I used to love to pull April Fool’s pranks on my dad. Just as he would be leaving for an appointment, I’d ask him why he had a big ink stain on his shirt. Or tell him that I wrecked the car.

Once the huffing and puffing was over, I’d calmly say “April Fools!” He was never all that amused, but I enjoyed it.

Company leadership pulls unintentional April Fools pranks on employees every year. Here are some examples.

Initiative: We conduct focus groups and surveys and tell employees we want and value their feedback. They give us time they don’t really have and provide their feedback with honesty.

April Fools! We do absolutely nothing with the employees’  feedback, except ask for it again the next year.

Initiative: Employees are asked to take on additional respnsibilities with the promise of a promotion.

April Fools! The employees don’t get the promotion, but the increase in workload continues with no end in sight.

Initiative: Mandatory sales training is conducted, everyone must go through 2-6 days of training with the promise of a changed environment.

April Fools! After a year of working on their new behaviors,employees attend their performance appraisal review and discover it still reflects only operational goals, and sales efforts are not even represented.

Initiative: Salespeople are told that there’s a new focus on relationship selling – do what’s right for the customer.

April Fools! The incentive plan hasn’t changed, and is still fueled by marketing programs that promote one product at a time, whether a customer needs it or not.

You know, eventually my dad stopped believing me on April Fools when I told him he had an ink stain on his shirt, or a wreck in the car. There were no more surprise reactions to delight me.

Employees will do the same. They will stop believing in corporate initiatives, and put only minimal effort in them. Why? Because businesses have started creating a “Ground Hog/April Fools Day” where the same things are promised over and over again but never delivered.

If your company has employees that seem to have lost energy for the next new initiative, consider this: Is your company guilty of its own Ground Hog/April Fools Day approach?

How can you not like a man who runs a beet farm after hours and hides weapons around the office? Anybody reading this who is not familiar with the character Dwight Schrute from “The Office,” well, I recommend you rejoin the human race and watch a couple of episodes. For the rest of us, I would like to share with you what Dwight could teach us about sales in my imaginary “Dwight Schrute School of Sales:”

Schrute Sales 101: Believe in yourself. No matter how bizarre his behavior, Dwight has the confidence to make the sale, because he believes he is the best salesman in the office.  In his own words:

 “D.W.I.G.H.T – Determined, Worker, Intense, Good worker, Hard worker, Terrific.”

Schrute Sales 102: Know your product. Dwight knows more about paper than anybody else in the office. In one episode, Dwight left the office to protect a co-worker and ended up working at an office supply store. As he talked to customers about a variety of products, it was obvious his real passion was paper.  He studies until he knows his product better than anybody else.

Schrute Sales 103: Grow an extra layer of skin. Selling is not for the weak of heart, and Dwight knows better than anyone that thin skin can cost you the sale. Staff people often complain about the money sales people make; well, I’d challenge them to become a salesperson. Try handling rejection every single day. Dwight understands the strength it takes to be in sales, and represents it when he said:

  ”My feelings regenerate at twice the speed of a normal man.”

Schrute Sales 104: A sense of constant improvement is required. People need to understand that most salespeople are driven by a certain competitive spirit, whether with themselves or other salespeople. There has to be some driver that keeps us facing rejection over, and over again. True salespeople like a challenge, they want to constantly improve, and nobody more than Dwight, who will compete even in his death:

“When I die. I want to be frozen. And if they have to freeze me in pieces, so be it. I will wake up stronger than ever, because I will have used that time, to figure out exactly why I died. And what moves I could have used to defend myself better now that I know what hold he had me in.”

Some of you might think Dwight is a poor example of a salesperson, but I disagree. I think he embodies the spirit of most of us who have worn the mantle proudly. It seems that too many of us are trying to “soften” sales, and declare that it’s only about helping our fellow man. Well, that too. But sometimes, we’re just like Dwight – thinking about how to win, honing our craft, perfecting our skill, competing with our Jim Halpert– minus the mustard colored shirt. By the way, Dwight is always expanding his area of expertise. He seems to be currently looking for an assistance in his building manager role. If you’re interested, click here.

So, Dwight, our bobble-headed sales guru, here’s to you: 

Click here to view the embedded video.

You know what it feels like when your leg falls asleep in the middle of the night? At first it feels heavy and numb, then it starts to ache, then tingle, then (thank God) it is awake and happy. That’s how my mind felt coming out of my Rip Van Winkle years inside a corporation. There were some really smart people in there, but every time they tried to do something creative the environment rebelled, taking their colorful ideas and whitewashing them to a lovely shade of “that looks just like what we did before.”

