Selling with your strengths – The AIM phase
Selling with your strengths – The AIM phase
In the last blog post you could read more about the CLAIM phase for selling with your strengths. In this blog post we are talking about the AIM phase. Here is the transcript of the fourth podcast episode I recorded with Mark. Enjoy ☺
Christine
Mark, do you want to tell us a bit more about aiming, selling with yours?
Mark
So we’re now at the point where we these talents that we’ve identified, the most intense ones are definitely ours. So we definitely own those. We claim those as ours that’s really important that we do that. And I help people to do that. And moving into AIM, this is where we start to look at. Well, now I know what my talents are. Now I know, my top five, but most intense ones, this is what they are, what am I going to do with them. And this is, when we set out right at the start. This was why we did it. The reason that we identified the most intense talents is so that we can now point them towards what it is we’d like to achieve. Now that could be a whole array, almost anything that someone wants to achieve it. It can be in there. So he could be things like getting a new job could be that it could be how do I get promoted? It could be how do I get to overcome some of those challenges that I’ve got within the role that I’m in now. So in a sales role? How do I overcome some of the challenges that I have with customers or I have with colleagues or maybe they even have with my manager or my sales manager. And the great news is, is that whatever your most intense talents are, they can be pointed towards helping you overcome or achieve whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve. And now that we actually own our talents. One thing becomes very apparent when I work with people is that almost straightaway, but certainly after a week or two weeks of looking at them after we’ve claimed them is people’s confidence starts to grow. So where people might not have been that confident in themselves before, we’re now starting to see that people are growing in confidence, because they know that they’ve got something to offer. And because they know that what they got can be great. So what we can now do is we can now say well, how can I use my talents to overcome that particular challenge? So one particular salesperson that I’ve worked with for some time now. One of one of her challenges was objection handling. So handling customer objections, particularly ones that arise near the end of the sale, which are often around the financials, that some of the time, we might not actually get the real objection from the customer. It might be some there might be something there that the customer didn’t really want to want to express. Or they wanted to give themselves the opportunity of not sitting in front of a salesperson any longer. So one of the things that Ryan name is one of the things that Ray identified was this was one of her challenges in sales. One of her children was the end of the sale, and particularly this objection handling phase. So, Ray had been given some training internally within our business, and worked with the methodology within the business. And what she found out is that didn’t really suit her, it didn’t really fit with her. And she felt that actually, when she got there, it was really awkward. She felt really awkward. And one of the spin offs of that is the customer can tell. No, people read people quite naturally. And she, she had a real problem at the end of the sale. So one of Ray’s top talents is something called empathy. But Ray didn’t use her empathy. So she started to use it, and she worked out a way, I didn’t tell her how to do this, I generally don’t tell people what to do. Because when someone coaches, the person, the person being coached, comes up with their own ideas. And they buy into those ideas, their ideas, and they’re more likely to use those ideas and if someone else tells them, so Ray came up with devised on a couple of calls that we had, she devised a way that she would start using her empathy and demonstrating to the customer that actually she did understand their point of view their position, and particularly how they were feeling. And the way that she did that was really just through verbalizing that. So she verbalized with the customer, that she had an understanding of their position, the situation that they were in at this moment in time. And what she found was, people became more open, her customers became more open, more dialogue was created. And because of Ray’s understanding, he didn’t always lead to a sale in the moment. But what she found was that when she didn’t follow up those people, firstly, they remembered her. And secondly, they must have liked it because more people actually bought. So actually, she would only have gotten there by focusing on the things that she was that were in the things that she was naturally good at. And maybe some of the some of the things that her then employer expected her to do, or wanted her to do with the most awkward for her. They wanted to be quite hard nosed, they wanted to be very direct with people. And they really wanted to hassle. hassle, the customer. That’s that was their measurement of effort and what Ray did. And it worked because her sales, close your rate grow. And the number of cells you make grew, actually work for her by just being a bit more empathetic, or by being empathetic. So that’s the whole process if you like if we can call it a process, I don’t really like the word but from when we first tip out, right through to now is about taking a look at those talents that can help us get to where we’d like to be to help us overcome or to achieve and be happier in what we do.
