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Category: Marketing

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

3 Bad Speaking Habits You Don’t Know You Have

If you’re like most people, even if you consider yourself to be a “pretty good” speaker, you know you could always be better. The irony is that, while that’s generally true, you probably don’t realize the actual problems you need to fix.

So let’s turn the microscope to three of the most common pitfalls to effective speaking.

  1. Fillers

We’re all familiar with the sins of the repeated “um,” “uh,” and “like,” “you know” and “I mean,” but fillers get much more sophisticated and subtle.

Words like “actually” and “really” can transform into what I call educated fillers. They seem to fit into the conversation, but repeatedly sneak into speech in places where they have no inherent value. They just chop up the sentence, making it harder for the listener to cognitively process the underlying message.

But where most of us get tripped up is the variety of fillers used. If you alternate between them as you speak, they’re less likely to be noticed… but still detract from the fluidity of the point you’re trying to make.

  1. The Vocal Cliff

The “vocal cliff” is what I call the habit of trailing off at the ends of your sentences. This happens for a variety of reasons. First, we tend to speak in a stream of consciousness, which is full of commas rather than periods. As you’re running along, you run out of air but don’t know where or how to refuel, so your voice creaks its way to a slow, grinding halt, much like if your car ran out of gas in the middle of the road.

Another cause of falling off the vocal cliff is when you’re halfway done with your point but your brain is jumping ahead, cueing up the next point you want to make so you don’t forget it, while your mouth struggles to catch up. Your lack of attention to what you’re currently saying comes through as your voice falls off the cliff. Stay present.

Or maybe you trail off because you lose confidence in what you’re saying after reading some displeased faces in the audience. This causes you to hold back, and you fall off the cliff, which projects your self-doubt.

  1. Negative Facial Expressions

As you listen to people, chances are, you don’t even know what kind of facial expressions you make, but more often than not they can convey negative thoughts. Maybe you’re just thinking about what the person is saying, but your “thinking face” has furrowed eyebrows and an ever-so-slight frown. This leads to two problems.

First, people will infer anger or disagreement, regardless of how you genuinely feel. Second, when you do speak, those down-angled facial features actually flatten your pitch and tone, making you also sound displeased. Even if that’s how you feel, do you really want to telegraph it so transparently? And if that does not accurately reflect your feelings, then you’re sending mixed messages and sabotaging your own credibility.

To avoid any of these pitfalls, awareness is the first and most important step. Don’t assume you know which habits you do or don’t have. Try video recording yourself talking on the phone. When you watch it afterwards, do you hear fillers creeping in, or does your voice fall off “the cliff”? Do you appear anxious or irritated? You’ll be amazed at what you discover, and what adjusting such small behaviors can do for your overall executive presence and leadership image.

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Do you have questions or comments about your bad habits or how to avoid them? If so, contact me at laura@vocalimpactproductions.com or click here to schedule a 20-minute focus call to discuss them with me personally!

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

You Always Have Control

“Change is ever occurring. Thus, you can embrace change and control it, or you will be controlled by change. The choice is yours but if you don’t make a choice, change will make the choice for you.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

www.TheMasterNegotiator.com

No matter what occurs in your life, you always have control. That’s true because you have the power and ability to change anything that doesn’t suit you. That change may be limited and limiting, but there’s a degree that you can influence change, you just have to seek what it is and what it means to change.

So, when you don’t like the outcome of a situation, seek to change it or the way you view it (i.e. change your mind per the meaning it has). Once you realize that you don’t have to be held captive by the outcome that change thrust upon you, you’ll feel better about how you can control the change that has occurred. That will allow you to see the perception of negative change from a more positive perspective … and everything will be right with the world.

 

 

 

 

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Entrepreneurship Management Marketing Personal Development

Strategy and Strategic Thinking

When starting or expanding a business, having a strategy is important. A strategy is simply an action plan. It may be as simple as how will I get my first paying customer or how will I / we penetrate a new market with an existing or new product or service.

