Summer is a traditionally a time for vacation to allow for rejuvenation and recreation. The word “recreation” derives from the root meaning, “recovery from illness”; and somehow going away to relax feels more than ever like an attempt to recover from the “illness” of so much of the rush, pressure and busy-ness of our lives.

Summertime with family, friends and longtime companions – what could be better? This coming week, I’m hoping to add new memories to some of my favorites from past years: Playing cards outside at a cafe on a Spanish island, hanging out at the Piazza de San Marco in Venice late at night, trying to find apple pie in rural Wales, helicopter hiking in the Canadian Rockies, pre-dawn jogs on Maui followed by a warm dip in the ocean.

What are your memories of summer? What are you doing to have recreation and restore your Self?

Study Hall will be on hiatus for the next two weeks and resume on Tuesday, September 8.

Often, the word “potential” is tied with superlatives like “unlimited” or “huge” or “fantastic” to inspire or motivate us. POTENTIAL in capital letters with exclamation points!!!

But how much do we think about “limited potential”? Talents and skills vary among human beings. How about potential? Does it vary similarly? Can it be diminished by life circumstances? Does potential stay the same over a lifetime or can it be damaged and reduced?

While everyone may theoretically have an unlimited potential for greatness, for example, greatness still seems to be in short supply. The same for common sense: limitless potential for it, yet common sense is not common. So if potential is limited, what is the source of the limitation?

Let’s look inward. Have you limited your potential for impeccable health, tremendous success, off-the-charts happiness? Do you really have the potential for the world’s greatest relationship, or have you allowed that potential to be damaged or diminished?

Today, please consider places where you may have been a party to diminished or reduced potential. Perhaps think about how and why that came to be. You might want to make sure that the choice to live below a superlative level of potential is a knowing choice. Perhaps you’ll want to restore your potential?

Among the stickiest places for dealing with potential has been numbers – and particularly financial numbers.  Money has been a highly-charged topic for many of us.  As a culture, we’ve often been more open about our romantic lives than our financial lives.

It’s likely that a key reason for historic difficulty in relating with financial potential is that our culture teaches us that we are to be measured by our financial achievements.  If we’re earning under our potential, the tendency for many has been to experience that as some sort of failure as a person rather than simply a measure of relative performance.

What is your relationship to your financial potential?  Is it easier to explore your potential for financial mastery at work rather than in your own personal balance sheet?  Have you been among those persons who ignores your financial potential altogether? What is the optimal relationship to that potential for you?

Fascinating, isn’t it, that the modern word “potential” derives from the Latin word “potentia” meaning “power”?  Yet, it makes sense that when we speak of the potential of someone or something, we are really speaking of power and / or possibility.

Interchanging the words is an interesting exercise.  How does it feel to say, “I have the power to (fill in the blank)” as compared to “I have the potential to (fill in the blank)”?

The word “power” conveys more certainty and, most likely, means a greater likelihood of something’s happening.  Try using the words synonymously and see what occurs.

What’s your potential?  Are you living up to it?  How do you know when you are or you aren’t?  What can you do about it . . . either way? Do you use your potential only as a means of motivating you, or have you used it in the past as a way of punishing yourself when you’ve focused on not living up to it? Is your perception of your potential a moving target that has mirage-like qualities?

Potential means “the inherent capacity for coming into being.” Potential from an engineering perspective roughly means the capacity – or the ability – of a structure to bear a specific load.

For human beings, our potential is probably less a fixed number than a range of possibilities that can be impacted – positively or negatively – by a tremendous range of variables.

How much do you access or consult the idea of your potential with the intention of being motivated and inspired by it?  Less pleasantly, how frequently have you consulted your potential – and the difference between where you are and where you could be – as a means of beating yourself up?  What is the optimal relationship to potential?

Advertising is a mammoth selling machine to influence us to buy products and services.  Huge amounts of money are spent annually to convince us that we need to be improved: to smell better, to look younger, to be considered sexy based on the cars we drive and the clothes we wear.

Selling by companies using mass media – and now the web – is virtually a science driven by psychology and often manipulation of our self images and identities.  Without realizing it, we can be influenced by advertising which sells us on particular world views.

What is your relationship to advertising?  Do you tune it out or edit it out?  What kind of credibility does that kind of selling provide for you in making day-to-day buying decisions?  Is this kind of selling honorable and useful? How conscious can we keep our buying decisions based on the selling that takes place in national advertising campaigns?

There has been not inconsiderable resistance in our culture to identifying oneself as a salesperson.  Many consider selling to be “beneath” them or somehow inferior to holding a “professional” job.  Over 25  years ago, psychologists Dudley and Goodson created a test to measure the degree of “Sales Call Reluctance” which measured 12 different areas that are predictive of success as a salesperson.

Among the 12 categories is the general category of the willingness to be identified as a sales professional.  One’s score reveals the degree of embracing or rejection of a role as salesperson.  Obviously, if one rejects the role, she or he is going to have a hard time selling successfully.

Where do you fall in terms of willingness to identify yourself as a salesperson – either directly or in terms of functionalities within your job?  Where do you see salespeople within a socio-economic hierarchy?  How valuable or not valuable are salespeople in your opinion to the ultimate betterment of society?

Selling is a process of communicating sufficient value so that a buyer says “yes” and a sale is consummated. Many buyers perceive higher value if they feel they are being treated as special. Oftentimes, we feel special when offered a bargain, a sale or a premium — among many ways.

“Special offers” can be offered in refined and attractive ways or, at the opposite end of the continuum, “deals” can be crude and even consulting — sometimes even counterproductive for the salesperson. Kin Hubbard defines bargain as:  ”A bargain is anything a customer thinks a store is losing money on.”

Do you currently offer discounts and bargain pricing to your customers? What are your reasons either way?  Are customers more or less demanding for deals and discounts in our current economic environment? Are you a “deal shopper”?  What have been the best ways for you to offer deals to your customers?

Writer Jay Abraham says, “Whatever area you work in, you do have clients and you do need to sell.”  This notion of  ”everyone sells something” can be translated into “Everyone influences others” because selling is a form of influencing and persuading.

What we have often objected to about selling is that it can include unfair or undue forms of influence or persuasion.  The stereotype of the “used car salesman” involves manipulation and psychological pressure – and, of course, we want to avoid that kind of behavior.

However, persuasion and influence can be performed ethically. Genie Laborde’s book, Influencing With Integrity, is a classic in sales communication and I recommend it highly:

http://www.amazon.com/Influencing-Integrity-Genie-Z-Laborde/dp/0933347103

How well are you at “influencing with integrity”?  Can you make the leap to seeing selling as influencing? What are the implications of this shift in perspective for you as both a seller and a buyer?

There’s an old saying that, “Nothing happens until somebody sells something” – no doubt penned by a sales manager given to exaggeration.  Selling has sometimes been a very controversial and difficult topic for clients over the years . . . primarily because few people want to be perceived as overly pushy or aggressive. Yet, an effective sales strategy and execution is essential for any business to grow.

The consultative sales approach is a way to simultaneously be of service to a prospect as well as promote a sale for your company or employer.  The salesperson assumes a role as an ethical consultant who advises the client with a useful analysis of the client’s situation . . . and, based on the resulting recommendations, there is or is not a further recommendation to buy from the salesperson / consultant.

How do you feel about selling?  Has it been difficult or easy for you? Are there situations where it is either more difficult or easy than others?  How necessary is it for you to be involved in an active selling process?  What are some breakthroughs that you would enjoy as a salesperson?