Photo credits: Seppo Iivonen

Before a fight, what are you the most afraid of? When you visualize yourself losing, how is it going to happen? Are you more afraid of not being able to perform as you should or are you more afraid of your opponent and that he will be better than you expected?

When fighting or selling, you always have an opponent/customer you meet in person. In sales especially, many times people say that one has two ears and one mouth, thus one needs to listen to more than talk. On the other hand, in many martial arts styles, the emphasis is on attacking techniques. Many times this is due to the fact that you train alone or with train a set pattern of techniques, which make the learning and repetition easy. But in which case should you play with your strengths and in which case should you capitalize on your opponent’s weaknesses?

In the year 2000, I was fighting in an open martial arts' tournament, where my opponent was a very strong in kicking and much taller than me. He had won a bronze medal in Tae Kwon Do European championships, thus excellent in keeping a distance and applying counter strikes, especially with kicks. I had previously that year, won a gold medal in world championships, but in under 58kgs class. Whereas, we were fighting that time in under 65kgs class. So I knew, when going to my training camp, that I couldn’t be using my normal strengths of keeping the distance and using my longer limbs to win the fight.

My coach and I knew, that I had to apply a different tactic to beat this guy, than what we normally used. Also, at the same time, we needed to prepare for the whole tournament and to win the other opponents as well. We decided to train 80% as we normally do and emphasis about 20% of the training time on training how to block and catch a kick. This would help me to take the game to a situation where strong kickers would be uncomfortable. And this would give me a chance to score points by taking the opponent to the ground.

I managed to win all the other fights, but against this guy, I lost on points. I did manage to catch his leg after a kick many times, but I wasn’t able to capitalize these situations, since most of my training efforts had been on catching the leg, not on what to do afterwards. Of course, one needs to catch the kick first and if that doesn’t work, then there is no chance to continue to a takedown either. But I didn’t win with just catching the leg. Our strategy was correct in trying to win the fight with his weaknesses, but fell short in not being able to train it to be my one of my strengths. We learned our lesson and next year, one of my teammates won a fights against him, by being able to continue with takedowns after catching the kick. We learned that to capitalize on opponent’s weakness is not sufficient by just recognizing it and having a plan towards it, but you need to build a strength to win the fight.

In sales the weakness is customer's need

With this perspective, you will look at your sales situation with different mindset as with what you would if you were trying to look for the weaknesses of your customer. Surely, you can spot weaknesses from your customer, but there is no point in "attacking" them, unless they are considered as needs by your customer. You have your benefits ready and see a spot where they would help the customer, but I would hold off, until you are sure that what you are about to introduce is really something that the customer needs. Sometimes, you need to build a new way to solve the customer's need, in order to win the deal. Prepare yourself as you would for a martial arts' fight. Build your strengths to match your opponent's weaknesses.

How to build strengths in sales

A lot of emphasis on sales training is spent on different sales techniques and how to ask questions. While as product training is often done, when a new feature or a new products are introduced. After that, it is up to the salesperson to get the needed information and update the knowledge. Customers are a good source for information and understanding how products helps them in practice. Customers are the ones, who in reality have benefited from using your solutions, thus know the best, about the advantages and benefits your company provides. They have chosen your company over your competitors and with some specific reasons in mind. The better you understand why your customers have bought from you and why they are happy with the purchasing decision, the better you will understand what are your strengths. While you talk with your customers and why they are happy to be your customer, you actually strengthen your relationships at the same time. It will be harder for your competitor to try to pitch in the next time.

How to open up weaknesses in a conversation

Apart from needs being weaknesses, there are also many sales tactics you can apply to your individual customer as a person. I briefly introduced SPIN-selling techniques in my previous post 'The way of perfection - is all about mistakes'. With SPIN-selling, you have a ready-made script for you conversation and you will get information which matters does your customer consider to be the most crucial parts to be fixed in her business. You will work with problems and see which of the current problems are actually troubling her and how she values the possible solution to fix these.

You might also want to read 'how to win a fight when your opponent is much better than you (part 2)', where I was writing about how to concentrate on your strengths and focus on being an expert, not only a salesperson who is trying to argue against a competitor.

