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Month: April 2019

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Best Practices Investing Management Personal Development Sales

Selling Value: It’s No Longer Enough

Selling value is great, but it isn’t the solution it used to be.  The world – and customers — have changed around static solutions, and now we need to rethink the whole idea of selling value.  Selling Value can no longer be the responsibility of any single corporate function.  It needs to become a company-wide culture.  Specifically, we need value-focused culture, or simply Value Culture.

There are four reasons why selling value is no longer good enough.

Sales Have Lost the Handle on Full Value

For many years, companies have delivered sales training to sales organizations, and salespeople have improved how they sell. The sales training industry has established “world class sales” is something that exists inside of the sales silo. Now, we have extensive research on what “World class sales performance” looks like…but only viewed within the arena of sales, sales ops, and sales enablement.

The business world has shifted around the sales performance industry, though.  For the past few decades, though, companies have splintered their customer interface into many specialized roles:

Sales (hunters), account management (farmers), business development, inside sales, technical sales, demo specialists, sales development (appointment setters), installation, customer success, tech support, customer support, operations, finance, underwriting…

Salespeople don’t contact — much less have credibility with – all of the customer personas these specialist roles work with constantly.  “Sophisticated” companies train their specialists to deliver a great “customer experience”: customer interactions which promote the brand promise— or at least, eliminate weak links in the customer arc.  That’s not remotely what’s needed. Customer experience training doesn’t equip anyone to discover any of the value gaps from their unique vantage point.

Any company not training every customer-facing role to uncover potential value is failing to leverage potential competitive advantages.

Selling Value Has Come To Mean Less and Less

Even for Selling organizations who haven’t splintered, selling value has become less and less effective.

Customers have splintered and siloed themselves as well.  Your product or service touches more customer specialties than it used to…even if it didn’t become more sophisticated and capable.  Dividing your total value proposition into narrower and narrower customer slivers can reduce the total value your salespeople sell.  Every specialty your sales people fail to bring into the buying decision represents less value offered.  Selling value doesn’t have the same impact it used to.

Sales organizations need to navigate more complex customer organizations.  Meeting this challenge means raising the level of business acumen in your selling organization to find more “value leverage points”.  Sellers need to combine business acumen with customer acumen to find those leverage points in each organization they encounter.

Value Selling Seldom Leads to Value-Based Pricing…

 Frankly, I’m not very impressed with many current “value selling” methodologies.  Average sales training teaches reps to apply benefits to each single persona. The best value selling methodologies only teach reps to sell beyond benefits, to customer outcomes…which is value. I haven’t run across any (OK, anyone else’s) value selling methodology which influences a customer to build their own cost impact statement of those outcomes.

Current value selling helps win sales, but is only short putt away from selling at a profitable price. I love winning a deal as much as the next guy, but I’ve help P&L responsibility: what’s the point of winning a barely-profitable deal?  Your company lives on profits:  a profit stream – not a revenue stream – is what funds innovation, investment, all of your fixed costs…and yes, commission checks.

Pricing is Profit.

If your value selling initiative doesn’t draw a clear, bright line to selling at a value-based price, you’re dropping out of the race with the lead…in the home stretch.

Hoarding Value Insights Cripples Your Company

Value uncovered by the sales organization …used to win sales…even at a value-based price…can represent a few open loops in a company.  An organization-wide value culture closes these loops.

Value insights gathered via value discovery need to inform many other organizations in your company:

  • Marketing. First, content can be tightly focused on the value your company is uniquely positioned to offer.  Clicks and opens relating to those value points are worth infinitely more than those on more generic click-bait content.  Leads that germinate from outcome-based content are gold.  Crap content generates crap leads.  Second, you have persona-focused value insights which can drive tightly targeted, highly relevant sales support content. Collaterals that focus on specific “buying journey sticking points” are deal-movers.
  • Product Management and product training. Product training that describes persona-specific outcomes is the gold standard that few organizations practice.  Roadmaps and product strategies informed by a rich database of value insights are also far too uncommon.
  • Innovation. The virtual call center, a staple of today’s world, was invented at a cost of zero (OK, we had to develop a few new powerpoint slides), simply by combining two products together.  The key to this innovation was a value insight.  When product developers have a deep well of value insights to draw from, inventions and innovation are radically improved.

Your World has Changed. How Will You Respond?