To develop a strategy – you need to continually get better at strategic thinking. This simply means how does your community, region, state and the country perceive your product or service. What’s in the news – real or fake – what are people believing and talking about? Understand what is going on around you. Then decide if you want to join in the flow or you want to “go against the grain”. Strategic thinking is what you will build your strategy or action plan around.

Learn for many sources. Ian Bremmer is a great source to learn about global issues, Tom Friedmann has his finger on the pulse of world and the United States politically and culturally, Mark Sanborn helps you become a better leader, NPR delivers great news updates and Ari Weinzweig is the best in the world at helping you develop a vision for your future. And, of course choose your own industry information sources. All this will help you to join in the flow with your startup or business expansion, or to decide to stand out from the competition by going against the tide.

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

You May Not Be As Influential As You Think You Are – 4 Steps to Increase Your Self-Awareness

Click here to watch You May Not Be As Influential As You Think You Are – 4 Steps to Increase Your Self-Awareness

Have you ever given thought as to how your communication may be sabotaging your influence without you even knowing it?

Most leaders haven’t given thought to this question, much less taken the steps to increase their awareness of how their listeners hear and see them rather than what they believe to be true.  That is why self-awareness is the first step to greater influence Monday to Monday®.

To enhance your influence, you need to evaluate your communication based on facts, not feelings. You need to get to the heart of what is really going on by experiencing your communication through the eyes and ears of your listeners and readers.

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Personal Development

The Value of Reading Body Language to Gain Influence in Negotiations

“The value of reading body language is like possessing the keys of influence to unlock someone’s mind, by gaining unguarded access to their hidden thoughts.” –Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

www.TheMasterNegotiator.com

You can gain the value of influence in negotiations by reading body language accurately.

Momma told me not to run. Don’t move too quickly! You might miss something right in front of you. No, that’s not an oxymoron. Such were the wise words then and now related to the value of reading body language to gain insight and influence in negotiations.

Take the following insight I gained from my mother on just that topic.

I recall a time when I was 17; I’d saved my money to buy an advertised car I saw at a dealership. My mother and I went to the dealership only to find out that the car had just been sold. The salesperson said ‘not to worry’, as he showed us another car; it cost slightly more than the original car that was advertised.

My mother attempted to get a lower price for the car, but the salesperson only budged a little and wouldn’t go any lower after that. He said that was his best price. After sparring in several negotiation sessions after that, my mother got up to leave; I was dejected, dispirited, and disappointed at not getting a car, and it showed on my face. The salesperson looked at my face and said to my mother, “You don’t want to disappoint your son, do you?” To which my mother replied, “You’d be the one disappointing him. He came here on good faith to buy the car you advertised. Now, you’re telling us the car was just sold (defiant look of disbelief). How does that sound to you? Would you want someone to do that to your son or daughter?” The salesperson replied, with a fallen-face, “You can have the car at the same price as the one advertised.”

Is was at that moment that I observed the effect that body language could have on a negotiation, along with how to utilize a negotiation strategy based on the body language being discussed. With one-fell-swoop, my mother turned the body language strategy the salesperson attempted to use on us (i.e. my sadness/disappointment) against him and into one of reflection. She did so by invoking fairness when she asked the salesperson if he’d like that dejected feeling I was displaying thrust upon one of his kids. She went deeper into his emotional psyche when she implied, with added emphasis via her body language, the disbelief she possessed that the advertised car had just been sold. Note that she didn’t confront him by saying so, she let her body language speak for her.

From the time two people shake hands at the start of a negotiation, they’re negotiating. Actually, they started negotiating before they reached the formal negotiation via any communications they’ve had. That occurs even if it was in the form of one person gathering information about the other and developing strategies based on what was gleaned.

If you wish to gain influence in your negotiations, learn to read body language more accurately. You see and sense the appropriate times to employ negotiation strategies, based on the body language signals you see. Once you add reading body language to your negotiation rapport, you’ll become a more dynamic negotiator … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

 

Categories
Marketing Personal Development Technology

Are You Missing the Third Kind of Search Marketing?