Above mentioned strategies are both very effective and useful in a sales situation, but when it comes to getting to talk about customers weaknesses on a personal level, I consider more psychological aspect to be the most effective. I am not talking about how to lure your customer to trust you, but how to build trust in a way, where you will get the needed insights from your customer, in order to be able to provide valuable content to the conversation.

One of the best and most usable method is NLP. There you will try to find clues, on how to communicate to that person by using words and sentences, which the person reflects the best. Some people visualize the outcome. There you might say: "can you see what I mean". You can spot a person who likes to visualize things by seeing her looking up, when thinking of an answer for a deeper question. They might look outside of the window and their glance when thinking might be somewhat distant.

Some others are better in listening, thus their audible representational system is stronger. There you might say something like: "how does this sound for you". The third representational system is kinesthetic or simply put - touch oriented.

You adapt to your conversation partner and use words that are familiar to their approach. This helps you to build trust and your words to sink in better. I have noticed that people change their representational system from time to time. Sometimes, I like to look out of the window and think during a conversation. Some other time, I hold a pen in my hand and touch it. So, it is important to pay attention to the current situation at hand and adapt the words and sentences accordingly.

Tips for fighters about NLP

Check how your opponent is preparing himself for the fight. Does he need physical contact to feel his power just before the fight. Or is he concentrating on his own eyes closed. Is music and especially lyrics important for him. If he is a kinesthetic person, you might want to start with a rush in the beginning. Try to make him feel weaker than you. If he is a visual person, then you start with a smile and look like you believe in yourself and look like a winner. With an auditory person, you can say out loud to yourself a few words, which state that you are prepared and nobody can beat you.

If this tactic works well and you get into his mind, he will start feeling insecure and likely will reveal his tactics with strengths and weaknesses. From there it is up to you to take advantage of the situation.

 
 
About 15 years ago, I received a call on Saturday evening, where I was explained that tomorrow at 2 pm, I should be trying to break the Guinness World Record (GWR) on the highest martial arts kick and it would be filmed for the official GWR program to be shown internationally. I know that you would want to read a fairy tale story, where I would be the hero and break the record, but I’m sorry, this is not the case. So, if that was the reason for you coming to read my blog, I have to disappoint you now, in the beginning of this post.

In my training group, there were two guys, who might had had a chance to break the record (2,94m that time), but they both were injured. I had been the contact person and thought that the record breaking attempt had been called off and had no idea, that it would be tomorrow. In training I had managed to kick up to 2,7m (I am 1,76m tall), but nothing close to the current record. If you have read my previous posts, I have written about yearly black belt test and on that Saturday, we had run 30kms in a rough terrain. My girlfriend had injured her knee and was in the waiting room at the hospital to get assistance. So you can imagine, how I felt at the hospital when the caller said that “you have to come here tomorrow and try to break the record. We have flown people from England to this attempt to be the officials of GWR monitoring the attempt and possible approving the record". I entered the train at 7 am and was at the recording studio at 11 am on Sunday morning. I knew, I had no chance of breaking the record. And with the 30kms run, I had no explosivity left, but this chance to be on tv and get the promotion for the martial art, was more important than losing my face with failed attempts. I hoped that I would break my own record, to say the least.

In sales, I have many times got into a situation, where my superior, perhaps the CEO of the company, had talked to a client and promised a very good deal. When I entered the negotiations and screened the needs of these prospects and their budget, I was in a place, where I would need to sell gold with a price of garbage. The expectations, were so high and the budget so low, that there were no chances to meet their expectations with the offer. There would have been no business for us, if I had sold with the price they were expecting. Of course, in those times, I reached out to the CEO and explained the situation, but that didn’t solve the problem. Even if he had approved the super low pricing, it would just help to close the deal, but not to make any business. We would have more likely lost some money and I would have had to come up with a lot more sales from other clients than possible, in order to recover the loss.

Even if you don’t win the price, you might still gain a lot

Both of these cases, required a lot of self-esteem. I was in a place, where I was not going to be successful and very likely a lot of (important) people, would look down on me and maybe even blame me for not succeeding. Especially, the record breaking attempt on TV was a hard part for me. I managed to kick 2,5m in the show and was very disappointed in me. I knew that there would be a lot of martial artists, who would laugh at this result. Especially, when it was announced to be the Finnish record (since nobody else had tried it, under the officials of GWR) of highest martial arts kick.

