Rapid Learning Institute

University Instructor Uses RLI Selling Essentials as a Prime Educational Tool

tjoneill — Mon, 21 May 2012 20:00:55 +0000

Chet Trybus is an old hand at the sales and marketing game.

He’s been a marketing executive for Xerox, a strategic account exec for SunGard and a sales consultant for CSC among other assignments. Over the course of a nearly 40-year career, he’s acquired a pretty good idea of what works in the field.

Now, Trybus is imparting some of that knowledge to young people as a marketing instructor at the College of Business at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, teaching courses in professional and advanced selling and sales management.

And in those classes, he’s introduced his students a new and innovative teaching tool – Rapid Learning Institute’s Selling Essentials Rapid Learning Center. Trybus says he’s found that the online training platform is ideal for today’s often- distracted full-time learner – be they college students or working sales professionals.

“Selling Essentials is a valid, current day, how-to methodology. Millennials are really kind of a short memory population and they say they like it because it’s short and to the point. It seems to ring a bell for them.”

Trybus believes part of the reason the program rings that “bell” is the brevity of its presentations. Selling Essentials is composed of a series of six-to-ten-minute modules called Quick Takes, each of which deals with a single specific sales solution. Subjects include “How to Nail the First 20 Seconds of a Cold Call;” “Turning Objections Into Objectives;” and “How to Shorten Your Sales Cycles,” among many others. The viewer watches a short, narrated program to discover why a particular business problem occurs and how to best deal with it, step by step.

“My students don’t yet realize that selling is a process – and every process has a methodology behind it,” says Trybus. “This program compliments that. The applications are very ‘real world.’ It puts ‘the frosting on the cake,’ if you will, for the subject matter I’m trying to cover.”

One of the platform’s advantages says Trybus, is the way in which reinforcing materials such as quizzes and discussion guides are built directly into the Selling Essentials architecture. This ongoing, periodic reinforcement makes it easier for his students to remember what they’ve learned.

“The fact that RLI comes out with updates on a regular basis is critical. Even though you’ve got a library of material you can draw from, I think constantly bringing in up-to-date stuff is important – especially when you ‘re able to go back and say, ‘what does the research show us today,’ to reflect what is changing in the marketplace.”

Chet Trybus says several recent graduates have reported that they use Selling Essentials in their new jobs to solve problems and learn new methods; and that it’s proved to be a competitive advantage in the working world.

“Selling Essentials works,” says Trybus. “It helps me achieve my stated learning outcomes. I plan to use it again and again and again.”

Rapid Learning Institute (RLI) provides online training and talent development tools for businesses, government agencies, nonprofits and educational institutions in the areas of sales, human resources, management, leadership and safety. RLI’s approach is founded on the idea that talent development can only be effective if managers make it a priority and follow up to ensure that learning sticks. The company’s signature five to 10 minute modules, called Quick Takes, help managers build their core competency as talent developers by giving them the tools they need to replicate in others the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors that drive performance.

Based in Greater Philadelphia, RLI is an operating division of Business 21 Publishing, LLC

For information contact:
Gerald Kolpan
Rapid Learning Institute
TEL: 484-490-9233
For more information contact us here

Three prospecting secrets from Sun Tzu’s ‘Art of War’

Michael Boyette — Mon, 21 May 2012 14:42:02 +0000

So you think the stakes are high in selling? Consider the battlefield, where one false move can cost life or limb.

In fact, you can learn a lot from the legendary Chinese general of two thousand years ago, Sun Tzu, says sales guru Tom Searcy.

Sun Tzu’s book, “The Art of War,” is often required reading for CEOs, as he shares his thinking on strategies that underlie military – and other kinds of – success. But many of his lessons are equally applicable to salespeople, especially in the area of prospecting.

Sun Tzu’s main message: Battles are won through knowledge and strategy, not simply force of numbers. “Why destroy,” he asks, “when you can win by stealth and cunning?”

That’s good advice when you’re selling against bigger and richer competitors. You won’t win against them by trying to match their capabilities and resources. You have to outsmart them.

Consider these lessons:

1. Get yourself some spies
Sun Tzu says: “Advance knowledge cannot be gained from ghosts and spirits, but must be obtained from people who know the enemy situation.” In other words, find yourself some spies.

We’re not talking about literal corporate espionage, of course. We’re talking about getting human intelligence about the prospect.

Anybody can gather information. In fact, your big competitors probably have more info-gathering resources than you do. But information becomes intelligence only when someone can tell you what it means. Sure, the annual report says your prospect is growing. But only an insider can tell you that the company is in danger of missing those growth targets next year. Unless you have developed such inside contacts, you don’t have a real opportunity. In fact, for a big sale, you need at least one friend or champion – preferably more – inside the organization.

2. Get the latest plan
“The best approach is to attack the other side’s strategy…” Sun Tzu wrote. Another way to uncover a prospect’s concerns is through understanding the prospect’s strategic plan.

But plans change. And the “official” plan may already be out of date. The real strategic plan may not even exist as a formal document yet. It may be a work in progress. If you can get a look at that plan – knowing that it will change – you’ll know what is important to buyers right now and where their money will be directed. That goes a long way toward helping you find the biggest problem to solve.

3. Find the buyer’s ‘laxity’
“Deeply investigate the true situation, secretly await their laxity,” the general advised. In other words, know where your buyer is vulnerable – because that’s what they worry about and where you can help them the most.

Buyers will often try to hide their weaknesses. The way to find these answers is to have your champion give them to you.

Come right out and ask your champion, with language like this: “Tell me, if your organization were to fail, what would be the most likely reason?” or, “Every organization has vulnerabilities. Where would you say your biggest exposures are right now?”

"Sales Discovery: The Five Whys Technique for Uncovering Hidden Customer Needs"

Source: To learn more from Tom Searcy, visit www.huntingbigsales.com

'Get out of here' – was it retaliation?

Dave Clemens — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:56:53 +0000

Based on the facts presented in the scenario below, how do you think the court ruled on this employment-law case?

“Rosalee Higgins claims you told her she was fired,” HR manager Katrina van Leuwen told supervisor Bob Tandy.

“No, that would have been the wrong thing to do,” Bob replied. “She was complaining about alleged harassment, and I know if you fire somebody who’s making a harassment complaint, you can get in big trouble.”

“I’m glad you’re aware of that,” Katrina said. “What did you tell her?”

“I listened to what she had to say, and read what she had written down,” Bob said. “The complaint sounded bogus to me, so after we’d talked for 45 minutes I wadded it up and threw it in the trash. Then I said I wanted her out of there,” Bob said. “I admit, I was fed up.”

A question of interpretation
“Didn’t you also say you never wanted to see her again?” Katrina prompted. “That could sound like you were firing her.”

“No,” Bob said. “I said I didn’t care if I ever saw her again. Different point. I was very disappointed in her. I didn’t fire her.”

“Another thing,” he went on. “When I told her to get out, I didn’t mean permanently. It was the end of the day and I wanted to close the book and move on.”

“You may have to tell that to a judge,” Katrina said. “Rosalee is suing us for retaliation. Of course, our position is that she refused to return to work, even after I explained she wasn’t fired.”

Free Training Video - "Retaliation: Four Key Mistakes That Supervisors Must Avoid"

The Decision
Yes, Rosalee got a court to agree her retaliation lawsuit should not be dismissed and should be heard by a jury.

The court said it wasn’t unreasonable for Rosalee to assume supervisor Bob was firing her. His statement about never wanting to see her again, or never caring if he did, was enough for her to draw that conclusion, especially after he’d said he “wanted her out of here.”

And although the company tried to get her to come back to work a couple of days later, Bob’s conduct was still enough to dissuade a reasonable employee from making a harassment complaint. That’s the legal definition of retaliation.

Takeaway: It’s easy to lose your temper – or control over what you say – when an employee makes a complaint you consider unfounded or frivolous. Don’t. Bite your tongue, squeeze a stress ball, take a walk outside; do whatever you must to avoid words that may resonate in court long after you’ve said them.

Cite: Young-Losee v. Graphic Packaging International, No. 10-2012, 8th Cir., 1/26/11.

The devil is in the details: Five deal-killing communication traps

Michael Boyette — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:05:41 +0000

Pro football analysts cite Bill Parcells’ meticulous attention to detail as one reason for his stellar career as head coach of four NFL teams. There is much that sales professionals can learn from Parcells, says sales trainer and author Al Uszynski: We can dramatically escalate our performance when we start paying more attention to details – like the common phrases we habitually use. Sometimes we fall into the habit of saying things the same way for years and years. In doing so, we may miss opportunities, put another person on the defensive or unintentionally create a negative image.

Deal-killing phrases
Here are phrases and habits that you can avoid or alter to become more persuasive.

1. “To be honest with you…” Consider the difference in these two statements:

“To be honest, we’re losing money servicing your account.”
“We’re losing money servicing your account.”

The first sounds like whining. The second sets up an adult-to-adult conversation with your buyer.

Why do people feel the need to announce their honesty? Does this mean that they’re lying otherwise? Usually, people use this phrase to set up a statement that might be inconsistent with the goals they are trying to achieve. (For example: “To be honest with you, our competitor’s system is somewhat faster.”)

Better: Omit the “honesty” phrase and get to the point.

2. “What I want to talk about is…” People don’t care about what you want, especially if you’re trying to persuade them. They only care about what they want. When it’s time to introduce a new topic in a conversation, tie it to the other person’s benefit. For example, say, “So that we can find out how to best (save you money, increase your productivity or give you another benefit) let’s discuss….” Do this and you’ll be appealing to your customers’ concerns rather than forcing your agenda on them.

3. “So what you’re saying is…” This comes from the well-intentioned effort to repeat back what you’ve heard and summarize what someone has said in order to be “on the same page.”
It gives your buyer the chance to correct wrong impressions, reiterate his or her ideas, or expand on them. However, the “what you’re saying” phrase is dangerous. The subtext is that you’re putting words in the buyer’s mouth. Also, if your your summary is incomplete or missing major points, it’s as if you’re saying: “I didn’t hear what you said.”

