Strategic Vision Shift—Do You Need One?

After a mind blowing 3 hour strategy session with my client, she turned to me and said, “You are so much more than a sales trainer”.

I am a sales trainer, I explained, but without a strategy based on your core mission you don’t know what to sell, who to sell it to and how to sell it. You can’t sell without a strategy. I move my clients through a process so they are able to create, find, understand, uncover or retool their core mission and then put a strategy in place that supports their mission.

In our session we were able to excavate and uncover my client’s true gifts. She has many, so we worked together to decide which gifts she wanted to share with the world and why. Most of us are gifted and have a lot of talents. We need to dig deep to find out what we want to share with the world and how. This is what I do with my clients, excavation. I am a Business Archeologist; I help you to unearth your gifts, find the gems, dust them off and let them reflect brightly in the light.

I am a Business Captain, helping my clients navigate the stormy seas of growing a business. Without charts, GPS or a compass the business ocean is a pretty scary place to be. It is hard to cut through the fog and waves without charting a course and having a strong seaworthy boat. Understanding your core mission is the first step to charting your course. From there you can determine what you want to do, how you want to do it and who you want to do it with and for.

Quite often, our true mission is hidden under busy-ness. We keep busy for many reasons. One may be because we think we should be busy. It makes us feel good to check off to-do’s from our list. We feel like we are getting somewhere, when really we are bobbing in the middle of the ocean in irons, with our sails luffing; there isn’t a stitch of wind to move us forward. This is a great prescription for seasickness.

Being busy can be a good thing, if it is really about getting down to business.

I work with my clients to ensure that each task they complete will move them forward toward their goals. It is easy to get lost in phone calls, emails, and tasks that don’t move us forward. Whether we delegate, or just focus on what is important first we have to make a plan and then work it so we can move on to our success. Your strategy is what you base your plan on.

I help my clients deconstruct what they are doing now. Then we renovate, creating a strong foundation for them to build upon. Each step is a brick that they use to build a strong building that will protect them from the harsh elements of the business world. I mean business and I mean to help you build a strong and prosperous one! A business that will sustain you into the future!

You could call me a General Contractor of Business (although a friend of mine already uses that catchphrase, but you get my point).

You need a strategy, a strategic plan. You may have an idea of what you want; you may have an idea of your core mission; you may even know what your core mission is, but if you don’t have a working strategy that lines up with your core mission, you aren’t navigating your course, you are just flying blind.

The bottom line is this: know your vision, know your why, know your mission and build a plan around that and then move forward with focused steps. If you don’t know why you’re selling, what you are selling, who you are selling to, how will you know how to sell it?

So, yes, I am a sales strategist, a sales consultant, a sales trainer and a sales coach. I start at the beginning with my clients. I don’t jump to the doing before uncovering all the knowledge, gifts, talents, reasons, and so much more of my clients’ vision. I ensure they have a map, direction, guidance, tools and support so they will become successful beyond their dreams. That is my goal.

You may know your core mission and you are currently working a plan based on that. Great! You are perfectly positioned for success! If not, that is okay; you just might need a strategic vision shift to bring you back on course.

For more information or if you have any questions, please reach out to me. carolyn@essentialselling.com

Stepping Outside Your Comfort Zone Means Working Smarter Not Harder

I like when things are neat and tidy and organized.

This makes me feel at ease, comfortable and safe. This is when I am in my “Comfort Zone”: a behavioral state wherein a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk.

Recently, I realized that living in my comfort zone wasn’t really living. When I live in my comfort zone, my life isn’t as vibrant and my business is something I have to do rather than want to do. I wanted to just follow creative ideas as they came to me to see where they would lead me. I wanted to have fun. I wanted to live in my truth. So, I started saying YES.

I started taking some risks committing to living in a place that is exciting and colorful. I started reaching beyond what makes me feel comfortable. I chose to live my life from a place where I say YES more than NO. Some of these choices have been challenging. Some even involved making difficult communications, because saying yes to me sometimes involves saying no to others.

