Do you think that your pricing is right considering the value you bring to your clients? In this Expert Insight Interview, Chris Kenney discusses how to raise your fees and start selling high end. Chris Kenney is a business leverage expert, and he primarily teaches business coaches and consultants on how to level up their services into high-end selling.

The interview discusses:

• How to change the belief system to start higher pricing
• How to overcome the doubt and gain confidence

The Belief System

The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make regarding charging their fees is that they charge based on the time spent because by doing that, they massively undercharge their results. As an entrepreneur, your pricing fee should represent the value you bring to the client and not the amount of time you spent to deliver that value. For example, you can teach someone a new skill set in two weeks, but once they learn it, they will have and use that skill for a lifetime. The key to starting to charge higher prices is in changing your belief system.

Our beliefs come from our subconscious mind, so what we have to do is to activate our mind. To do that, we start with the visualization practice. When we visualize ourselves as charging the higher fees, our subconscious mind thinks that we have sold for a higher price indeed while our conscious mind knows that we haven’t. Those two create structural tension in our mind, which increases our desire to sell at higher prices. Another thing that impacts our mind by visualization is a reticular activating system. This system filters the information in our minds, so by visualizing, we will be able to see the people, resources, and other things that we need to advance in our work.

Risk Pays Off

Even just from the thought of increasing the charging fees, many people start to feel the imposter syndrome. However, in this case, you have to trust the process. By quoting the higher price and taking the risk, it is natural to feel a bit scared, but at the same time, your delivery will shift to better. And eventually, the confidence will come with experience. Furthermore, this is a more emotional than practical process. We all have triggers that hold us down, and one of the most common ones is the need to be liked. For someone who quotes the higher prices for the first time, almost always the reaction from the other person will be adverse, which allows self-doubt again. So, the key is in staying committed to the goal despite adversity and rejections.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Many things happen at work that we do not address enough or sometimes not at all, which affect women’s engagement at work. In this Expert Insight Interview, Alessandra Wall discusses the importance for women to speak up on burnout and the pushback they face in the workplace. Alessandra Wall is a business consultant, speaker, psychologist, and CEO of Life in Focus Coaching Inc., helping women to develop deeply satisfying careers and companies to attract and retain exceptional women.

The interview discusses:

• Unconscious bias against women
• Wonder Women effect at the workplace
• Things that men overlook concerning female coworkers

Unconscious Bias

The way how we socialize in the professional environment is often unconsciously biased towards women. Being nice for women in business means doing everything people ask them to do. Being humble means not communicating the impact they make in projects while being kind means not saying no to anything because then they would not be team players. The reason for unconscious bias is because we lack full self-awareness, and we are prone to avoid things that make us uncomfortable. Thus, the company should put in place a system to help employees gain self-awareness and practice it regularly. Other people can identify our patterns more clearly, so pairing up people enables the use of objectivity in the right way. When we realize our bias, we get defensive, so the goal is to rise above it and to take action to change it. The change should start with small, practical, and doable steps, so thinking of only one person we treated this way and changing our behavior towards that person is a great start.

The “Wonder Women” Effect

It is a common situation that company leaders are not aware of their top-performing women trying to leave their jobs. These women always say yes to all new tasks. They also never voice out their overwhelm, portraying themselves as a “Wonder Woman” on the outside, when indeed they are slowly burning out inside. Hence, to avoid the “Wonder Women” effect, women must take ownership of their roles regarding what their responsibilities are at the workplace.

