Who?
 

Who built all of your Windmills, frustrated Don Quioxte?
Who put you on your treadmills, delegated you a toady?

Who keeps you from doing something new?

Who has you locked up in your cell? Who has sentenced you a living hell?

Who does your thinking day by day? Who tells you what you must say?
Who is the director whom gives your cue?

Who claims you are just one of many? Who says you're worth just a penny?

Exactly who,

makes you...

YOU?

Gordon Jay Alexander
Copyright 2017

Re: Who?
 

That was great! I really enjoyed reading that. It's Marcus, I sent you an email recently.

It reminds me of the SQ1 Lesson 1 that I just read (and will copy out) from your reply on the post of your other recent poem. Specifically, how we either surrender choices or make them for ourselves, however: even in the case of surrendered choices, we have still made the choice to surrender our choice.

And that idea ties in directly with an idea I've been playing with recently about the terms "takeaway selling" and "control" and how I had decided to articulate it in a new way, which is "leadership".

Because "control" makes you apt to feel negative about it, whereas leadership rightfully communicates that you are doing something good in the situation. In selling, you are leading them to the right solution.

And sales leadership can be what really separates the wheat from the chaff in selling. You want the prospect to make the choice to follow your lead. Through trust and everything else, including take away selling.

It all has to do with becoming the leader. You can do that either by displaying strengths or exploiting weaknesses and the best way to do it is determined by who you are addressing.

Either way, you are offering a solution that is either more strengthy (made up word) or that can shore up that weakness, so it is ethical. That's why I decided to call it "leadership" because nobody likes to be "controlled"

In the case of a product, you want them to allow you to give them your product as a solution to their problem. They set out to solve a problem, and they decided to give you the leadership role in solving it once they saw your solution.

In any interaction where decisions are to be made, one person will be doing it to another, isn't that right? Whether it is ideas or anything else.

The really "chaffy" stuff (as opposed to "wheaty" stuff) is when a salesperson gives the leadership role to their client. That's when nobody knows where things are headed because they came to you for an answer and you are looking to them to lead!

This is just one small (but very significant) part of my understanding.

Anyways, I was chatting with a couple of the people here and I am thinking of starting a thread on take away selling to that effect, explaining it within that context.

Would love to chat soon.

Food for thought...
 

Hello Marcus,

I like your "leadership" spin.

Your other post inspired me to look up "take-away selling". Powerful stuff.

Now about the salesperson giving the leadership role to the client...Hmmm

How do you lead the client from where he is to where he needs to be?

For instance, you have a client who says he needs Solution 401. But from your experience and analysis, you KNOW he needs to start with the rudimentary and less sexy Solution 101.

And the client is the one with the money. He more or less pays our bills.

How do we lead him to humble himself to start with the basics?

Re: Food for thought...
 

That's a very good question. And I suppose that there are probably several answers to the "how" question that you have asked, depending on the specific scenario.

I'm assuming in this one that you are actively speaking with the client, instead of communicating all of this through sales letters, implications, systems, etc. because for those, there are a different set of solutions.

Assuming that you are talking to the client, then if the person has arrived at solution 401 when they should be on 101, then something has already gone awry. A confrontation of sorts is necessary.

The longer the conversation goes on without this confrontation, the harder it will (at least seem to) be to reinstate your authority to lead. It is your job as a responsible leader to not let the tourist guide the tour wherever they feel like going. They will get lost.

However, to really understand this, we really have to go back to the very beginning of the interaction. Because by this point, something has already gone awry.

In fact, we have to go all the way back to that very first 1/10,000th of a second BEFORE the very first impressions were being made.

This is the basis of everything I understand and teach. The first 10,000th of a second is the most powerful. Why do I say that, and what does it mean?

Well, the first 1/10,000th of a second is concerned with who you are at the exact moment that you encounter the client. It has to do with your predisposition, beliefs, attitudes, your state, and millions of other unseen factors that are coalescing as who you are at that exact moment.

That's where all of the power comes from. Let me explain it in another way before I get to how to use this. Because it is imminently useable, it is more useable than anything else I have ever found in life - it makes this stuff literally as easy as snapping your fingers once you "get" it.

And that's all it takes. In fact, I am teaching you the knack of "getting it" I'm going to teach you "how to 'get the knack' of anything". It's a breeze, it's like falling off of a log. Getting the "hang" of it. But let me explain it in one more way first.

You can think about who you are as either existing or being defined by several categories. Most people in the world today are in the category of "getting" - what that means is if I make $100,000 a year, that's who I think I am. I am the guy with the Ferrari or the gal with the cute boyfriend drinking a Starbucks and buying clothes at the mall.

If the person is not constantly fulfilling their "getting-ness", they will start to feel unfulfilled and bored, etc.

The second level is doing. People at this level define themselves by what they do. I sell cars, I ski on the weekends, I travel a lot, I went to the Genesis concert, I went skydiving, I hitchhiker across North America and played in a rock band or I saw so-and-so and shook the president's hand.