In the past two weeks alone I have sent emails suggesting new ideas to friends and associates. I have posted love poems on Facebook. I have introduced myself to people I don’t know and asked them to collaborate with me on specific projects or I have asked them to include me as a speaker at an upcoming event. In each instance I have gotten amazing feedback. Maybe the initial request has been denied, but the idea it was born from has materialized in a much bigger way than I had imagined it would. The result is that doors are opening faster and more frequently and my business is growing more quickly than it was before.

This is my new definition of “working smarter not harder”.

I see a pattern. The more I reach beyond what I would normally do, the easier everything else around me becomes. My “work” is no longer work. The more risks I take the more rewards I receive. It is as if the road comes up to meet me when I take a step outside my comfort zone. I am not struggling, trying, pushing, or working hard. Instead I am having more fun, feeling more energized and living in a more joyous and creative state. This is a smarter way to operate on a daily basis.

Think about it for a moment. When you reach out in the direction of your dreams and STRETCH beyond where you would normally go what happens? Even if you don’t always get a resounding “YES”, is there a “YES” in the “NO”? Is there something that comes to you that is perfect for what you need at the time? If it isn’t exactly what you asked for, is it something that brings you one, two or even more steps closer to where you want to be?

Following our dreams, really living in our truth can be a scary thing in itself. When we do this and live in a place beyond comfortable we create the space needed for miracles to happen. We are able to function at our best and at our most creative! It might not seem to be the case in the moment, but our businesses will move forward more quickly when we operate from this place.

Usually this place is on the other side of our comfort zone. You know over there, across the rickety bridge, on the other side of the raging river that is the line that keeps us safe in our zone. The journey over that bridge is well worth the effort.

I bet you could even look back and track some of your choices. Decisions made from a place that might seem a little risky are usually the ones that have the higher rate of return!

I have a challenge for you. Take a step outside your comfort zone. Be true to yourself and say YES in the moment and let it lead you beyond where you are comfortable. Do something that is a little scary. Whether it has anything to do with your business or not, just try it and see what happens.

As Nike says, “Just do it”!

Mixing Old and New to Boost Sales

We are becoming a global community as our ability to communicate expands worldwide.

We can reach out to people around the world using sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn. People are coming together, craving community and connection. People, wanting to be seen, heard and understood, are changing the face of how we do business.

This is the age of Joint Ventures and Affiliate Partnerships. We no longer have to struggle alone to grow our businesses; the trend is to move forward with partners. “Why compete when we can collaborate?” is what we hear more and more.

As an entrepreneur, you are ideally situated to ride the wave by taking advantage of this new movement toward community. By being proactive and utilizing the tools available to you, you can vastly broaden your reach. It’s not the internet that is driving us to be more social, it is a predictable trend in human nature that is moving us to want to connect, be more social, collaborate more and join together with others who are like minded. It is this bigger human trend that is taking the internet and turning it into a social contact machine the likes of which we’ve never seen before.

Here are some ways you can tap into this emerging trend and position yourself to use social networking sites to your advantage and grow your business:

Think about who you can partner with and how you can help each other to expand your reach for mutual benefit.

Investigate new ways to collaborate with individuals who are in similar industries, or who were once your “competitors”. (They have a name for this because it happens that often! They call it “co-opetition”, the combination of cooperation and competition).

Be creative and reach out with the intention of helping each other in the process. This is the key as we move into this new marketplace.

Learn about Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other important networking sites through free on line tutorials; learn how businesses are benefiting from ‘social’ networking.

It’s fun to scour Facebook and the other social and business networking sites to look for old friends and reconnect but as I look at my social networking sites I see people, at first a few but eventually hundreds and even thousands that are showing up in my community. Just seeing them there is like a mini introduction, showing up in each others communities shows that we have something in common and that connects us, in fact, we feel like we know each other even though we’ve never met or spoken.

