Here is a selection of our most popular articles and podcasts – yours to use FREE for internal purposes.
How do we make the most of it's great ability? First learn how it works. How does memory work? How does concentration work? What is the best way to learn and to teach? Start your brain exploration and you will come up with some interesting surprises.
In a sales conversation, the person who asks the questions has the control. Top performing salespeople are invariable those who confidently and deliberately control the sales process, leading rather than following. The quality of the sales professional’s questions and his/her ability to ask them in a logical sequence is what demonstrates to the prospect that they are a complete professional, knowing what they are doing every step of the way. In this podcast, you will learn a common sense strategy to prepare specific questions in advance, to improve the likelihood of uncovering real wants and needs that move the sale forward.
Attracting clients through referrals is the most powerful way to build your business. When you are first starting in business, you have to prospect in other ways to get the ball rolling. And some businesses lend themselves more naturally to referral marketing than others. But most salespeople can apply the following seven step method to generating additional contacts for their business.
As management consultants, businesses ask us for programs and systems to improve performance. But what about practices that hurt a business? What habit patterns cause companies to hesitate, lose momentum or seize up and no longer perform at full throttle?
For most people, the term creativity is more easily applicable to art and music than to business. We expect the Picassos and the Mozarts of the world to experience creative breakthroughs; but we are less convinced that business people have anything to be creative about. Yet art and music can be characterized as the production of order out of chaos, and isn’t chaos the natural state of business?
Western thinking is traditionally concerned with what is -- which is determined by analysis, judgment and argument. Thinking based on this is fine, just as the front left wheel of a car is fine. Such thinking works well in a stable world.
While working with a multinational company, the question came up, “how does a British manager coach a French employee?” Other clients have asked,“what happens when the manager is in the top left corner of the personality style matrix, and the employee is in the bottom right hand corner?”Still others have asked about Boomers working with Generation Y.
We all make our livings selling something to someone. Everyone works on commission. All of us are paid both tangibly and intangibly, on the basis of how well we sell ourselves, our ideas, and our products and services to others. It is not a matter of whether you sell or not, it is only a matter of how good you are at it. All sales success is based on these three principles. They are practiced consciously or unconsciously by every top performing sales professional. The regular application of these principles is guaranteed to dramatically improve the performance of any sales person.
Today, workshop participants have limited attention spans, so facilitators have to bring in games and accessories to keep everyone entertained. Some workshop facilitators toss out small candy bars when participants answer questions. But using experiential activities should be more than just “games trainers play”.
The sales world is changing, and you should be aware of the impact of the changing tastes of your customers and how it effects your business. Age plays a critical role in customer buying decisions. In fact, the generation into which we are born has as much impact on buying and purchasing decisions as income and education. Our shared experiences determine what motivates us toward or away from a sale. By selling effectively to the next generations, you in turn, effectively sell to all the generations. By honing your message, becoming more technologically proficient and using multiple communication channels, you will not only reach the Millennials, but all generations. Draw inspiration from this influential generation, and create a business and sales strategy that is not only innovative, but relevant.
Each year over $60 billion is spent on training in the United States, particularly management training. Regardless of the quality of the content, the delivery or the frequency of repetition, management training is often ineffective in changing organizational practices.
The key to success in prospecting for new clients in a business-to-business environment is patience. There are no quick and easy approaches, there are no silver bullets that will guarantee a whole bunch of new clients -- despite what the list companies and trade show producers promise you.
Old style prospecting consisted of closing and overcoming objections, essentially arm wrestling prospects into seeing you and eventually buying from you. Today, in a few minutes you can send out e-mail broadcasts to qualified prospects and clients. And while you are wrapping up a sale, your computer can crack out twelve letters a minute. And who knows how many people can check your latest quote on your web page? During this podcast, learn a client acquisition system including email, fax and internet strategies.
Most people experience distress from conflicts which fall into three categories: Intrapersonal (me-me), interpersonal (me-you) and personal-functional (me-job). Any one of these types of conflicts can cause energy drain.
