Why Fusion Points© are a must.
In our last post, we discussed the science of persistence and the definition of Fusion Points©.
If you missed it—click here to readThe solution to self-motivation is found in creating your personal Fusion Points©.
Creating your personal Fusion Points© may be the most important selling skill you must master.
After all, I believe that a lack of Fusion Points© may be the number one reason people give up on a career in sales. Quite frankly, I also believe it is the reason for most of the bad decisions made in many areas of our lives.
“The result of decisions made at collision points is destructive. When our negative emotions are the dominant force that connects with our logic, the outcomes are quitting, lashing out, refusing to make sales calls, and blaming others for our lack of success.”
“On the other hand, the results of decisions made at Fusion Points© are beneficial. When our positive emotions are the dominant force that connects with our logic, the results of those decisions are perseverance, tenacity, creativity, and success.”
– Jeff C. West
So, obviously, we want to create our personal Fusion Points© so that our decisions are life-building.
To do that, we must have a logical plan for our success that, when followed, will bring our desired results.
Then we must counterbalance the weight of our negative emotions
by intentionally adding weight (by adding experiences) to our positive emotions.
Think about the advice given by mothers over the generations: Feed a cold; starve a fever. When it comes to your success, you must feed your positive emotions and starve your negative emotions.
One of the greatest mistakes made by salespeople and sales leaders is thinking that the logical side of the equation should be enough to make them or their teams successful. That is why so much effort and money is spent by companies to improve their training programs. After all, we consider ourselves logical people. So the logic of a great training program should be enough.
Most of us were also taught that we should keep our emotions out of our decision-making process.
Well, the idea of keeping emotions in check during the decision-making process may have worked for the character Mr. Spock in the Star Trek franchise, but it doesn’t have a chance with us earthlings.
When a salesperson persists, works harder, and succeeds, it is because they made the decision to do so. And, as Dr. Damasio stated, all decisions are made with a combination of logic and emotion. When a company focuses all of its efforts on fulfilling the logical requirement of the decision, without also investing significant efforts into meeting the emotional requirement in a positive way, their retention of salespeople never improves.
Instead, the leadership finds itself wondering how they could have such fantastic training and still be struggling to find and keep good salespeople.
In his article “Faces of Product Pleasure: 25 Positive Emotions in Human-Product Interactions,” Pieter M. A. Desmet of Delft University of Technology gives a thorough list of the positive emotions we experience. He states that “Different emotions have been shown to have different effects on behavior.”
Feed your positive emotions of love, joy, desire, hope, courage, pride, confidence, inspiration, and satisfaction.
Do this by all of the following:
- Read fifteen minutes per day. Articles or books designed to grow your positive emotions are listed above.
- Listen to at least one podcast or recording daily that builds your positive emotions.
- Practice positive self-talk. Intentionally verbalize the things that you want rather than what you do not want. For example, it is better to say, “I will succeed,” as opposed to “I will not fail.”
- Place positive reminders around you that you can see regularly.
Sales leaders must help their sales teams understand and embrace this concept, and focus them on finding their personal Fusion Points©. Sales leaders should also intentionally create experiences and environments that result in Fusion Points© between their sales team and their company.
QUESTION: What book did you read last?
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