Men Can Help

There are some things that men overlook when it comes to their female coworkers that could make a significant impact on women’s satisfaction and engagement at work. Firstly, management delegates more tasks to perform to women than to men. Secondly, women often get interrupted when they speak during the meeting or have to justify their statements. And lastly, asking women what you can do to make them feel more supported and valued at work is the easiest way to unburden them while increasing their work satisfaction and improving their overall well-being.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

The elements that accelerate our performance lead to success faster than any technical skill. In this Expert Insight Interview, Nathan Farrugia discusses how to raise your game in business and life. Nathan Farrugia is an entrepreneur, CEO, owner of Vistage, business coach, TEDx speaker, and a record-breaking athlete.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• Our perception
• How to gain self-awareness
• How to shift the mindset to performance-based
• Level of uncertainty we live in

The Perception

In challenging times, it is essential to focus on elements that can increase our performance, such as having a clear purpose in life. People tend to blame the external factors for the circumstance they are currently in, but they do not do anything to take control of their lives and influence better outcomes. How much control of our life we have dictates our stress levels. More power over our lives comes with more responsibility, but it also produces less stress. The key is in the perception. We see things one way, but do we have enough self-awareness to see our strengths and weakness without being biased?

Increase Self-Awareness

Lack of self-awareness is why some people struggle to reach their full potential. The journey to self-awareness starts with having the growth mindset as its foundation. Having a growth mindset means being open to understanding yourself, accepting the feedback and criticism, and doing something about it. There are different tools to be used, like individual assessments, coaches, or online subscriptions. The point is to get yourself in a mental place from which you will be able to take further challenges in life. Raising your game does not have to be in your work. It can be in a family or love relationship, hobby, anything that pushes you out of your comfort zone.

Shift the Mindset

Running a marathon is a psychological game in which you run kilometer by kilometer. That same principle works for shifting the mindset. It starts with baby steps. People think that a four percent change is nothing, but the research shows that any change that is greater than four percent is too overwhelming for our brain. Thus, a four percent change builds up our mental resilience.

Uncertainty

The level of uncertainty we feel falls back on our perception and self-awareness. At the end of the day, if we have the education, the skills, the people that love us, and the warm bed to go to sleep at night, we have more things to hold on to than we thought. Those are the fundamental things that we need for success, while the opportunities depend solely on us and whether we will look enough to find them. We need way less than we think for happiness, but unfortunately, it takes some significant episodes in our lives to happen to realize that.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Have you ever thought about making a safari trip? In this Expert Insight Interview, Lorne Sulcas continues his discussion on how we can learn from African big cat predators to thrive in the world of unpredictability we live in nowadays. Lorne Sulcas, also known as the Big Cat Guy, is a former successful management consultant, and now a motivational speaker and an international award-winning wildlife photographer and expert.

The interview discusses:

• Lessons to learn from big cats on adaptability and resilience
• Handling crisis every day
• Believing in the power of the dream

Adaptability and Resilience

The behaviors that big cats show and the challenges they face in many ways mirror the corporate world. Firstly, they face a significant amount of change on an everyday basis in terms of their hunting setting as differences based on weather conditions, prey they chase, landscape, etc. Secondly, they strategize to deal with the competition. When a leopard hunts in the presence of a lion, it has to protect its prey from the lion and then to catch it. Also, leopards made themselves adaptable to eat different prey sizes from large impalas to small birds or reptiles. Eating smaller prey more often helps leopards to build their resilience.

Regarding lions, they handle the change by teamwork and humbleness. Lions create strong relationships within their pride. Lions are very physical with each other, which builds a social bond, but that is also their way of identifying their fellow mate. In lion pride, every team member is capable of detecting, chasing, and killing the prey. They are all adaptable, flexible, and quick to react to their surroundings.

The Crisis

The big cats face the crisis on an everyday basis. One of those crises is the Great Wildebeest Migration. The big cats are very territorial, but their prey is not. Every year for the last 29 years, zebras, gazelles, and wildebeests migrate ten thousand kilometers across Eastern Africa. Considering that the big cats cannot follow them across Africa, they have to adapt, thus, to change the species they eat. At that point, a life or death situation forces lions to go out of their comfort zone by chasing the buffalos. Chasing buffalos is risky and life-threatening for lions, so they have to elevate their performance to survive.

