DECISION MAKING IN THE YELLOW LIGHT ZONE

DECISION-MAKING IS EASY AT RED OR GREEN LIGHT, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE YELLOW LIGHT? 

One of my roles as a creativity and innovation coach is to help innovators and entrepreneurs hone their leadership skills. Sharon*— a university professor and social innovation entrepreneur—asked me for coaching on achieving her goals for a large visionary project. Since she is highly motivated and productive, most of our coaching conversations were about stepping up to the challenges of leadership, exploring the deeper truth of a situation, and decision-making; so she could move forward. She shared this insight with me following a breakthrough coaching session:

One of the most poignant learnings I have gained through our coaching sessions is to gauge where to put my focus and energy? Where are the green lights and where are the red lights? Sometimes I have been hovering in the yellow light zone, hesitating to call something for what it was: a red light. Stopping, putting an expiry date on activities and business relationships that are going nowhere–helps me to put energy into positive initiatives. Knowing that a green light is bright green really helps me to put more focus there. Thanks so much for helping me find clarity!

I love Sharon’s traffic-light metaphor for decision-making. It’s easy to know what to do at a red or green light, but what about the yellow light? Do you take a gamble and proceed? If you are investing time and energy on a project you hope to get funded, at what point do you stop giving away expertise to forward your cause? And how do you stop, without ruining an important relationship? As we explored options and strategies, a message from BC Lottery about gambling popped into my mind:

Know your limit and play within it.

When I shared this, Sharon burst out laughing and had a flash of insight that triggered her yellow light analogy. She chose to let go of a project dear to her heart and move on. Interestingly, once she let go, she received funding a few weeks later.

TIPS FOR BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT SUCCESS

Revenue generation is part of everyone’s job functionality, no matter whether you work in a business development function for an engineering service company, sell technical solutions, or are part of the technical team for that company.

SIMPLE BRAND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

Brand development is not a new business concept.  Surprisingly, I still speak to many business owners/executives that don’t fully understand its importance.They have read about some big branding campaigns by a mammoth company like Coca-Cola, and can’t make the connection to the relevance for their business.

7 THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN NAMING A BRAND

Shakespeare was right to question – what’s in a name? As it turns out, a name can represent a lot about an entity. 

WRITE A BLOG - IN AN HOUR

What can you do in an hour?
Here's our answer: blogging. 

SAVING HACKS - TO HELP YOU CLOSE MORE SALES

I think we can all agree that a salesperson's time is their most valuable asset. I’ve been in sales longer than I can remember, so I know very well from experience just how much a salesperson’s effectfiveness can suffer by limiting their productivity and misusing their time.

Here are three time-saving tips to help you maximize the use of your time and close more sales in the process. 

1. Educate Your Target Market Through Content Marketing

Prospecting can be the most time consuming part of a salesperson’s job. What you need is a mechanism that is sure to attract the right prospects your way. Most of your target market wants to do business with someone that is recognizable and that is great at what they do. They seek out knowledgeable industry leaders that they can trust to solve their problems. Creating blogs, ebook, presentations, videos and other forms of content is a great way to achieve this and showcase your leadership in your respective industry.  

If you cringe at the thought of writing, don’t despair; there are other creative ways to achieve the same goal. For instance, you can start a video blog series featuring a tip of the week -- something brief and catchy, but more importantly, offers valuable insight that highlights your extensive knowledge in your industry. 

Upon creating content, remember to focus on real issues that matter to your target market and how they can overcome them. Don’t be afraid to share real industry knowledge. Don't worry about losing prospects that will take the information to try to execute it on their own. Trust me when I say, you don’t want to waste your time with them anyway. 

Educating your target market will help you attract a qualified prospect that already sees you as an expert. You will have a shortened sales process and you'll have more time allotted for reaching out to the right prospects, increasing your closing rate significantly along the way.

2. Marketing Automation 

Using a marketing automation tool to help you stay in touch and nurture your leads down the sales funnel. For example, if your prospect downloaded a piece of content like an ebook or white paper, this action could trigger the marketing automation.

Instead of harassing each of the leads with a phone call, you can nurture your leads with valuable emails that position you as a thought leader while building a relationship with them in the process. These emails will be dripped out over time and include call to actions that lead to other content offers and opportunities further down the sales cycle (e.g. schedule an appointment, make a purchase, etc.). 

