Most helpful. Thanks for the link, too.

Peter:

The visualizing success suggestion is another good one. You are dead right about the need for assurance.

Ford Harding

Peter’s blog is a visual knockout for anyone who hasn’t seen it.

FH

The need to identify, clarify and manage expectations. Upwards management is a skill in itself.

The second is the need to feel positive – which includes (on a mini-level) breathing exercises – but there is much, much, much more to it. The best time to win a pitch is just after you have won another pitch. The client can smell the success.

On the flip-side, the client can also smell desperation or fear or failure.

If there are no “other successful” pitches to focus on, she needs to reframe past successes (they don’t all need to be in business) and take that mindset into the room.

Confidence is key in selling professional services – these people don’t have the time or the patience for any timidity, uncertainty or need. They only want experts who are sure of themselves. They must need you – otherwise the conversation will be over soon!

I think your initial comments were right on point as I do your followup. My concern for Lenore is that the pressure she feels has, at times, been counter productive. Your suggestion to focus on serving is one way to help with this problem. Whether it will be sufficient by itself–and you may not have been suggesting that it will–time will tell.

My goal is to identify as many avenues as possible to help her deal with the stress she feels so that it doesn’t get in the way of her succeeding. My suspicision is that she will need to do a number of things. Focusing on service and making sure she knows where she stands with her boss are two good ones. Are there more? (I ask this last question more generally, not just of you, Mel.) One of the benefits of blogging is the potential to access many perspective and ideas quickly. The longer the list of ways to help Lenore, the better the chances of finding the ones that will work in her specific case. I have an analagous case at another firm, with a man I will call Chester. He is a different person in a different firm, and I suspect the answers for him will differ from the best ones for Lenore. But, the answers can be found in the same broad list of options. It is the options list that I want to assemble and enhance. You and Clifton and Ian have all helped in doing that.

Thanks for the comment.

Ford Harding

I wonder then, if there is also an element of performance anxiety mingled in there too – and that may be something to address.

I must admit, “stage fright” has never been a big issue for me (quite the reverse) so I don’t feel really qualified to comment too much on this area.

In my spare time though, I have been through quite a bit of training in the performing arts. It might be interesting/useful for Lenore to look there for inspiration. Correct breathing is one important factor (breathing from the diaphragm rather than the inter-costal muscles) and I learned a basic technique for good breathing before going “on stage” which can be used before presentations or whenever stress sets in too. The basic technique is :

* Breathe in slowly, for a count of four
* Hold it for four beats
* Breathe out slowly, for a count of eight
* Hold it for four beats once more before you breathe in again

Keep your shoulders level while doing this rather than letting them rise.

Breathing like this helps in two ways – it apparently effects hormone release (and gets more oxygen into the blood) – and it also takes your mind of the problem because you’re focusing on your breathing. It also really helps the sound of your voice!

There are also mental exercises performers run through which help them to ease the stress. A good example is: http://www.davidleisner.com/guitarcomposer/noname.html

Hope this helps

Ian

I certainly didn’t intend to ignore the need to generate more leads. But let’s consider why professionals don’t generate enough leads and, even worse, fumble or neglect most of the leads they do uncover. The primary hindrance in my experience of working with professionals is a general discomfort with selling. I’ve witnessed that when professionals shift the focus from selling to serving, sales activity increases–sometimes dramatically. Research indicates that the biggest obstacle to effective selling is one’s mindset, not method or markets. I suspect that’s the main reason Lenore finds herself in such a precarious position.

Mel

Excellent suggestions. It is easy to infer more pressure than is intended in today’s environment. And keeping one’s professional perspective is important, if hard when you are a breadwinner, too.

Any thoughts on breathing exercises? Managing one’s physical self is a part of the issue.

Ford

In terms of purely reducing pressure to allow Lenore to perform well at the upcoming pitch, there are probably three factors to think about:

1) The real pressure her boss is exerting on her to hit the numbers.

2) The perception she has that her boss is pressuring her to hit the numbers (which may be more than the real pressure).

3) The degree to which this pressure is affecting her focus on the upcoming pitch.

For 1 and 2, a productive discussion with her boss about the upcoming pitch, and Plan B if they don’t win will at least help her understand what the real pressure is. It may be that her boss will be fine with her bringing in the leads later. It may even be that she can enlist his help with other lead generation activities. Either way, at least she will know where she stands and it may well be less of a make-or-break pitch than she thinks.

In terms of not allowing the pressure to win to put her off her game – I’ve always found that (similar to Mel) if I focus on working with the client to design the very best solution for them (rather than pitching how good I am) then I can get so engrossed in that intellectually that I somewhat forget the pressure to win. And focusing on what’s best for the client usually helps me win.

Ian

As you say, one way for Lenore to reduce the pressure is to get more leads. She works at this, though they are harder to come by than they were eighteen months ago.

Mel

The suggestion to focus on service is a good one. It is important to remind ourselves that one determinant of who is a professional is service by always putting the client’s interest first. That mindset may help Lenore.

Still, there are bills to pay.

Ford Harding