To combat these evolving challenges, you must establish a value-oriented corporate culture.  Culture crosses silo boundaries, countering the unintended consequences of specialization.  There are techniques, tools and technologies that can help.

If this resonated, or spurred some thoughts, like, comment or share. If you’d like to talk further, contact me.

To your success!

Categories
Best Practices Growth Personal Development

7 Rules That Will Make Your Emails Rule

Is your mailbox full? Ours sure is—every day! Do you read each and every email? We don’t. Because there are simply too many! Most messages are spam, and as a result, we miss quite a few important things. We’re sure you’ve discovered a few quick scanning methods, like looking for senders you recognize, subject lines that sound familiar, and replies to your latest email chains.

In a business world driven by email, how do you write effective messages that will actually be read? We don’t mean marketing emails either. There are far too many courses and books on that subject. (And frankly, we wish they’d stop.) But how can you write effective correspondence that will sort through the distraction, confusion, and noise in your recipients’ inbox?

We’ve used email since the days of “You’ve got mail!” And here’s what we have learned:

  1. Protect the Subject

Create a subject line that’s easy for you and your recipients to spot among the crowd. Make sure it’s pertinent to the topic and no more than three words in length. If the sender has looped in to another email to start a new conversation, change the subject to reflect the new topic. Change it back if the subject shifts again. Your recipient will appreciate the consistency.

  1. Keep the String Going

Once in a while, your recipient might send a reply message from a different mailbox. This could possibly change the subject line and the sender’s name. And more importantly, this can disturb the ongoing trail of emails on the same subject. If this happens, find the trail on the previously used email address, and paste it into the bottom of your response. This way, both of you will able to see the conversation’s path more clearly.

  1. Who’s Watching?

One of the biggest mistakes we’ve all made before is to “reply all” when we didn’t intend to. Double-check who’s CC’d on the message before you hit Send. A new recipient could’ve been added or someone else could’ve been removed. This is especially important when emailing larger organizations. They’re trained to move CCs around depending on who they want on the message. Sometimes letting their boss go from the chain removes a bit of pressure.

  1. Get On Your Phone!

If there’s a disagreement, misunderstanding, or miscommunication via email, pick up your phone and figure it out verbally. You’ll be surprised at what can be done during a personal and friendly phone call instead of a contentious and lifeless email. And NEVER fight through email. It’s emotionally draining, time-consuming, and both sides feel like they have to get the final word in. A lot of these arguments can be solved in just five minutes on the phone.

  1. Obtaining the Evidence

Email memorializes everything that has been said. Unless you want it to come back at you later, keep conversations away from email and on the phone instead, or even better, in person. But for this same reason, email is a great way to document what was agreed upon. We like to discuss verbally, whether on the phone or at a meeting, and then summarize the points, action items, or consensus in a memo that lets others know, “This is our understanding of what we’ve agreed to. If you have any additions, corrections, or comments, please respond by tomorrow at 5pm or we will assume that this is our understanding.”

  1. Only One Thing

Have you noticed that when you send someone an email with a few instructions or tasks, only the last one is acknowledged or completed? People only remember the highway entrance ramp, and the highway exit ramp. Everything else is all meshed together. So, keep things simple! Ask for one thing per email. If you have several requests, create a separate email chain for each, or even better, send a new email each time they complete a request. This way, you can keep it all on the same trail.

  1. Keep Things Friendly

Say something nice about your recipient in the message’s first line and the PS, and sandwich your message right in between. Break paragraphs up into two or three-sentence smaller paragraphs. If they can see the end, they’ll more likely read it. Let them know you’re open to a phone call if clarification is needed. And don’t forget to thank them for their completion or previous response. If their boss is CC’d, you should note how effective they are, even if they really aren’t. They’ll be more likely to live up to a compliment that makes them look good in front of their bosses. Once your business with them is finished, be sure to thank them publicly, with their boss copied on the message. They will both look forward to working with you again!

We could go on forever about email best practices and etiquette, but these are the general rules of thumb that will make your emails “rule!”

For more, read on: http://c-suitenetworkadvisors.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

The Fire Hose Effect

How the Power of Influence Can Keep You From Drowning 

I’ll be the first to admit that leaders have a tough gig. You wear hundreds of different hats, you shoulder an immense amount of responsibility, and it seems to never end. It can feel like you’re facing the fire hose every day! In my business, I meet leaders from all over the country, from different industries, and they all have the same challenges. I hear things like:

“Mona, even though the economy is great, and my industry is thriving, I’m still expected to do more with less.” Or,

“My customers have more buying power today than ever before making it harder and harder to secure customer loyalty.” Or,

“I’m struggling to keep employees engaged, and other companies are stealing my best talent, leaving me with open positions that are hard to fill.”