We got a lot of good exposure from the GWR show and that helped us to promote ourselves a lot. There were discussions in many internet forums, where people were laughing at the poor result. I felt ashamed about the result, when I was introduced as the Finnish record holder in different events. But the show opened us new doors for other TV performances and still gave us a lot of credibility among people, who didn’t train martial arts.

With previously explained situations in sales, where I was sitting in a table, I would not normally make. When trying to close an impossible deal, I chose to represent me as I am and not trying to sneak my way out of the situation. I tried to build the best possible solution and come up with a price, that nobody else would get, but which would still be much higher than the customer had stated with the current budget. Out of 10 situations, I was able to close 3 deals. Those that I wasn’t able to close that time, I have been able to close almost all of them later with a new solution. I knew that if I couldn’t meet the price they were expecting, I had to over-exceed their expectations of my expertise. So I put everything I had and asked for help from my colleagues to put the best offer ever built. And I prepared myself for the best performance possible, when presenting the offer to the prospects.

Mentally from rags to riches

Both of these examples played into my favor in the end, even though both cases felt like a disaster at the time. I didn’t give in. I did my best, even though, I knew that I had no chance at that time to succeed. I have had many excellent discussions during my professional working life about that GWR video. People find it on YouTube and value my performance there. With my world championships gold medal and that, people who work with me or are my customers, give me credit and admire me for my accomplishments. These help me to differentiate myself from other sales people. And in sales management, they give me a strong background of succeeding in life, which make it easier for my team to believe in me and work for me.

Moreover, I have gone through mentally tough situations, which have build up my character a lot. It would be nice to tell the story of having a Guinness World Record and closing all the big deals easily, but I consider these experiences more valuable in building my character than what I would have got from success. On the contrary, I do understand how top level athletes feel, when they disappoint their fans in big events in front of live tv or how it feels to let down your company and employees by not closing the big deal available. These all are valuable lessons and it is up to me to use the full potential given to me.

photo credits: Seppo Iivonen

How easy would it be, if you knew for sure that what you do today (to improve your skills), would bring you improvement for tomorrow? If your maximum for push-ups is 50 today, then next week for sure, you could do 55. If you called one more customer today, you would sell 5% more next month. If you learned a new thing today, you could use it in real-life situation tomorrow.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. For some time, you can keep up the development, but then after a while, you will stop developing by doing the same thing allover again. Don't get me wrong here. You need routines in order to develop, but in the end, you need different and updated routines for keep continuing your development path.

In the beginning, work as hard as you can

When I was actively teaching beginner's courses in martial arts, we spend about half of the training time in developing condition and stretching. We had many different movements we were improving, but as an example, we started off with 10 push-ups. Each week we increased the amount by 5 and in the end of the beginner's course, everybody did 50 push-ups. I know what many of you are thinking now. How can someone go from 10 to 50 push-ups in few months. To add more steam to your thoughts (Finnish expression coming from steam in the sauna), after a year of training, everybody did 100 push-ups. The point in this is the amount, not the quality. Many other instructors and teachers in other martial arts, started to demand push-ups with perfect technique. There the development is much slower, whereas with this method, everyone hits higher numbers each week. The point is to set the mind for higher goals and build a stamina for development, not for perfect push-ups.

The same example goes for sales as well. When I get a new team member, fresh out of school, I will put him to contact prospects and existing clients. In my previous post on "Goals and Dreams", I emphasized on building knowledge from the beginning and this method of active contacting might sound like a contradicting method, but it is not. It is very hard to learn business and sales related skills, without talking to customers. You need to hear what kind of language customers are using and how they are approaching different situations. From these conversations, you will start learning your field of expertise and the more customers you talk to, the more information you gather to your knowledge. Therefore, the first step is to learn to work hard in contacting your customer base, whether it be existing customers or prospecting to new business sales.

Start with 10 phone calls per day and next week do 12 and the following 14 and so on. The first conversations don't need to be in-depth ones, but just that you reach a customer and get to the next stage. These could be anything ranging from getting the contact information of the right decision maker, setting up a meeting or getting information for your RFP. Then you move on the the next call. The most important part is to get a routine of picking up the phone quickly and getting back to talking with the prospects.