But too often this is where it ends! Take this tool one step further to build valuable relationships by reaching out beyond the norm and creating strategic alliances that can propel you forward in ways you never imagined.

Reach out and touch someone – or – the lost art of the cold call

Remember this AT&T iconic slogan? Its meaning is more important now than ever. Our modern social networking medium is amazing, but what if you took it one step further and picked up the phone and made a more lasting connection? This is the magic opportunity; you can turn social networking into something that will differentiate you from others and boost sales.

While I was on Facebook recently I found a college friend I hadn’t spoken to in twenty years. I sent her a message to ‘reconnect’ and then went to her ‘info’ page and noticed that she works in advertising sales for a major corporation. It was fun to connect via message, but it was even more fun to pick up the phone, exchange stories about our lives over the last twenty years and be able to ask for a referral to her VP of Sales. As a corporate sales trainer, this turned out to be a really great lead for me.

Your first step might be to become friends with people on line, but don’t stop there. Make a real connection with someone and pick up the phone. If you can’t find phone numbers, company names and email addresses on their profile, then send them a message and book an appointment to speak on the phone. Cold calls aren’t really cold anymore, at worst they are “warm calls” because you have made the introduction via a friendly message, by sharing mutual interests and just that is already building a relationship! As social human beings we tend to have a predisposition to like people who like what we like. So use that, use the similarity of interests you’ve already discovered to build rapport.

One of the stumbling blocks for people is determining who to call. Creating your list isn’t as hard as you might think. In fact, you can utilize the social networking and business networking sites to create a comprehensive list of people and places to contact. Utilize these sites for all they have to offer and conduct searches for individuals and companies that are in your target market. LinkedIn has an excellent advanced search.

This is the time to shift the global community and our global consciousness and work together in new ways. This is the time to work collaboratively in teams rather than as individuals. This is the time to think “outside of the box” or to do away with the box altogether. Take full advantage of all the tools available, both new and old. The internet and the phone are a match made in heaven.

Carolyn Ziel, President of Essential Selling, is an expert sales trainer and she supports entrepreneurs, sales teams and corporations with her trainings. Her specialty is lost art of effective cold calling please contact carolyn@essentialselling.com

How To Turn Your Dream Idea Into A Dream Come True

You know you have an incredible idea a dream that you're driven to share with the world, but you can't seem to put all the pieces into place to move forward.

You find yourself in overwhelm and procrastination. You've reached what's known as an impasse. An impasse is a roadblock to a desired mental path.

Being creative involves getting around impasses. According to Professor Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, more than 50 percent of workers today do creative work. Are you one of them? Do you write, invent, design, draw, color, frame or even tinker with information in a novel way? Creativity drives business. Your creative process is your wealth generator!

Answer this though: if you're creative, developing new ideas, writing, drawing and generally being innovative how do you move through impasses to share your brilliance with the world? And, if you are moving forward, sharing your ideas with the world, are you juggling too many things at once while you're doing it?

Are you doing everything effectively? The real question to ask your self is: "Should I be doing everything? Am I letting my business drive me or are am I driving my business?"

Look around at the truly successful people you admire and you'll see most of them working with teams. You need a team of talented creative and non-creative people around you as well. No one can do everything. As the CEO of your business, your job is to focus on building a team so you can move forward with your dream. Building on your strengths and bringing in support, will free up your brain space so you can easily move through impasses.

Running a successful business requires a strong foundation. You need a business plan, a strategic plan; you need to look into the future to determine where you want to be. How do you create your business plan, strategic plan, create your marketing and strategic sales plan, build your website, write the copy and market the website using social media and good old fashioned sales techniques, create your marketing collateral, oversee business development, build relationships to further extend your reach, and run your day to day operations and accounting all at the same time? It's exhausting just thinking about all those elements. If you can figure that out, let us know!!!