Sometimes we have to retrain our brains to think creatively, and many high performance corporations realize we’re exiting the information age and entering the artistic age. Strong leaders know that the competitive advantage is no longer the number of widgets and managerial drones, but the number of ideas and creative leadership dynamos. A great source of creativity is a book called Thinkertoys, writen by Michael Michalko. It’s a phenomonal “handbook of creative-thinking techniques” that will help you generate some new ideas.

Based upon some of those techniques, here are five ways that you can escalate your ability to stop being considered a drone and become recognized as a leader of ideas:

1. Change something about your daily routine so that your brain begins to work a little harder.   Our brains send messages along the same neuro-pathways, literally creating “ruts” when we do one thing  on a regular basis. To get your brain refreshed, be sure that you do something different that forces the synapse to fire in a different direction, literally getting you out of the “rut.” Daily changes could include:

Read a new type of book

Start to learn a new language

Take a new route to work

Listen to a different radio station

Read a different newspaper

2. Block out 20 minutes for at least one brain workout per day.  You do that for your body, don’t you?  Well, if you don’t, you should.

3. Write down a current challenge you are currently  working on.   Select a challenge that is frustrating you, or that is highly visible. Coming up with ideas will help generate your energy around the challenge. This “challenge” could be a co-worker or team member (and often is).

Example: Jane Doe is not interacting in my sales meetings.

4. Every day, in your  20 minutes, write down five new ideas concerning how you will solve your current challenge.  Having a certain amount of ideas will help you actively generate new ideas and solutions rather than feel overwhelmed. The ideas should have no boundaries like “how” or “what if.” Just write them down.

Example: 1. Give Jane an active role in the meeting, asking her to share one idea of how she’s increased sales. 2. Take Jane to lunch and ask her why she’s not interacting. 3. Think about past interactions and performance appraisals – is she being demotivated by something? 4. Leave a note on her desk thanking her for her hard work. 5. Change up the meeting – have 3 salespeople at one and 3 at another and make it more interactive.

5.  At the end of the week, select the ideas that are implementable with the resources at hand.  Review your ideas, and use the ones that will really work. What you’ve probably found is that during the week the idea session has already generated a new thought that you’ve taken action on.

I’ll be providing more of these ideas over the next few weeks, so if you’re not subscribed to my blog be sure to go back to the home page or www.highfillperformancegroup.com and sign up in the upper right hand corner right above all of the social media buttons. Thank you!

Some things really should change; here’s my ballad to a service debacle many home and small business owners are dealing with today:

Let me tell you a story about two weeks past,

When I’ve been at battle with Verizon and Comcast,

Verizon said they’d provide a better price,

Comcast said “Yea, but we can be really nice.”

Verizon said they owned the phone lines,

Comcast said “Huh? We’re really doing fine.”

Verizon switched the lines, but no incoming calls,

We talked to a rep who completely dropped the ball.

Comcast said “Sorry – just come on back to us,

We’ll get you up and running without any loss or fuss.”

Fourteen days later, and eight hours worth of time,

Comcast says “Sorry, Verizon won’t release the lines,

Go back to Verizon,  and maybe they’ll reactivate,

Sorry about the delay, sorry you had to wait.”

Talked to Verizon who said “our box will make this fine,”

A technician must be scheduled, here’s the toll-free line.

The rep that scheduled our tech said I had an attitude,

Because I wanted this ASAP – somehow she found that rude.

We’re supposed to get our lines back next Wednesday between eight and five,

I hope that when it happens our business is still alive.

Three weeks without incoming calls, I hope it won’t be four,

Comcast and Verizon – we’re the casualty of your war!

Here’s why some people can’t get others to change – they focus more on outcome rather than the behaviors needed to get to that outcome.

I remember the first time I decided to diet. It was Christmas break, and I was coming home from my first semester at college. Unlike many who find the “Freshman 10 lbs,” I set a record with the “Freshman 23.5 lbs”. I found those pounds in just a couple of months – how amazing am I?

Unfortunately, my sister was getting married in late January. I had to fit into a bridesmaid dress that had been tried on before the mounds of starches I found in the “all you can eat” cafeteria at my school. I pasted my weight goal on the mirror, and a picture of myself before I left for school. After a week, I had found two more pounds lounging lazily at my house. They were more than willing to jump on my hips through late night cinnamon toast and home-made hot chocolate.

I finally went to my doctor, who set up a low-calorie diet. He told me exactly the calories I could have each day, and told me that if I stuck to those calories (around 350 per meal) and exercised for thirty minutes a day the weight would come off. I now had daily actions that I could follow, and the weight came off. It found me again once I went back to college, but I looked hot for the wedding.