Sound familiar?

I get it, I used to be the consummate go-getter, can-doer, workhorse manager I thought my employer and my people needed… and sure, that got me results. But something was missing. I wasn’t getting the results I wanted or knew I could get!

Then someone told me that I just needed to shift my focus.

One of the biggest mistakes that leaders make today is that they overlook the vast amount of untapped wealth that’s right in front of them every day. We get so busy focusing on the projects, and customers right in front of us – above the surface – that we miss what we don’t see under the surface of the people we serve. And what lies beneath could potentially be a wealth of greatness!

So how do you tap into this greatness? The good news is, it’s not about working harder. And it’s definitely not about working smarter. I’m quite sure you do both very well. It’s merely about shifting your focus. Shifting from a traditional leadership model to an influential leadership model.

Let me ask you this: Do you believe talented leaders are born or made?

I think the answer is both.  Sure, there are some people with a raw talent they seem to be born with. But even the rest of us can learn the same skills – work the same muscles – and reach the same level of impact. While there are thousands of books on leadership, we tend to overcomplicate it.  Effectively guiding people to your common vision with excellence, really comes down to your ability to do one thing:

Influence.

This is where the rubber meets the road. So, what does it mean to influence? Or even more important – what does it take? Money? Prestige? Connections? A Best Seller? If those were true, how do you explain Mother Teresa, or Gandhi – who influenced the world with so little to their name?

Or how Abraham Lincoln was able to influence the world with a speech consisting of less than 300 words scribbled on a piece of paper?

Or how Martin Luther Kind drew over 200,000 to Washington, DC with no email or social media?

These people knew how to do one thing – influence.

Influence starts by building a connection. When we truly understand that connection and relationships are the ultimate fundamentals for us as leaders, we’re able to increase our influence, our effectiveness grows, and we become better leaders.

There’s power in influence, and this same power can be yours – right where you are – with the people you serve today. You HAVE the power to stop the fire hose. Not only could you be sitting on untapped wealth – it is your role as a leader, to bring out the strengths in you and your people.

In every person, just below the surface of what we think we know and what we think we’ve seen, lies untapped greatness.

What are you doing to tap into yours and that of the people you serve?

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Einstein’s Window of Opportunity

Develop Your Open-Mindedness as a Leader

Let’s take a few minutes and think about opportunities. How many opportunities come your way and you take advantage of them? On the opposite side of the spectrum, how many opportunities pass in front of you and you either miss them or decide to wait for a better one to take advantage of? If you wait for the right opportunity, you may have a long wait. Many entrepreneurs and professionals that don’t get the results they deserve often suffer from a poor opportunity mindset. Do you?

Most people don’t like to take risks, yet leading an organization is a risk as you choose which direction to take the company and what decisions you make to grow the company. Moving forward is taking a risk. In order to take advantage of any window of opportunity, you are taking a risk.

“Risk is all around us. Life is a series of calculated risks. Everything you decide to do has a margin of risk. No outcome is ever 100 percent certain but it pays to calculated risks.”

– Thomas  Oppong

Opportunity Insights

 “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein

Crisis vs. Opportunity sometimes weighs the difference and yet a crisis can turn into an opportunity as you become more aware of what happened to make things into a crisis. Putting your attention onto what lies in front of you is a telling tale of how you can shift things into an opportunity to move your company forward. Problem-solving is concerned with what is going on now, or in the very near future.

Expand Your Unique Leadership Patterns

What you need is to think about your differentiators with regard to choosing the specific opportunity that will help you move forward? Your leadership style needs to expand to look beyond where you’ve been. With creative and innovative as today’s business trend, leaders need to take advantage of what you have and what’s needed to thrive from where you were. If you don’t take advantage of these you may find yourself either being passed by losing clients and customers, or a competitor may take you over.

As you learn new things, develop different perspectives about yourself and the world around you. Look for new and fresh experiences to discover new strategies for coping with stress at work and problem-solving.

