Rejection Without Shame

Rejection comes in a litany of flavors:

“We don’t have any conflicts here.”

“We deal with conflicts really well here.”

“We don’t really need your services right now, but if we do, we’ll give you a call.”

“[silence]. Who are you again?”

“How do you say your name?”

“I don’t understand how anybody can make money from doing what you do.”

“How do you monetize that?”

“Yeah, your rates are too high.”

“Yeah, your rates are too low.”

“I don’t understand what you are selling.”

“Why can’t you help me NOW?”

“Where did you get your degree again?”

“How do you make it here in this town?”

“Where are you from again?”

“Hmmmm. Ok. That sounds kind of interesting.” [Then wander off to get bread at the networking event ‘nosh’ table.]

“Have you tried working for a human resource company?”

“Have you tried working with [insert name of big company here]?”

“I don’t understand what you just said that you do.”

“There aren’t any people around here doing that are there?”

“Could you not charge me as much?”

“We’re strapped for cash right now and not really focused on retaining outside help right now.”

“Your rates are too high; you’ll never make a profit around here.”

“We are a family company. There aren’t any conflicts among family.”

“I handle conflict really well; I don’t see how I would use your services.”

“Have you tried working with lawyers around here?”

“We can’t pay you.”

“We’ll get back to you.”

“We can’t pay you.”

“Can you do this for free for us?”

“We can’t pay you.”

“Send us your information and we’ll look at it.” >click<

“I just don’t have time to talk to you, call back next week.” [Call back again next week]

“I just don’t have time to talk to you, call back next week.” >click<

“That sounds interesting, but I don’t want you to drive all the way to [name location 25 miles in any direction from locally] to meet me. It would just be a waste of your time.”

“You’ll never make a living doing that. You should get a ‘real’ job.”

“You went to college for CONFLICT!?”

“Why don’t you just volunteer?”

Very rarely have we ever heard “No,” “No thank you,” or “No this isn’t for us.”

Although ultimately, the fact is that all the forms of rejection really come down to such a consideration. All the forms of rejection can be given without personally attacking, trolling, tearing down individuals’ talent, and questioning people’s motives. But when rejection crosses the line from “No this isn’t for us” to “You don’t deserve to have a voice,” or “You need to be denied the ability to speak because I disagree with you,” then we’ve crossed over the line into another area.

And we must be careful with what lines we cross because sometimes, there is no going back.

[Advice] New Behaviors

Peace builders struggle with sales for a variety of reasons, but the most pernicious reasons are around behaviors.

There are three areas where behaviors can be changed for peace builders to close more sales:

  • Determine what kind of prospecting are you doing as a peace builder: active (networking) or passive (website development). The prospecting that you are doing as peace builder may come down to understanding that you have to leverage what you do like (passive prospecting) in order to mentally and emotionally address what you don’t like (active prospecting).
  • Determine what the one scary behavior is that you would engage in during the day. The scary behavior goes beyond just writing a blog post and hitting “publish” (although it may start there) and goes right to researching ten local companies and calling their human resources departments. Many times, the scary behavior involves collecting “no’s” as if they are going out of style.
  • Determine where you as a peace builder are making excuses to not engage in the act of selling. Whether you have decided to become an evangelist—or a champion—for an idea with clients, or if you have decided to use cold-calls as a way to collect informal information about the market, peace builders often make excuses to get out of doing hard work that’s scary and uncomfortable.

Many times peace builders struggle because the things that they don’t want to do (the scary things) are the very things they need to do to build the sales in their practices.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

HIT Piece 2.23.2016 – The Book Trailer

My book, Marketing For Peace Builders: How to Market Your Value to a World in Conflict is one step closer to being completed today.

I recorded a book trailer (link here), laying out some important points from the book, and encouraging you to get on the pre-order list.

After you’ve watched the trailer, send me an email with the subject line: PRE-ORDER list and I’ll add your name to my list, no questions asked.

Then, closer to the end of February (which is fast approaching) I will be at the end of the proofing cycle and will open up pre-orders for people on the exclusive list only!

I’ve already got a few names, but I’d really like to add more, because I think that peacemaking and money making shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.

Because I think that getting the word out about a path to peace is critical and the only way that peace builders can do that is with a stream of consistent revenue and consistent clients.

Because I know that peace building is hard, marketing and business development is even harder, and that there are no “silver bullet” solutions—no matter what the Internet tells you.

Because I know that relationship based, permission marketing is the only way for the relationship oriented, peace builder to make a mark on this conflict-ridden world with their message.

And…

Because I know that you want to go along with me on this amazing journey, one step at a time.

So, send me an email. Join the pre-order list. And let’s make peace together.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] 3 Stages to Launch – Part 2

There are three hard parts to launching any peace building project:

The first hard part is attaining technical knowledge (i.e. getting a degree, getting experience, phoning a friend, etc.).