3. Lead Scoring

I think we all can agree that the biggest waste of time for a salesperson is pursuing the wrong lead. Don’t let this happen to you by relying on mere trial and error. Take advantage of lead scoring tools that will allow you to find out which leads are the most engaged with your company's offering.

A basic lead scoring system will be able track who engages with your emails, if they convert on any offers or downloadable content, if they click through to your website and which specific pages they view. The system will give a score to each based on their engagement. You can then choose to follow up with the most engaged prospects who are most likely to convert into profitable clients.   

Employing these three elements will help you attract, convert and follow up with sales opportunities in a more efficient manner. Follow these steps and you will be optimizing your time for peak performance -- pursuing the right leads at the right moment, while building relationships with the rest of your prospects.

PITFALL FOR NEW INBOUND MARKETERS; PLANNING VS DOING

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that planning is easier than doing.  Congratulations, you’ve made the brilliant choice to pursue your marketing efforts, inbound style. Are you excited? You should be! You’re about to break barriers and dominate your industry.

TOP TEN - BOOST YOUR CREATIVITY

Does your creativity need a boost?

In order to boost your creativity, your body and mind should be operating at peak efficiency. Try these brain-juicers to optimize your mental and physical well-being:
1. Make sure you exercise.

Exercise juices up the brain with nutrients in the form of glucose. The more glucose it uses, the more active the brain. It increases oxygen in the bloodstream that is delivered to the brain, releases endorphins into the bloodstream (the runner’s high) and increases nerve connections to the brain.

Any rhythmic activity such as running, walking, swimming, scrubbing, chopping quiets mindful chatter, allowing your imagination to flow. Einstein got so many ideas while showering he installed waterproof material to record his ideas. My favourite forms of exercise are walking, hiking and yoga.

2. Open your heart

“The heart is a primary generator of rhythm in your body, influencing brain processes that control your nervous system, cognitive function and emotion. More coherent heart rhythms facilitate brain function, allowing you more access to your higher intelligence so you can improve your focus, creativity, intuition and higher-level decision-making. When you’re in heart-rhythm coherence, you perform at your best – what athletes call being in the zone. You feel confident, positive, focused and calm yet energized.” —HeartMath institute

HeartMath teaches a simple “coherence” technique for de-stressing, activating intuitive insight and heart intelligence:

Step 1: Heart Focus. Focus your attention on the area around your heart, the area in the center of your chest. If you prefer, the first couple of times you try it, place your hand over the center of your chest to help keep your attention in the heart area.

Step 2: Heart Breathing. Breathe deeply, but normally, and imagine that your breath is coming in and going out through your heart area. Continue breathing with ease until you find a natural inner rhythm that feels good to you.

Step 3: Heart Feeling. As you maintain your heart focus and heart breathing, activate a positive feeling. Recall a positive feeling, a time when you felt good inside, and try to re-experience the feeling. One of the easiest ways to generate a positive, heart-based feeling is to remember a special place you’ve been to or the love you feel for a close friend or family member or treasured pet. This is the most important step.

3. Listen to music

“Music is one of the greatest ways to enter “mind-wandering mode,” which can unlock creativity”  —Daniel J. Levitin author of This Is Your Brain On Music

Music forms new neural networks in the brain, and  influences the process of thinking and learning. Based on a study at the University of Helsinki, (2015) research shows that classical music has a tempo-regulating effect on genes responsible for generating feelings of pleasure.

Participants in the study listened to Mozart, and scientists noted greater improvement of brain function in those who were already familiar with the music compared with those who were not.

Dopamine secretion and synaptic transmissions are aided by listening to classical music, the study concluded. Dopamine helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers and is conveyed through connections made through the synaptic transmissions.

4. Try Aromatherapy to activate your brain.

One day, as I was falling asleep, while listening to endless speeches at a conference, my brain suddenly perked up when I caught a whiff of lemon from someone’s cologne. I immediately felt alert and found it much easier to pay attention to the presenter. I discovered aromatherapy really is useful and I have used it ever since revitalize or to relax.

Energizers include peppermint, cypress and lemon. Relaxants: ylang ylang, geranium and rose. creativity and aromatherapy PsychologyToday.comy seem to be linked.

A few drops of essential oils in your bath or in a diffuser will do the trick. You can also put a drop or two in a cotton ball or hanky and inhale. One caveat for the workplace; make sure no-one is allergic to the oils before you use them.