Most marketing teams know about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC). You have teams devoted to getting searchers to your site from Google and other search engines. But what happens after they get there? Do you focus just as strongly at getting them to convert? Do you focus on the third kind of search marketing–site search?

Site search–that box in the upper corner of your website–finds pages on your own site. It’s a critical way to convert those searchers who find your site into customers. Here’s why–the folks who search on your site are your most qualified visitors. Think about it. If you land on a website and don’t find what you are looking for, you probably bounce back to Google and search again. But what if you really want to buy from that company? What if you really think that company has what you are looking for? You stick around and perform a site search.

That’s why reports show that site searchers have conversion rates anywhere between 43% and 600% more than other site visitors. So, the question becomes, “What would they find with your site search?” Would they find their answer? If you’ve been ignoring site search, probably not.

If you’re spending precious resources on attracting searchers to your site because you know your customers use search, why would you ignore site search once they get to your site? But most companies do.

Get ahead of your competition by focusing on the third kind of search marketing, site search. Instead of just attracting searchers to your site, you will turn searchers into customers.

 

Categories
Management Marketing Skills

Business Builder – A Tool to Help You Acquire More Customers

The business builder is a chance to find out a simple strategy or technique to acquire more customers, get customers to spend with you more often or get them to spend more money when they shop.

This is about creating opportunity from what otherwise would be wastage. We’ve all had opportunities where we’ve met with customers, we’ve introduced what we’d like them to buy from us and it’s been too rich for them at that period of time–too big a decision. They were interested, but couldn’t say yes at that moment in time. Typically in those scenarios, we leave with our tails between our legs and we put it away for another day to revisit in the future. You’ve all heard about how effective it can be to upsell, to add to people’s purchases, to add stuff on top, to increase the average transaction value. But what I’m talking about here is the power of a down sell, the opportunity to acquire a customer when otherwise they would have said “no”.

Let me give you an example of an incredibly effective down sell that happened with a client of mine around 12 months ago. The client in question runs a relatively new start up accountancy practice looking to acquire new customers. The key service she was looking to introduce was a high-level accountancy, non-exec financial director position, a fair sum of money, a fair size investment. She’d meet lots of people who were interested in the proposition, they would show a level of interest, maybe ask for some details to be sent or written down, and then she’d typically get a response of “I’m going to need some time to think about it.” This happens in all of our businesses.

What’s the simple thing that could’ve been introduced as a product or service to get them on board as a customer right now so we could build their value over a period of time? What she chose to introduce was some fabulous online accounting software. In fact, it’s the same accounting software that we now use ourselves, and she’d introduced it to these clients for a low monthly fee for an initial start-up, and they took this product on board because it was a no-brainer.

Introducing your down sell is what I call your “Columbo Moment”. Columbo was famous for saying “Oh, just one more thing.” That was his chance to get his real golden piece of information.

You’re going to introduce your down sell almost as you’re heading out the door, as if it’s a no-brainer, so that you get more customers from your activity that you can then revisit to grow into the size and scale of customer that you would like. But a customer at a low value is far better than no customer at all.

Categories
Management Marketing Skills

Magic Words: Increase Your Average Transaction Value

If you sell a number of anything, then there are magic words to increase the number of items, objects, or hours upwards. You’ll typically get people stuck in indecision between two options based on size, and we want them to pick the top one, the bigger number, as this is the one that rewards us most.

Let’s imagine it was numbers of people in a training course. You were speaking to the training department and they were unsure whether to send three or four people. They need help making their mind up, and they’re almost about to say we need time to think about it. Ever heard that before? Knowing you’ve heard that before we want you to try and bring them to a decision, and we want them to choose four.

The magic word that I’m going to share with you is the magic word, ‘enough’. It might sound simple; it’s a tiny little word with only a few characters in it, but if you say to people at the very right time ‘Would the four places be enough for you?’ Provided you’re reasonable, people will take the higher option, because the brain asks itself the direct question that you’ve asked it: “Is four enough? Yeah four’s enough so let’s move forward with four”.

