The vast amount of information available via the web has radically altered the selling process. Potential customers can reference websites, blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other web-based tools to gather volumes of data before they ever reach out to a salesperson. If you are not careful, when that inquiry arrives, your response will convince them that your product or service is just like the other commodities they see all over the web and they …
Leadership is the practice of influence. Inspiring people to follow your lead requires a commitment to personal engagement – an investment of precious time to be prioritized versus other stakeholder demands for your attention. Where does personal engagement fit into your priorities? People choose to follow you because they believe in you and where you are leading them. When they stop trusting you, your ability to continue as leader is over. This is why engaging …
Doing more than expected is time-consuming and expensive. Sustaining this level of effort is difficult. There’s always a shortcut available – why not take it? Creating value frequently involves this choice. Which path would you choose? Our world of connectivity provides access to reams of information and promotes instant gratification. Many folks are so addicted to their smart devices that it’s hard to have a cogent conversation with them…the phone rings and their focus is …
What’s the most vital ingredient of enduring relationships? Your first instinct might be to answer that trust is the most essential ingredient. But in today’s “connection” economy, there’s an even more primal element that enables trust and benefits everyone in the relationship. Before trust can grow, there must be generosity. Generosity creates trust. Generosity is more than offering discounts or giving products or services away for free. If we don’t know you, why would we invest valuable time …
The daily demands on your time – meetings, email, personnel management, etc. – can distract you and destroy your plans for a productive day. Before you know it, there is little time for the proactive tasks you had planned to pursue like following up with customers and collaborators, asking for referrals, reviewing your key performance indicators, goal setting and planning. Time management is a challenge for every business leader. Filling your day with “busyness” instead of …
In business, technology is the indispensable enabler of communications, customer service, productivity and other functions. You cannot compete without it. But people want to do business with other people, not with faceless companies or their technology. If technology identifies a new opportunity, how can you transform it into a personal interaction? Years ago, our parents and grandparents knew the people that sold them their food, hardware, shoes, etc. and B-to-B transactions were conducted across a …
Change is inevitable. Organizations are always adapting to meet shifting market conditions, to enable their growth, etc. Resistance to change is also inevitable. It takes more than a memo containing a few bullet points to overcome this resistance. What seems crystal clear to you regarding a pending change initiative is often less straightforward for those impacted by the change. Expect it to take much longer than you imagined to implement a major change. Plan your …
The most critical part of any sales process is Discovery – seeking to uncover a prospect’s needs and goals. Prospects become customers once they confirm that you have heard their story, can meet their goals as well as their needs, and could actually exceed their expectations. Productive sales Discovery does much more than uncovering a prospect’s needs and goals. It: Encourages prospects to do the talking; Provides an opportunity for you to demonstrate empathy; Enables …
We interact with this world through our five senses. We are feeling beings who think, not thinkers who feel. When you care about someone else, you are invested them – what happens to them, happens to you. When your child is recognized for an accomplishment, you feel the pride that they feel. When something bad happens to your good friend, you feel the pain they feel. When your employee or associate is acknowledged for achieving a goal, you …
The working relationship between manufacturer and distributor is often defined by sales quotas. But using only quotas to manage this vital affiliation does not preserve the relationship’s primary, mutually beneficial purpose of sustaining growth in the market. When that purpose is unclear, and it becomes separated from the profit motive, bad things happen. The original purpose of the manufacturer-distributor working relationship was to increase sales by expanding market coverage in local markets. For a while, …