People at this level are primarily concerned with creating certain experiences. They could be fulfilled and feel really competent when they are skiing but when they get injured they can't go and do much of anything so it is just terrible for them.

They can still have a bad day, however they are much better off than the getting people. Doing something lasts for quite a while, maybe a whole day. Whereas getting something has an even more temporary sheen. But neither of these is a permanent condition of happiness or success.

At some point in your life, maybe when you are laying your head down at the end of the night, you will find yourself having to stop doing and getting and just be.

And that is the final and most powerful level - being. This is the person who defines themselves by who they are, not by what they have done or are going to do but by who they are. I am a caring person, I have a great sense of humor, I am content and accepting of who I am.

If you find true happiness with who you are, that is something that you can take with you at all times, it doesn't cost any money and it doesn't matter which activity you happen to be doing, or even whether you are good at it or not. You can do something badly and give it 100% because you are already happy with who you are as a person.

That's the place you want to get to.

And also, Gordon J talks about states, this is very similar/May in fact be the same thing. But if you think about it, you do the things you do and you have made the decisions to get the things you have gotten because of who you are.

Every decision, every mistake, every challenge. It all comes from this mysterious entity "who" which resides at the core of your being.

We try to "fix" this who or make it feel better by getting things or by doing things a certain way. And some ways of getting and doing do lead to a certain type of being experience.

But you can see that it is always something about our being that we are trying to achieve with getting and doing. Feel better, feel more confident, if I just do this or if I just get this thing, then so-and-so's will admire me or I can be famous if I do this, or I can finally feel calm if I could take a permanent vacation by either having the best internet business or winning the lottery.

Even if you chart it from a timeline perspective, when you wake up in the morning what you do exists as a future possibility or a past story, and what you get is all in the future or the past.

Who you are is the only thing that exists at all times.

Now, to make the final point that ties all of this together: this is all cart-before-horse (in the real sense). Since being determines what you do, how you do it, and why you do it, which determines your results, why don't we focus on that first?

The answer: because everybody thinks this is abstract mumbo-jumbo! At this point everything you've been taught is screaming "this doesn't make sense!" - but do not worry, I have been there.

Have you ever been listening to a great teacher, or someone who everyone says is a great teacher, and you are just so curious as to why they are the way that they are? Gary Halbert comes to mind. Totally whacky, and many times would insult people for stupid questions.

He was trying to get people to "be" like him. And that's the secret. That's the whole secret.

It is true, when you have become a certain way, doing becomes effortless. If you "were" Gary Halbert, then writing s million dollar ad would be effortless, right? Well, many people who followed him did find their "inner Gary" and they did come to effortlessly write great ads.

In fact, the harder you"try" oftentimes the greater the struggle. To just "do" you have to allow yourself to "just be".

Why do we copy ads in our own handwriting? So we can "get it", so we can experience the type of "being" that the writers had, so that we can experience their salesmanship.

Salesmanship is a type of being, it is not really a series of tactics. Once you understand the being, great sales ideas flow out of you effortlessly because you have the knack for it. You understand the objective, the terrain, the challenges and you have become great at it.

But if you could skip the tricks and the learning of endless tactics and focus directly on the becoming, then you'd literally be able to take years off of your learning curve.

From the first 1/10,000th of a second you would be dialed in and selling would be effortless.

This post is getting long, so it will have to be continued. But in the next post, I will explain how to focus directly on the level of being so that you can effectively lead every conversation you enter, especially within a sales context.

I didn't answer the question specifically, however I am answering the question by pointing to the right question. Does the customer choose the 401 when they should be on the 101, or is it really who you are that does so? Read the poem at the top of this thread to find out.

"All together now..."
 

"...WOW!"

Marcus, you just delivered a MASTERCLASS in pre-suasion,
leadership and everything in between.

You hit the nail on the head about reinstating the authority. I guess I must have overdosed on all those "customer is always right" lessons.

Fixing the WHO is certainly key to the positioning I get in the marketplace.

I love how you break things down. I've already started applying some tips I got from my little research on "take-away selling", a term I learnt from YOU.

(I'm still waiting for the post you promised on that)

In short, our clients' reactions can be FEEDBACK in letting us know how our leadership is going.

If the emperor has no clothes, the people will keep making snide remarks about his...er...face - instead of following him.

Thanks for the brain juice!

Re: "All together now..."
 

You're welcome, unpinkpanther.

I'm going to bring the Pictogrigm of Persuasion into this post. This will be fun and altogether shorter than the last one.

I was thinking about the word "confrontation" from my previous post and Gordon J's teachings.

The "confrontation" is like the "wow" in the Pictogrigm of Persuasion. You know, the "rock" that you throw to interrupt the pattern, to get a response.

