A Checkup from the Neck up

Stinkin’ thinkin’ kills! It zaps your energy, stunts your growth and makes you an all around dull, boring person. We all tell ourselves incredibly stupid lies about ourselves, especially when we’re stressed….like during a career transition. When you need to be at your best, you may find that you’re letting that peanut gallery in your brain take over. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between those lies and what’s real. So when you create negative thoughts and messages, it’s reality to you. When you tell yourself things like “I’m really not that good; “I was just lucky.”. “If they only knew how stupid I really am.” “I’ll never get what I really want.” – you’re re-enforcing negative thoughts about yourself. This thought process sabotages your confidence.

Here’s a few ways to change your “head trash” to “head treasures”

1. Create 2-3 positive statements and repeat them daily; i.e. “I am successful. “I am valued.” “My business is growing.”
2. Begin to act “as if” and project yourself as being confident and successful.
3. Avoid negative people and people who don’t believe in you.
4. Pay attention to your thought process and when you find yourself taking a negative turn, mentally stop the negative conversation.
5. Expect the best to happen. Be optimistic.

How does being positive benefit you? You achieve success faster and easier. You have more energy. You are happier and people want to help you. You have greater personal power and people respect you. Life is fun and you are a powerful, positive force in the world.

Our Own Rules For Cold Calls.

You're finally at the stage in your job search process where you've talked to all your personal contacts twice. You've reached your goal of getting at least three names from them to follow up with. You've also completed everything on your "things to do around the house" list and cleared the entire backyard for your a new garden..

But now you realize that you've put it off as long as you can and find yourself perilously close to stating to enter into the cold lonely, cave called the "cold call" zone. Anyone who's gone through a job search, knows this lonely place. You become paralyzed, dry mouthed, stuttery, dull, boring and generally uninteresting. You shuffle toward the phone, punch in the number and become, anything but the confident, focused, accomplished professional are you. Your mind starts racing, you're sweating, and wishing no one will answer.

Cold calling is even more dreaded than networking and rightly so. For some people, cold calling can be heart stopping. Any yet, cold calling is definitely a short cut to connecting with the people who can help you move forward toward your next position quickly. So, given that we know we're going to make these calls - let's set up some different rules for ourselves and because they're our rules, we can change them whenever we want. The only rule that's etched in stone is: Make The Cold Calls!!!

• Our Rule #1 - Stand up while making your phone call. Chances are good that the person you're calling will be sitting down, so standing up puts you in a place of power psychologically. Your voice delivery and confidence is enhanced. Believe that the person you're talking to interested in taking to you. Smile while you're talking and try not pace.


• Our Rule #2 - Know what your goal is for the call. Your goal is NOT to ask the CEO for job.... your goal is get a personal meeting i.e. take the CEO out for lunch and find out what challenges the company is facing. Research the company and get the latest news about new products, services, acquisitions, mergers, etc. Even better ask one of your contacts who knows the CEO to make an introduction for you. The CEO isn't expecting your call, so you have about 7 seconds to get their attention and want to listen to you.(For all you busy CEO's out there, please take at least one call cold a week. You could very well be on the other end of the line one day soon and hoping someone will take your call!)
  
• Our Rule #3 - Practice making these calls. Decide what you're doing to say i.e. "Hi, my name is Jan Marino and I was referred to Mr Ward by Dan Harris. Does he have a few minutes to talk to me? If you don't get through to the CEO be sure that you get the email so that you can send an email referring to your earlier call and asking for a meeting.


• Our Rule #4 - When you do get to meet with the CEO ( and you will) make sure you ask them "What keeps you up at night?" Make sure you follow up on the answer to see how you can help this poor person get some sleep!