Most of us intuitively understand that the climate of one's workplace has an impact on how people feel and on how they perform. In using the term climate, we refer to the collective atmosphere of a workplace: the attitudes, perceptions and dynamics that affect how people perform on a daily basis.
The winning edge principle says small differences in ability can lead to enormous differences in results. The difference between top performers and the average or mediocre performers is not a huge difference in talent or ability. Often, it is just a few small things done consistently and well, over and over again. We know that human beings are extraordinarily influenced by suggestive elements in their environments, especially the human elements. In this audio session, learn the suggestive influence skills of a calm, confident, relaxed sales advisor that communicate value to the client at every step of the sales process.
Whether you are in manufacturing, distribution, financial services or technology, it is becoming more and more difficult to remain competitive. One of the untapped areas for competitive differentiation is your service approach. In this podcast, I present 21 ideas on how to create a sales and service culture, where everyone in your company is committed to creating a terrific customer experience.
Sales coaching is the key ingredient that makes your performance improvement strategies, your training program work. Without commitment from managers to inspect what they expect, there is little chance that the sales team will change their behavior. Coaching utilizes the same skills as effective selling: listen carefully, make recommendations, and follow up. With Sales Coaching, follow these steps even more carefully than usual.
Working with sales managers, we’ve noticed that even the best intentioned managers get bogged down in the minutiae of their work: the paperwork that piles up, the high profile account that needs hand holding, the vendor relationships that need to be nurtured, etc. Although these managers struggle with busy work, they know that they need to focus their time on the critical essentials of their job.
Strategy is a plan to deploy your resources in a way that brings your strengths to bear, creating momentum that leads to victory. You can win without strategy; it’s called luck. Most organizations turn their sales strategy over to their sales force without clear definition. The three point sales strategy of “here’s your cards, here’s your brochures, there’s the door” is still quite common. Salespeople need a mental picture and map of how they plan to win. And, then they need to effectively implement the plan. Strategy is how you intend to achieve your sales objectives; it’s your plan of attack. It is how you plan to allocate resources, what you’re going to sell to whom, where and when. Tactics are the day-to-day detail actions your sales team does to execute the sales strategy. Competitive advantage doesn’t come from awareness of a sales strategy, it comes from consistent execution of your strategy faster than the competition.
If you are a sales professional, you are essentially in business for yourself. The most important thing you have to sell is your time. How well you spend your time will determine how much money you make.
Mission, vision and values are qualities that separate top performing companies from their competition. Leaders within companies have a clear picture of the kind of future they want to create, and they have the ability to communicate this vision to others in an exciting way. During this podcast, learn seven keys that that keep your sales organization motivated to achieve higher levels of performance year after year.
The American Dream used to mean owning your own home. The new American Dream is owning your own business. Many people are convinced that they will never achieve total job satisfaction by working for someone else.
While the demand for effective managers continues to grow, the retirement of baby boomers is producing a sharp decline in the ranks of available personnel. In addition, executives are expected to be more sophisticated in order to lead new global and technological initiatives. For these reasons, careful planning for the eventual replacement of managers at all levels in organizations has gained strategic importance.
A number of trends facing sales organizations are commanding executives to rethink how they do business and how they deploy sales reps.
Research indicates that formal mentoring partnerships can be successful, especially if the right amount of structure is present. Structure includes such things as discussing expectations, agreeing on goals and outlining a schedule.
A salesperson’s most precious resource is their time -- it’s all they have to sell. And yet because of the independent nature of the world of selling, most sales professionals are not good time managers. The number one challenge sales professionals face today is time poverty; people feel there is not enough time to do all that they need to do. The focus of the podcast is to address key challenges facing sales professionals today, including managing priorities between servicing existing clients and selling new clients, territory management challenges and overall organizational skills.
Hiring is not easy today, and it wasnʼt easy over 2000 years ago. The Chinese Han dynasty attempted to create a scientific hiring process for their civil servants. They developed detailed job descriptions for various jobs. Historical records show that the people who created these job descriptions were not happy with the results of their efforts. To their chagrin, few of those hired performed as expected.