In their book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler write the following:

“It turns out that all influence geniuses focus on behaviors. They’re inflexible on this point. They don’t develop an influence strategy until they’ve carefully identified the specific behaviors they want to change. They start by asking: In order to improve our existing situation, what must people actually do?”

I’ve spent twenty years helping organizations and individuals change, and the one element I see missing again and again are the specific actions that will get people to the exciting new goals that are being set.

I worked with one sales manager who had could not get performance lift from her team, even though she had repeatedly delivered this message:

1. This sales team is behind on goal, and needs to sell more to new prospects, and we need to start doing it now. We need to hit this monthly goal.

I talked to her salespeople, and realized they understood the message, but they were going back to their desks thinking “exactly how am I supposed to do this?”

 I worked with her on delivering a message more like the second one shown below, and there was immediate sales lift: 

2. Each sales person on our team needs to make three more prospecting calls per day, and close at least two per week to hit goal. We’ll discuss these calls at the end of each day to share our successes or any need for help on the next calls.

This message provided specific actions – the right actions – that needed to be taken.  So, if you’re trying to get yourself or a team or a company to change and are having no success, make sure you haven’t just delivered a big goal. Ask yourself: Have I delivered the specific behaviors or actions that will get people to that goal?

Some of you might remember the movie Glengarry Glenn Ross. The scene with Alec Baldwin as the new, demeaning and demanding sales manager perfectly illustrates the manager that delivers a lot of goal, but not one behavior to help his team get there.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Please subscribe to my blog at www.highfillperformancegroup.com. Just put your e-mail address in the little box to the right of the chick in the hard hat .

The following change story comes from Russell Simmons’ book Do You! 12 Laws to Access the Power in You to Achieve Happiness and Success. I find Russell Simmons to be refreshingly honest and forthright about his passion for business, and this particular story is something I really needed to be reminded of – that the result of hardwork should never replace the passion for working in the first place. This story is found in his fifth law titled “Never less than your Best.” I hope it helps you as much as it did me:

Not long ago, a woman working as a nurse approached me for advice on how to improve what she perceived to be her position in life. I can’t recall her exact situation, but essentially she didn’t want to be “stuck” working as a nurse her entire life because she was afraid she would never make enough money in that profession to be happy. She was hoping I could show her a way to make it in the business world instead . . .

The strategy I shared with her is the same one I’d like to share with you now: Always focus on your effort, instead of the results of that effort. That means don’t get hung up on the size of your paycheck, or the title next to your name. Instead, focus on the actual work itself, which is the process.

So in the case of the nurse, I encouraged her to simply concentrate all her energy on helping the sick people in her care. I encouraged her to do everything she could to bring comfort to those people and their families. Not to suggest she hadn’t been doing that before, just to do it now without any concern over the payment or perception. I told her that if she put all her effort into helping her patients, the results she was looking for would take care of themselves. They might not come in the form she was expecting, but they would come. I promised her instead of feeling like she was toiling in obscurity, she would start to feel noticed. That instead of feeling stuck, it wouldn’t be long before she could feel the momentum of hard work taking her closer to where she wanted to be in life.

Whatever profession you are in, when you get attached to the results of your hard work, you’ll be in for a rude awakening when those “results” finally do come. It’s happened to me several times, even when I received multimillion-dollar checks for selling Def Jam and Phat Farm. Now a lot of those checks went to my partners, but you’d still think I’d be jumping up and down for joy over my piece of those pies, right? Wrong. In both cases actually getting the money was a major letdown. Cashing those checks was anticlimactic. Because as soon as the money was in my hands, I realized the actual hard work that I put into those companies brought me much more happiness than the money ever could.

P.S. Please subscribe by entering your email to the right of the hard-hat woman at http://www.highfillperformancegroup.com/

My internet was down, again. No big deal, I only rely on my internet connection for my livelihood, and this was the third time in a week that it had gone down. Our phone lines were also down, which was not a surprise since we had lost phone lines at least six times in the last two months.

I screamed at my computer screen, but to no avail. As I swept my arm around dramatically to call a technician, I hit my Diet Coke and sent it flying across the office. So, I tried to be more Zen and less Zany and called my internet service provider. Of course this happened on a Friday afternoon, but I decided to be a crazy optimist and called anyway. My partner and I were told a technician would arrive Saturday before noon.

So, I got up on a precious Saturday – you know, the only day small business people tend to take off – and went into work. I sat and waited from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., listening to the crickets and watching tumbleweeds roll by. Around 1:00, I picked up the phone and called the dreaded 1-800 number (which I remember as 1-800-into-the-abyss), and entered the service number given when we first called.