In my first sales job, I wasn't told about this strategy and was trying to sell immediately to the clients. I got disappointed in not succeeding and wanted to prepare myself better before the call. I spend a lot of time preparing the possible questions and answers, but in the end they were wrong ones. I wasted a lot of time got even more insecure about myself. Later in my career, I got to work with experienced sales people, who drank their coffee at their desk, in order to be able to call the next customer as soon as possible. I started to measure how much of my working time was I on the phone and started writing offers, when it was hard to reach people on the phone. My only goal was to get step further in the sales process and with that in mind, I was able to call up to 50 customers per day. Today, I can easily do the same, whenever needed.

Then comes quality

I can ensure you, that after a year of trying to do more push-ups weekly, you will start building resistance to your development. You will start telling yourself and your instructor, that you cannot hit bigger numbers each week. Your condition is not developing as it was months ago and your body is getting tired and maybe more stiff. You don't recover from 100 push-ups the same way as you did from 10 in the beginning, even if both were your maximum at the time.

This is the perfect time for start learning techniques and building quality in your movements. Now you have the stamina to train harder and some knowledge of your body control. With better body control, it is easier to pick up instructions and control your movements better. With hard physical training, you have built better muscle control and this helps your development in techniques as well. This is the basis in movies like "Karate Kid" or my favorite movie "Drunken Master". At first, the master puts the student through tough physical exercise, which builds stamina for harder training and at the same time has taught the techniques in some mysterious way.

I remember explaining to one of my first sales managers, that I don't want to call prospects that don't buy. It was hard to make dozens of calls each day, when the majority of the prospects didn't want to do business with me. I was trying to explain, that if I had more time to concentrate on each prospect, I would be able to have better conversations and do more sales. If only, I could do less calls each day, I would do them with better quality. This all sounded very good in my head and I'm sure that many of you has had the same conversation with your sales manager.

The problem was that, the less you call, the less you will have conversations with potential buyers. The quality comes from repetition and control, not by avoiding hard conversations. Did I want to develop myself or avoid feeling down after unsuccesful sales calls? Preparation is important, but it needs to be done right. Especially in sales, it is not about the hours you put in, but the results you bring in.

Quantity and quality together

After reaching your limits in developing your skills with approaching quality, it is time to focus on repetitions again. This gets your mind out of quality for a while and soon you will notice that the quality improves even without concentration. You will be able to perform techniques better, even if you don't put emphasis on them anymore. There are times, when you will have to come back to focusing on high quality, but you can never forget to build up your condition as well.

My master, used to demand black belts to take part in the first degree black belt test each year. There you had to go through the hard physical test (including 150 push-ups, 3000 squats, 3 kms running under 11 minutes and many more) and the technique test with the new black belt candidates. This was mentally really hard to go through each year. Many of us, decided not to take part in those events and soon these people quit training or at least reduced the amount of training a lot. But those who went through the test each year, developed very well. The condition was each year better and the skill level was much higher each year.

Many times in sales, these teachings are forgotten. It is hard to go back to telesales, especially when your title might be Sales Director or similar. It is nice and easy to talk with the same customers as you have talked for many years. But don't forget to talk to new prospects as well. Don't forget the basics and go back to the basics often enough. If you are great in sales, it doesn't matter which part of the sales process you pick up, you will do well. If this is not the case, then you are not great in sales yet. With changing your focus back and forth from repetition to quality, you will become one.

What is the difference between a goal and a dream? For achieving your goal, you have to have a path and a plan, but for a dream, you simply need an image in your head and continue until you have conquered your dream. Goals are attainable, when you put your effort on them and dreams occur when you have reached enough of your goals. Think how differently you will act, if your goal is to win world championships next year or your dream is to win it someday. With the first one, you will find yourself training immediately, whereas in the latter you will find yourself smiling and continuing the dream. This doesn't mean, that your dream couldn't come true, but the level of urgency is different than with goals.

In order to achieve your goals, you need to have a path and a plan on how to achieve them. For goals you build up routines and for dreams you build up hope. Planning is more important than willpower. You just need to follow the routines. There will always be distractions and other challenges, but with a good plan, you will have room for these as well.