Embrace the Opportunity Mindset

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” – Milton Berle

Where others see problems, you see potential. When others are bogged down in endless details, you see the big picture. Be open to looking at different perspective to determine what you can take advantage of. Being open to what’s out there to grow your company requires you to be aware of everything and anything whether you take advantage of it or not.

Leadership Opportunity to Grow

“If a window of opportunity appears, don’t pull down the shade.” -Tom Peters

One of the most important opportunities leaders have is to grow personally and professionally. Here are a few ways you can grow within your company as a leader.

  • By changing your habits you need to put the time and effort into implementing them. Like everyone else you have certain habits that you do Monday through Friday that differ from your weekend habits.
  • Motivating your disengaged employees needs you to get them interested in the work your company is involved in. If you first find out what these employees are interested in giving them the opportunity to be creative and innovative instead of the traditional work they have been doing. This can turn them around as they may have been great employees who need something different to work on.
  • Watch for a trend that can help you move your company forward.

People often wait for opportunities, but is it worth waiting for opportunities? Many people say “No”. The reasons are noted above, plus the fact that many executives don’t want to change what you are currently doing. What makes you comfortable can ruin you. What makes you uncomfortable allows you to grow.

“There is a window of opportunity. Whether we, I mean all of us, use it or not, well it’s another question.” –Andrei Denisov

Opportunities are out there. Too many leaders prefer to stick with what you know that are similar to what you already do. In order to thrive, you need to take chances on new ideas that can help you move forward beyond your current expectation.

“If you cannot find the distinctive opportunities you want, you can create the distinctive opportunities you want but you can’t find!” ― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Categories
Body Language Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

Are You a Pleasant Experience Easily Forgotten?

“To be someone’s pleasant experience, you must evoke pleasure in them. Its longevity depends on how you extend it.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

“What was his name – you know, that guy that made me laugh so much? He was very pleasant. I wish I could remember his name.”

How many times has someone said that about you? If you don’t know, it’s probably because the person that made the statement never reached out to you. You were easily forgotten. No one wants to think they’re easily forgotten – especially after they’ve bestowed pleasant experiences upon someone.

I offer the following suggestions to become more memorable.

  1. Take the time to understand how individuals experience pleasure – Everyone doesn’t have the same sensations and thus, people experience pleasure differently. To put someone in a pleasant state of mind, you must understand their perspective (i.e. what’s funny, what’s sad, what they are seeking, what moves them). Once you have that insight, you’ll have a better idea of how to inflame their pleasure. And they’ll be more likely to remember you as the source that provided it.

 

  1. When someone is in a festive mood, say your name several times during the conversation. As an example, say, “I know you might think, oh Greg your self-effacing humor is hilarious – but Greg says, for me, it’s not hilarious, it’s my life!” (Do that with a shrug of exasperation to add more meaning and humor to your words. Also, using the ‘third person’ (i.e. “Greg says …”) can add a sense of comedy to your statements.). They’ll remember you easier if you repeat your name because your name will become more infused in their mind. And they’ll associate your name with the occurrence.

 

  1. Be engaging to the degree that your demeanor ignites emotions. People become moved to action via the emotions they experience and feel. To be more memorable, seek to arouse pleasant emotions that make people light up – you can detect this in the smile they display. Once they’re in such a state, keep them there through your actions as long as possible.

 

  1. To connect better, match the body language of those you’re connecting with. You may be familiar with the phrase, people like people that are like themselves. There’s truth in that statement because, psychologically, if you’re like someone, they see a reflection of themselves in you. You can enhance the connection when someone’s experiencing pleasure by getting closer to them physically, making the same body gestures they make (i.e. hand movements, facial expressions, reactions), and speaking at the same pace and rhythm. You’ll influence their subliminal perspective by doing that. And that’ll make you more memorable.

 

  1. When people experience pleasure, they associate whoever is around them with that experience. To be more memorable during such occasions, touch people in a manner that will make them feel good about you being with them – I’m not suggesting anything that’s inappropriate. The more sensations you ignite in them, the more memorable you’ll be.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

Not only do you shape a negotiation by what you say, and how you say it, you also shape it through the emotional arousal you awaken in the other negotiator. Thus, to endear yourself, make people remember the pleasant moments they have as you’re negotiating. When you reach a rough patch in the negotiation, you can attempt to put them back into a more pleasurable state by invoking the happier moments they’ve experienced with you. Doing that will help ease the tension in the negotiation and make it a more pleasurable experience. That will also cause others to remember you more fondly … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