Don't let your business, or "Busy-Ness" drive you right into the ground! Take inventory of all the tools you have at your disposal. This includes all of the relationships in your network. Build on your strengths and collaborate with those who can add strength and value where you need extra support.

Innovative Solutions Productions helps you do just that. If you're overwhelmed, juggling too much for one person, or unhappy with your Company's performance results we are the resource to support you, collaborate with you and guide you to success. Our job is to make your job of developing your ideas not only fun and exciting, but manageable. We help you develop your ideas and EXECUTE!

Whether you're a start up company, a solo-preneur or a well established business, we urge you to reach out to us.

We all have dreams and we will help you share yours with the world!

Carolyn Ziel carolyn@essentialselling.com

Pick Up The Phone Already!

The new sales formula combines social networking with old-fashioned phone calls.

Although it might seem contrary to many, cold calling and social networking are a perfect blend of old and new tools that, when used in conjunction with each other, can really boost your sales.

Take the first step by getting involved in social networking to expand your contact base. This will provide the context and contacts for the cold calls you're going to make. The fact is, as our ability to communicate has expanded, we have become a global community. We can reach out to people around the world in ways we never dreamed of, using sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn. People craving community and connection, coming together to be seen, heard and understood, are changing how we do business.

This is the age of joint ventures and affiliate partnerships. We no longer have to struggle alone to grow our businesses; the trend is to move forward with partners. Why compete when we can collaborate?

As an entrepreneur, you are ideally situated to ride the wave by taking advantage of this new movement toward community. It's not only the internet driving us to be more social, it's a predictable trend in human nature. And it's this bigger human trend that is turning the internet into a social contact machine the likes of which we've never seen.

Here are some ways you can tap into this emerging trend to grow your business:

Think about whom you can partner with and how you can help each other to expand your reach for mutual benefit.

Investigate new ways to collaborate with individuals who are in similar industries or who were once your competitors. (There's even a name for this because it happens a lot. It's called "co-opetition," the combination of cooperation and competition).

Be creative and reach out with the intention of helping each other in the process. This is the key as we move into this new marketplace.

Learn about Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other networking sites through free online tutorials; learn how businesses are benefiting from social networking.

But don't stop there. Take this tool one step further to build valuable relationships and create strategic alliances that can propel you forward in ways you never imagined.

The Lost Art of The Cold Call

Remember AT&T's iconic slogan, "Reach out and touch someone"? It's more important now than ever. Social networking via the internet is amazing, but what if you took it another step? What if you picked up the phone and made a more lasting connection? This is the magic way to turn social networking into something that will differentiate you from others and boost sales.

Recently on Facebook, I found a college friend I hadn't spoken to in 20 years. I sent her a message to reconnect and then went to her info page and noticed that she works in advertising sales for a major corporation. It was fun to connect via message, but it was even more fun to pick up the phone, exchange stories about our lives over the past 20 years and ask for a referral to her vice president of sales. I'm a corporate sales trainer, so this turned out to be a really great lead for me.

Your first step might be to become friends with people online, but don't stop there. Make real connections with people and pick up the phone. If you can't find phone numbers, company names or e-mail addresses on their profile, send them a message and book an appointment to speak on the phone. Cold calls aren't really cold anymore. At worst they are "warm calls" because you've already discovered mutual interests and started building a relationship online. As social beings we tend to have a predisposition to like people who like what we like. So use the similarity of interests you've already discovered to build rapport.

One stumbling block is determining whom to call. Creating your list isn't as hard as you might think. In fact, you can use the social networking and business networking sites to create a comprehensive list of people and places to contact. You can use the sites to conduct searches for individuals and companies in your target market. LinkedIn, in particular, has an excellent advanced search tool.

Social media give us the opportunity to work together in new ways. Now's the time to work collaboratively in teams rather than as individuals. Take full advantage of all the tools available, both new and old. The internet and the phone are a match made in heaven.

For more information on how you can feel comfortable and easily pick up the phone, reach out to me: carolyn@essentialselling.com www.essentialselling.com

Telling isn't selling!