So what about if you sold on quantity and maybe you were selling print? You typically sold 500 letterheads, but you’d like to sell 1000, and they couldn’t choose between the two. Imagine what a difference it could make if you said, ‘Would 1000 be enough for you?’ Imagine you were selling consultancy services and you were selling days of your time over a month and they weren’t sure to have you for one day a month or two days a month. ‘Would two days a month be enough for you?

The beauty of ‘enough’ is it’s difficult to go backwards from, provided you’re reasonable. So try this today, tomorrow, or the day after. The next time you’re speaking to somebody, ask how many they’re looking for, and using the higher number, ask them ‘is it enough for you?’ You might be amazed at the response.

I do hope that’s been enough for you, and until next time, keep moving forward, keep picking up pace and let your momentum carry you as far as your ambition guides you.

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing News and Politics Personal Development Women In Business

How to Read Body Language to Negotiate Effectively

“The better you read body language, the better you’ll be at understanding someone’s mind.” –Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert.

 

“How To Read Body Language To Negotiate More Effectively”

When you negotiate do you know how to read body language? When you read body language, do you know what to observe?

The following are some examples of body language signs you can observe to negotiate more effectively.

  1. Forehead Wrinkles – When someone displays a wrinkled forehead (unnatural wrinkles) it’s a sign of stress. Thus, the absence of wrinkles is a sign of calm and easygoingness.
  2. Eyes (wide opened versus closed and narrow) – Wide-eyes indicate someone’s attentiveness, interest, and open-mindedness. A narrowing of the eyes signals a higher degree of focus on the subject, which is usually accompanied with a furled brow/forehead.
  3. Smile – A genuine smile is denoted by turned up corners of the lips.
  4. Hand movements – Hand movements give insight into the mental thoughts you’re experiencing at the moment the hand gestures are made. Thus, open hand gestures are usually displayed when someone is not fearful. When hand gestures become closed (i.e. kept close to the body, rubbing each other, rubbing other parts of the body), that’s more of a mental display of being guarded, anxious, and/or cautious. When you see such actions in others, take note of what might have brought about a change from open to close. In situations in which you seek to impress others, keep hand gestures more in an open mode and don’t make gestures that might be perceived as manic, indecisive, and/or not in rhythm with the words you speak. Doing so will detract subliminally from your likeability and persuasiveness.
  5. Feet – When the feet of two people engaged in a conversation are facing one another, the individuals are mentally engaged in their conversation. When one person turns a foot away, that’s usually the point at which that individual has mentally begun to disengage in the conversation and soon they’ll exit it in that direction.
  6. Touching – The degree you touch someone and where you touch them conveys a sense of familiarity. Thus, you should be mindful of what someone might perceive as too much familiarity per you touching them too much. To gain insight as to whether you’re touching too much, take note to what degree the person you’re touching flinches and/or slightly pulls away/back when you touch them. That’s a nonverbal sign that you may have overstepped a boundary. Pay very close attention to such feedback. It will be the gauge from which you’ll gain insight per how well you’re being received.
  7. Voice Inflection – Since 80% and more of your message is conveyed nonverbally, take note of how your words can possess different meanings based on the way you announce them. Thus, note the inflection and tonality you convey with them. Ending a sentence on a high note can turn a statement into a question, which could make you appear less authoritative than what you intended.

 All of the above body language and nonverbal gestures impact the perception of the words you use to represent your thoughts. Thus, the meaning of your words can be altered by the body language signals that accompany them. As such, you should be very mindful of the signals you send to make your body language work for you and not against you … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

Categories
Management Marketing Skills Technology

The Social Devolution of Business

Since the mainstream takeover of the social networks in 2008, every small business owner has been nudged, persuaded and cajoled into adopting a presence on all major platforms, and for many the results are perhaps not what you may expect.

