The idea of being present is a practice preached in every aspect of life. We are told tips like “live in the moment” and “take in your current surroundings.” We read best-selling books like Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now.” We quote movies and songs themed along the lines "life moves pretty fast - if you don't stop and look around once and a while, you could miss it" (from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off") or “no day but today” (from the rock opera "Rent").
In business particularly, being present is absolutely imperative to creating rapport which is absolutely imperative to building long-lasting and lucrative partnerships. entreQuest cannot stress the importance of being present enough when helping our clients deliver a remarkarable experience. We train on this topic in every engagement we lead. The basics of this lesson are best described in the article we published in SmartCEO magazine titled “Being Present to the Opportunity” which is available at this link: http://www.entrequest.com/wp-content/pdf/entrequest_BePresent_04.04.pdf?phpMyAdmin=d2c4aa6766ft5760658.
Let’s take this whole idea one step further though and ask: how do you become better at being present when working with a client or prospect AND also create a situation that will help your client or prospect be present to the messages you’re trying to send? After all, successful professionals are able to assess their surroundings and execute their strategies in a way that keeps them focused on their business opportunity and keeps their business opportunity focused on them.
Why don't we try an exercise? Think back to the BEST teacher you had in grade school. Who was the man or woman who really made you love to learn? Who opened your eyes to a subject you initially weren’t interested in? Who made doing work feel good?
Our guess is that this teacher wasn’t too similar to you at the time. It’s quite likely that he or she wasn’t looking forward to playing tag at recess or reciting lines from the afternoon cartoon line-up. He or she might have even had kids or grandchildren that were older than you. Yet somehow this teacher could relate to you. He or she engaged you, built a memorable relationship with you, and enrolled you in their subject matter for the long run. He or she successfully sold you on schooling.
What was it that these types of teachers did? Did they light up a history classroom with dramatic recounts of battle scenes from ancient Rome to World War II? Did they put the complexities of science into simple terms that you were familiar with? Did they convince you that learning appropriate sentence structure would indeed be necessary in whatever dream job you wanted to hold one day? Did they take extra time to help you figure out those frustrating math equations until they finally clicked?
Jogging your memory like this will help you figure out your own ways to be present to opportunities where you can learn about your prospects and clients AND help you capture the interest of those prospects and clients so that they’re present to the opportunity being presented to them. If one teacher in a classroom of twenty-plus rambunctious kids, almost all of whom openly oppose thinking any harder than they have to, can effectively convince even just a few of them to take advantage of the learning opportunity, then you can too during an intimate business meeting. And when you succeed in being present, your revenue riches can be won just like your educational enrichments.
For additional inspiration on the everlasting impact of being present, we recommend reading an interesting list of famous people who became present to the learning opportunity that their favorite teachers created for them. Published by the National Education Association, “Celebrities & Notable Public Figures Thank Their Most Memorable Teachers” is available at this link: http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/HE/Complete_Thank_You_List_CC_042408.pdf.
Joe Mechlinski is the President of entreQuest and has partnered with countless leaders to effectively improve their team’s performance, their clients’ experience, and their company’s profits.
