Talk Selling

Steven Covey 7 habits meets LinkedIn?

In his book, The 8th Habit—From Effectiveness to Greatness, Steven Covey wrote about some major shifts that have created a rapidly changing world. He said they define the Knowledge Worker Age and present new challenges that confront individuals and companies world wide.

One such shift is the use of web sites like LinkedIn that harness the power of networks and the idea of everyone being within six steps of everyone else. The 7 habits prescribe a way of working individually and with others but the 8th habit says that the key challenge facing the world today is to find our voice and also to help others to find their voice too. Here is a key excerpt from Covey:

Stephen Covey the 8th habit from effectiveness to greatness in helping people to achieve

The 8^th habit builds upon the world bestseller 7 habits of highly successful people and becomes a 3^rd dimension to help you to find your voice and then to inspire others to greatness. Something you may say that would be appropriate for every business leader today. It does this through providing a wider context of culture and organisation in which personal and interpersonal habits are cultivated.

No Fear Cold Calling

Dave Sibley here – I’d like to share some of my thoughts about cold calling to help you break through the fear barrier and be able to control your own success destiny. Often we hang on to those leads and wring the life out of them instead of picking up the phone and finding new sources of business. It’s very easy to get distracted and find something more interesting to do to avoid cold calling,(most people don’t like having to do it so always have an excuse not to.) I wrote a previous article called the Pursuit of Happyness which talked about time spent and how you could use it wisely, which might also help you utilise this time well. Now lets look at getting organised. Here are some strategies that will help get organised and in the right state of mind...

Use NLP to improve your cold calls

Almost all aspects of NLP are applicable to cold calling - after all it's about getting effective and speedy results for people. In this article I'll focus on an area that I think can make a big difference to how you approach a cold call and your effectiveness

Compel:To exert a strong, irresistible force on; to sway

Can you remember a time when you saw a heavily pregnant woman walking down the street? We sometimes show a powerpoint image of a pregnant woman to really give a sense of something that is totally compelling it certainly gets people focused, taking action and buying things. In an earlier post we gave an overview of compelling selling and one of the parts of the model is the idea of compelling reasons - why you prospect is going to buy and why now. So for the next part in this series let's explore compelling reasons further - what kinds of things compel a sale?

So what's your proposition?

Ask a your colleagues what a value proposition is and you'll get as many answers as the people you ask - maybe more. Helping our clients get clear on what they are trying to achieve with a proposition is often all that's required to focus attention on the right thing and swiftly get results. After all if a group is talking at cross purposes it's frustrating at best and rarely gets much done. We use several labels for different types of proposition and certainly make no claim to define what a value proposition really is - all we want from the labels is to ensure we are all working to achieve the same thing.

The first type of proposition we use is the credibility proposition.

Buyers guide to sellers Episode 2: How to respond to bids

In this interview Barry takes us through how he evaluates tender responses. Some of the topics he covers are:-

Blink - Malcolm Gladwell

How many times have we been in a business meeting and we have had some kind of alarm go off in our heads, something just doesn’t feel quite right about the situation. We feel uneasy and out of balance and all this happens in the time it takes to blink your eye. This as we say raises alarms because often it’s our intuition that lets know this not our cognitive logical part of our brains. It could be so many things, here are some examples; the tone change in their voice, the lack of interest in their body language, or seeing an expression on their face. I am very tuned in to how long it takes for a client to return a phone call. There are different  categories 

Linkedin is more than Facebook for business

When Chris and I run business training sessions networking is always a hot topic for discussion along with how we use linkedin. When we review the profiles of our delegates we always find that their networks are

Alarms, real or false

Sometimes you’re working away in your office and the fire alarm goes off  and you stop for a minute and ask yourself is this a real or false alarm, what do you do? If you are like most people I know unless they see people running down the corridor they tend to ignore it. Intuitively, we use the same internal responses with our clients. We often observe something that is potential issue, e.g. a competitors name in the company sign in book. We may hear something in a meeting that we would like to ignore e.g. the budget meeting has been delayed. Or we intuitively feel something is not quite right .e.g. the client has a longer time period in retuning our calls. Usually these are alarms that are going off and we tend to ignore and get on with our daily tasks

Pay it Forward-The Secret to Success!

Early on in my selling career I can remember a trainer who inspired me, as he was so knowledgeable about selling and psychology. I was fortunate enough to go on a three day course with him and tap into some of his fine wisdom, which gave me a renewed confidence to go achieve. Whilst I sat in his class I was thinking that at some point in my life it would be great if I could help others serve their clients and achieve success for themselves. At the end of his course, when we had exhausted this poor man with our questions, he said one thing that always stuck with me, “Now I have taught you, go help someone else and pass it on”. Many years later

People buy from people - NLP & Selling

NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) has been around for a long time now, most people have heard of it and a lot of sales training courses include at least some aspects of it. So how can it help you to sell?

There is a wealth of material that has been developed by various members of the NLP community and so rather let's look at one of the most basic but also most useful NLP skills - rapport.

Not enough hours in the day? The Film “ The Pursuit of Happyness”

When you’re making cold calls it is very easy to get distracted and your attention wanders onto other tasks that are easier than dialling your next suspect. Time is your most precious commodity and highly treasured. In order to maximise my dialling time I am always looking for new ideas. Recently, I was inspired by the film “The Pursuit of Happyness” which prompted me to reorganise  how I spent my cold calling time.

McKinsey conversation starter

Mckinsey are turning their minds to a recovery. The following article raises questions for FDs and starts to focus thinking on an exit from recession and getting a first mover advantage in the recovery.

Gartner on 2009 CIO priorities

We saw the followingYouTube  video on what CIO's face in 2009. It's always good to have a conversation starter so whether you agree or disagree with Gartner at least you can be up to speed with their views.

Patience and Persistence: When things are tough, remember, there’s always someone else having it tougher than you.

When I worked at Xerox, I remember canvassing one day collecting compliment slips to generate leads. I’d had a tough month, getting marched out of my 6th building and hadn’t won a deal for a long while. I sat down on a wall in tears of pure frustration at my lack of ability. Self doubt was starting to creep in but at that moment I had an epiphany.

A buyers guide to sellers

Our first series of video articles gives a buyers view on the various aspects of the sales process. The series starts off with how to get an appointment and follows the sales process from there through proposing, presenting, negotiating all the way to contract renewal and starting the sales cycle once more.

Barry Henniker is a Fellow of CIPS (Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply) and has been a Procurement Director for more than 30 years . As a Director of The Procurement Practice Barry has worked in both the public and private sectors.

Episode 1: How to get to meet me

In this interview Barry takes us through how to get an appointment with himself or other CxO level people. Some of the topics he covers are:-

Compelling Selling – generating inevitability about you and your solution

Remember Y2K when it was so easy to sell anything that could be covered by a Y2K budget – the London 2012 Olympics will provide a similar sales scenario. The idea of compelling events has been around a long time and in our view is a key part of qualification. We have extended the notion of compelling events to compelling selling that sees a sale as the successful completion of a logical and emotional journey for you and your client.

A passion for selling

Once a climber has conquered a peak they are always looking on to the next pinnacle to pursue. We are continually driving to reach new peaks of selling and this blog is our way to share that journey with you. Along the way we have gathered over 50 years of sales experience and plan on discussing and sharing some of the ups and downs here. A warm welcome to talk selling.