When launching a peace building project, the savvy peace builder often doesn’t think too hard about the first part. In peace building fields from mediation to law, attaining technical knowledge is considered a rite of passage. Which is why peace building is so dominated by the presence of volunteer labor at one end (mediation) and highly paid labor at the other end (litigation) and there is a squeeze in the middle. As a result, many peace building practitioners continue to fund a self-perpetuating economy of training and certifications, rather than doing and experiences. This is a hamster wheel for another reason: The training and certifications are to reinsure that the peace builder continues to remain proficient in old skills they already know and practice (i.e. mediation skills) rather than training and certifying them in new skills that might be uncomfortable fro them to learn and practice (i.e. marketing, sales and business development).

The second hard part is getting the hardware together and attaining a certain level of comfort with it, particularly if it is new.

When launching a peace building project, learning new hardware (or software in the case of many entrepreneurial peace builders) is the second hardest part. Admittedly, there are ton of applications and software solutions that can be cobbled together to create the operational infrastructure for a functioning business model. But too often peace builders (as do many other entrepreneurs) become so focused on avoiding learning the new application (or fiddling with it constantly) that they miss completely the third hardest part of developing and launching a peace building project—sales.

The third hard part is developing content—and allying with partners in that development—and getting that content distributed to the right audience to genrate a lead, create a relationship and to close a sale.

When launching a peace building project, content development—books, articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, workshop/seminar content, and on and on—is seen as the most overwhelming aspect of launching. At the core of most content development practices are three objectives for the peace builder to consider:

  • What do I want my content to do? (i.e. drive brand recognition, drive sales, create actionable leads who will pay, etc., etc.)
  • Where do I want my content to be distributed? (i.e. from a workshop, from a blog post, from a podcast, etc., etc.)
  • Who do I want my content to target? (i.e. women with children, business owners with conflicts, men in divorce, judges in arbitration, etc., etc.)

Unfortunately, many peace builders get caught in a spiral of focusing obsessively out of fear on “how to make money” rather than focusing on “how to make a difference.”  To be successful as an entrepreneurial peace builder, the things is to manage thinking about how hard the three hard parts might be to accomplish collectively, rather than avoiding actually taking the concrete steps to think (and act) differently about at least one of them individually.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] CRaaS for Employees

Online based processes to resolve human disputes have had a long and harried journey.

CRaaS for Your Organization

In some ways, this is because technology and innovation has not caught up to the conceptual framework of the people who envisioned its wide use.

In other ways, the integration of human beings—with the emotional stimulus that human beings bring to conflicts—has proven to be beyond the capacity of such online systems to handle.

In orer to overcome both of these drawbacks, clumsy integration of human beings into the process of online dispute resolution at the beginning point, the midpoint and even the endpoint of systems has become enshrined in ODR procedures and practices.

However, organization of all sizes, can create their own conflict resolution as a service platform, for the benefit of employees, with the help of web based applications, cloud based storage capacity and encrypted and secured servers.

As technology further advances, predictive (rather than reactive) systems based in artificial intilleigence, data storage practices and analytical tracking, could provide the next pieces in the process to integrate humans in a conflict resolution system that serves the needs of both human resources and the employees in conflict.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] 3 Entrepreneurial States

There are three emotional states that can catch hold of the entrepreneurial peace builder as she is building her project:

YES!

  • The fear which is accompanied by every new decision
  • The exhilaration when a client is helped and “closed’
  • The dread of returning to working for “the Man”

The employee mindset is built on the idea of stability, predictability and “money that will always be there.”

The employee mindset still dominates, even in our post-Industrial world.

This mindset also tolerates bad behavior, ego driven decision making, and gives away its autonomy for dollars.

The detoxification process than the savvy peace builder experiences as she moves confidently through dread, fear and exhilaration, while also holding onto her employee life, ensures that—once her definition of success is realized—she will never go back to “golden handcuffs” ever again.

And she’ll be no good to any large organization—other than as an equal to be negotiated with, a competitor to be crushed or a morsel to be gobbled up.

The three emotional states—and their impacts— are integral to overcome because the road back to the “golden handcuffs” is a long one indeed.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] 3 Stages to Launch – Part 1

There are three hard parts to launching any project:

  • The first hard part is attaining technical knowledge (i.e. getting a degree, getting experience, phoning a friend, etc.).
  • The second hard part is getting the necessary hardware together and attaining a certain level of comfort with it, particularly when the learning curve is steep.
  • The third hard part is developing content—and allying with partners in that development—and getting that content distributed to the right audience.

Unfortunately, many people get caught in a spiral of focusing obsessively about how hard the three hard parts might be, rather than actually taking concrete steps to complete at least one of them.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/