A better way to ensure that you and others are on the same page is to turn the confirming statement into a question seeking confirmation. Instead of, “So what you’re saying is…” try, “Am I correct to understand your (points, ideas, reasons, etc.) to be…?” This demonstrates that you are listening and trying to synchronize with them, rather than forcing your own interpretation down their throats.

Get Free Training Videos - "The Top 5 Sales Skills Your Salespeople Must Master"

4. “What you have to do is…” Barking orders is not beneficial to persuasion. A prospect or customer is likely to think, “Who the heck are you to tell me what I have to do?” This phrase usually precedes how-to information. For example, while the following statement gets the message across, it’s not the most persuasive: “You’ll need to buy an inexpensive interface in order for our hardware to be compatible with your system.”

You’ll sound much friendlier and less bossy by saying it this way: “Our hardware is compatible with your system by using an inexpensive interface, purchased separately.”

5. “I don’t know how much you know about (topic), but…”
Speakers often use this approach out of laziness. They have a set piece they’re trying to get to and use this as a bridge. What buyers hear is someone who openly admits to not knowing the listener’s level of knowledge, and then babbles on hoping that his points will stick. Only one of three things can happen in this situation:

The buyer thinks you’re a time-wasting know-it-all who just wants to spout off your superior knowledge.
You tell the buyer stuff he already knows, wasting his time. Possibly, you also insult your buyer’s intelligence.
By some happenstance, you deliver just the level of knowledge the buyer needs.

The odds of hitting it just right aren’t very good. There’s no need to take such a chance. Here’s an easy process to use as an alternative: Ask the buyer: “How much do you know about (topic)?”
Then you can speak to their appropriate level of expertise.

When speaking to a larger group ask for a show of hands with “How many of you know a lot about (topic)? Something? Nothing?” Then speak to the consensus level or slightly below it.

Source: To learn more from Al Usznyski visit www.uszynski.com or www.sellingresource.com

Be on the lookout for teams that 'circle the wagons'

Dave Clemens — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:39:38 +0000

We like to think of teamwork as the ultimate organizational good. Team players support co-workers, sublimate their egos for the benefit of the larger group, and help bring about greater innovation and productivity.

It follows, then, that the more tightly knit the team, the better the team will perform. Or does it?

Check out "A Four-Point Model for Leading High-Performance Teams" for FREE and give your organization’s managers the tools they need to find the best people, make the most of their talents and keep them happy and loyal.

Such a thing as too close
Two faculty members at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School recently published a research paper suggesting that teams which are too tightly knit may resist outside input and end up hurting themselves.

The researchers studied the reaction of 252 subjects to new information, and found there was a big difference, depending on whether the subjects worked alone or in teams of two.

Subjects working alone on the research task – estimating answers to questions like “What percentage of Americans own pets?” – adjusted their estimates by 33% on average when presented with outside estimates that differed from theirs.

But those working in teams adjusted their answers by just 20%, showing greater resistance to outside information – even when it was potentially helpful.

The researchers suggested that a couple of factors were at work here:

Team members believed since both their opinions went into the initial estimate, it was more reliable than if just one person had come up with it.
Team members wanted to maintain the team’s social cohesion.

What’s all this mean for your organization? For one thing, managers may want to make special efforts to “open up” their team to new members and/or reshuffle teams that have been together for extended periods.

Source: knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

Attention blindness: How workers miss obvious dangers

Lori Sereditch — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:48:15 +0000

Some workers are focused so hard on what they’re doing that they don’t see obvious hazards.

“Joe, did you have blinders on?” asked Supervisor Rich Jones. “I can barely believe what happened here.”

“I’m sorry,” said worker Joe Reynolds. “I was concentrating on those stitch cuts, and didn’t see the lift, and I didn’t see Larry on the roof.”

Joe was helping to demolish the top of an oil tank. To do that, he used a torch-cutter to “stitch cut” the steel tank roof into sections, leaving a one-inch segment between the cuts so the roof wouldn’t fall. A crane was to be used to lower the sections.

Left hazard for worker
“Larry walked out onto that roof to inspect something for me,” said Rich. “He used a lift to get up there. And while he was standing on the roof, you cut the roof directly in front of the lift, then left without marking the area. You left a trap for him. He stepped right on the section you cut and fell through. You tell his widow what you did.”

“I’m sorry,” said Joe. Then, getting angry, he added, “But he knew I was up there, and he didn’t pay attention to what I was doing. If anything, this is your fault for sending him up there. Frankly, this whole demolition plan was unsafe. These stitch cuts were an accident waiting to happen.”

“The plan was fine,” said Rich. “But you weren’t thinking.”

Larry’s family sued Rich’s company, saying the company negligently supervised the work site. The company countered it had no knowledge of the danger.

Check out the Workplace Safety Rapid Learning Center FREE for 30 days. Get instant access to a collection of safety training videos perfect for helping you build a safety culture throughout your organization.

Decision
The judges agreed with the company and dismissed the case. The supervisor didn’t have time to discover the dangerous condition, and so wasn’t legally liable.

For supervisors, this case illustrates attention blindness. That’s when workers get so focused on what they’re doing that they don’t even see obvious dangers. And both Larry and Joe, in this case, were blind to the encroaching danger.

Whenever you have workers doing high hazard work, you as a supervisor need to keep an eye on the big picture. If one worker is creating a hazard zone, keep everyone else out, if possible.

And if two workers must be in a hazard area together, you need to coordinate their efforts and supervise them carefully so they don’t harm each other.

Cite: Richard v. City of Austin, No. 03-05-00700, Texas App.

Angry customers: It’s not yelling. It’s a cry for help.

Michael Boyette — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:38:21 +0000

Every one of us – even those in sales – has at one time or another, been an Angry Customer.

Think back to one of those times and get in touch with your pain. You’ve been on hold for 20 minutes. Given your information to three different people. Heard “no” about seven different ways. And finally you’re told that, unfortunately, you needed to call by yesterday and the policy can’t be waived.

Are you there yet? Good.

Now, if you could only hear one thing, would it be…

A silky soothing voice?
Chirpy confidence?
An apology?
A solution?

Sweet talk and apologies are nice, but I’d choose a solution. Without that, none of the rest matters.

Free Training Video - "Angry Customers: The Three R's for Dealing with Hostility"

So I wonder why so much advice about handling angry customers isn’t about what you say – the solution – but how you say it. There’s only one thing you need to remember when a customer flies off the handle: It’s a cry for help. Angry as they are, they’re only still talking to you because they harbor some faint and fluttering hope that you – YOU – are the person who can help them.

‘Free recall’ works better than studying

Stephen J. Meyer — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:08:02 +0000

Here’s one study technique that can help trainees improve their recall. Ask them to write down everything they remember about your last session.

It’s called free recall, and researchers say it’s one of the most effective ways to improve retention in the long-term. Most recently, researchers broke down college science students into four groups:

One group studied as usual
A second group conducted four consecutive study sessions.
A third group did “elaborative studying” – mapping out concepts while reviewing a text.
A fourth were asked to write down everything they remembered from the text in a “free recall” exercise.

Result: Free recall did twice as well as ordinary studying, about 20% better than repeated study, and about 25% better than elaborative studying.

There was only one area where the other three groups did better: self-confidence. All three groups predicted they’d do better on the final exam than they actually did.

The “free recallers,” by contrast, exceeded their own expectations.

Conclusion: Researchers say the “retrieval practice” of free recall was crucial to building memories, and helps keep self-appraisals of learning realistic.

Source: Karpicke, J., et al.,“Retrieval Practice Produces More Learning than Elaborative Studying.” Science 331, p. 772, February 2011.

Check out the Compliance & Management Rapid Learning Center FREE for 30 days. Get instant access to a collection of 6- to 10-minute modules perfect for training supervisors and managers throughout your organization.

Lessons from Yahoo's CEO debacle: Look into EVERY job candidate

Dave Clemens — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:46:15 +0000

Just four months after being named top guy, Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson is no longer with the company. Prior to the announcement that he was resigning for health reasons, it was discovered that he lied on his resume. Thompson claimed to have graduated with a degree in computer science, though his university did not offer such a degree until well after he left.

In light of the scandal, Yahoo is dealing with some unfortunate and embarrassing press. The sad part is, this could easily have been avoided.

We’ll never know what exactly happened at Yahoo in the days surrounding Thompson’s hire and subsequent departure, but his resume fiasco should serve as a lesson to all hiring managers.

‘The Best Interview Questions To Smoke Out Impostors’

Under pressure
Hiring managers are often under pressure to fill a position in a hurry, for various reasons: The job is a really important one, the position has been vacant too long, some line manager is complaining about being short-staffed.

So when a job candidate like Scott Thompson comes along, with a pristine resume and a history of getting results, it’s tempting to forego the process of doing your homework and asking the difficult questions to be sure your candidate is as perfect as he or she looks on paper.

But Yahoo has now proven why hiring managers need to overcome that temptation and dig deeper into a candidate’s history. Not only is Yahoo making headlines for a questionable hiring decision, they have to go through the entire process again — all because the hiring team didn’t want to look into a resume that seemed too good to be true.

It doesn’t matter if you’re hiring a CEO or an intern who will work in the mailroom; hiring managers need to take a long, hard look at every job candidate to make sure the person is really capable of performing the task at hand. The consequences for failing to do so just became a little bit clearer.

Keys for developing safety judgment

Lori Sereditch — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:00:47 +0000

You know that to build a safe and productive company culture, workers need to learn how to balance safety and risk.

You don’t expect workers to blindly march off a cliff, but you also expect them to handle a bump in the road. The scary part, though, is you must rely on their judgment to discern which is which.

Example: Two federal contractors were asked to get some info about a 480-volt circuit breaker in a motor control center. The workers dutifully tried to get the info, but soon realized they couldn’t get what they needed just from looking. They began to remove the breaker while the box was “live.”

An arc flash followed. Molten debris scarred one’s face and burned another’s hands. The correct procedure would have been to return to their supervisor and explain that a safety analysis was needed to remove the breaker.