The automated machine said someone was within our vicinity and would be by within the hour. I celebrated with a real Coke and waited. At 2:30 steam began literally coming out of my ears, so I called again and waited for an actual person. They informed me that I had no service number at all – that our entire order had never occurred. I had been bumped out of the system, and since I was talking to a new person it was as if I never existed at all. I pinched myself to be sure I was still alive, and then asked for them to input a new order. A technician could not come out until Monday. I refrained from dramatics lest I send my real Coke flying across the office, and simply went home.

The technician did show up first thing Monday morning, and looked very sharp in his Oakley glasses. He walked in with the profound statement “What do you need?” Nice entrance, I felt so valued as a customer and certainly felt the sincere concern about the delayed response.

“Well, our phone lines have been down since Friday, and our Internet is down as well. This has happened repeatedly . . .”
“Yea – the guy next to you has had his line go down a bunch. I’ve been out here at least ten times for him.”

Nice, now I feel much better. Why would I ever doubt my internet service provider when their technicians provide this information as if it’s just part of their job? The service technician asked where the phone lines were (something I have to repeat for every new guy) and strutted to check them out. He came back in look mighty proud of himself, and said, “Well, I just unplugged and plugged the lines back in and they seem to be working. I don’t know what happened or why. Just weird, I guess.”

Okay, maybe this would be easy after all. “Could you check the internet, please?” I thought maybe the “weirdness” could be as easily fixed there.
“Do you know where your modem is?”

Of course I did, I’d led a multitude of their technicians to it. So, I took him to modem land and went back to my office, filled with false optimism. Suddenly, I sensed someone was staring at me, so I turned in my office chair to see stylish ISP man holding his clipboard, ready to deliver his profound diagnosis. “This isn’t our modem, m’am. I don’t know who put this in here, but it’s not ours.”

“Well, that’s weird because you are my internet service provider and your guys set it up.”
“Is that a new copier?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, if you guys are networked this could be a copier problem, not a modem problem.”

Ah, he was a tenacious sleuth. With that shallow solution, our guy left as quickly as he could, looking equally as stylish in his Oakley glasses as he was useless as a technician. I beat myself up immediately for simply staring, mouth open, when he left. I should have tackled him in the parking lot and forced him to return.

Instead, I called the copier company, and talked to someone who actually wanted to help. He led me through a series of diagnostics, at which point we realized it was a modem problem. Rather than dealing with this internet service (said with sarcasm) provider, again, we played with the modem until we got it working.The result? My phones work for now, my internet struggles along taking brief naps, and we’re swit
ching everything we can to another service provider in the first of September.

P.S. Today, when I came in to post this article, my internet was down – AGAIN. The technician is supposed to be here between 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. This time I have on my football gear. If he tries to leave, I’m going for a chop block.

The following is a story from one of my favorite books by Diane Conway called “What Would You Do If You Had No Fear? Living Your Dreams While Quakin’ In Your Boots.” The title alone grabbed my attention, but the picture of a woman (I believe it is the author) gleefully jumping out of plane and doing a split in the air made me pick it up. Not that I’m going to jump out of a plane any time soon, and if I did the split would be unintentional, but I realized that this woman was overcoming fear and loving it, and I wanted to do the same. 

If you want a boost of energy, a lot of humor, and tremendously inspiring stories, read this book. One of the chapters shared a story that seemed especially poignant based upon my series on No Fear, so I want to share it with you. The chapter is titled “Permission Slips.”

Brad said, “I have a good voice and I love to sing. For my whole life, forty years of it, every time I thought of something bold I wanted to do, immediately a voice in the back of my head would start, ‘You can’t do that, you’ll look stupid, you’ll embarrass yourself, forget it!” Like a reverse abracadabra, the desire would be wiped away, stuffed down, and stomped. The voice might as well have been on a PA system like the old air raid signals squawking a warning: ‘Duck and cover, he’s dreaming again!”

One day Brad finally had the nerve to declare his independence from fear long enough to call the San Francisco Opera for an audition. Today he sings in the chorus. In one moment Brad gave himself permission to take a risk, and the desire spoke louder than the fear. We don’t have to wait for fear to vanish altogether because that moment will never come; all we need is a moment of daring that can change a whole lifetime of waiting.

Life Challenges:

Write yourself a permission slip.

Give yourself authorization to succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

Look for moments of inspiration and act then.

