When working with sales teams, three excuses are often cited as obstacles to earning new business. Ask yourself “why” you think it is an issue when you are tempted to mention one of these excuses and try a different approach 1. “If we don’t offer the lowest price, we don’t get the order.” If you make no effort to learn about your customers’ business, and offer nothing novel or compelling to help them achieve success, …
Every leader faces a business crisis during his or her career. It’s the defining moment of adversity that tests that person’s leadership competency. What decisions must be made now? What vital actions must urgently be taken? Proven leaders consider 3 key questions when confronting a crisis. 1. What is the current real situation? Leaders first seek to gain a comprehensive understanding about the actual scope of the crisis. This is the diagnostic assessment. What caused …
Prospects have stated and unstated needs. Discovering the unstated ones results in getting the order. Intimacy is the key that unlocks these hidden unstated needs and begins to build the emotional connection with a prospect that leads to an order. What is the best way to foster intimacy with new prospects? Your first three minutes with a new prospect is your chance to put the person at ease and gain insights into his or her …
Leaders are increasingly challenged to preserve balance between their corporate responsibilities and their personal core values. The inability to sustain this balance can cause conflicts for the leader and confusion for those who depend on her or him. A prolonged imbalance can breed distrust in a team. One way to help leaders preserve balance is for them to measure the energy and skill invested in their key activities versus the benefits they receive back from …
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 …
Experienced sales people know that their primary task is to identify and resolve a customer’s need. Look for pain points and propose solutions to remove the pain. Customers know this too which is why they often want to shortcut the selling process by quickly categorizing your proposal and focusing on the price for pain removal. How you react defines how seriously the customer will consider your proposal. This is the decisive moment. How will you …
If you rely on distributors to get your products to market, then your core challenge is managing your relationship to maximize your mutual benefit. The distributor is not your employee, but you must ensure that the integrity of your value proposition is sustained as if the distributor worked directly for you. The distributor is not your end customer, but you must help achieve the distributor’s and end user’s goals. Your distributor relationship is ideal for customer-partnering. The most …
Your people are your most sustainable competitive advantage. When they robustly and consistently demonstrate your company’s core Principles, they create experiences for your customers that cultivate enduring relationships. In addition, research confirms the direct linkage between high company performance and high employee engagement. Engagement infuses your company’s actions with vitality, strengthens your competitive advantage, and focuses energy to grow your business. It requires a consistent investment of your time and a regular infusion of new ideas to fuel your people’s …