Helping workers learn
So how can you shape workers’ judgment? Consider the following:

Set strong boundaries. Workers need to know what lies within their discretion and what’s beyond it. Working on live electrical panels without a proper safety analysis is beyond it.

Test workers regularly. The best way to learn the boundaries is by discussing real-world decisions that often aren’t clear cut. During training sessions, work through case studies about when they’re expected to “figure it out” and when they’re expected to step away and report back to you.

Recognize workers when they get it right. Thank workers who come back to you for more info. Even if the workers are wondering about a “bump” instead of a cliff, they’ve created a “teachable moment” by approaching you.

Rapid Learning Institute named as Finalist in 2012 American Business Awards

tjoneill — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:43:13 +0000

10th annual Stevie® Awards will be presented on June 18 in New York City and September 17 in San Francisco

Philadelphia – May 10, 2012 – Rapid Learning Institute (RLI) was named a Finalist today in the category Best Training Site in the 2012 American Business Awards, and will ultimately be a Gold, Silver, or Bronze Stevie Award winner in the program.

The American Business Awards are the nation’s premier business awards program. All organizations operating in the U.S.A. are eligible to submit nominations – public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small.

More than 3,000 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories, including Most Innovative Company of the Year, Management Team of the Year, Best New Product or Service of the Year, Corporate Social Responsibility Program of the Year, and Executive of the Year, among others.

The training website entered in the competition is RLI’s Compliance & Management Rapid Learning Center. The site is designed to give busy managers the tools to train their people amid such challenges as limited training time and short employee attention spans. Using the concept of “chunked” learning, the site breaks training down into small, easily digested six-to-ten minute modules called Quick Takes that any employee can call upon at any moment they need them. The Quick Takes also provide consistent learning reinforcement through the use of immediately accessible discussion guides, quizzes, fast read articles, newsletters and other tools that both managers and learners can consult at the moment of need to make sure their training sticks.

“This is a great honor for us,” said Stephen J. Meyer, Chief Executive Offer of RLI. “To be chosen as a finalist from among so many great training firms is a real tribute to the terrific research and creative team we’ve assembled.”

Finalists were chosen by more than 140 business professionals nationwide during preliminary judging in April and May. More than 150 members of 10 specialized judging committees will determine Stevie Award placements from among the Finalists during final judging, to take place May 14 – 25.

Details about The American Business Awards and the list of Finalists in all categories are available at www.stevieawards.com/aba.

About Rapid Learning Institute
Rapid Learning Institute (RLI) provides online training and talent development tools for businesses, government agencies, nonprofits and educational institutions in the areas of sales, human resources, management, leadership and safety. RLI’s approach is founded on the idea that talent development can only be effective if managers make it a priority and follow up to ensure that learning sticks. The company’s signature five to 10 minute modules, called Quick Takes, help managers build their core competency as talent developers by giving them the tools they need to replicate in others the knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors that drive performance.

Based in Greater Philadelphia, RLI is an operating division of Business 21 Publishing, LLC

About the Stevie Awards
Stevie Awards are conferred in four programs: The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about The Stevie Awards at www.stevieawards.com.

Sponsors and partners of The 2012 American Business Awards include American Support, Business TalkRadio Network, Callidus Software, Citrix Online, Dynamic Research Corporation, iolo technologies, John Hancock Funds, LifeLock, PetRays, Primus Telecommunications Group, SoftPro, and VerticalResponse.

For information contact:
Gerald Kolpan
Rapid Learning Institute
TEL: 484-490-9233
For more information contact us here

‘Get lost,’ the prospect told me

Michael Boyette — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:05:25 +0000

Editor’s note: Greatest Sales are true accounts of how successful salespeople closed the deal despite sales objections, buyer inertia, cutthroat competition and other obstacles. Veteran salesperson Mark Chilnick tells how one sale early in his career taught him what it took to get past the buyer’s “no.”

“Please leave,” the prospect said. “I like my current supplier. I don’t even want to know your company exists.”

Early in my career, I sold advertising for a major telephone directory company. It was a tough, prospecting-intensive job, and I got my fair share of no’s.

But there are bad no’s – and then there are not-so-bad no’s. And despite the harsh words, I thought this was a pretty promising no.

For one thing, the prospect was anything but indifferent. People only use language like that if, at some level, they care. For another thing, this was a customer who was loyal to his supplier – just the kind of customer I wanted! All I had to do was get him to be loyal to me instead.

But how could I win him over when he wouldn’t even meet with me?

Free Training Video - "When the Prospect Says No: How to Make an Effective Second Sales Effort"

No, no, and still no
I used every technique I could think of to get a meeting. For three years, I got nowhere.

Finally, the prospect agreed to hear me out. Maybe he figured it was the only way to get rid of me for good.

When we met, I showed how much we’d saved other customers. He wasn’t interested. He wouldn’t even tell me what he was spending.

Was I frustrated? You bet. But the guy’s unwillingness to discuss his costs got me thinking. I was out there every day negotiating with customers, so I knew cost trends in my industry very well. My prospect hadn’t talked to anyone but my competitor for years, and he was likely to be way out of touch with reality. So I decided to gather every detail I could about the prospect’s operations, without asking him directly. With this information – as well as my best estimate of what my rival was charging him – I put together a presentation that laid out what he was spending and how much he could save.

‘Wow, you’re right’
I asked for one more meeting. The prospect was skeptical but agreed.

I opened the discussion with a dollar figure. “Here’s what you’re spending now,” I said.

“Wow, that’s pretty close,” the prospect said.

“Here’s how you’re spending it,” I continued, pulling out a poster I’d made up before the meeting.

He stared at my chart. “You’re exactly right.”

Then I pulled out a second poster. “And here’s how you can make your budget go a lot farther.”

“Let me see that,” he said.

That’s when I knew I had the sale.

Now my loyal customer asks me how he should allocate his budget. Not long ago, I asked him why he finally said yes after so many years.

“It was when you put that first budget number in front of me,” he said. “If you knew that much about my business without my telling you, I figured I should listen to you.”

Mark Chilnick, based in Frederick, MD, was a top-selling sales rep for a major publisher of telephone directories. He now sells online marketing services.

What really gets employees fired up? Hint: It’s not an ‘atta boy’

Dave Clemens — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:58:26 +0000

No doubt you’ve heard that managers – both in HR and elsewhere in the organization – should “show some love” to employees if they want to encourage their best efforts.

And that’s true … as far as it goes.

But a surprising research study shows that demonstrations of appreciation from managers, while they do increase employee engagement, are less effective at it than other kinds of positive events that are also within managers’ control.

The study was done by Teresa Amabile of the Harvard Business School and independent researcher Steven Kramer. They collected 12,000 diary entries from 238 professionals in seven companies over a period of several years.

Three types of ‘events’
In this extensive study, employees diarized about three main types of events at work that they saw as positive forces, making them happy and increasing their determination to give of their best.

The researchers classified the three kinds of events as:

“Nourishing.” These included shows of respect, encouragement or appreciation from a manager or other authority figure.
“Catalytic.” These took place when employees were given resources or training that enabled them to improve their performance.
“Progress.” These occurred when employees were able to move forward on a project or accomplish something meaningful.

"Why Employee Praise Can Backfire – And How to Do It Right"

What worked
If you followed the pure logic of managerial appreciation, you’d say that the “nourishing” events were the most effective at floating employees’ boats.

But in fact, the study found that they were the least effective.

On employees’ best days – the days when they reported going home happy – their diaries showed a heavy preponderance of progress events.

The distribution of events on those happy days broke down like this: 76% progress events, 43% catalytic events, and just 25% nourishing events.

Conversely, employees’ worst days were the days when they suffered setbacks, the opposite of progress. On these days, employees cited setbacks 67% of the time.

Action steps for managers
What does all this mean for managers?

First, let’s be clear about what the study doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean managers should suddenly refrain from praising employees who have merited a pat on the back. Encouragement still works, especially when it’s sincere and timely.

The study’s results do mean, however, that if praise is the only tool managers use to motivate and engage employees, they’re missing some big chances.

Here are three action steps that the study suggests managers can take:

Find out whether nagging resource issues are holding people back, and address them where possible. It may surprise you how often fixable computer glitches or small equipment malfunctions can weigh on employees’ minds and productivity. Or how often a lack of knowledge or skill that feels to the person like a major hindrance can be addressed in just an afternoon of training.
To create and/or capitalize on feelings of progress, meet with each employee and help them identify milestones on the path toward their goals. Then as they hit these milestones, celebrate their incremental successes. You don’t have to throw a party; sometimes a handwritten note is enough. (Note: Here you’re leveraging a “nourishing” event to underline a “progress” event!)
To minimize the effect of setbacks, let the employee know you noticed and are sorry the setback happened. Then start getting the person back on the path to progress by setting a new milestone that is achievable. And of course, monitor their efforts to hit that milestone.

Key to maximum profit: Your customer’s price-tolerance ratio

Michael Boyette — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:32:13 +0000

Every customer has a price range where he or she is willing to make a decision without any further thinking. Sales guru Mark Hunter refers to this as the Price Tolerance Ratio, or PTR.
Knowing your customer’s PTR is critical, yet salespeople fail to comprehend the obstacle that not knowing it presents. When you don’t understand a customer’s PTR, you inevitably:

offer a price that does not maximize the profit potential
get the order but encounter resistance from the customer that hinders the relationship, or
encounter resistance that leads to spending too much time on the selling process and ultimately no order.

The first scenario is the most common. The salesperson doesn’t find out the price is lower than necessary until long after the sales is completed – or never finds out.
The solution: Long before customers express any intention to buy, find out how they determine value and what their critical needs are.

Act early
Begin determining a customer’s PTR early in the prospecting and sales process. How? Ask what they’ve been paying for services in the past and what their expectations have been for the suppliers they’ve been using. Without direct questions like these, you will waste time chasing customers you ultimately do not want.

Asking these questions during the sales transaction itself is too late. Once the customer has decided to buy, he or she will often focus on what it will take to get a lower price. Ask about value now, and they may use the question as a negotiating ploy.