From ABC's to University

The best part with goals, is that they make you to work for them. You simply need to build a path for you, where you will break the path into smaller attainable and doable pieces. In martial arts, you can make a target of completing 10,000 repetitions with high intensity or make a path for development with setting up different skill levels for you.

My master, used to break levels with school grades. We would start to learn a new technique from the ABC's, meaning preschool. This was the outlining of the technique with enough details to understand how it should be performed. From there, we would do the movement with a continuous rhythm, which was called the elementary school level. This would continue up to University level and sometimes upto upper-upper-upper-upper University. The most important part, was to keep the rhythm constant, or else the technique was done at the ABC level. No matter how quickly it was performed. This helped us to understand which techniques we could pull out in a tournament and which not. You knew, that if you cannot perform at the University level, you cannot use it in a fight. Therefore, the goal-setting was very simple. Train as long as you are able to perform at the university level. And the path was clear too, with these simple and understandable steps from school grades. Check my previous post Does this work in real-life situation for another example, how my friend learned to skateboard like pros.

Sales approach

In sales, I have broken this idea into sales questions and steps. First, you need to master your field of business, meaning what your products and solutions can provide to your customer. If you don't have a clear picture on what you are selling, it is very difficult to help others to buy from you. The basics need to be clear in your head, or they won't help to continue in the sales process. You might be able to make sales still, but in the long run, you will not close deals as well as you should.

The next step is to understand how the customer is currently solving the situation, and where your product or service would provide a solution. Here, you need to build understanding on customer's business and get more in depth knowledge on what makes this customer unique from her company's perspective. On paper, many companies look the same, but they are all different. And this is the step, where you should understand why.

Then at the evaluation step, one goes into discussion whether the current solutions is providing wanted results or is there a room for improvement. Here your knowledge and expertise play a big role. You need to convince the buyer that you actually know how to improve her situation and that you will provide better results for her. You can attain this goal by using good questions which clarify your customer with understanding of the flaws of the current situation. Good questions bring doubt to her mind that there is a better solution than what she is currently using. You can also provide data to  back you up and to tell stories of successful companies with better approach than what she is currently using.

The last big step is to build a tailor-made solution for your customer. This doesn't mean that the actual solution is something new which nobody else has ever seen or used. This means you have paid attention to your customer's needs and when providing your solution, it feels like it was made just for her. The execution needs to feel like it was prepared for this case, since like I wrote before, each company is different.

The same goes in martial arts. You need to be able to modify your movements to your opponent. The basic form might look the same, but in reality, the techniques need to be altered to fit the situation and the opponent. How that is done, should be another blog post on its own.

Dreams are your vision

On top of goals, you need a vision. The vision sets the direction where your goals are at. Without a vision, it is hard to commit to goals. The difference is that, it is hard to build a path for a vision, the same way as it is for goals. Dreams can't be changed and modified easily. They need to be big enough, so that you have to develop yourself accordingly. My master used to tell me that it takes 7 years for each cell in your body to change, therefore whatever you do know, will affect you for 7 years. I don't know if that 7 years span is correct, but this made me for sure to think carefully, whether I wanted to improve my condition or do something that I would suffer for the next 7 years. With this in my head, I paid very close attention to everything that I did during the day, not just during the training. For instance, I stopped drinking alcohol, since that ruined my recovering after training. Drinking didn't ruin my training as per se, but it affected how my condition was building up and I wanted to build a better condition rather sooner than later. Small decision, but big influence. The vision was strong and made these kind of decisions easy to make.

 photo credits: Seppo Iivonen

If you have been a martial arts instructor, you must have heard the question: "does this work in real-life situation?" many times. People see a technique and feel that it cannot be used in a real-life situation. It just seems unrealistic that the real-life situation would end up in a similar situation where you can perform the technique just the way as shown. The real-life situation cannot be as clean and you cannot predict the movements of your attacker in a way that you would get control of the situation as done in practice. Is this true? If yes, then why to practice unrealistic techniques?

If you have a fear of flight. Think how differently you feel, if you manage to fly to your holiday, even with help of tranquilizer, compared to staying home and letting down your family. In which case would you go and seek help and try to overcome the fear? Which case would have stronger impact on your future behavior and would make you change?

