58 It’s not magic

Over the last few months I have been contracted to train many sales people and managers for large corporates like MTN, Old Mutual Bank, and Transnet among many others. At then end of every training session I always include a section that can loosely be called motivation.

Motivating people is not difficult, the real challenge is to make people see that they can motivate themselves. Encourage them to believe that they capable of far more than they are achieving right now and giving them the skills to achieve that greatness. I can help people to go away from a seminar all pumped up but the challenge is to ensure that lasts longer than the trip home.

So how do you do that?

Well... I am glad you asked.

There are two things involved here.

Thing One: The first is skills. People like to go away with a set of skills, tasks if you like, that will help them motivate themselves. I do not have the space to go over these skills here, but if you are interested you can look on my web site under the description of my book “The Will to Win” (www.richardmulvey.com)

Thing Two: The second is Attitude. Again I could talk about this until the house gets tidied, but I would like to underline it’s importance by telling you about a phone call I received a year ago.

Ring... Ring

(Me) “Hello, Richard speaking”

(Angry customer) (I could tell he was angry because he started by saying... ) “Richard, I am angry.”

(Me) “I am sorry to hear that John (Not his real name) (Actually his real name is Brian), how can I help you?”

(John) “Richard.. I attended tour Seminar called the ‘Will to Win’ 6 months ago"

(Me) "Oh yes, how did you enjoy it?"

(John) "It was fantastic, I had a great time, but that's not the point. After your presentation I bought your book by the same name."

(Me) "That's kind of you, did you enjoy it?"

(John) "Yes, I thought at the time it was a very good book, short and to the point but with everything I needed to know. I read it twice. I then decided to make a difference to my life so I followed everything you said in your book. I wrote down my goals. They were unrealistic goals, of course, so that I was stretching myself beyond my belief system. I wrote them down as if I had already achieved them and dated them so I was makings a commitment. Since then I have taken out my goals every morning and focussed on them. I have visualised them in the way you taught us but here I am, 6 months down the line, and I am still in the same job I was six months ago. It doesn't work!"

(Me) "Oh.... I am sorry to hear that John. But what have you changed?"

(John) "Changed? I told you what I changed! I wrote down my goals, I focused on them each........

(Me) Interrupting..... "Yes yes, I know all that, but what are you doing differently apart from that?"

(John) "Well... err..... nothing!"

(Me) "Well what do you expect? This is not magic! I can't wave a magic wand in a Potteresque swoop chanting "Vocation Exchangeus" and suddenly you have a new occupation. If you do the same things this year as you did last year you are going to get the same results. If you want different results this year you have to do things differently."

I wont go on with the rest of the conversation but I should tell you that we talked for another 30 minutes and by the end of that week Brian (err John) had resigned and is now doing very nicely working from home.

As the saying goes, we cannot move the mountain to Mohammed. But maybe, just maybe, however, we may be able to motivate Mohammed to go to the mountain. That's what this is all about.

I have just read through this dialogue and I realise that this is not the best way to handle customers phoning in with a complaint. Maybe I will look at that next week.

Thanks Brian for giving me permission to write this article, I hope you agree that this was the essence of your phone call. R