 Listen to Greg’s podcast at https://anchor.fm/themasternegotiator

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

#Pleasant #Experience #Easy #Forgotten #Negotiate #Process #Power #Powerful #Emotion #Business #Progress #SmallBusiness #Negotiation #NegotiatingWithABully #Power #Perception #emotionalcontrol #relationships #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions

Categories
Best Practices Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

How to Use Disinformation to Negotiate Better

“Disinformation is meant to alter your perception of the truth. To combat it, dissolve it before it dissolves you.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

You set the stage for any negotiation with information. That’s called positioning. The way you present that information, and it’s content, shape the persona the other negotiator has of your negotiation power, resources, and abilities. #Disinformation plays a vital role in shaping that persona – using it strategically can help you negotiate better.

Disinformation is used in planning wars, corporate espionage, and in the planning stages of negotiations. Think for a moment about the term #FakeNews. What comes to mind? That phrase has become a form of disinformation.

The following is how you can use disinformation to improve your negotiation efforts.

Creating a Disinformation Campaign:

To create disinformation campaigns, start by disseminating information in small cycles first – you want the target to become familiar with it. That’ll make him more susceptible to believing it and the information that follows. Over time, expand it, its believability to the truth, and its cycles. To have the greatest effect on the target, have information disseminated in places that they frequent (e.g. social media post, news outlets, radio, etc.). Doing so will impact their belief as to the validity of the information (i.e. I see/hear it everywhere – so it must be true).

Psychology of Disinformation:

For disinformation to be viable, tie it loosely to the beliefs of your target. People become swayed more easily if they have a preconceived belief about something they accept as already being truthful. So, if you associate your disinformation with their currently held beliefs, they’ll accept your information more readily. The trick is to make your information just within the outer realms of their beliefs. That’s the setup to having them stretch their beliefs as you later present insights further outside of it. Your efforts should become geared to having them expand their beliefs to the point of easily accepting the new insights you present as the truth.

Combating Disinformation:

As you know or may have discovered, disinformation is a powerful mental tool. Thus, while employing it, you must be mindful about its deployment against you.

To improve your plight when disinformation is used against you, ask yourself the following questions.

  1. Consider the originating source of the information. Ask yourself, what belief is this information attempting to form in my mind or in the mind of my supporters?
  2. How was the information delivered? Did it arrive through a source that has proven to be believable in the past? Is that source being manipulated?
  3. What new paradigms is this information attempting to create and who benefits from it?
  4. To what degree are others attempting to alter my perception for the benefit of who they’re serving?
  5. What happens if I ignore the information?

Posing such questions to yourself and your confidants will help you evaluate the information and its potential validity. I’m not suggesting you become paranoid. What I’m suggesting is you not readily accept information at face value as the truth. There are too many ways to get disinformation into today’s environment. Guard the door that keeps it away from you.

Disinformation is used in all realms of negotiation. And, there is a multitude of ways that it’s used. Therefore, the better you become at utilizing it, and knowing how to thwart its use against you, the better you’ll become as a negotiator … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

 To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

#Disinformation #FakeNews #Negotiate #Process #Power #Powerful #Emotion #Business #Progress #SmallBusiness #Negotiation #NegotiatingWithABully #Power #Perception #emotionalcontrol #relationships #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions

Categories
Best Practices Culture Entrepreneurship Industries Leadership Personal Development Technology

Augmented Reality Defined with Opportunities

Several years ago, I started using an augmented reality (AR) app for my smartphone whenever I ventured into the mountains. It was quite useful; I could point my device at any mountain to see information overlaid on the image. When I moved my device around, the information changed to correspond with what I saw.

Google Glass was an early example of AR glasses. However, the Three Digital Accelerators(computing power, digital storage, and bandwidth) I first identified in 1983 as the drivers of predictable exponential change were not advanced enough when this product emerged, and miniaturization of components had not reached the level needed to make the glasses look like regular glasses.

While few consumers tried them, Google Glass opened the eyes of entrepreneurs to see future possibilities. Surgeons used Google Glass to watch a patient’s vitals without taking their eyes off the surgical area, warehouse workers used them to locate products needing boxing, and universities used them to enhance student engagement in science lab classes.