I am a myth buster.

You won't see me on Discovery Channel though, well not yet anyway. You will hear me busting the "myth of selling" through my classes, my writing and when you meet me. This is my goal: to change the way people sell. Selling is an amazingly creative and fun process and that is what I want to impress upon you. Not only that, the art of sales is the art of clear communication, listening and relationship building. Learning this has changed my life and the lives of those I "sell with" and it can change yours as well!


People think selling is about pushing your product or service on your client or prospect. Others still think that it is about telling their story, sharing about how their product or service has changed their life. It isn't. Selling is so much more. Selling is about building relationships and discovering who your prospect is as a human being. Beyond that, selling will help you to discover who YOU ARE as a human being. If you follow my Equation for Success: VISION + VALUE + KNOWLEDGE + TOOLS = SUCCESS you will understand your own VALUE as a human being and this will transform you in ways you wouldn't imagine. The art of sales is a collaborative process. In this process we learn about ourselves, about our prospects and we build strong relationships with ourselves and our prospects!

Think about it, you go to a networking group and share your story. What happens if the person you share your story with has a different story? The person you are speaking with might not have the same problem you had and you could easily lose them right here. You can start over, and start building from that place, but it will be six times harder to build this relationship because you haven't established trust.


Many companies teach their sales people to "share" their story to bond with potential customers and clients. I am the first to tell you that this is a myth. Telling isn't selling. Discovering is selling! Learn about your prospect first and then selectively share your story when appropriate. Be yourself and reach out to ask about your prospect and learn about them. Don't make the sale the primary goal, make learning about your prospect's needs the primary goal and you will make the sale.


If you don't make the sale, you will build a relationship and this will lead to a sale down the road or a referral and a bigger sale. Trust the selling process and have fun with it, don't push.


Selling can be transformative if you allow yourself to embrace the process. If you are connected to your VISION you will feel the passion that drives you and so will everyone you reach out to. What about your VALUE? I mean your VALUE beyond your product or service. When you understand your intrinsic VALUE and reach out to people grounded in this understanding you reach out in a powerful way.

This is a powerful place to visit, your intrinsic VALUE as a human being and why you are special. When you are able to truly appreciate your own VALUE then you easily lead by example. People are drawn to you and you can easily build powerful relationships with others, because you have built a powerful relationship with yourself. KNOWLEDGE is your bridge to your prospects and clients. When you add in the TOOLS you can only WIN! Selling becomes bridge building because we are touching people in a way that lets them know we care.


I believe that we can change the way people do business. Selling becomes a way of connecting that shows our clients or prospects we care about them, not only about the sale. We don't tell our story but we listen to theirs. We just relate to them as human beings and we offer them our presence and our clear communication. We don't tell them our story until they ask and they will. So, selling becomes so much more than just telling!

I would love to hear from you!

Reach out to me and tell me your stories and share your thoughts about the selling process and I can share them with my readers: carolyn@essentialselling.com

What is your definition of an expert?

Here is Webster's Definition of an Expert: "one with the special skill or knowledge representing mastery of a particular subject".

I believe an expert is someone that is always learning. I believe an expert is someone with an open mind, a creative mind, a flexible mind. I believe an expert is someone who is open to changing. I believe and expert is someone with an open heart.

Really an expert is someone who doesn't always have the right answer and accepts that someone else might.

The more open we are to learning the more opportunity we create for ourselves. In business we want to see all sides and have an open mind. We can be in service and offer a benefit AND get well compensated for the benefit we bring. We can be in a place that is cooperative not competetive.

An expert can see the doors opening and takes the steps forward to cross the thresholds. Along the way an expert helps others and this collabroation is what supports everyone's success.

I would love to hear your thoughts. What is your definition of an expert? Email me and let me know how.

I can post some of your answers in my next newsletter or blog post! So do send them along! Thanks for sharing...have a great day!!!

Email: carolyn@essentialselling.com