Take the time to ask the customer why the order is important and what risks they face if it isn’t received on time. Ask how the order fits into the overall scheme of what they do and what their customers do.

If you can identify value or risk in other parts of the supply chain, you can leverage this information during the sales process and increase the amount the customer is willing to pay (widening their PTR).

Relationship damage
The second scenario is that you get the order, but with resistance that hinders the relationship. Resistance is not always a bad thing. If you don’t encounter some customer resistance from time to time, you have not truly pushed the process to maximize profit.

The final reason for knowing the PTR is to prevent you from spending too much time with a customer from whom you can’t make any money.

‘Price Objections: Four Secrets Prospects Will Never Tell You’

Is resistance superficial?
When you encounter resistance, you first have to determine if the resistance is real or superficial. To do that, watch to see if the buyer continues to express concern about price on multiple occasions.

If price comes up only once or twice, you can reasonably assume it is merely the customer venting. Re-establish the value proposition and pursue your sales process, knowing your level of service and support is going to overcome any pricing perception.

If the customer keeps bringing up pricing, then the resistance is probably real and you probably need to slow down the sales process and spend more time on price.

Sure, Price Tolerance Ratio (PTR) is a different concept. But if you want to improve your bottom line, begin now to identify the PTR for each of your customers. Waiting until you close the sale is too late.

Source: To learn more from Mark Hunter, visit www.thesaleshunter.com

Why you want to be the framer, not the framee

Dave Clemens — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:46:00 +0000

Imagine a photograph of a landscape with a horse, a cow and a hill. One observer says, “That’s a horse.” Another says, “That’s a cow.” A third says, “That’s a hill.”

Why would three people have such different views of the same photo? Well, possibly the photographer has cropped and framed the photo differently for each – so that the horse, or the cow, or the hill, becomes the central object.

What’s this got to do with the day-to-day management of your department or team?

Different views
A lot. As with our photo, different employees take different views of workplace problems and situations, depending on the frame they see them through.

But as you seek to motivate employees to behave in productive ways, you don’t have to accept their frames. Often, you’ll be able to exert a greater and more positive influence by reframing issues to suit your purpose.

Example: Barbara and James battle constantly about whose job it is to enter the daily sales reports into the database. You call them in, and as they discuss the issue, you see their frame: They both consider the task a tedious chore, which has to be done at the end of the day and sometimes keeps the person doing it at work past 5 p.m.

The frame of peace
You realize there’s a better frame. So you explain that the first thing the sales force does each morning is look at the sales reports from the previous day. That helps the salespeople schedule their calls and callbacks, and is essential to their success – and the company’s revenue stream.

James and Barbara exchange looks. And from then on, they share the data-entry duty evenly and amicably.

Free Training Videos - "Leadership Training for Managers & Supervisors"

Source: “Increase Your Influence at Work,” by McIntosh and Luecke.

photo credit: garycycles3

Employment Law Training for Managers: How to Be Sure They Remember and Apply What They Learn

tjoneill — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:01:57 +0000

This webinar will give you research-based insights on why so much employment law training fails, and a road map to deliver future training in a way that will dramatically increase learning retention and transference to workplace situations.

Sloppy use of PPE leads to blockbuster OSHA fine

Lori Sereditch — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:45:51 +0000

“We’ve got workers wearing hoods and respirators – they look like they’d be ready for a moon landing,” said Supervisor Henry Chandless. “And we’ve got an exhaust ventilation system. We’re doing this right.”

“What you’re doing is nowhere near enough,” said OSHA Compliance Officer Jeff Lawton. “You do understand the risks of contamination from abrasively blasting lead-based paint, don’t you?”

“Of course,” said Henry. “But no way the lead exposure is 18 times the PEL.”

“That’s what our readings say,” said Jeff.

Not testing correctly
Henry took a look at the CO’s findings and then talked to his workers. An hour later, he told the CO, “I see the problem. First, you’re testing the air inside the tent, not inside the hood of the respirator.”

“Right, that’s the OSHA reg,” said Jeff. “You test the air outside the respirator, but inside the containment tent. I’ve also noticed workers store the respirators in the containment tent overnight. That contaminates them.”

“All right, we’ll take care of the storage,” said Henry. “But your measurements are off. Look, one of my guys put his monitoring equipment in backward. It’s facing up, which means that lead particles are falling directly into the monitor – and this gives a false reading.”

Results close enough?
“Yeah, I noticed that. But his results are about the same as everyone else’s,” said Jeff. “It might have been different if his results were way off.”

“Everyone’s results are off,” said Henry. “These guys tell me they’ve dropped the monitoring equipment onto lead-covered surfaces, and they’ve bumped into these surfaces, too. Those particles are throwing off the readings.”

“I considered that, too,” said Jeff. “But I’ve done some independent tests, and they confirm the airborne lead levels.”

Challenge fails
The company challenged the citation, but lost and must pay more than $1 million in fines. The OSHA judges gave the following reasons:

The incorrect configuration and monitoring equipment didn’t throw off the readings. Neither did the “dropped” and “bumped” equipment.
The respirators were stored inside the lead-contaminated containment area overnight, ignoring that this would contaminate the respirators.

What this means to you
This case shows how even if you have the right PPE, you can still go wrong in three ways:

Incorrect configuration. One worker didn’t understand, despite direct instruction, how to configure his monitoring equipment. Check that workers have put equipment together correctly.
Wear-and-tear during work. Workers frequently bumped and dropped their monitoring equipment. In this case, the wear failed to change the readings, but it easily could have done so.
Storage. Make sure PPE is stored properly. Respirators, for example, shouldn’t be stored in areas where they’re likely to be contaminated.

Cite: Secretary of Labor v. E. Smalis Painting Co., Inc., No. 94-1979, OSHRC.

To buy … or not to buy

Michael Boyette — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:04:15 +0000

Elaine recently took over the Denmark territory for General Armor. Today she’s visiting her prospect, the CEO of Elsinore Inc.

Frankly, Elaine can’t figure out how this Hamlet guy got the top job at Elsinore, because he can’t make a decision to save his life. He was all set to order new chain mail for his knights, but now he’s waffling.

“To buy or not to buy? That is the question,” Hamlet muses, while Elaine looks at her watch. “Our cash flow is down this quarter, and the economy’s not looking so good, and my mother says chain mail is practically obsolete. Oh, to die, to sleep – and thereby avoid choosing the wrong course of action! Oh me! Oh my!”

Oh come on already, Elaine’s thinking. She needs this sale, and she needs it now, before she catches pneumonia in this damp and dreary castle.

So what should Elaine do? Should she:

Give Hamlet a firm boot in the breastplate to get him to focus?
Warn him that the price of chain mail is going up fast, and he should act now to lock in the price?
Ask him, “What will it take to get you into a new suit of chain mail today?”
Remain calm?

The correct answer: Remain calm. Hamlet is hesitating because he’s anxious. His anxiety is making Elaine anxious. And if she projects that anxiety back to Hamlet, he’s just going to get even more anxious.

Her best bet for winning this sale is to help Hamlet manage his anxiety. She might say, for example, “Your highness, I understand. This is a big decision. Of course you want to make sure it’s the right one. So let’s revisit what you told me earlier about why your knights need better armor…”

"Overcoming Purchase Anxiety: How to Close Buyers Who Just Can't Make a Decision"

This type of anxiety – purchase anxiety – is common in high-stakes sales. Fortunately, it’s a temporary condition. With the right approach, you can help your buyer deal with it and move on. But if you allow your buyer’s anxiety to infect you, it could escalate and derail the sale.

‘Rewire your brain’: Yes, but not so fast

Stephen J. Meyer — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:38:14 +0000

You’ve no doubt heard a lot about learning activities that “rewire your brain.” But does learning really change the physical structure of your brain?

Yes, according to one recent study.

Researchers studied the brains of London cab drivers – who must pass a comprehensive exam of London’s 25,000 streets as well as numerous “points of interest.”

The researchers conducted a longitudinal study of these candidates as they began the licensing training program (which usually takes 3-4 years).

They found two things:

Taxi drivers who passed the exam had a larger section of their brains related to spatial memory than when they started.
Retired London cab drivers’ brains reverted to normal.

Conclusion: Use it or lose it. Training does “rewire” the brain. But the changes aren’t permanent unless the learning is reinforced.

Check out the The Selling Essentials Rapid Learning Center FREE for 30 days. Get instant access to a collection of 6- to 10-minute modules perfect for reinforcing the fundamental selling skills of your busy reps.

Source: Woollett, K., et al., “Acquiring ‘the Knowledge’ of London’s Layout Drives Structural Brain Changes,”

photo credit: jtbarrett

Religious issues at work: What’s a supervisor to do?

Dave Clemens — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:50:49 +0000

For years, Gretchen has been one of your best workers. Now, there’s been an important change in her life – she just converted to an evangelical Christian denomination, and her new faith makes big demands on her.

You’re fine with Gretchen’s choice – she seems happier and more motivated than ever. But then one day she comes to your office and tells you she can’t wear the uniform your organization requires any more.

“Why?” you ask, puzzled.

“My church has a very strict code on what’s considered modest attire,” she says. “We believe women shouldn’t wear pants, and pants are part of the company uniform. I’m sorry if this causes a problem, but I have to obey my conscience.”

What do you do now? Tell Gretchen she has to conform to the company dress code or face discipline? Exempt her from wearing the uniform, and face complaints from other employees who may not be thrilled about the uniform, either?

Free Training Video - "Religious Accommodation: What Every Supervisor Must Know"

A tough call
It’s a tough call. And to make it, you need to understand federal law on religious discrimination and accommodation.

In this case, it may seem to you that Gretchen is refusing to obey a company rule. But what she’s really doing – if you understand the situation properly – is making a request for a religious accommodation.

And the law requires you to try to accommodate a sincerely held religious belief, unless it would cause undue hardship for your organization. That’s not the case here.