Christine
Yes, I love them. Yes, yeah, it’s super nice. And I would like to pick up on a few points there that you mentioned. So owning the talent and realizing actually that something is a talent, we already talked about in the past, but gaining more confidence. And I assume also motivation is when you really have like maybe an external person or an external tool that tells you this is a talent. And I think this is what the strengths assessment does. It gives you an external objective validation of the things that you’re good at. And sometimes people who are not super confident, need this to get the confidence boosts like you say, so there’s something there’s something scientifically proven and millions of people have done this. So there must be something in it. If they tell me this is a talent, and this is a strength of mine. Super nice. So everyone might not be as confident in listening to this. If you want to find out what you’re good at. Even just for fun, not just for selling. We mentioned that before. You can use this model for all kinds of things in your life, to get to know you better to get to know what you’re actually good at, which will help you in all kinds of situations in life. I suggest really to do the assessment and find out what you’re good at and you might be surprised or you might not be surprised but At least you have this external validation tool that can tell you yes, this is what you’re good at. And then you can, you can make use this as a tool like you, you mentioned off this ray. And you will be able to overcome challenges. But you have to be, I think, and this would be my question to you as well, you have to be conscious about it. So once you do the tool you it comes up with these other your strengths and your your talents that you can use, but remembering that you have them is another thing. So I think the things the steps that we talked to, through in the in the previous episodes as well help with that, because it’s really some work behind it and what you should do, and you talk to people about it, and you underline things. So you’re constantly reminded about this. But do you have any, any further tips apart, obviously, of working with you for a while, also over a few months, but any other tips on how to remind myself of what came out of this tool?
Mark
Yeah, I want to record off thoroughly recommend is that you use the Insight guide. So when you, when you go on and you do your assessment, at the end of the assessment, you get two reports. And they’re both really good. The Insight guide is particularly good, because it’s tailored to you, it’s based spoke to you, and the arrangement of your most intense talents. And it gives you an explanation of how you use each talent page by page. And at the bottom of the page, it gives you some things to think about relative to that talent. Now what I would suggest, it’s really easy to say, well, they’re my top five most intense talents, let’s start using them. My suggestion would be that you look at them one at a time, and that you don’t rush in and try and do everything. Because usually, if someone does rush in and tried to do everything, then the results people get from that are usually less than average. So just focus on one task at a time. And just focus on and remember what that talent is. And in terms of learning, become a conscious, competent. And as Christine just suggested, that means you need to think about what you’re doing, you need to think about how you’re going to use that particular talent, what you’re going to do, and be aware. So if you are before using this in the sales contacts, context, which we are, be aware with you when you’re with customers, of whatever that talent is your empathy, or your adaptability, or your achiever, whatever the talent is, be aware of it and be thinking about how you can use it. And then when you spend time with the customer. When you’ve had that moment with the customer, maybe with a colleague or as I said before, with your manager, think about how that talent actually manifested itself during that interaction. Think Did you did you use it? Did you do something with it that you’ve not done before. Because if you do it all the time, then that’s great. But what you want to do is you want to stretch it. So you want to come out of your comfort zone with that talent, and go into the stretch zone. Because what you’re doing is you’re investing effort there in stretching and honing that particular talent. So if you just stay stuck with it as you where you are, then you’re not you’re not improving, and you’re probably not achieving, and being as happy as you could be. So, so just think about each talent. And I’d suggest you spend at least two or three weeks, just focusing on one talent at a time. So that would be my suggestion. Even if you don’t speak to me, or anyone else that looks at Clifton Strengths. Even if you don’t speak to someone look at look at that insight guide. Look at the suggestions at the bottom of each page. And just do it on one at a time and leave about two to three weeks between each one at least. I mean, some people might say, well, I’ll spend a month or a couple of months, just on my number one and then go to number two. And what you’re really looking for you looking you’re obviously looking to get to where you want to go. What you’re looking for is to a point at which this becomes a little bit more normal. I wouldn’t use the word habit but there’s a lot of misinformation out there about habits so until it becomes more comfortable until it until the things you’re doing become more, I guess natural or they will be natural but where it’s not such as stretch, and then try adding another one, try it and another next talent and how you’re going to use that, how you’re going to use that to get to that result, or maybe a different one. Yeah, how you’re going to use that to handle difficult conversations. So it might be something different. And one last thing I said, look at your first, first talent, the most intense one, you don’t always have to do that. He look at your top five, work out which one’s going to give you the most impact. If you can do that. Think well, I’ve got I’ve got adaptability. And I’ve got connectedness. And what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to give when I’m with customers, I’m trying to give them the best experience, which one of those am I going to use? And I’d say doesn’t have to be in order.
