This week I was listening in on one of our virtual Sales Wisdom workshops. After hearing the candor between the instructor and the participants about how to respond to a particular question, it struck me that there is a big difference between the “right answer”, and the “right conversation”. The role play in the workshop takes real world situations that the participants experience, and strives to have them rethink their automatic responses in tense or confrontational situations. The hope is to engage the conversational partner in a meaningful dialogue rather than directly answer their question (which often can shut down the conversation). Naturally some participants are a little uncomfortable with this approach and have been inclined to answer the question right-out, especially when they did not see any adverse effect on their or their company’s position by doing so.
Continue reading
Our Perspective is the Root of Success or Failure
When we are leading, influencing, being called upon as trusted advisors or salespeople, the perspective we choose to take in a situation is fundamentally linked to our success or failure in that situation. Perspective tends to drive how we react instinctively, and our reactions drive our attitudes and our behaviors which then drive our outcomes.
Willpower & Personal Performance
“There are 3 types of strength” I tell my kids. “Physical strength, intellectual strength, and the strength of your willpower.” I’ve been telling them this because I see them stuck in a lot of the frustrating patterns of behavior that I also see in myself… and that I’ve been working on continuously for years. So much of our performance in our jobs and in our roles in life will ultimately be tied to our strength of will. For a lot of my customers and coaching clients, their will is tested most when they move from an operations or technical role (engineering, consulting, etc.) into a role with sales responsibilities. It is very often willpower, not knowledge, that limits our performance.
Continue reading
How Attitude Influences Communication
“Attitude” is a funny thing. We often talk about attitude, refer to it, judge it as “good” or “bad”, and yet it is very difficult for us to really get our arms around what it really is. In situations involving persuasion, tact, diplomacy, etc. we are all aware there is a right attitude for the situation and a wrong one. Continue reading
Don’t wish it were easier… Wish that you were better.
I heard a quote years ago that shifted the way I look at challenging situations. It was such a formative idea in my personal development that I thought it might be a good blog entry. The quote was on a CD by a speaker named Jim Rohn called “The Art of Exceptional Living”. I can still hear Jim’s unique voice ringing in my head when he said “don’t wish it were easier… wish that you were better!”
Becoming a Trusted Advisor… Relative Seniority
There’s a lot of rhetoric available about how to become someone’s trusted advisor. It is a coveted position to be in – both in terms of how it strokes our ego as well as being a prime position from which we can grow our relationship (and our role/business) with that person. From my experience in coaching some very smart people, I’ve noticed that being smarter doesn’t particularly create the trust, credibility, or relationship you might seek with your counterpart.
Continue reading
Conversation vs. Information Exchange
One of the fundamental fallacies that I’ve observed in selling is the idea that information is the key reason people buy from us. I have watched the sales people, sales engineers, techies, and executives I coach share with their prospects how great their technology/process/approach is, how superior their features and benefits are, how the speeds and feeds are this and that, and continue with a litany of details about the product or service in question. It is as if they believe the information has some magic ability to cause the prospect to buy. It isn’t so!!!
Continue reading
Can you be too smart?
Sometimes a company’s smartest people are rather handicapped when it comes to situations requiring tact, persuasion, influence, leadership, conversational elegance, emotion, etc. This white paper looks at the numerous roles and situations in which this behavior arises, the problems it causes, the workarounds that get implemented to mitigate the issue, and the actual solutions available to generate long term behavioral change in the personalities and interpersonal skills of, well, anybody who shows that narcissistic, know it all, fear of rejection, talks too much, talks too little, talks about the wrong thing, dysfunctional behavior in the workplace. Continue reading
Happy Holidays!
Click image for PDFAs 2009 draws to a close and we anticipate a new year and a new decade, we are filled with gratitude for those who have made our success possible. So in this spirit we wish to tell you all, simply and sincerely, Thank you! And as is the tradition during this time of year, we stumbled upon …
Thoughts on Teaching Sales to Technologists
We teach engineers/technologists/consultants about sales. “Why the heck would someone want to do that?” you ask. “Does it work?” you ask. I was driving home from teaching a class today and was in one of those “rant” moods, and luckily my handy blackberry has a record function on it. So, with nothing better to do while caught in I-25 traffic, …
- Page 1 of 2
- 1
- 2