So what you could do, for instance, is ask Gretchen whether she’d be willing to wear a skirt and keep the rest of the uniform. She’s already stated that the pants are the issue, so your compromise suggestion should be acceptable to her. (If it’s not, you may have a problem that goes beyond religion, and you’ll want to kick it upstairs to higher management or HR.)

Discipline: OSHA warns on potential discrimination

Lori Sereditch — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:26:01 +0000

Even good companies can easily run afoul of workplace discrimination laws – and end up getting sued or facing tough OSHA scrutiny.

OSHA’s deputy secretary identified three potentially discriminatory actions in a March 12 memo.

“There are several types of workplace policies and practices that could discourage reporting and could constitute unlawful discrimination and a violation of section 11(c) and other whistleblower protection statutes,” said OSHA deputy secretary Richard Fairfax.

“Some of these policies and practices may also violate OSHA’s recordkeeping regulations, particularly the requirement to ensure that employees have a way to report work-related injuries and illnesses,” Fairfax continued.

Rule of thumb: Will an OSHA inspector think the practice or policy creates a strong incentive to not report injuries?

Here are three policies and practices that are not necessarily discriminatory, but will raise OSHA’s eyebrows and cause them to dig deeper for evidence of discrimination:

1. Disciplining for every injury
Problem: One size-fits-all treatment of injuries, either by policy or in practice.
“[A]n employer’s policy to discipline all employees who are injured, regardless of fault, is not a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason that an employer may advance to justify adverse action against an employee who reports an injury,” Fairfax said.

OSHA will also look at your injury reporting records to see if injuries always result in discipline, even in the absence of a formal, written policy.

Bottom line: Before imposing discipline, make sure supervisors take the circumstances of the injury into account. As hard as it is to say, workers are sometimes injured through little to no fault of their own, such as:

Someone else creates the hazard (e.g., an operator drops a pallet behind another operator, who trips over it)
Equipment or engineering control failure (forklift brakes fail or machine guard comes apart during normal operation).

OSHA will look for the following:

Does the employer monitor for compliance with the work rule in the absence of an injury? (If supervisors only catch workers violating rules after injuries, OSHA will suspect a less than good faith discipline program.
Does the employer consistently impose equivalent discipline against employees who violate the work rule in the absence of an injury?

OSHA will also see if the company cites a rule that’s “too vague,” such as a requirement to “maintain situational awareness” or “work carefully.” These kinds of rules, OSHA says, are red flags because they may be “manipulated and used as a pretext for unlawful discrimination.”

2. Discipline for violating injury-reporting policies
Problem: A worker reports an injury. She’s then disciplined for violating company policy about the timing or manner of reporting.

“OSHA recognizes that employers have a legitimate interest in establishing procedures for receiving and responding to reports of injuries,” Fairfax said. “To be consistent with the statute, however, such procedures must be reasonable and may not unduly burden the employee’s right and ability to report.”

Not all workers immediately know they are injured seriously enough to report. You can’t discipline if a worker only realizes later that they’ve suffered a reportable injury. Factors OSHA will consider in determining if the discipline is discriminatory:

Was the employee’s reporting mistake a major deviation from policy, or only a minor slip-up?
Was it deliberate or inadvertent?
Does the employer have a reasonable basis for the policy in the first place?
Was the punishment “unduly harsh” and a pretext either for discrimination or to discourage reporting?

Bottom line: Be prepared to defend your reporting policy and any sanctions against a worker. Documentation, and consistent discipline under the same reporting circumstances, will protect your company.

3. Incentive programs that focus on results, not behaviors
Problem: OSHA still doesn’t like safety incentive programs based on results.

“[S]ome employers establish programs that unintentionally or intentionally provide employees an incentive to not report injuries,” Fairfax explained.

Examples: Prizes for workers who were injury-free in the previous year, or team bonuses when no one is injured. In both cases, workers have a strong incentive not to report injuries. People want their individual prizes, and don’t want to be the person who loses the team bonus for everyone.

Instead: Reward the correct safety behaviors. Examples:

identifying hazards
participating in safety investiations of injuries, incidents and “near misses”
compliance with safety rules during spot inspections (e.g., wearing PPE), and
serving on safety committees.

Complete text of Fairfax’s memo is here: http://www.osha.gov/as/opa/whistleblowermemo.html

Six ways to make sure you learn as much as you can from lost sales

Michael Boyette — Mon, 07 May 2012 14:51:13 +0000

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of closing a sale. Whether it’s large or small, salespeople celebrate first and then try to understand why they won so they can replicate their success.

There is much more to be learned from losing, says sales coach Richard Schroder. Yet most salespeople don’t know how to gather accurate and meaningful information from prospects to learn from their losses.

60% of customers won’t tell the complete truth
Salespeople often ask prospects why they lost a deal, but typically don’t get a straight answer. In fact, recent sales research says salespeople get the complete truth only about 40% of the time.

The rest of the time, the answers you get not only are unenlightening, but can actually lead you to incorrect conclusions about why you lost. Here are the key reasons prospects aren’t forthcoming:

They do not want to hurt your feelings.
They fear confrontation and/or criticism from sales reps.
They often have issues with the sales rep or sales process that impact candor.

Salespeople may inhibit the feedback process just as easily. Here’s how:

Salespeople are often caught off guard by the bad news and unprepared to conduct a debrief.
Salespeople usually do not know the right post-sale questions to ask (and how to ask them).

How to improve feedback
Here are six ways you can improve your post-sales process and get more candid feedback from prospects after they’ve decided to go with someone else’s offer:

1. Give early notification that you will conduct a debrief, regardless of the outcome of the sale. To make the prospect comfortable and elicit honest – and even more important, actionable – feedback, let them know early in the sales process that no matter what the outcome, you will be conducting a post-decision debrief call. Use language something like this: “We are always looking for ways we can improve our sales process, and do the best job we can. So after you have made your decision, I’d like to conduct a 15-20 minute debriefing call to get your candid feedback.”

2. Schedule a separate debrief call. Do not debrief on the same call as when you hear about a loss. When they’re telling you that you’ve lost the sale, prospects have one goal in mind: to get you off the phone as quickly as possible. Plus, your own emotions may get in the way. Under those circumstances, getting good feedback is both challenging and unlikely. Instead, schedule a separate debrief call after you have accepted the loss and let the prospect know that you will not try to change their decision.

Get Free Training Videos - "The Top 5 Sales Skills Your Salespeople Must Master"

3. Use a debrief guide. Using a questionnaire maximizes feedback and keeps the conversation focused. Consider opening language like this:

“Ms. Prospect, thank you very much for speaking with me today. These feedback calls help ensure that we are working on the right issues, rather than guessing what needs improvement in our sales process and to our products and services.
“I want to let you know up front that your feedback isn’t going to get anyone in trouble. Our company is committed to improving on everything we do and we view these calls as a critical opportunity to help us achieve that goal.
“So please be as candid as possible. I am totally open to any constructive feedback you may have (including feedback directly related to my personal performance) because it will ultimately help me do my job better and be more successful.”

Then ask questions that compare your approach to that of the supplier chosen, how the decision was made, and how you could improve. For example:

“When you look back at our/my sales process, proposal and presentation, what were our strong points? Where could we improve?”
“Compared to the chosen supplier, what did our team do well/not as well?”

4. Take responsibility. Make sure that you really want candid feedback. Prospects will be able to tell if you don’t. Don’t get defensive or angry, don’t debate with the prospect and don’t try to resell the prospect.

5. Probe for specifics. Ask “How do you mean?” or “Say more.” Other great ways of getting candid feedback include asking, “How can I improve on this?” “How can I make it better?” or “Can I get your advice?”

6. Consider having someone else conduct your debriefs. Once you develop a debrief questionnaire, you could have someone else within your company conduct the debrief. You could also find someone outside your company to do this work for you. If you are running a sales team, consider hiring an outside party to conduct interviews on behalf of your team.

By implementing a process for conducting better debrief calls, you will unlock a vast source of prospect information which will allow for continuous sales improvement. This process will ultimately increase your close rate for years to come.

Source: Based on “From a Good Sales Call to a Great Sales Call” by Richard M. Schroder. ISBN 0071718117. To learn more visit www.theanovagroup.com

Is this a swan, or are the others all geese?

Dave Clemens — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:59:05 +0000

Veteran HR people and managers are aware of some of the traps an interviewer can step into – like leaning toward people who share your interests, or favoring the physically attractive candidate.

But how about the “best of a bad lot” trap? That one can spring when:

You’re in a hurry to fill a job, and
The candidates you’ve interviewed so far are all worse than mediocre.

‘The Best Interview Questions To Smoke Out Impostors’

Now, if a candidate who’s even semi-competent walks into your office, you may see her as a winner, because you’re comparing her – perhaps unconsciously – to a bunch of losers.

Big mistake. Just because this person is better than lousy doesn’t mean she can do the job.

To avoid this trap and see more clearly, you can:

Ask yourself: Would I hire this person if she were the only candidate I’d seen?
Get a second opinion. Another interviewer, who hasn’t seen the bad candidates, will have a sharper view of the only slightly better one.

Source: “The Everything HR Kit,” by Putzier and Baker.

How to win in negotiations without alienating your buyer

Michael Boyette — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:05:56 +0000

In sales, you will never make more money per hour than when you’re negotiating. Let’s say your buyer is offering $10,000.

After some back and forth, you get him to $11,000. It took you 20 minutes. That works out to $3,000 an hour. (For your commission, do the math.) Not a bad day’s work.

You can’t do it for every sale, of course. But if you approach every sale with a negotiating mindset, you will increase your sales numbers over time. Here are four negotiation habits to cultivate:

1. Start on Day One
Savvy sales professionals know that the tone they set in the early stages of a sales campaign will often determine what happens later. That’s why they always ask for something in return when a prospect makes a request. “You want to speak with a customer using my product? Terrific. I really need to have a brief chat with your COO. Let’s arrange both of those calls.”

At times, you have little leverage, especially early in a customer relationship. But winners try anyway. At the very least, they are starting to create a relationship based on equal standing.