We all hear and read of the massive success achieved from the small independent business that blew up from their inspiring Instagram account or the personality-led business that became an overnight success with their viral YouTube channel. These meteoric results create a desire that you must heavily invest in your presence on social media to have any success in a modern business landscape. The reality is, many small businesses are performing mass self-sabotage from their current efforts and their involvement in social media marketing is causing their business to go backwards.

Before I get into the dangers I want to make a very clear and simple point. I am a HUGE supporter of how digital marketing and social networking can have a MASSIVE positive impact. It is just the practices that I see adopted by the masses are quite frankly embarrassing.

The primary problem is that the “dark-arts” and “ninja tactics” orchestrated by some of the world’s most creative marketers have delivered results beyond expectation and suggested to the masses that these tools provide the answer, missing ingredients or short cut to success. So much so that they now have forgotten many of the core principles of building a business.

In all of my experience to date, the one thing that has been the single driver of every single successful venture, project or campaign has been the following of my personal mantra for success.

“Do the basics, to a high standard, consistently.” 

What is happening in thousands of businesses right now is that the core principles of sales are being forgotten in favor of rolling the dice with the next magic campaign, social post or viral video attempt looking for short-term success.

In the real world, there are no short cuts and developing a sustainable customer base is created over time and built on trust.

Business developers know that questions lead to conversations, conversations create relationships, relationships create opportunities and opportunities result in sales.

Slowing the process down often speeds the outcome up. I often draw comparison here as looking for a partner for life as opposed to sex on the first date.

Back to the self-sabotaging behaviours that are costing businesses a fortune.

1. Pissing in the Wind

I do not understand why thousands of independent business owners rush to build their social platforms, invite a handful of friends to like or follow their page and then never plan anything else to build their audience. Worse than this they spend fortunes on creating graphics and then invest bucket loads of time into collating and creating content to post regularly and nobody is listening! They are just pouring productive time and effort down the drain and could have gained more success by opening their front door and shouting their offers into the street!

2. SPAM

We are all in the “people” business and to gain true influence it is important that both visibility and credibility are established before any opportunity to do business ever exists. Yet daily the prior trend of spamming people’s email inbox has been replaced with sending 500 word messages with links to videos or squeeze pages via Facebook messenger, direct messages or as an auto-response to a new follower. Please, please pretty please can people put a stop to this blindly unsophisticated intrusion of privacy and if you have something that may benefit me – please get to know me a little first.

3. IDGAF

I am pretty certain that most people do not want to read some of the mindless drivel that people are sharing on their social streams. Ask yourself before you hit the “post” button, will this represent me and my brand well? Can people engage with it? Does it serve others? Everybody now has the ability to be a full media production unit – great that you can be the journalist, please do not forget that you need to hold the role of editor too! In this age of information we are awash with content to consume – if you want yours to stand out then please make it good enough.

4. Egocentric Results

Yes, you are the most important person in your life – I get it! Unless you are Kim Kardashian, Donald Trump or Selena Gomez then the likelihood of people being that concerned about what is happening in your world is slim to none. Make your contact about your audience, understand them and provide them with things that serve their life, make their day easier, and things they love to talk about.

5. Aimless Distraction

Whether it is the thumb on your iPhone, the index finger on your mouse wheel or two fingers on the trackpad, the action of mindlessly scrolling through the sea of nonsense on your social walls is causing a tragedy in lost productivity. For many a homebased worker, high pay off activity such as prospecting, serving customers and planning marketing campaigns has been replaced with the vacant distraction of the soap opera of social media.

This article is delivered with the purpose of holding up a huge STOP sign and helping you to re-evaluate your activity and ask yourself if it is really working and genuinely driving results or is it simply draining from your limited resource and standing in your way of building a solid business foundation.

Perhaps the shift could move back to understanding the biggest value in these tools is how they can increase productivity, reduce geographic constraints and accelerate the building of new relationships.

Build your audience, serve your audience, engage with your audience and be prepared to bring the conversation “offline” and work the old fashioned way if you would like to see some true returns.

And if you can’t wrap your head around it to make it pay for you, stop it and get back to delivering the basics, to a high standard consistently.