P.S. Please subscribe by entering your email to the right of the hard-hat woman at http://www.highfillperformancegroup.com/

To those of you who have been following our change journey together, we’ve spent the last three weeks following three signposts:

1. No Complaining

2. No Excuses

3. No Fear

Why are we talking about this change trifecta? Because, as Scott Peck said in the first line of The Road Less Traveled, “Life is difficult.” Positive perspectives make a huge difference in how we handle life, but sometimes we need a little punch, a little feistiness, to make it through. So, today, we’re going deeper into No Fear with a specific action. This week we’re going to eliminate the What Ifs. Yesterday while I was out, I listened yesterday to a series of conversations (my daughter would call me a creeper), and in a very short period of time I heard the following:

• What if I buy all of these DVDs and then don’t exercise?
• What if we don’t sell our house?
• What if my stomach hurts because I have some weird cancer?
• What if I stop smoking and start eating more?

Here’s the amazing part – each one of these individuals was either stressing out over something that might never happen, or predestining themselves to fail. If you buy a DVD and say “What if I don’t exercise?”, odds are you’re not going to exercise.

When facing What Ifs, I always remind myself of one thing – our bodies don’t know the difference between what is imagined and what is real. That’s right. If you face a rabid dog while jogging, your heart will pump blood faster, you will work up a sweat, and your muscles will tense up, prepared for the fight. If you are sitting in a nice comfortable hotel conference room, and I take you through a visualization where I simply suggest you confront a rabid dog while jogging, guess what? Your heart will pump blood faster, you will work up a sweat, and your muscles will tense up, prepared for the fight. The same physical reaction.

So can you imagine how exhausted you must be at the end of a series of What Ifs - since your body keeps reacting to the threat of an unknown assailant. This week, set up a What If jar. It can be a basket, or a waste basket. Every time you say What If? write it down and throw it away. Let it go. Then do something amazing.

My biggest What If over the last forty some-odd years has been about becoming a writer. While I’ve spent twenty five years writing training and developing tools, my creative side has suffered. My unknown was always: What if I can’t make any money writing something beyond manuals and tools? What if my writing isn’t any good?

Well, this week I’m allowing no What Ifs, so it’s the perfect time to move forward boldly with my writing career. I’m going to do the following this week:

• Offer my services on-line as a writer of blogs. Any company that wants to create a blog but needs a writer for it each week, I’m their woman.
• Escalate the pace of the two books on change that I have in the works.
• Start a personal blog that will allow me to write about more than just change. 

I’m actually relieved that I don’t get to ask What If? this week. I’m just going to do it. Sometimes life isn’t easy, and we get hit, and we start to hide. And the more we hide, the more comfortable we get in our hiding place. Today, come out of that hiding place. Face the world, eliminate the What Ifs, and move forward without fear. Listen to Rocky Balboa - he knows what he’s talking about!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ding-Ding, start your round with your What Ifs. My money’s on you!

Sales begin and end with the ability to create relationships. In their book the art of woo, authors G. Richard Shell (author of Bargaining for Advantage) and Mario Moussa discuss using strategic persuasion to sell your ideas while building relationships that will last. They share the following stories about Andrew Carnegie and Abraham Lincoln in their chapter called “build relationships and credibility”:

Andrew Carnegie once described Abraham Lincoln’s gift for creating relationships with virtually everyone he met. Carnegie was in charge of the railroads during the Civil War and Lincoln “would occasionally come to [my] office and sit at a desk awaiting replies to telegrams, or perhaps merely anxious for informatoin.” Carnegie went on to note that “[Lincoln's] manners were perfect because [they were] natural; and he had a kind word for everybody, even the youngest boy in the office. His attentions were not graduated. They were the same to all, as deferential in talking to a messenger boy as to Secretary [of State] Seward. His charm lay in the total absence of manner. It was not so much perhaps what he said as the way in which he said it that never failed to win one . . .I never met a man who so thoroughly made himself one with all men as Mr. Lincoln.”

Carnegie himself learned the importance of developing relationships through day-to-day interactions at a very early age. When he was a teenager, Carnegie worked as a messenger for a telegraphy company in Pittsburrgh, and he delivered telegrams to many of the city’s leading businessmen. To advance his career, he made a conscious effort to memorize all their names so that he could acknowledge them when he saw them on the street. In his autobiography, Carnegie elevated this activity to the level of a principle:  “Slight attentions . . . often bring back reward as great as it is unlooked for. No kind action is ever lost. Even to this day I occasionally meet men whom I had forgotten, who recall some trifling attention I have been able to pay them.”

A business epigram sums up this idea quite simply: “No salesman ever went broke who knew the names of his customers’ kids.”