2. Demonstrate high value
Your scope for negotiating a more profitable deal is the difference between the price and the perceived value. The key is to get your perceived value higher without adding to your costs.
For example, one customer may place a high value on reliable service. Another may value the prestige of your brand. Yet another may place a high value on the your knowledge of the industry or their company.

None of these value enhancers add to your costs. But if you know what the buyer values and can deliver it better than others, you can command a higher price. One winner explains: “Once I prove my value to my prospects and they trust that I will deliver, they certainly don’t want to overpay for my offering, but they don’t want me to lose either. We’ve developed an interdependent relationship, and for them to be successful they know I have to maintain my margins.”

3. Discuss sacred cows
Sacred cows are terms and conditions that are immune from negotiation. Discuss your sacred cows with your buyer early, before formal negotiations begin (remember, you are always negotiating). For example, some software companies have a strict policy that maintenance fees are never discounted.

You need to explain logical business reasons behind your sacred cows, and convey the message that these items will not be up for discussion later on. Additionally, you’ll need to know what’s critically important to your prospect. If you go into a negotiation depending on winning a point that is one of their sacred cows, you could very well be headed for a deadlock.

‘Tough Sales Negotiations: How to Stay in Control and Get What You Deserve’

4. Be willing to walk away
The second worst thing you can do is walk into a negotiation without knowing what your walk-away point is. The worst thing is to know what it is and to permit your customer to negotiate you past it. The confidence and determination you exhibit when you know you can and will walk away sends a loud message to the other person.

Sometimes – not always – you’ll get called back when you walk away. The buyer may have been bluffing, has a change of heart, or gets overruled. But you can’t count on the callback. Before you begin, be 100% sure that you can live with your walk-away point. To convince your buyer that you’re serious, you need to be serious.

Based on “How Winners Sell: 21 Proven Strategies to Outsell Your Competition & Win the Big Sale,” by Dave Stein. Published by Bard Press.

Employee stress: Why it’s a safety as well as a productivity issue

Stephen J. Meyer — Fri, 04 May 2012 14:05:54 +0000

HR pros are well aware that workers under stress are likely to suffer from declining productivity and plummeting morale.

But have you stopped to think about the occupational safety and health consequences of stress? This isn’t just a concern for your Safety department; it’s also an HR issue.

And it’s a timely one, too: Over the past 20 years, the number of people reporting that stress affects their work has increased fourfold.

Yet stress is often overlooked by managers from both the productivity and the safety standpoint.

Reasons to care
Here are the two main reasons why stress is worthy of your attention and that of line managers:

Stress makes people sicker. People who take time off work for stress miss an average of 20 days. Stress creates more lost workdays, and the absenteeism creates even more stress on other workers.

Stressed-out workers will have more accidents. Look closely at any injury or near miss, and there’s a good chance you’ll find a stressed worker. They’re the ones who get distracted, cut corners and put safety on a back burner.

Subtle, insidious
According to Ted Boyce, a behavioral scientist who specializes in workplace issues, the psychology of stress is subtle and insidious. Unless people are made aware of its causes and symptoms, they may get caught in a “cycle of distress” – where stress leads to fatigue leads to more stress – before they can figure out what’s happening.

So what can you do to manage and mitigate stress in your workplace?

Boyce sees both macro- and micro-answers. The former have to do with overall workplace culture, the latter with employees’ daily routines.

Let’s check the big picture first. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) sees five big stressors in the workplace:

Lack of participation in decision-making, leading employees to feel their work lives are out of their hands.
Lack of support from co-workers and/or supervisors, creating feelings of isolation.
Conflicting or unclear job expectations.
Physical environment problems like noise or crowding.
Job insecurity.

You may not be able to address all these issues directly. But you can bring them to the attention of top managers and point out the consequences.

Also, you could organize a company-wide initiative to look at stress, in partnership with Safety, Operations and Facilities Management. You can start with NIOSH’s research to help persuade others that stress is both a productivity and a safety issue.

Changing it up
Where you and your allies can have an immediate impact, though, is by helping workers “bust stress” through healthy changes in their routines.

Here are some of the changes you could encourage them to adopt:

Be punctual. Employees can reduce their feeling of being rushed – a major contributor to stress – by arriving at work on time, and returning from lunch and breaks on time as well.
Enjoy R&R. Employees need their scheduled breaks. Anybody who frequently works through breaks is a high-potential stress candidate.
Break the monotony. Even an efficient routine can become stressful if it’s never varied. Encourage workers to mix things up a little.
Monitor physical responses. Help workers heed the physiological signs of stress – such as rapid breathing or heart rate, tenseness and headaches. When these symptoms strike, even a two-minute break for fresh air and deep breathing can help a lot.
Take control where possible. Encourage people to personalize their areas, and keep their workplace clean and organized. Frustration at an inability to find materials or tools adds substantially to existing stress.
Say “no” when appropriate. The stress of conflicting expectations can be better managed by employees who know how to say “no” at the right times, in the right way. You’ll need to educate both employees and supervisors on this one.

Free Training Videos - "Leadership Training for Managers & Supervisors"

Ep. 15: Green Leads

tjoneill — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:23:09 +0000

Many sales pros would be tempted to abandon leads who say they aren't interested. But most of those leads just need time and nurturing before they're ready to buy. Watch this short video and learn why seemingly worthless leads might actually lead to big sales further down the road.

Safety concerns: 'Killing the messenger' backfires on company

Lori Sereditch — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:15:05 +0000

It’s easy to feel that employees who complain about safety issues are a pain or even disloyal, especially if they take their grievances to OSHA.

But employers who let that feeling run away with them are likely to find themselves in trouble. That’s the lesson underscored by a suit DOL just filed on behalf of a safety whistleblower.

The employee, a school bus driver in Syracuse, NY, complained to management about safety issues, and was fired. The driver filed a retaliation charge, and OSHA tried to get the employer to reinstate the driver with back pay.

When that effort failed, the agency sued the employer, First Student, for reinstatement with back pay and interest plus compensatory and punitive damages.

Complaint channels
Workers have a right to complain to OSHA, but Safety Directors need to take steps to make sure workers will know that all feedback – negative and positive – is welcome.

What you can do: Tell workers they can bring safety complaints directly to you. They may be more at ease talking to a safety specialist than a line manager who could see the complaint as a personal attack, and react badly.

Why learners leave their training at the door

Stephen J. Meyer — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:40:56 +0000

You’ve seen it a million times. You train someone on a new skill. They know it cold in the training room.

Twenty minutes later, back on the job, it’s like they weren’t trained at all.

It’s not the learner’s fault. It’s psychology’s fault. Specifically, it’s an example of a phenomenon known as “event boundaries.”

Our brains tend to break up experience into events, rooted in a specific time and location.

As learners move to a new location, their brains dump data from memory, anticipating the need to focus on a new event. “When people pass through a doorway to move from one location to another, they forget more information than if they do not make such a shift,” researchers concluded.

(They also found that the forgetting happens whether the doorway is actual or virtual – an image of a door in a computer simulation, for example.)

Other event boundaries likely have a similar effect – for example, the bell at the end of a class, or a shift from classroom training to a role play.

If you view training as an “event,” you’ll be fighting the way the brain’s memory is structured. The solution: Carry the training beyond the “event boundary.” In other words, don’t treat it as an event, but an ongoing process. Follow up in the hallways; continue the discussions in the coffee room – and reinforce the training in the context of the job.

Source: Radvansky, et al., Walking through doorways causes forgetting: Further explorations, The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, May 10, 2011.

Looking for a few good prospects

Michael Boyette — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:22:20 +0000

Jack is a sales rep. Today is his day for cold calling. After 100 calls, Jack has a scorecard that looks like this:

No answer/voice mail – 75
Answered, not interested — 21
Possibly interested – 3
Definitely interested – 1

It’s slow going, but Jack knows this is what it takes to get more customers.

But wait. Let’s look at the second category — the people whom Jack spoke to but aren’t interested. Of course, most of them will stay not interested — no matter what Jack says. But what if Jack could make a second effort that moved just one or two of them into the Possibly Interested category? Over time, what might that do to his sales?

It’s always worthwhile to make a second effort when you hear a no. Because there’s no way to predict which prospects might respond. It only takes a moment. You have absolutely nothing to lose. And — perhaps most important — 95 percent of the work is already done.

Think about it: Where do you spend most of your prospecting time? Actually talking to prospects? No, you spend it dealing with receptionists, gatekeepers and voice mail. It takes a lot of work just getting connected to a decision maker. So once you reach them, why not try to get as much value as possible from the call?

Free Training Video - "When the Prospect Says No: How to Make an Effective Second Sales Effort"

What aren’t you good at?

Dave Clemens — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:34:16 +0000

I used to work for a guy who started every job interview with “So, what are you good at?” Then, later on, he’d asked, “Okay, now tell me what you’re not so good at.”

When I was in college, the job placement office told us we had to have an answer for that question. I assume everybody who coaches job candidates does the same. Which is why few candidates were ever surprised by the question.

What’s surprising was how bad their answers were.

For example:

“Well, some people say I take my work too seriously. I’m sort of a workaholic.”
“I’ve been told that I’m too hard on myself. I set my expectations too high.”
“I’m a little too impatient.”

These are, of course, examples of dressing up a strength as a weakness, which is manipulative and unhelpful. Sharp interviewers are looking for evidence of two things when they ask the “What are your weaknesses” question:

Candor. Only phonies pretend they have no weaknesses. If they lie about that, what else will they lie about?

Confidence. People who know their strengths have the self-assurance to admit a weakness.

I once had a guy applying for a senior executive position tell me, “I’m very good at overseeing high-level employees but not very effective with low-level employees.” When I pushed him about why he was ineffective, he said he knew exactly which levers to pull to motivate high-level employees but not low-level ones.

I could see it bothered him a little. He wanted to be better at understanding the rank and file. Admitting this weakness made him seem human to me. Since his job would be to oversee high-level employees, his weakness wouldn’t hurt him. Admitting it gave him credibility in my eyes.

