In traditional sales programs, you are typically taught to ask certain questions. The problem with being taught to ask certain questions is that you are fundamentally changing your behavior when you ask them. Generally speaking, you are probably changing your behavior out of self-interest – to generate a sale – rather than asking in the interest of the customer. And the thing about sales is that you should always be focusing on the needs of the customer. Why? Because sales is not about you. Sales is about them. So what questions would you normally ask someone when you are trying to figure out what is best for them?
In my new book, Authentic Selling: How to Use the Principles of Sales in Everyday Life, I discuss the importance of authenticity relative to the usual tips and tricks you might learn in a formal sales training program. The rationale for this is two-fold: first, people just register authenticity easily. and authenticity is the key to building trust, which is fundamental for generating any sale; second – and perhaps more importantly – Read more
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Customers don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Learn how to improve your sales pitch by taking the time to understand your customers.
Even if you are the best sales person with an airtight pitch, you might fumble your sale if you don’t make space to listen to what your customer has to say to you. Steamrolling ahead without listening to your customer will cause you to miss key cues about what’s important to them, their hesitations, and their goals. Without this information, you’ll never achieve value alignment.
Listening well is your single biggest asset when it comes to selling. People fundamentally want to be understood, but many salespeople get so caught up pitching their latest whiz-bang widget that they don’t stop to investigate whether their customers even want or need it in the first place.
This is why, as a seller, one of the most important skills you need to develop is empathetic listening. I learned early in my career that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. To be an empathic listener is to understand someone intellectually and also emotionally.Read more
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Paying attention to your word choices will make you a more effective communicator. Keep your speech concise by avoiding these common phrases.
Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS.
“At the end of the day…”
You sound ridiculous. You just don’t know it.
Word choice matters. We spend countless hours in meetings with colleagues discussing big, important ideas. We write hundreds of documents making our case for one initiative or another. We write thousands of emails. We give dozens of presentations. And you know what? We sound ridiculous. Using buzzwords can make us sound like hyper-educated idiots who swallowed a thesaurus.
In our efforts to sound more intelligent and compelling, we use big words and bigger phrases we hear other smart and compelling people use. The problem is, those words and phrases didn’t mean anything in the first place. By adopting those vapid phrases as our own, we’re saying things that are just as meaningless as the first person who uttered them.
Stop. Please stop.
Speak plainly. Speak simply. Speak directly.
Doing otherwise is a disservice to you and your audience. There are two reasons you’re likely using these words and phrases: either you’re using them as verbal pauses (instead of “um” and “uh”) or you think they sound really intelligent. If it’s the former, get comfortable with silence and simply collect your thoughts. If it’s the latter, it’s having the opposite effect but your coworkers are too polite to tell you so.
Here are a few of my (least) favorite ridiculous words and phrases: Read more
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Cultures are patterns of human interaction that define the values and the behaviors that help groups accomplish a shared mission. In an organization, the culture is the soup in which work gets done. It influences employee satisfaction, customer retention, and the bottom line.
Getting organizational culture right is complicated, but it can mean the difference between a flourishing organization and a floundering one. Defining an organization’s culture and bringing awareness to the vital role it plays is a big step to shifting productivity and positivity and to increasing customer satisfaction. Yet organizations are often like fish swimming in polluted water, unaware of the unhealthy environment that surrounds them.
Undefined unconscious cultural norms are hidden forces that encourage the worst of human nature. Put any group of ambitious people together in a hierarchical structure with sizable goals and a good salary, and you’re sure to see an outbreak of competitiveness, cliquey behavior, distrust, jealousy, and resentment. Competition overshadows collaboration, individual egos trump collective goals, and ambition outshines curiosity.
Without an intentional approach to culture, an unconscious culture will slowly emerge in a company or team, influenced by leaders’ personalities, relationships, and the quality of conversations that teams have or don’t have. Some people say, “$#!& happens.” I say, “Culture happens.” It’s not unusual for leaders to wake up one morning and say, “Why are we behaving this way? When did we become so disjointed?”
To fix a broken culture, it’s useful to examine how world-class teams work together and the role conversations play. Those teams typically have two things in common: they name and live in a purposeful culture, and they’re headed by leaders who make culture a primary concern and who create a psychologically safe environment where everyone has a voice and participates in dynamic conversations aligned with the team’s mission. Collaboration and creativity are essential elements in the success of those teams.
Changing a culture isn’t easy, but it’s required work for an organization that wants to realize its potential. External eyes and ears can often help teams uncover blind spots or patterns of unproductive behavior.
Here’s a four-step process to create a new culture or change an existing one:
Define a Desired Culture for the Coming Year
Have purposeful conversations to define a culture that will support your mission. Keep it simple. Long cultural treatises or big, clichéd posters won’t do the trick. Name a few values that begin to shape the rules of engagement. Name qualities you believe in (e.g., integrity, humility, psychological safety, respect for unique voices, or accountability). These values are the first step in discovering an appropriate culture. Here are a couple examples of value statements: “Our culture values transparency, collaboration, accountability, and excellence,” or “Our culture is based on individual creativity, team collaboration, and innovation.”