5. Feed your brain

Vitamin B is essential for brain power. Sources include peas, beans, liver, kidney, chicken and eggs. Boron is essential for memory and attention. Sources include apples, pears and green leafy vegetables. See also Dr Amen’s Seven Simple Brain-Promoting Nutritional Tips

You also need to feed your brain with diverse stimuli.

7. Hang out at a cafe

Some studies say coffee helps creativity and others say it hinders it. A new study shows that moderate noise level in busy cafés perks up your creative cognition.  As the researchers write in their paper, “Instead of burying oneself in a quiet room trying to figure out a solution, walking out of one’s comfort zone and getting into a relatively noisy environment may trigger the brain to think abstractly, and thus generate creative ideas.” The full study is published in the Journal of Consumer Research.

I personally find cafés too noisy. I feel best in forests, mountains, and light airy rooms with high ceilings.

8. Capture your daydreams.

Mind wandering, or daydreaming facilitates creative incubation. Walk away from your problem, literally. Let your mind wander, then track what you were daydreaming about. Look for clues in the images and thoughts of your daydream to find a solution to your problem. You can also capure your daydreams by keeping a journal.

9. Play with passion!

You can’t do great work without personal fulfillment. When people are growing through learning and creativity, they are much more fulfilled and give 127% more to their work. Delight yourself and you delight the world. Remember what you loved to do as a child and bring the essence of that activity into your work. This is a clue to your genius; to your natural gifts and talents. da Vinci, Edison, Einstein and Picasso all loved to play and they loved to explore.

10. Build a brain trust.

Surround yourself with inspiring people from a wide variety of fields who encourage you and stimulate your creativity. Read magazines from a wide variety of fields. Make connections between people, places and things, to discover new business opportunities, and to find solutions to your problems. This is easy to do in the age of social media. For face to face interactions, host a salon.

DOES THE ZOO LOOK LIKE YOUR OFFICE

Smart Space: Thinking Outside the Cube

Organizations demand high quality thinking and creative solutions, and yet they house the workforce in bland and boring seas of beige cubicles that don’t offend…nor do they inspire. Is this the kind of environment that produces the mind’s best work? Probably not.

THE ART OF MANAGEMENT

“Business has much to learn from the arts.”

As a pioneer in arts-based learning I’m happy to see this topic is being covered by The Economist, albeit with slight hesitation. The Schumpeter blog describes a scenario akin to two solitudes dancing, and the worlds of art and business have much to teach each other.

The art of management is more than a metaphor. Here are a few excerpts about what business can learn from the arts:

Studying the arts can help businesspeople communicate more eloquently. Most bosses spend a huge amount of time “messaging” and “reaching out”, yet few are much good at it. Their prose is larded with clichés and garbled with gobbledegook. Half an hour with George Orwell’s “Why I Write” would work wonders.

Studying the arts can also help companies learn how to manage bright people. Publishers coax books out of tardy authors. Directors persuade actresses to lock lips with actors they hate. Their tips might be worth hearing.

Studying the art world might even hold out the biggest prize of all—helping business become more innovative. Companies are scouring the world for new ideas (Procter and Gamble, for example, uses “crowdsourcing” to collect ideas from the general public). They are also trying to encourage their workers to become less risk averse (unless they are banks, of course). In their quest for creativity, they surely have something to learn from the creative industries.

SETTING UP YOUR STUDIO OR CREATIVE SPACE

“I have done some really good work under the worst circumstances and some pretty awful stuff in a well organized, pristine studio.”

—Shirley Erskine

COMMITTED OR INTERESTED

A few years ago I saw an interview conducted by Charlie Rose featuring abstract painter Brice Marden. The interview was conducted during a huge retrospective that Marden had at MoMA – 

QUOTABLE QUOTE BY MICHAELANGELO

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.” -Michelangelo Buonarroti

THE IMPORTANCE OF MENTORS

“Success leaves clues.”—Anthony Robbins

What is a mentor? Well, according to Oxford’s Dictionary of Current English a mentor is “an experienced and trusted advisor”. So in order for someone to be your mentor they would have to have had certain life 

4 MARKETING REPORTS YOU NEED TO CREATE

Inbound marketing is a science. Every tactic is measurable, every campaign is data driven, and performance indications are delivered to marketers in real time, enabling them to develop strategies agile than ever before.