.

Even when making the simplest purchase, customers may need help to understand pricing, product differences, or even what a product does.  A helpful salesperson can play a role in helping customers understand what they need to know.

Even though the goal of the salesperson is to sell something, the role of the salesperson is informing the buyer.

A helpful salesperson makes it their obligation to tell the customers the things that they need to know.

Limitations: You Can’t Help Everyone.

Some buyers hate dealing with salespeople so much that they refuse to look at a salesperson even when greeted.  You can’t help everyone. Nor should you try.

You want to work with the best customers.  That is, the customers who interested in buying and who want a salesperson to help them make the best decision.  You can’t help everyone.

Objections: When is an Objection a Request for More Information?

Salespeople need to know when an objection is a request for more information.  Customers can’t always know the best time to buy a product.  They can’t know the availability of a product or how quickly a product is selling.  They sometimes don’t understand how a product fits their needs.

Great salespeople know when and how to help.

Perspective: How to Refocus, Realign, and Create Happiness

Perspective: How is it that some people live balanced lives while other people damage themselves and their relationship through a loss of perspective?

When perspective is not automatic, the happiest people create perspective. ~ www.jaywren.com

Perspective: How to Refocus, Realign, and Create Happiness

These three steps help me keep perspective. They may help you.

Refocus.

When we focus on any thought, that thought becomes the largest idea in our head. When we focus on things that people have said that angers us, we lose perspective on the value of what people say.

To get perspective, we must step away and try to understand what the person is saying.  Just because we are angry doesn’t mean that we don’t need to hear the other person out.

To get enough space to understand the point of the other person, we may need to take time and get advice on how to handle the question.

Gaining perspective is not always automatic.

Realign

Often our thinking is out of line with things that are best for us.  For example, when we hang on to damaging habits, our thinking is out of line and our reasoning can’t reach us.

At one time, I was a three-pack of day smoker.  I grew up in a culture where everyone smoked.  Smoking just made sense of as a way a of life.  It was sort of rite of passage into adulthood.

My thinking was so out of line that I could not even reason that the warning labels on cigarettes applied to my health.  For me, cigarettes were an addiction.  Like other addictions, nicotine addiction creates a denial of reality.

I couldn’t align my thinking to reality until I came down with bronchitis three times over a few months.  I finally said to myself that smoking was not for me.  I knew people who might, on occasion, have a cigar after dinner.  However, I was smoking myself to death.

It took a bit of work, but I built up a system of defense and support that enabled me to quit smoking decades ago.

Create Happiness.

I learned how to create a happiness perspective.  I found that I could not just stop being angry.  I had to do things to things instead of being angry.  I had to take a deep breath.  Second, I had to learn to listen.  Third, I had to learn to step away until my anger passed.

Perspective: How to Refocus, Realign, and Create Happiness

In closing, I still have trouble remembering that happiness comes from the inside.  Even when I have wonderful things happen to me, my attention can turn to the things in my life that I don’t like.

Furthermore, I am still at risk of not aligning my thinking to the realities of my life.

Therefore, I must continue to grow and work on creating perspective.

Authenticity: The First Step to Greatness

Authenticity: Why are rebels so appealing?  Why are they so successful?

Authenticity – The First Step to Greatness

If you copy other people, you are an impersonator. When you remake the work of other people in ways that it becomes your own work, you are authentic. When authenticity leads you to break the rules and change the world, you are a rebel. With authenticity, rebels find greatness.
~ www.jaywren.com

Rebels Don’t Just Try to be Different.

Rebels don’t just try to be different.  They have the courage to develop what is great and unique in themselves.  Through the authenticity of what is true in them, they do original work that appeals to followers in any field: entertainment, consumer products, business leadership, and so on through all endeavors.

Therefore, do what rebels do.  Don’t try to be different. Try to be yourself.  Through your authenticity, you will find greatness.

Recognize Your Uniqueness

We tend to see greatness as coming from a common set of abilities.  People who have greater talent become more successful.
However, greatness takes many forms.  Your gifts for greatness are unique to you.

Michael Jordan is a historically great basketball player.  He has a competitive mentality that lead him to try to become equally great in baseball.  But baseball was not a sport where he had skills for greatness.  Rather, he was uniquely great in basketball.

However, everyone has a unique set of natural skills.  Focusing on developing the skills that come to you naturally enables you to become the most successful person you can be.  Assuming the courage to stick to develop your natural skills, sparks the authenticity of your natural greatness.

First, Seek Authenticity.

Copying other people makes you an impersonator.  However, building on the work of other people until it becomes true to your authenticity will free you to be an original, a rebel.

Wisdom: How to Choose Intelligence over Bias

Wisdom: Is this a hollow word? A meaningless concept? Or is wisdom a powerful force that is available to everyone who seeks it.

The voice of wisdom is always there, even when we can’t hear it. ~ www.jaywren.com

The Wisdom to See Through Bias

Wisdom is that quiet voice that makes us pause and question our thinking.  It is our inner voice.  Some people call it the instinct of our gut.

When bias is shouting in our ear, wisdom is calling to us to look beyond our feelings to find the truth.

Knowing when to beware of bias and when to embrace your inner voice is the direction to wisdom.

Case Study #1:  Company leaders love a group of products.  Bias leads them to believe that these products are critical to a company’s image.

However, this group of products is losing money.  Furthermore, these products distract from the great products that will create a successful company future.

In this case, wisdom can balance between the feelings for image and the logic of building a successful business.  The company leaders decide to sell these image products.

Case Study #2:  Proud Dad loves baseball.  He insists that his daughter play fast-pitch softball.  However, his daughter hates everything about fast-pitch softball.  The size of the ball, the fear of dangerous pitching and fielding fly balls, even wearing a glove and cleats, everything.

However, his daughter loves volleyball.  She even excels in volleyball.

Proud Dad has no interest in volleyball. The games bore him, in part because he has never been around the sport.  Volleyball is not a sport that triggers for his enthusiasm.

Fortunately, Proud Dad can listen to that quiet voice speaking under the noise of his own bias.  He sees that the sports his daughter chooses are about her interests and not his interests.

Proud Dad signs up his daughter for volleyball and comes to the games.  He develops a positive interest (a new bias) in his daughter’s volleyball.

The Powerful Freedom of Wisdom

Wisdom frees us from the anger and resentments we have for people who are different from us.  It enables us to recognize the truth in what other people say, even when they say things we don’t like.  In this sense, it lifts us above our emotions to see the truth.

In conclusion, wisdom frees us to see the faults in our thinking.

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