Have a Brutally Honest Look at the Current Culture
It takes time and effort to uncover the hidden forces driving unproductive behavior. Have a conversation to uncover the hidden patterns of behavior, and ask yourselves these questions:
Do we suffer from groupthink?
Is our hierarchy suffocating?
Do we allow for constructive disagreements?
How do we behave when things go awry?
These are tough conversations to have, to say the least, but without an honest investigation, you won’t discover or execute a new culture.
Explore the Gap Between the Desired State and the Future Desired Culture
Investigating the gap will uncover aspects that are working and those that aren’t. The gap points to the practices you will need to put into place. Every member of the team will have a role to play. Support one another, but also hold one another accountable in a nonjudgmental way.
Change Up Your Conversation
Consciously changing the pattern of our conversations takes practice and humility. Focus on your meetings. Change up your agendas to make time for better collaboration and creative thinking. In business, we’re addicted to stating opinions, telling stories, and making decisions. When we jump into action, we lose the ability to have collaborative and creative conversations. That leap to action is a “conversational bypass.” The hierarchy is obvious when the person with the most stripes is consistently the most powerful voice in the room, and when the members of a team are reluctant to offer differing perspectives, innovative solutions are lost.
Team members who have collaborative conversation have learned to hold their opinions lightly and to listen to and absorb other perspectives. Teams that set aside time in meetings to “chew” on a subject are engaging in such conversations. In any meeting, robust collaboration outshines report-out. Teams get smart together when they feel safe to speak up, disagree, and wrestle with ideas.
Creative conversations are byproducts of robust collaborative conversations. When team members have open minds, a world of infinite possibilities opens up. Fresh approaches to long-standing problems bubble up to the surface, which excites new energies that lead to unforeseen solutions.
Any leader’s efforts to make culture an asset to a team will reap the benefits: clarity of values, explicit rules of engagement, much improved collaborations, and cross-functional alignment. Those new values can start a virtuous circle that can have a profound impact on an organization, so let the conversations begin.
Chuck Wisner is a strategic thinker, coach, and teacher in the areas of organizational strategy, human dynamics, communication, and leadership excellence. He is currently working as an advisor with leaders and their teams at major technology companies in the United States, other Fortune 200 companies, and non-profit institutions. Wisner is the author of the forthcoming book, Conscious Conversations. (CLICK HERE to learn more).
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Our reader poll today asks: Which of the following statements best reflects your situation related to getting promoted?
I was promoted within the last 3 months: 12%
I expect to get promoted within the next 3-6 months: 11%
I expect to get promoted in the next 6-12 months: 14%
I’m more than 12 months from being promoted: 63%
Getting close? Looks like a lot of you (25%) see yourselves in line for a promotion within the next 12 months. The question is, what are you doing to secure that jump? If you’re not already acting “as if” you’re in that role, consider doing so. Many times it’s not about “can they perform at that level?” but instead the conversation is, “Are they already performing at that level?” When there’s uncertainty in the market, organizations tend to assume less risk which puts your promotion in question. Start acting as if you have the role in terms of the size of your contributions and your acceptance of responsibility.
For the 63% who see it more than 12 months away, what can you commit to in the next year to get yourself ready for the next role and get yourself the visibility you need for your leaders to see yourself as ready? Build a plan now. Execute it in the coming year. Without action, it’s simply wishful thinking.
Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!
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A critical part of effective leadership and success means the understanding of including all stakeholders and total collaboration in your leadership model.
Today’s post is by Kim Lorenz, author of Tireless (CLICK HERE to get your copy).
It’s that time of year again – many organizations have started diving into accomplishing their strategic business goals and objectives for 2021. Do you have a 2021 business vision?
In my years of experience as an entrepreneur, business owner, partner and CEO, I have come to realize that if you can learn to see opportunity, can innovate, and look past the “obvious,” you can achieve almost anything.
To me, a critical part of effective leadership and business success means understanding the importance of including all stakeholders and total collaboration in your leadership model.
Stakeholders are both internal to your company, some in higher levels of management, and often are suited best to contribute fresh ideas and perspectives, mainly because they are often the ones in the trenches and closer to the actual issue you might be addressing.
Unfortunately, when business decisions are made due to a lack of knowledge and failure to seek understanding and input from others, millions of dollars can be wasted. Sadly, these poor decisions, whether in the non-profit or for-profit arena, are not typically discovered for many years down the road, so the losses pile up needlessly.
With this in mind, I encourage leaders in this New Year to strive to gather more information and consult with others (who might know something they don’t) in every decision they make. Remember, you must be willing to meet with the people who do the work every day – and recognize that they are significant, valuable stakeholders who can help you craft smarter business decisions.
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