The Future of AR

Now that the Three Digital Accelerators have improved enough to enhance smart glasses, consumer use will increase. Imagine walking down a busy street in New York City searching for the perfect slice of pizza. It would benefit you to be wearing AR glasses that can quickly scan the area for a highly recommended restaurant per consumer reviews. Wearing the technology rather than having your eyes divert to your phone is faster and safer.

I envision that the earpiece of your AR glasses will act as a rheostat, allowing you to fade the information in or out. As a keynote speaker, wearing a pair of AR glasses that allow me to see the names of audience members would be helpful, and by adjusting the fade control, turning off the information as needed will be helpful. This does not exist – yet. One of the principles I teach is “If it can be done, it will be done, and if you don’t do it, someone else will.”

It’s clear that practical uses for AR are ripe with opportunity. After acquiring smart glasses lens manufacturer Akonia Holographics in August 2018, Apple has been working on AR products. This positions the company to positively disrupt the industry, along with Microsoft and Facebook, which are working on AR glasses of their own.

Outside the US, Chinese technology giant Huawei is creating its own version of smart glasses. Its latest device, the Mate 20 Pro smartphone, already utilizes augmented reality apps predominately, but the company suggests that AR glasses are definitely in the works.

The company will bring more AR experiences to the Mate 20 Pro so its customers can use AR more widely before releasing its smart glasses. By better perfecting the user experience, they are pre-solving predictable problems, following one of my core principles.

Outside of AR, Huawei is a serious player in consumer electronics. It recently displaced Apple as being the world’s second-largest smartphone maker, expanded its digital products and even ventured into the world of smart speakers.

In comparison with virtual reality (VR), AR is developing faster for several reasons.

1)   VR requires the user to be cut off from the real world in order to be fully immersed in a virtual world, while AR allows the user to see the real world simultaneously.

2)   VR requires time-intensive graphics programming in order to create a photo-realistic 3D world, limiting the ability to attract the talent needed to grow as fast as AR.

3)   VR headsets are cumbersome compared to AR glasses.

Augmented reality represents a new platform for launching game-changing products and services. If you want to profit from this fast-growing industry, focus on being anticipatory by identifying the Hard Trends that are shaping the future and their related opportunities to lead change.

If you would like to learn how to become more anticipatory in the new world of augmented reality, be sure to pick up my latest book The Anticipatory Organization today!

Categories
Best Practices Growth Skills

Use Quotations to Enliven Your Writing

Sprinkling quotations into your writing is a very effective way to improve it. Doing this serves a number of functions.

  1. Quotations summarize a point you’re making in your work.
  2. They also emphasize this point.
  3. A quotation by someone both famous and respected gives confirmation to your ideas.
  4. They serve to break up large blocks of text.

Choosing Quotations

I’ve found that the most effective way to find quotes is to search for a topic. For example, if I want a quote from a successful woman entrepreneur, I use that term and put “quotations” in front of it. A number of sites come up, and I scroll through them.

I need to know what I’m looking for before I start reading them. I pick out several that come the closest to my goal for a suitable quote and compare them.

Several factors influence my decision.

How long is the quote? A one-sentence quote is ideal, two sentences if it really makes the point. If it’s any longer, it begins to diverge into something that looks more like text.

Is it accurate?  Random House copyeditor Benjamin Dreyer points out in the hilarious Dreyer’s English the need to verify quotes are accurate. He cites three sources for verifying or debunking quotes:

  • Wikiquote.com
  • Books.google.com
  • quoteinvestigator.com

Who said it? I tend not to use quotations by “Anonymous.” They may sound great, but they lack the additional clout of name familiarity.

I usually don’t use quotes by anyone I’ve never heard of. They have the same lack-of-clout problem. However, bearing in mind that I’m not swimming in the mainstream of popular culture, if the quote really has an impact, I may look the person up. If he or she is well-known, I’ll use it.

Sometimes the person’s name isn’t well-known, but her company is. For example, Debbi Fields is the founder of the Mrs. Fields company. If I saw a powerful quote by her, I would use it and name her company.

If I’ve heard of the author of the quote but think others may not have, I will, as in the case of Debbi Fields, add, “author,” “playwright,” or some other identification.

A different problem can arise if someone who is always quoted made the quote. Yes, Oprah, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk do have a lot to say, but I’d be cautious about quoting them. People might say, “Oh, another Oprah quote” and skip past it.

My rule of thumb here is: The more I see one name in my scanning of quotations, the less likely I am to use it.