"Leadership Credibility: The Fallibility Paradox"

When bosses take risks, trouble’s just around the corner

Lori Sereditch — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:11:22 +0000

OSHA CO Simone Perri looked at Safety Director Doug Fellowes and grimaced. “In my 10 years on this job, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a flagrant violation,” she said.

“That’s a pretty strong statement,” Doug said.

“But justified,” the CO replied crisply. “Your site supervisor straddled a trench with the excavator he was operating while he had two of his people working down in the trench.”

“They could have been hurt or killed by the trench caving in, or by the excavator falling,” she said. “You’re very fortunate neither of those two things happened.”

“Luckily I was driving by and saw the mess in time to put a stop to it.”

Offender is fired
“We are happy nobody was hurt, sure,” Doug said. “And once we established what had happened, we fired the supervisor.”

“But I want to point out that we had no idea he would do something like this,” Doug went on.

“We have a serious safety program, and we train our people on proper procedures for trenching.”

“I can show you the training materials and the training log of all the sessions we did. Needless to say, this guy went way outside the procedures,” Doug concluded.

“He sure did,” CO Simone said. “And I’m citing you for failing to protect workers from earth and equipment falling into an excavation.”

The company contested the citation and accompanying fine. Did it win?

The decision
No. The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission rejected Safety Director Doug’s argument that the company couldn’t have known the supervisor was going to violate OSHA regs by his own actions and what he had his subordinates do. The Commission affirmed the citation and fine.

Key point
When supervisory personnel commit a safety violation, or know a violation is being committed by others, it’s as if the employer itself knows about the violation.

In legal language, the supervisors’ knowledge of their own or others’ behavior is “imputed” to the employer. And at that point, the employer is wide open to citations and fines.

Takeaway
Supervisors have a heavier safety responsibility than other employees.

They’re the conduit for passing the employer’s safety message down to the troops, and their vigilance can determine whether people get injured or not.

But when supervisors “go rogue” and violate safety rules themselves, the consequences for co-workers and the employer are also heavier, in terms of potential injuries and fines.

In a word, supervisors who violate OSHA regs leave their employers defenseless. Smart Safety Directors will certainly want to impress this point on them.

Cite: Sec’y of Labor v. Pike Electric Inc., No. 08-1389, OSHRC.

photo credit: michaelkpate

Research: Personal sales goals really do make a difference

Michael Boyette — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:57:20 +0000

If you’re in sales you’re results-oriented by definition. And you probably set goals for yourself. So we’re not going to preach to you about the need to set goals. But we want to share with you the results of some interesting academic research that shows a link between goals and results.

The study, by Dr. Dan VandeWalle and others at Southern Methodist University, will reinforce your belief in the importance of goals, and give you insight into the types of goals people set for themselves. In the study, researchers looked at 158 salespeople working for a medical supplies and equipment company with annual sales of $140 million. These salespeople were veterans who’d been with the company an average of 10 years. They were given a challenge to sell a certain piece of equipment for which they would receive $300 for each sale over a three-month period.

The challenge – and beyond
The company set a minimum goal of just one unit. However, salespeople were allowed to set higher goals beyond this requirement as they wished.

The salespeople were directed to fill out a questionnaire asking about their:

intended number of units to be sold
intended effort toward selling units
intended planning related to sales territory, and
intended planning related to current accounts.

The results
The study showed that salespeople who set higher goals and put more time into planning made more sales and earned more commissions. In fact, goal-setting behavior explained 60% of sales success.

Bottom line: The “intended number of units sold” and the “intended effort toward selling units” were accurate predictors of sales success.

Get Free Training Videos - "The Top 5 Sales Skills Your Salespeople Must Master"

Consider the implications of this research next time you set sales goals for yourself. The study suggests that your sales success is significantly influenced by:

How ambitious your personal sales goals are, and
How willing you are to commit a specified amount of time for planning to meet those goals.

Two types of goals
The study divided people into two categories: those who tended to have a learning goal orientation and those who leaned toward a performance goal orientation. People with a learning goal orientation seek to develop competence by acquiring new skills and mastering new situations. They view challenges as opportunities for growth and development. In contrast, people with a performance orientation tend to validate their competence by seeking favorable judgments and by avoiding negative judgments. People like this are highly motivated by fear of failure.

What type of goal orientation is best?

You may have put yourself in either the learning or the performance goal “bucket,” and you may assume that one or the other type of goal orientation is superior.

Turns out it doesn’t make a lick of difference what fuels a winner’s burning desire to hit goals. The research showed no difference in the sales results of those who set learning vs. performance goals.

What made a difference was simply the fact that salespeople set high goals in the first place – and devised a thoughtful plan to hit them.

Source: VandeWalle, D., Cron, W.L., & Slocum, J. W. (2001). “The role of goal orientation following performance feedback.” Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 629-640.

Did boss create paper trail to cover FMLA retaliation?

Dave Clemens — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:00:35 +0000

“As I already told you, we terminated Georgia Minsky because we needed to eliminate a position. Hers seemed like the logical one,” supervisor Tom Schmidt told plaintiff’s lawyer Justin Case.

“I heard you say that,” Case said. “But hadn’t you initially decided that a different position was the one to eliminate, and you changed your mind only after Ms. Minsky requested six weeks of FMLA leave?”

“I changed my mind, yes,” Tom said. “But I don’t like your implication that it was because of Georgia’s leave request. I reviewed the matter and decided it would be less disruptive to the department to let her go than Larry Butts, after all.”

What he said
“Just to refresh your memory, here’s your e-mail to your own manager,” Case said, unfolding a computer printout.

“You say, ‘The team was already preparing for Georgia’s leave, so her definitive departure shouldn’t have any immediate impact.’ Sounds like you were taking her leave into account in your decision.”

“But let’s put that aside and look at the notes you typed up about your meeting with your boss where you discussed terminating my client,” the lawyer said.

“These notes are dated two days before she made her request,” Case went on.

Backdated?
“But neither your calendar nor your boss’s reflects a meeting between the two of you on that day. Isn’t it true that you typed up the notes weeks later, after my client filed suit, and backdated them to create the false impression that the termination discussions started before she requested FMLA leave?”

“My calendar doesn’t reflect every meeting I have,” Tom said. “Things come up and you have to deal with them. I did type up the notes later, but I had no intention of deceiving anybody about when the meeting happened. Or about the reasons for terminating Georgia.”

Did Georgia win her FMLA retaliation case?
The verdict
Yes, Georgia got the court to agree that her case was worthy of going to a jury. That represented a defeat for the company, which had to decide whether to go to the expense of a jury trial or instead settle the suit out of court.

The court said that the uncertainty over the timing of Tom’s notes and the date of the meeting suggested that he might have been trying to create a paper trail.

And the e-mail about the change in which position to eliminate supported Georgia’s claim that her request for leave did lead to her termination. Both the e-mail’s timing – immediately after she asked for leave – and its content might look dubious to a jury, the court said.

Cite: Shaffer v. American Medical Association, No. 10-2117, 3rd Cir., 10/18/11.

RLI COO Joins Indiana University Sales Advisory Council

tjoneill — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:43:38 +0000

Rapid Learning Institute (RLI) Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Glenn Eckard has joined the prestigious Sales Advisory Council of the Scott College of Business at Indiana University.

The Sales Advisory Council is an organization of volunteer business leaders dedicated to developing the next generation of sales professionals. Members of the Council serve as advocates for the University’s sales education program, role models for students, and advisors for the strategic direction of the Scott College Sales and Negotiations Center. As a member of the Council, Eckard recently made RLI’s Selling Essentials Rapid Learning platform available to Scott students.

“We’re very excited to have the participation of Glenn Eckard and Rapid Learning Institute in our program,” said Professor Jon M. Hawes, Scott Sales and Negotiations Center Director.” Here at the university, it’s my job to expose students to new learning resources. In a relatively short period of time, they’ve benefitted greatly from the Selling Essentials program and have told me they find it extremely valuable. Glenn is a true professional and I’ve really enjoyed talking to him and learning from him, especially regarding his expertise in the field of distance learning. We’re looking forward to Glenn’s involvement in the Sales Advisory Council. I know he’ll be a fabulous mentor for our students.”

“I’m thrilled with the opportunity for RLI to participate in the work that Jon Hawes and Indiana State U are doing,” Eckard said. “When I graduated from college twenty years ago, if you wanted to become a sales person, you got a marketing or business degree and came out not really knowing very much about sales. Now, through programs like the one John is leading, sales has evolved from being considered ‘vocational training,’ to being rightfully considered an area of true academic concentration. When today’s graduates come out of a program like this one, they’re much more prepared for the demands of excellence that will be required of them to really succeed in a professional sales position. I applaud Jon for his efforts, and I’m pleased to be a part of his program.”

Other current members of the Council include such business luminaries as Tom Hopkins, Chairman of Tom Hopkins International; Anne M. Armao, Vice president of Marketing of SummaCare, Inc., and Howard P. Stevens, Chairman/CEO of the HR Chally Group.

Based in Greater Philadelphia, RLI is an operating division of Business 21 Publishing, LLC

For information contact:
Gerald Kolpan
Rapid Learning Institute
TEL: 484-490-9233
For more information contact us here

Hiring Great Salespeople: A Proven Approach to Smoke Out Impostors

tjoneill — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:23:35 +0000

Sales candidates are among the most difficult job candidates to evaluate. Sellers usually have the best presentation skills, understand how to “sell themselves”, and know exactly what buttons to push. But the cost of a bad sales hire is huge. Watch this webinar to learn a proven technique to find out which sales candidates can really sell, and which will likely fail.

Who's the decision maker? You are!

Michael Boyette — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:17:46 +0000

Three principles need to guide your interaction with prospects, says sales guru Tom Hopkins. First, establish a bond. Second, ask questions that give you the answers you need to keep the sale moving forward.

Third – and this is the principle many salespeople don’t get: You can’t lead people to decisions until you make some yourself.

Now wait a minute, you’re probably saying. Isn’t it the customer who needs to make the decision? Tom answers no. Do your clients know all your products or services? If you have several to offer, how many of them would the average client usually select?

