A Successful Meeting Outcome

A meeting is successful if: everyone comes out of the meeting inspired and motivated with a clear sense of responsibility, sharing a clear understanding of the objectives and targets discussed and agreed in the meeting. Next actions have been clearly communicated and documented and everyone knows exactly what they need to do, by what date. Are these bases covered in the meetings you attend?

Attracting And Maintaining Customers

The purpose of a company is to attract and keep customers. Your job in sales is to upgrade the quality and sophistication of your sales process and your approaches to create customers in sufficient quantity. To maintain the customer over time you can't be self centred. You must focus on the needs of other person. Remember the saying: "If you want a friend get a dog. If you want a customer solve his problems."

Do Not Say Not

The other day a friend of mine, an expert in Neuro Linguistic Programming, told me that our brains can not comprehend "not". He told me that sales people trying to close a sale with a negative question, like for example; "Could you not just consider trying this out?" can easily double their closing rate by just switching their language into the positive. This is good advice for all of us. We should talk in a way to make it easy for the brain to comprehend.

Tackle The Toughest Task First

When you start your day, take a look at all your important tasks, pick the most difficult and start by attacking that first. Stay with the task until it is completed. Then pick the next one and so on. This way you stay focused on the important stuff, you have less to worry about and get a sense of accomplishment. This way you keep your energy level high for the duration of the day and can finish with smile on your face knowing you did your best.

Focus On Who You Become

Rather than concentrating on what you want to get out of life, it is very powerful to concentrate on who you want to become and what behaviours you need to develop do in order to get you there. For example; don't focus on making a lot of money, instead focus on becoming the type of person people want to do business with. This way attraction will come naturally as a result.

The Medical Procedure To Sales

In medicine a doctor follows a procedure he has learned in school. First comes examination, investigating symptoms and gathering information from the patient. Secondly there is diagnosis determining what is wrong with the patient and finally there is prescription telling what the patient has to do now to get well. It turns out this is very much like the selling process. With practice you too can become a surgeon of sales.

Do Unto Others...

There is an extension to the classical golden rule, sometimes referred to as the "Platinum Rule", propagated by Dr. Tony Alessandra; and it goes like this: "Do unto others as they want you to do unto them". In other words, treat people like they want to be treated. People have different personalities and come from different backgrounds. Particularly in one-to-one situations this suggests that in order to communicate more effectively we need to be good at adapting to the other person.