I would also avoid using quotations by people who may have a polarizing effect, i.e., those who are on extreme ends of the political/social spectrum. This would depend on what I was writing.

Build a Quotations Collection

The other way you can work with quotations is to collect them so that you have many handy to put into your articles and books. File them in categories so that you can find them easily.

Sometimes you’ll get an unexpected bonus. A quotation may spark in you an idea for an article. You can deliberately activate this effect by going through your collection when you’ve run out of fresh ideas.

I close with this quotation:

A quotation in a speech, article or book is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman. It speaks with authority.—Brendan Behan, Irish playwright

Pat Iyer is an editor and ghostwriter who helps authors shine. Contact her for a free consultation at patiyer.com.

Categories
Best Practices Management Marketing Personal Development Sales

Five Reasons Your Salespeople Aren’t Good In the C-Suite

If your well-trained salespeople are having trouble getting into the C-suite, you aren’t alone.  It’s pretty common. There are a couple main reasons, some of which are easier to correct than others.

I’ve been in the sales training game for almost a decade, and have engaged with a a lot of sales forces in a lot of industries. Through my past experience as an executive, bolstered by my work selling to them, I’ve observed a couple of major problems.

Problem 1: The “Salesperson Doesn’t Add Value” Loop

This is a problem wider than just C-suite selling.  The sales profession has hurt themselves.  CSO Insights published a research note which describes what they call the apathy loop(contact me if you’d like a copy). The basic idea is this:

  • When sellers act unremarkably, customers no longer consult them (currently B2B buyers prefer company salespeople 9thout of 10 information resources…ouch!).
  • Sellers self-inform using one or more of the 8 better information sources and self-diagnose their solution.
  • They then distribute a requirements document and ask sellers for proposals/bids/etc.
  • The request traps most sales teams into a response every bit as standardized and unremarkable as the customer expected in the first place.

Sellers need to add value–go beyond customer expectation– to break out of the apathy loop. Challenger salespeople shake up a customer’s thought process by challenging (hence the name) assumptions and thought processes – generally by “telling”.  Insight sellers might ask questions or tell stories.  Perspective sellers build credibility, then offer business insights. These insights might take the form of:

  1. Enlarging – or shifting– the customer’s conception of their situation and/or problem.
  2. Altering – ideally expanding — outcomes that a client envisions and desires.
  3. Helping a group improve the quality or efficiency of decision-making. This kind of perspective is useful, but doesn’t move an executive’s needle – today’s topic.

A lot of training programs “yada yada” business acumen:  they tell sales people to “just use yours” to provide perspective. Has everyone in one of your selling roles really mastered the business acumen to provide insights?

It’s pretty hard to provide insights into something you don’t understand.

Some of the highest end sales forces in the world buy their sales people MBAs.  You can build a lot of business acumen for a lot less…why are you choosing none at all?

Problem 2: Executives Only Want to Talk About Executive-Level Topics

Top executives organize their companies.  That is, they define and arrange organizational silos, then direct how work flows between them. If an operation or process lives inside a silo, execs don’t generally want to hear about it. Instead, executives summarily refer functional-level subjects down into the silo (and place the offender on their “time-waster list”).

The work of getting executive time is often the work of making your topic relevant to them.  While sellers should show the same respect for every persona’s time, the stakes are higher for executive meetings.

Only approach an executive on a topic/issue they will value.

If you don’t have anything, wait until you do.  If your people can’t tell the difference, they need more business acumen.

Of course, your training and enablement included techniques and practice for talking to executives (it did, right?).   Now, did you feed them executive-worthy issues…or the business acumen to find topics for themselves?  Or, did you simply tell your sales people to “get out of your comfort zone.”?  How did you coach actual conversations? Did you get out of your comfort zone in training and enabling them?

Problem 3:  Customers often buy in silos.

Another reality: your customer reinforces the apathy loop via their own org chart. Organizational silos shape buying processes by simply existing. Companies tend to self-examine their needs through a silo filter. Requirements, RFIs, RFPs, etc. often signal how narrowly your customer is thinking through their own problem.  The easy – almost automatic — reaction is to follow the customer’s self-limiting thought process.

Remember the customer who called your salesperson in after internally developing their own requirements? Have you explicitly trained your reps to ask:

  • Who had input into the proposal?
  • What other functions and silos were consulted? How heavily was/will their input be weighted?
  • What functions/silos weren’t consulted…and why not?

