Living On Autopilot, Changing Habits To Create Breakthroughs
Ah yes, the good old autopilot. The brunt of all of the jokes around my house when we talk to our neighbour “who’s a pilot….” We banter the idea that pilots really don’t do much work, I mean really! The plane almost takes off, fly’s, and lands by itself!! Now that’s funny! (not really but he takes it like a champ) So let’s dive into it shall we? We have all been there, where you might ask? On autopilot, letting your habits control your actions. Ever got home then stopped and thought to yourself, “how did I get here?”. When the drive from your office was more of a blur that a journey? When you step out of your car and the last thing you remembered was getting in your car at the office? Oh ya, we’ve all been there, on more than one occasion I’m sure!
Nice Sunday drive over a train track sitting 10 feet high! Why Not? It’s a beautiful day!
That’s living or operating on habit, auto pilot, or you can even call it your subconscious. Whatever you choose to call it, the fact remains that most of us live most of our lives in this “zone”. Now this place could be really good, if your in the “zone” when you play sports, you know it. You just can’t do anything wrong, when your actions are almost Matrix like… (When Neo dodges the bullets for the first time). That my friends, is a great place to be! This is a place where breakthroughs happen, and happen often! Then there’s the habits or your auto pilot times that don’t serve you all that well. These are the times when you continue to do the same thing and expect different results. Can I share something? Breakthroughs never happen when you are stuck in a limiting habit! Have a look at any of the images in this post. Do you think that any of these driver’s actually wanted to end up where they were? I would like to think NOT. They were driving like you do on the way home from work, they were on autopilot. Let’s take sales for a great example of how we get stuck in this ever turning pattern of habit, that most of the time, doesn’t serve us. At the time of writing this article, I have been selling for both asset and non-asset based companies in the transportation industry for over two decades, and let me tell you first hand… I have done the same thing and expected different results many times. (ssshhh, don’t tell anyone!)
Do you think this driver was driving with his conscious or subconscious mind?
Like sales in most, if not all industries The most common perception is, it’s all about volume. It’s sayings like “If your not hearing no 100 times today, your not making enough calls.” Yes, there is something to be said about volume and hitting more people to attain better results, I mean if you hit enough people, one must be ready to switch suppliers right? Yes and no! Here is one idea that can spice up your sales and give you a new habit to help you create the breakthroughs you deserve, maybe even a new “zone” to operate in. So you have a few choices when it comes to gathering new prospects right? I am going to focus on Transportation as I’ve been selling it for over half my life. So the way I see it here are a few of the most common ways we go about getting prospects.
- Cold Calls
- Warm Leads
- Calling Shippers (That are not clients)
- Calling Receivers (That are not clients)
- Referrals
- Walk Ins
Today’s post is going to deal with Cold Calls: Now I have always said that I would love to take a survey to find out how many sales people completely dislike… Wait lets be realistic here. How many of you HATE Cold Calling? (Make sure to leave us a comment!). Most sales people I speak with hate cold calling, however, they also know that without it, it’s possible that your sales won’t grow in the way you would want, that is if you only apply a few systems to your sales. Here is a quick way to change your perspective on cold calling: Figure out how many calls you make to close a sale, then take the average profit from a sale. Now with that information, you’re armed with two really valuable keys to your new cold calling paradigm. Take the number of calls and divide it by the average profit per client. You take that number create a bill out of it and tape that to the back of your phone.
Now this is quite an unusual thing to see on a highway no?
Lets look at an example: So you make 50 calls on average to get a new client. A new client brings you $100.00 in profit. So in essence, every call put $2.00 in your pocket. So when you now look at your call volume for the day, month, or year. You have a number, something visual to look at each time you hang up the phone. So no matter how the call goes, you can now say thank you to the prospect when you hang up, because they just put a cool $2.00 in your pocket. Hey after three calls, Starbucks, Here I come! Do you see how this little action that isn’t in your habit zone can change your perception and when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. So if you were to use this simple and easy to implement idea when cold calling, do you thing the habit of not making the amount of calls you need to make to close the deal would change? Of course it would, Why? Great question and we’ll share the answer before we close out this post. When you see a result, even a small incremental one, it changes the vibration inside and this in turn changes the way you think about your task. Here’s the thing! As humans we make decisions to do things based on several types of emotions, but all of them can be reduced to two main drives that control our entire life, they are:
- The Desire For Pleasure
- The Avoidance Of Pain
That’s it. If the desire for the pleasure out weighs your avoidance of pain, you will do it. If not, you will make excuses. Don’t believe me? Stop and think about a time when you really should have completed an act, job, or challenge but you thought that it was going to be too tough, too hard. To avoid the pain maybe you procrastinated, tried to rationalize lies to yourself to make it better. Whatever it was, it is these two main controls that drive you.
Make your desire for pleasure stronger than your fear of pain and you have the winning vibration
Next post we will dive into value and referrals! Have a great week!
