I don’t sell a bean

Leanne’s running late – like usual. Juggling her career and personal life is a challenge at the best of times, but she’s all over it. This Super-mom runs a tight ship. Everyone is awake at 7am, washed, changed, fed, and out the door by 7:45. Leanne loads the dishwasher, puts the slow cooker on for dinner tonight, and charges out the door to drop off her youngest at the nursery and eldest to school, just before shooting across to work. Every day she bounces into her job as a Head of Safeguarding at a local secondary school, where she makes significant child protection decisions, like removing children from their parents and interrupting drug dealers recruiting children and child grooming and other serious crimes like FMGM. It’s a tough job, where she focuses on inspiring children, influencing parents, opening minds, and giving children the capacity to dream and live a progressive life. The emotional weight with the job and parent life is heavy, so looking after her mental health is a top priority for Leanne so the best version of herself can turn up time and time again. Her rest-bite from the mayhem is grabbing a coffee with her friend Saturday morning where they talk all things life, offload and exhale.

Saturday Morning.
Sam is waiting, again in their favourite coffee shop for a late Leanne. She crashes down in the chair with her friend Sam, a Family Lawyer, Latte at the ready and they dive into the usual – it’s great to see you, how are you? What’s new?

The momentum of the conversation slows as they both ease into a range of topics like the cost of childcare, the latest Netflix series, the books they are reading and so much more. Sam interrupts Leanne and says “I stumbled across this eBook from a company called Blu-J, it was full of tips, hacks, and advice on how to deliver a High Persuasive Performance and win the decision you want. You should check it out, it could really help at work”. Leanne frowns and says “I don’t think that ones for me Sam, it sounds businessey and I don’t sell a bean”!

“Of course you do” replies Sam, “you are probably the best Salesperson I know”! Leanne puts down her half-drunk Latte, leans forward in her chair with intrigue and asks “what do you mean”? “Leanne you spend most of your day inspiring children to act, influencing colleagues, persuading parents, getting buy-in from loads of people. I hate to break it to you, but that’s selling! Leanne you may have the hardest and best sales job ever”. “I don’t understand,” Leanne asks. “Well, you are selling hope, futures, standards, dreams, protection. You are getting young people to buy into the concepts they may not understand yet. You get them to make decisions that give them a better future. It’s bloody awesome”. Leanne sits back in her chair, looks into the middle distance full of thought. You can see her pensively thinking as the ‘penny drops’ and she says “Oh my god. I am a salesperson”. She is gobsmacked. She takes another sip of her latte and in a daze, says to Sam “I’m going to get a cake”.

Later that night, Leanne is lying in bed, trying to come to terms with the fact that she has been selling and trying to get people to buy into ideas and lifestyles for years. Her brain was motoring with thought and she didn’t sleep that well. The next day she was in the staff room and started to cautiously share her ‘penny drop moment’ asking colleagues – “What does High Persuasive Performance mean to you? Do you think we spend enough time and effort selling what we are pedalling to children to get their buy-in or are we telling them? Could we do more to capture their hearts and minds”? Leanne got a broad range of answers that day and came to the conclusion that everyone was on a different page, have wildly different beliefs and perspectives. She thought drawing all of these insights, cultures together to form a united High Persuasive Performance for her and her colleagues has got to be a positive thing.

Later that day she started to sketch out some ideas. She downloaded the eBook from Blu-J for some support and new perspectives. The very next day…Leanne grabbed the attention of everyone in a staff briefing and opened by asking “Are we Salespeople and can we sell”?

She went on to cover off how the goals they have and the way they go about them are all sales tactics. She went through a quick checklist to determine if the Teachers in the room sell or they don’t. It was a resounding success, every Teacher accepted that selling is a huge part of what they do. Some found this daunting and overwhelming, others found this exciting and brought a new perspective to their job, the type of fire in their belly they were looking for.

A week later, Leanne planned and delivered an Assembly to over 300 students where she explained that life was a Trade and the decisions they make on a daily basis shape your future and that people from all walks of life will compete for your attention and try to win a decision from them like; do you want these trainers for Free? Do you want to buy more upgrades on your Xbox? Will you drop this package off for me? Leanne declared war on all the things that were competing for the student’s attention, putting them in danger and robbing them of prosperous different future. She wanted to make a more compelling sell to win the decisions that would keep her students safe and buy-in from the children to learn. She ended the Assembly with a story about a past student who went on to live a very compromised life full of poverty, drugs, and crime because the right decisions were lost. She ended with an apology to students for telling and not selling. She made a vow to change things.

1 month later, Leanne meets Sam for another coffee and spends 2 hours downloading how her entire perspective had changed, the way the school teaches and the successes she has had inspiring, influencing and persuading students and parents. She has been capturing the successes along the way to keep track of everything. Next week Leanne is going to share her content with the Governors as she campaigns for more Teachers and Schools to sell the knowledge and experience, hopes and dreams and standards to students in exchange for their time. Not bad for someone who doesn’t sell a bean. She now sells magic beans!

If you liked this blog and keen to learn more about how to inspire, influence and persuade someone, then you may be interested in our FREE eBook.  The information you will read will help you consistently deliver High Persuasive Performances and win the decisions you deserve while making sure you avoid failure, missed opportunities and, appearing incompetent. Check it out here:  https://blu-j.co.uk#ebook

By the time you’ve finished reading, you’ll have all the information you need to kickstart your journey to success and delivery High Persuasive Performances.