If you haven’t trained reps to ask these questions, do you think they formulate and ask these questions on their own?

If your solution positively impacts more than one customer silo, you need to make sure you uncover every possible ally.  Remember, cross-silo benefits are often a valid reason to engage with an executive.

Problem 4:  Perhaps your selling activity is siloed too.

Maybe you’re unconsciously reinforcing the apathy loop yourself.

Your sales methodology is just as effective across silos as within, but I haven’t seen a single trainer encourage thinking outside of the box…well…silo. Ask yourself: what explicit skills, analytics, or tools did I give my people to carry their methodology across silos to hunt for value gaps?  If you didn’t train and coach them to apply methodology outside of the comfort zone, you’ve reinforced a discomfort zone…and strengthened the apathy loop.

Business acumen provides a foundation.  Sales people rely on their business acumen to talk comfortably about bigger business issues across organizations.

Articulating different ways your product or solution could impact functions and roles across a target company requires a different kind of product training.  I know of some great tools to help sellers understand the networks of value their product/service can have at a customer.

Problem 5:  You’re Rewarding Mediocrity

You may have also erected another barrier to your own success:  your compensation plan.  Do you have a compensation plan and discounting review processthat incentivizes sellers to get outside of the apathy loop and discover value? Or, do comp plan and discounting process reward commoditization equally? Humans– buyers and sellers — take the easiest route to an end.  If sellers can, they will make discounted sales by sticking inside of the apathy loop: meeting expectations, acting unremarkably and not differentiating themselves or their offer. Ability to manipulate your discounting/price exception system is all that’s required.

Sales People Want to Be Great.  Let’s Help Them

I am happy to talk about how to help close all of these gaps.  Contact me if you’d like to discuss further.  As always, like and share with your networks if you think they might find value.

To your success!

Categories
Best Practices Human Resources Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

How to Make Your Words Colorful to Inspire People

 

“To inspire people, touch their emotions. To touch their emotions, use colorful words that paint pictures in their mind’s eye.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

To inspire people, you must touch their emotions. To touch their emotions, use colorful words that paint pictures in the mind of those you seek to inspire.

Since words communicate feelings, they move people to action. To become better at inspiring people and moving them to action, take note of the following insights.

Colorful Words:

Some words are more vibrant than others. And the way you form them makes you appear more powerful. As an example, if I said, ‘we can achieve our goal’. Depending on the modulation of my voice, some people will become inspired and moved to action. But, if I said, ‘if we stand strong, united as a single force, we can overcome anything – we can achieve our goal!”, with the same modulation as the first example, more people will become inspired.

Here’s another example. “Through a forceful fight, devoid of fright, we can forge our way to victory!” Out of the three examples, you’re probably moved more by this one. I’m sure you can sense the sensational difference too. The last two examples where more moving, more inspiring, more colorful. They had more rhythm, too.

Rhythm:

The rhythm in which you deliver your words also impacts their perception. You may have observed the rhythm in the second example. The words stand, strong, united as a single force. They set the tone and rhythm for, ‘we can overcome anything – we can achieve our goal!’ Where rhythm is concerned, the more your words end on a beat, the better they sound to someone’s ears. Then there’s alliteration.

Alliteration:

Alliterations can also be impactful and lead one to become inspired. They can move a listener to action due to the rhythm and pictures they create. Forceful, fight, and fright, were the words used to alliterate and paint a picture in the third example. Those words were the backbone upon which life was given to, “Through a forceful fight, devoid of fright, we can forge our way to victory.” I’m sure that example conjured up more imagery in your mind’s eye. I bet it was more inspiring, too.

When it comes to inspiring people, the more colorful words you use, along with rhythm and alliteration, the greater the image you’ll paint upon the perception of their mind. That will also be the source by which you’re able to inspire them.

By taking note of what’s mentioned above and employing it during your efforts to inspire others, you’ll increase your degree of influence, be perceived as more of a leader, and become more admired. You will have reached a higher summit in your life … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

In a negotiation, words are the means through which you communicate your position. To be more impactful, you need to be aware of how to use those words to move the other negotiator to your perspective. By utilizing the examples mentioned, you’ll be well on your way to accomplishing that mission. Thus, if you want to win more of your negotiations, don’t take those insights lightly. If you do, you do so at your peril.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com 

Listen to Greg’s podcast at https://anchor.fm/themasternegotiator

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

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