In a back-and-forth sales conversation, there is a dynamic that whoever throws the "wow" that becomes the dominant pattern interrupter is the leader of the conversation.

There is a point that can really feel like a confrontation if you are both throwing "wow's" at each other. This is the meaning of the saying:

"A sale is always being made. Either you will sell the prospect on why they should buy or the prospect will sell you on the reason that they won't buy."

Either it will be the salesperson or the prospect leading. If you follow the prospect's "wow" - they are going to convince you that they don't need to buy anything. That's what they say more often than not, right?

"Just looking" sound familiar to anyone.

But if they follow your "wow", then they will buy. And that's your whole job and responsibility as the leader - is to provide a suitable solution and convince them to take part in it. The money exchange is more of a matter of logistics.

Everything costs money, including your services as the leader of this expedition, correct?

Anyways, here was the really interesting point I was going to make. Let's go back to the 1/10,000 second thing again.

When you have a tool like the Pictogrigm of Persuasion, this tool goes directly into your subconscious mind where it resides.

Because it is a picture, it can be recalled by both sides of the brain at a moment's notice, like recognizing the house you grew up in. Especially if you write it out in your own handwriting with both hands, backwards and forwards, possibly multiple times.

If you are familiar with it to the point where it is an instant recognition, then you don't need to memorize specific rules of persuasion anymore.

You will keep coming up with your own creative "wows" to persuade other people, and you will see that they are throwing "wows" in your direction.

But you don't need to remember what So-and-so said in page 32 of her book about such-and-such a tactic. Because you have the overall "picture" embedded in your subconscious mind.

Make sense? Catch you on the flip side.

P.S. I'll come back, maybe tomorrow if I have some time, to complete the post on take away selling. :D

Thank you and congrats.
 

You are one of the few who personalized and INTERNALIZED the SQ1 POP over the last 17 years. Good job.

Now add to it, the PICTOGRIGM of PreOccupations and you can quickly get to the WOW they would be most amenable to, at the time of your Intersection.

Maybe it is time, I start explaining the SQ1 a bit more general, letting people figure it out on their own, has produced a very small group of people, who get it and APPLY IT. I thank you for that.

GordonJ

Personal responsibility...
 

Hi Gordon,

I don't know if I get all the nuances of this poem... However, one thing this does make me think about is personal responsibility.

Unless you take personal responsibility, you'll never be a success, in my opinion.

Blaming other people for all your problems might make you feel good in the short term... However, you're sacrificing your long-term success.

The reason why is because unless you take personal responsibility, you can't improve yourself!

Thanks Gordon!

Best wishes,

Dien

How do you make it real?
 

How do you make responsibility real?

For instance, you have a new project you want to embark on. You've weighed the pros and cons and you clearly see the benefits of taking the step.

But you still have that nagging fear: what if it doesn't work?

And the fear holds you inactive.

By now, you already know all the affirmations and chants "If it is to be, it is up to me", "screw it; let's do it", "just do it!" and so on

Yet you still can't kick that nagging fear.

How do you get yourself to act?

Re: How do you make it real?
 

The way that I do it is I see it all as upside possibility. There is nothing to lose. It is already as bad as it can be in the state of nonexistence.

For example, a promotion that doesn't exist is the worst kind. It can get you 0% response. Even the worst promotion ever is going to have a 0.0000001% response. So you are always improving with everything you do.

If you make a mistake, then you correct it but that is still a positive because you learned from your mistake and got a course correction. So you HAD to go through that in order to learn not to do that or you would have kept doing it forever.

Since we live in a world of certain limits, there will come an end to the mistakes that you can make and one day, you will be left with something that is very successful. Like Thomas Edison and the lightbulb. 10,000 mistakes to find one success.

But ue knew that we lived in a world of certain limits and that he could not make infinite mistakes, eventually he would have to hit upon the secret to his success in that field.

So the sooner you can race through the mistakes you have to make to get there, the better off you will be.

The way I do it is I understand that we live in a world of certain limits and that I am going to make mistakes until I finally hit on super success. And then even then I might make different mistakes, but I would be able to used what I learned so far and get back and go higher because of the lessons learned from those different mistakes.

So I accept the process of making mistakes and learning first. Then I become determined to blast through to the very edge of the limits of the mistakes that I can make as fast as possible so I can start to get to those successes. Never make the same mistake twice but make all of them once as quickly as possible and move past them as quickly as possible, that's my mindset.

At the same time, I want to learn the right way as quickly as possible. That's why having a mentor like Gordon is super powerful because he can cut years off of your learning curve.

So having that "world of limits" attitude COMBINED with constantly being on the lookout for the right way and trying assiduously to avoid the wrong way.

It's kind of a matter of "where should I steer myself?" As close as possible to the right way as possible, while still realizing I'm still going to need to make some mistakes until I actually get it.

And I've discovered a way to hone in which has made all the difference in my life. Anyways, that's how I do if.