Page 81 - Lighting Magazine December 2019

routine Has a rut Hidden inside
Not all ruts are equal. We can have ruts in both our personal and work lives, and the clues are the same.
When I think of boring routines, my mind im- mediately thinks of fast food employees and flight attendants: “Would you like fries with that?” and “When the seat belt sign illuminates, you must fas- ten your seat belt” respectively.
What you do and say contributes to your work rut. Even if your actions are a job requirement, change it up a bit. If I were coaching the fast food industry, I would suggest they break their rut in the way that they offer fries. Instead of the usual phrase, how about “Do you want FRESH, HOT, TASTY fries with that?”
Many Southwest Airlines flight attendants break the monotony of pre-flight announcements by de- livering the safety instructions in a fun way to get passengers’ attention. Take a tip from them and get out of your rut by adding some humor.
Change YOuR ROutine
Start with small changes that are easy to implement. Change up your morning practices to begin the day with a twist. This can be as simple as starting your day earlier, moving around the time of day that you eat meals, or by altering the route you take to and from work. These seemingly insignificant changes will send signals to the brain that something is different.
When a task becomes routine, there is often a loss of emotion and, ultimately, the real purpose of the assignment itself. One simple, everyday task that happens in every showroom is greeting the client. Based on many observations of salespeople, I find most have their own repetitive greetings that they say over and over, day in and day out. Without get- ting too deep into the structure and delivery, think about what you say. Keep the context of “welcom- ing” someone, but change up the words and delivery.
the Rut is COmfORt
We all get comfortable with routines and to keep them from becoming a rut, we must leave our com- fort zones. This should be an easy step given all the channel changes that impact us in showroom sales. Try adding something new to your skillset; what seg- ment of your industry do you want to know more about? It could be anything from adding a new prod- uct category to learning new marketing skills such as blogging or vlogging.
Getting out of that comfy and familiar zone takes just a couple of steps and, as you progress, your fear will become excitement. How uncomfortable are you willing to get to break free from the rut? Since this is the last month before the new year, goal- setting is on our minds.
Setting different goals that may be peripheral to your daily routine go a long way toward keeping the excitement alive. The simple goals for getting out of a rut are discovered based on your own self-exami- nation and are not the typical DO MORE objectives.
One showroom I am familiar with has had an in- crease of Russian population in the community. We established a goal for all staff members to learn a few regularly used phrases in Russian. They learned hello, goodbye, thank you, and the kicker: “Would you like to buy that?” The sales team could visually see the clients’ excitement as they looked at items. Even when the sales associates did not know the exact words being exchanged between the clients, when asking a closing question in the client’s native language, they frequently got a positive response. When they didn’t, they were able to figure out how to move forward with the sale.
These out-of-the-box goals can be expressed in a modified goal-setting format. The two most essen- tial rules in “rut breaking” is to keep the change goal simple and make it fun.
“Simple changes in repetitive patterns can help break you out.”
DeceMber 2019 | enLIGHTenment Magazine 77
on the mark