Follow the Dream

We all have dreams and things that only by thinking of them make us feel alive, but not all of us are brave enough to follow them. The truth is, we will all face obstacles and negative comments, but if we believe in the power of our dreams, we will be able to overcome those obstacles.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Have you ever thought about making a safari trip? In this Expert Insight Interview, Lorne Sulcass discusses how we can learn from African three big predators to thrive in the highly complex world we live in nowadays. Lorne Sulcas, known as the Big Cat Guy, is a former successful management consultant and now a motivational speaker and an international award-winning wildlife photographer and expert.

The interview discusses:

• The passion and the process to make a career shift
• The challenge to face when making a shift
• Parallel between African predators and the corporate world

Make a Shift

When we are 18 years old and approaching college, many people do not know what they want to do in their lives. Then we end up choosing the profession that seems the most logical at that time, something that will give us security in the future. However, having one life-altering experience as visiting the African Bush for the first time can have such a powerful impact on a person. An effect that big to make him switch his management consulting career for tracking, observing, and photographing wild cats in South African Bush. When some experience has such a strong influence on us, the only thing we can do is to embrace the change and to follow the newly discovered passion.

The Challenge

If we find passion in our current job does not mean that we cannot discover new things that make us passionate in life. Life is a process in which stuff that felt right in one moment might not feel right later. Our views change because things that influence our decision- making change. The biggest challenge for a person deciding to switch a career is not having the right background and education, only a dream and a passion. However, the opportunity is somewhere out there, and it is crucial to stay determined to find a way to find that opportunity for yourself. An extremely significant skill to have at that moment is a communication skill, which sometimes comes even handier than some technical skill.

The Parallel

People who come to Safari usually want to see the big cats like lions, leopards, and cheetahs. These animals are succeeding in their survival for a long time, and the studies help to get to know them better and to learn their patterns. They have features and characteristics very relatable to people, like when they use their cognitive functioning skills in preying. Their daily behavior and the strategies they use in finding food or in dealing with change and competition mirrors our corporate world behavior. For instance, the lion represents a king of the jungle, but he has a tough life maintaining that status.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Have you ever thought of our well-being as a puzzle that needs all the dots to get connected? In this Expert Insight Interview, Mariya Radysh discusses how human beings can thrive in this fast-paced world we live in nowadays. Mariya Radish is a two times TEDx speaker, keynote speaker, and thought leader on resilience, intentional adaptability, and human potential.

The interview discusses:

• Physical and Mental Health
• Relationships and Fulfilment
• Confidence as the result of the alignment of three legs

Physical and Mental Health

These days we can hear people talking about adaptability almost everywhere. However, being adaptable for mere survival differs from adaptability that helps us thrive in life. Three areas of life represent the three legs of our so-called chair of resilience. The first leg is our mental and physical health. It is crucial that mental and physical health act as one leg and not separately because they represent the “back leg,” the one that provides support. Our mental health affects our physical health and vice versa, not allowing us to prioritize one over another. Unfortunately, mental health usually gets overlooked. The reason for that is because we never learned how to express ourselves and ask for help in that area, as well as how to act when someone else asks us for help, so both situations make us uncomfortable.

Relationships and Fulfilment

The second leg is the quality of our relationships. The cultural bias that we experience today in the era of social media promotes the number of our relationships as the key. However, one of the keys to happiness is actually in the quality of our relationships. The research shows that people can maintain quality relationships only with up to 150 people at the same time, so once and then, we should rethink which relationships have a positive impact on us and which have not. Parting ways with people who put us down in any way does not mean that we are betraying them. Sometimes, we need to lose friends in order to grow. And third and the last leg is our fulfillment by doing something. That can be a hobby, charity, professional work, anything that creates meaning in our life. Interestingly, men mostly focus on the third leg, while women usually focus on the second leg. However, all three legs are required for the chair of resilience to stay stable.

