Page 82 - Lighting Magazine December 2019

on the mark
Mark Okun is a Sales Success Consultant for Bravo Business Media and President of MOC Performance Group with over 40 yearsí experience in sales, marketing, and business management within the furniture, lighting, and decorative plumbing industries. He is a monthly contributor to enLIGHTenment Magazine and conducts sales training programs, webinars, workshops and market seminars for retailers, sales representative agencies, and manufacturers. Contact Mark Okun via email at mark@bravobusiness media.com or call 800-425-5139 ext. 626.
the games PeOPle PlaY
The workplace is a unique environment to suggest gamification, but most of the work worlds I see need to add more fun. If you are in the sales profession, you are by nature, competitive. What better way to break out of a rut than to have some fun doing it?
Please take a look at your workday. Each of us has monotonous tasks to be accomplished daily aside from the prime objective of selling and ser- vicing clients. When thinking of the repetitive functions that showroom staffers face – such as email and housekeeping – try gaming these tasks. The principle behind this type of gamification is its singular focus. Like snowboarding, cycling, or golf, the competition is to beat our own levels of perfor- mance and excel beyond the personal goals we set for ourselves.
In our email example, turn answering or send- ing emails into a game. Do you complete your daily email tasks in 30 minutes or maybe one hour? Can you beat that time? Ask yourself, “How can I complete this quicker?” Before starting the game, determine the amount of time you spend on email daily. This is an easy one to win as most people look at emails throughout the day. My tip is to not make email your first priority of the day; it saps the creative energy needed to sell and can send you down the rabbit hole before the day begins. You need a process, and the Pomodoro Technique® is a good one. Set a timer for 25 minutes and attack your email. When the timer goes off, stand up, take a break, and then count your results. Whenever possible in a showroom setting, do not let anything interrupt you when you’re in the zone. Focus on the task and keep the self-talk positive.
get YOuR head in the game &
Out Of the Rut
In his book First Things First, the late author and businessman Steven Covey wrote about the power that having a “passion of vision” provides.
Think about the internal dialogue you have: What are you saying, is it positive or negative? As you may know, there is a trinity out there called Thought, Word & Deed. Your thoughts impact the words you use and the actions you take. If that self- talk is negative, you will erode your confidence and destroy the goal of increased performance and rut break-out.
With each task that you gamify, plan the self-talk that goes with winning the self-imposed challenge.
Using the email example in the previous paragraph, many of you read it and immediately said to your- self, “I can’t do that!” and you had a plethora of reasons to support your thoughts. Maybe those words were so strong that you didn’t even try to take on the activity in a new way.
If this is the case, you have experienced, and set in your mind, a negative vision of the future. In- stead, look at the challenge and say, “No problem, I can get that done in 20 minutes.” No matter which voice you give power to, you will be correct.
In my experience, when you can discover the ruts in your daily undertakings, you have found an opportunity to improve yourself and your perfor- mance. I hope as the New Year comes upon us, one of your 2020 professional goals is to hunt for the ruts in both showroom and personal performance. Once ruts are discovered, fill them in with different actions that get you out of the rut.
As Always, Happy Selling! 
“Your mental attitude attracts to you everything that makes you what you are.”
—Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich
78 enLIGHTenment Magazine | DeceMber 2019
www.enlightenmentmag.com