Christine
Yes, this is always a one thing at a time thing that we should apply to most situations in our lives in general, I would also make another suggestion is to actually print things out if you can, or have a piece of paper and write down maybe the talent that you want to focus on for these weeks or months. Because I’m a visual person, I need to remind myself constantly because I can put my best intentions in but I don’t have, if I don’t have a constant reminder, I forget about it. It’s a busy day, and I didn’t think about stuff. So maybe it’s something if you are a visual person, write down the word that is one of your strengths that you want to focus on, on a piece of paper and have it around you in your work environment or wherever you want to use this. Maybe if you have a habit of a morning routine, or an evening routine, where you do some journaling, may your writing we do some reading, you could include maybe I’m saying all these things, because I will do those, I just came up with those. Because also I have done the training, the training with you obviously and the assessment. And I have not done too much with it, I have to really say because it just busy life took over. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to do exactly what I just said, I’m going to put it on a piece of paper to remind me but I’m going to read this inside guide to these few paragraphs about this one strength in the morning to remind myself what that actually means. And then maybe in the evening, when I write down things anyway, because I’m having like a short journal, not longer journals, but I might write down how I fused those on the day. And then like you say, it becomes more and more natural and more and more easy to remember and use it. So these would be maybe also some of my suggestions have even just a dedicated strength journal, if you want to do that.
Mark
Really good idea. But I like that idea of Christine. I think that having something visual, actually just thinking about some other things visual view, if you go into you tube, and you type in Clifton Strengths, and then they the talent theme. So if you put in in Clifton Strengths and you put in their input, so if one of your in most intense talents is input that there are some little video there as well. Watching, it gives you someone talking about that someone that’s got input as one of their most intense talents talking about how they use it. So you can also use video, I like the idea that you said of having something that’s quite visual, it’s a reminder.
Christine
What else do we have in the AME phase? Anything else that you want to mention?
Mark
I’d like to mention that, that I feel like that’s quite fluid. So what, what I find people do is, is that they, they get to a point where they’re happier. So to get to a point where they achieve a goal, they get to their objective, and then something else happens. They have another idea or desire or need to do something else. And they can go back to their talents and most intense tell us to do that as well. So some people that I’ve worked with I’ve worked with for longer than, excuse me, I’ve worked with for longer than three or four sessions, and it’s, it’s an ongoing, ongoing program. So don’t think that once you’ve, once you’ve got to where you originally wanted to be that you’re going to stop there. Because Because human beings have this urge, internally to progress. And once we get there, we want to get to the next, the next destination. So that then could be, you know, that new job or that promotion within the organization, where originally, we were looking for improvement in what we’re doing now, we then might want to move on further. So always go back to your most intense talents, and work, work with your intense talents to say, how am I going to get to that next step? And it becomes it becomes a natural thing to do to do that. So rather than thinking, How do I need to change? How do I need to be someone different to get there? We start to saying how can I use my talents to get there, and there’s a massive difference in those two. So that will be added suggestion once you get to where you want to do.
Additional resources