Confidence

Focusing on the “three legs” that we mentioned earlier helps us to create the confidence to live the life we want. Every human being is born with some level of confidence but building up a decreased level of self-confidence is a developing skill. And when developed, we become more resilient, and we make and implement our decisions faster.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

This year’s pandemic impacted businesses significantly. Many of them had to accelerate their transition to 100 percent virtually within a matter of days to stay competitive. In this Expert Insight Interview, Lance Tyson discusses sales leadership during times of uncertainty. Lance Tyson is a President and CEO of the Tyson Group, providing coaching, training, and consulting to sales leaders and their teams to achieve higher performance.

This Expert Insight Interview discusses:

• How to keep the sales team on the right track
• Sales leaders finding themselves in the middle
• The importance of sales processes in uncertainty

Focus on Success

This change to virtual came with its consequences because some people still struggle to accept it. Sales leaders now face the challenge of refocusing their teams on success. The most important thing for the sales leaders is to keep the communication going. Considering that the culture of being in the office all together is lost and that team meetings became more complicated, sales leaders cannot afford to lose the connection with the employees. Constant communication with employees also helps to see how they are dealing with this overall situation. The biggest mistake a sales leader can make is to follow the approach “one size fits all.” Every member of the team gets motivated differently. Hence, a good leader should try to understand each person’s needs separately to be able to get the most of them in return.

Finding Balance

On the other hand, this is a hard time for sales leaders as well. They feel the pressure from the senior management to achieve results during uncertainty while they cannot and should not pass that pressure to their subordinates because that will be counterproductive for the team performance. Therefore, the sales leaders have a hard time finding a balance between being empathetic towards the employees yet still putting the company’s survival as a priority. In some situations, sales leaders even have to ask themselves the unpleasant question of what is more important, the ship or the crew?

Sales Process

When the uncertain time arrives, the sales process is the key to the sales team. The sales process must be present even if adjusted. Sometimes, the sales team would have to negotiate even against themselves to get the sales process moving. It is a dynamic process that heavily matches the current condition of the market requiring close and constant attention. Moreover, in recent years, sales teams got a little spoiled by technology innovation and marketing automation, generating quality leads and allowing them to enjoy their comfort zone. However, now more than ever, an old-fashioned way of picking up the phone and doing extra levels of prospecting is necessary.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.

Courageous culture is a company culture in which employees feel empowered to speak up their ideas and opinions. Hence, in this Expert Insight Interview, Karin Hurt discusses how to build a courageous culture within the organization. Karin Hurt is the CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders, a global leadership development program, as well as an award-winning author and Top 100 leadership speaker.

This Expert Insight Interview explores:

• The steps of transitioning to a courageous culture
• The infrastructure for the courage

Transition to Courageous Culture

The studies show that if employees would share their ideas with their leaders, they would mostly be about improving customer and employee experiences and increasing productivity in business processes. However, the reasons why employees do not speak up and share their ideas with their leaders are because no one asks them, they are scared to, or they think that speaking up will not change anything. So, the leaders are the ones who should navigate and encourage the narrative within the team. And even the most encouraging leaders should know that sometimes people have so many scars from the past that it takes a lot of time and effort for them to feel ready to speak up again. Still, hopes and fears are important topics to talk about within the team to understand each other and to create a feeling of being together in something.

The next step is complete clarity in showing that you want to hear other people’s ideas while making sure that those people understand what a good idea is. The good idea has to be strategically interesting for the company, doable, engaging, and also it has to encourage the next steps. Furthermore, curiosity is the step when you intentionally ask a courageous question. That question has to be specific and vulnerable while requiring only one answer as an opening for a potential dialogue later. And the last step is to give an update to people about what happened with their idea with gratitude and invitation for more ideas, so they feel heard at least.

Infrastructure for Courage

It is crucial for any organization that HR systems and processes work to support the courageous culture. As early as during the onboarding process, the new employees should feel comfortable enough to share their ideas. Also, current employees should not be visible ranked in any way. Moreover, there are so many diverse talents within an organization to recognize. Some people are silent and introverted, while others are loud and extroverted. Thus, using creative ways to encourage everyone to speak up, such as breaking people into smaller groups, is always beneficial.

Our Host

John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.