Have you ever been in a situation where in a fight you have had to give up, because your opponent has just been too good and you had a zero chance of winning? What about in sales, where you have noticed that you have nothing to offer to the customer and her arguments against you are just too strong? You knew, that you have a solution suitable for her, but just couldn’t get the conversation up and running. Have you just given in and moved on to a next prospect?

Losing is hard, but for a goal oriented person to give up is many times harder. It is very difficult to admit that there is nothing you can do to win the fight or close the deal. If you have put your heart in it and still have to forfeit, this is the best situation for you to learn a valuable lesson. It all starts with asking yourself a question. Very simply put: Why did this happen?

Being honest is the hard part

Self reflection on the issues that made you to give up is often very difficult. Will you blame it on the situation? Or can you dig in and find plausible reasons in how you had prepared yourself and what really went wrong. Not just giving reasons for failing, but seeing the real reason behind why you would fail again.

In a fight, if you say to yourself: “this was not my day”. Why wasn’t it? Why was it your opponent’s day? The poorest reason for losing is in my opinion: “he just wanted the win more than me”. Why would you let anybody beat you, just because he wants it more? The real question is: “why did he want the win more than you”? Did he prepare himself more than you? Why was the fight more important to him than you? Try to find your real reasons why he was better than you. They could be like: he was stronger than me, or he had more versatile technique repertoire or he had that one trick that I fell into. Try to find reasons for losing and why your opponent was better than you and how could you become better than him in those specific fields.

In sales, sometimes it feels that the prospects aren’t smart or that competitors are playing unfair games and even lying to the prospects. What kind of mistakes did you make in your sales approach? How was your timing and ability to react to your prospects needs? Did you really understand the problem and provide the best possible solution? Too often, it feels that you had provided the best solution, but somehow the competitor lured in with something else, and the stupid prospect bought that idea and bought from your competitor. Look into your flaws and the mistakes you have made and think through can you improve them and if yes, then act upon it.

Losing vs forfeiting

You learn a lot, when you lose a fight or a deal. Especially, if you self reflect properly and go through what you could have done better. But when you forfeit and really feel down, you will learn a lot more. You will be more honest about what you really feared and why you felt that you had no chance in winning. These issues are the ones, you need to fix, in order to make you more successful. These issues are the ones hindering you from being the best. These issues are the ones, you admire in others and consider to be your weaknesses. Start improving those and I guarantee that you will become much better and will have a much brighter future.

When I was competing in martial arts, there was a one guy who was much stronger, quicker and very versatile in his techniques. He knocked out many opponents and in one tournament I was supposed to fight him. This tournament was arranged in my hometown, so it was easy for me to help with the arrangements. In the end, I was wearing a suit and being the announcer of the tournament and skipped fighting. I was so much afraid of fighting him, that I took the easy way out. It wasn’t easy to skip the tournament and for several months my self esteem (in fighting) was very low. Then I started to go through the real reasons of skipping the tournament and why I was so much afraid of fighting him. I started to build my skills against him and improve the things I thought he was better than me. I never fought against him, but I managed to use the fright of facing him to build a better fighter of myself. I have lost many fights, but none of them has thought me such a deep lesson than giving up before the fight. This had much deeper impact on me and gave me long term motivation.

In sales, you skip opportunities constantly. It is quite easy to explain to yourself, why you shouldn’t try to win one particular prospect. What are the real reasons behind that? There are many steps in sales processes, are you mastering them all at a sufficient level? Or are you lacking some knowledge that you should have in order to be the best expert in your field? I remember when working in media sales, when at first we all were saying that social media will never be replacing traditional media in marketing. We were coming up with excuses, why traditional advertising will be better than social media advertising. In the end, I have studied and operated with social media marketing for a few years among with traditional media. I had to learn them both and today I am much stronger in discussions related to marketing than I have ever been. I found my knowledge gap and fixed it. There was a time, when I thought that I have to move to another industry, because there wouldn’t be a bright future for someone working in a traditional media company. Today, I feel just the opposite. Not because the change in the industry, but because of the change in my knowledge and the approach that I can take with my prospects and customers.

Check also my previous posts "The fear of getting hurt" and "Win or lose, you have to train tomorrow again". They also cover the same subject.