Just one, right?

So how can a client, who doesn’t know your offering well as you do, decide which is the right one? They can’t. That’s why your job as a professional salesperson is to make decisions for clients. It’s why they need you.

"Connecting with Buyers: Sell More by Selling Less"

So what’s ailing you?
Here’s an illustration. Suppose you wake up with a high fever. You go to the doctor and she says, “Hi, you look terrible. Any idea what you’ve got?”

“No,” you say.

“Well, no problem. What kind of medicine would you like?”

How would you feel about such a doctor? Or about an architect who asked you to prepare detailed drawings for your new house? Or an attorney who asked you to outline your case? You wouldn’t want any of these people because they aren’t professional. They aren’t solving problems for you; they aren’t making decisions for you; they aren’t discovering new opportunities for you.

You get his point. Successful salespeople think of themselves as professionals. Like patients at the doctor, their customers are in pain. Customers have problems and obstacles that stand in the way of their success. Professionals have answers and solutions.

Not a call, a consultation
Professionals use their expertise to solve problems and create opportunities. And that means you must have a larger fund of knowledge than any one client can use – as well as a means to discover what part of that knowledge will best serve the client’s needs. Because customers rarely know that themselves, you need to make this discovery through an organized consultation routine.

Some professionals are brilliant at consultation. Others are weak. The good ones are those who take control of the interview to efficiently isolate, understand, and define the problems (opportunities) each client has.

No forced decision
Making decisions for customers doesn’t mean forcing them into a solution that suits you. Remember the first two principles: Before you take control (start making decisions) you need to establish a bond and ask questions that show you understand their pain.

Take that approach and customers will want you to use your diagnostic equipment – a pad of paper, a measuring tape, a laptop computer, or simply your brain – and give them a solution. That’s what professionals do.

To learn more from Tom Hopkins visit www.tomhopkins.com

Seven questions to foster stronger employee engagement

Dave Clemens — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:42:46 +0000

Everybody knows that engaged employees try harder, do more, and create better feelings around them than their more blase co-workers.

As a manager, you have a big responsibility for the engagement – or disengagement – of your department or team.

Employee development consultancy Blessing White suggests that if you’re interested in fostering a higher level of engagement, you first ask yourself these seven questions:

How engaged is each team member? If you’re not sure, how will you find out?
What do you know about each person’s interests and aspirations?
What can you do to ensure they understand organizational priorities?
What feedback do they need to increase their performance?
What type of support does each team member want? If you don’t know, how will you find out?
How strong are your relationships with team members – really?
Do team members understand your personal motivation? Do you understand theirs?

Source: www.blessingwhite.com

Free Training Videos - "Leadership Training for Managers & Supervisors"

The dangers of arc flashes

Lori Sereditch — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:40:04 +0000

Just how dangerous are arc flashes? Consider that in a fraction of a second:

High temperatures will melt nearby objects almost instantly, creating molten shrapnel
The pressure blast can propel that shrapnel at speeds up to 700 miles per hour
Workers as far as 10 feet from the arc center can get hit, and
Arc flash burns and shrapnel wounds can kill, of course, but also maim, requiring skin grafts.

Here are some suggestions for working on energized lines:

1. Require a job-hazard analysis (JHA) before working near energized components so workers realize the dangers.

2. Require a permit for energized electrical work. No exceptions.

3. Require that workers notify a supervisor prior to any live electrical work. The permit may have taken care of that, but a supervisor may be out of the loop. Mandatory notification to an immediate supervisor beyond the permit will take care of that.

4. Clear the area. Identify a no-go zone around the potential arc flash. If possible, cordon off the room. That way, bystanders aren’t at risk.

5. Use the required PPE. Workers have been burned when wearing short-sleeve shirts.

Use:

safety glasses and hearing protection
V-rated gloves and tools
non-melting t-shirts and underwear (untreated natural fibers, such as cotton, work)
fire-resistant pants, long-sleeve shirt and/or coveralls, and leather work shoes, and
a flash-suit hood or switching hood with a fire-resistant face shield.

Don’t get left at the altar

Michael Boyette — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:13:52 +0000

June is right around the corner, and that means it’s wedding season.

Which always makes me think of the final scene in one of my favorite movies: The Graduate.

You know it: Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) shows up at the church at the very last minute, with tears in his eyes and undying professions of love, and swoops Elaine Robinson (Katharine Ross) from beneath the very nose of her nerdy husband-to-be (whatsisname).

Everybody roots for Dustin Hoffman. But I feel bad for whatsisname. He did all the hard work. He seems like a solid guy. And he had every right to think he had a done deal.

Sooner or later, most salespeople experience the commercial equivalent of being left at the altar: the customer who says yes to your proposal, only to bail at the last minute when the ex pleads for one more chance.

I can’t advise you on your personal life, but I might be able to offer some help when it comes to sales. There’s a simple technique called the Post-Close. It can help you lock down your new buyer’s commitment and make them less likely to leave you standing at the altar.

It happens right after you’ve closed the sale. “Let me ask you one more thing,” you say to your buyer. “What do you think your current supplier will do when you tell them they’ve lost the business?”

Free Training Video - "The Post Close: How to Lock in a Sale and Avoid Last-Minute Surprises"

The idea is to get the buyer mentally prepared for that difficult conversation. Because you know the other supplier will probably make a big dramatic gesture to keep the business. “Oh, they’ll probably ask for another chance, and maybe offer a price cut.”

“And if that happens, what will you do?” you ask.

What you want to hear is that the buyer knows exactly why they need to make a change. “I’m not interested in a price break,” the buyer might say. “I need to change vendors because they dropped the ball one too many times/can no longer meet our needs/don’t understand our business/etc. etc.”

If the buyer isn’t 100 percent committed to the change, now’s the time to remind them why they decided to switch. Get them back in touch with that pain.

Whatsisface, for example, should have sat down Elaine right after she said yes, and asked, “What do you think Ben will do when he hears you’re about to be married?”

“Oh, he’ll probably show up at the church and beg me to run away with him.”

“And if that happens, what will you do?”

“Um….”

Um? That’s not what a fiance wants to hear. Either he has to work harder to seal this deal — by reminding Elaine just how miserable she was with Ben — or think about a new deal. Either way, better to know now than at the altar.

If he’d used the Post Close, maybe Elaine would have left the church with him. If she had, I’ll bet they both would have been happier. And maybe we’d remember his name.

Making training stick: What’s the best timing for reinforcement?

Stephen J. Meyer — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:33:33 +0000

We all know learning doesn’t stick without follow up. But how much follow up is enough? And when should it happen?

Reinforce too often or too soon and you waste training energy for little result; too little or too late and it’s unlikely that your learners will retain what you’ve taught them.

A growing body of research suggests yes, there is an optimal reinforcement schedule that helps you get the most out of your training efforts.

The Forgetting Point
Experimental psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus found that without reinforcement, retention drops off dramatically.

You lose most of what you learned in just a few hours. In a week, nearly 80% of it is gone.

At first blush, the Forgetting Curve seems to suggest that you need to reinforce early and often – in other words, start pounding away immediately and keep at it until the learning sticks.

However, retention isn’t that simple. Which is actually good news. Subsequent researchers have built on Ebbinghaus’s research and discovered that the ideal timing of reinforcement is right when someone is ready to forget the material.

Repeatedly triggering learned material right at the cusp of forgetting trains the brain to remember that material and make it readily retrievable when you want to want to recall it. Call it the “Forgetting Point.”

And here’s the good news: After every reinforcement, you remember things longer. So the Forgetting Points become farther and farther apart.

Rules of thumb
That still leaves the question of how far apart these reinforcements should take place, and how long you need to keep following up.

The short answer, as you might have expected, is that it depends – on the material, on the learner, on the importance of what’s being learned. But there are some practical rules of thumb for trainers as they design their reinforcement programs:

Increasingly space out the intervals. Each time you reinforce the material, forgetting takes longer. So have short reinforcement intervals right after the training, and then extend them over time. Research suggests you should schedule the first follow-up session within three or four days, depending on the material. Then make the next one five days out, then perhaps eight. Plan for about four or five intervals over two months.
Assess and adjust. You train your team on a Monday. Just before your Wednesday follow-up session, you give them a quiz and everyone gets 100%. Good news, right?
Well, yes and no. It’s good that they retained it. But it means they weren’t yet at the Forgetting Point. Next time you train people on similarly difficult material, expand the refresher interval. If people can’t remember the training, you’ll need to either shorten the interval or make sure people had a solid understanding of the material in the initial training session. You’ll know you have the interval right when people are struggling a little to recall the material.
Formalize it. Create a follow-up plan and put the refreshers on a calendar. Don’t count on your ability to remember when you need to deliver reinforcements – the Forgetting Curve applies to trainers as well as learners.
There is no end point. Research suggests that reinforcement continues to be valuable long after the training has taken place – even as long as several years out. But because the Forgetting Points gets farther and farther apart, you don’t need to refresh as often. Consider scheduling occasional refreshers on old concepts – perhaps once a year – to ensure that the learning isn’t lost.

But he deserves to be fired...

Dave Clemens — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:54:29 +0000

Adam has always been a temperamental, bristly employee, but today he’s gone too far. He’s just told you to your face that you’re a son-of-a-b****. With your temper rising and the blood pounding in your head, you tell him he’s fired for insubordination.

When you cool down, you reflect that, yes, maybe, you lost control of your emotions a little bit, but who wouldn’t? And you had justification to fire Adam, because your organization’s policy specifically identifies insubordination as grounds for termination.

So you’re OK, right?

Well, maybe. But it’s also very possible that you’ve put your employer at risk. That’s because you’ve done one thing you should never, never, never do.

The ‘one thing’
What is that “one thing”?

Never fire an employee when you’re angry. It sounds simple if you think about it, but when you’re steamed, you may NOT think about it. If you do fire someone when you’re angry, you may be giving the person grounds for a lawsuit.

How? Well, maybe what the person did hasn’t been a firing offense in the past, and might not have been in this case, except that it made you mad. And if the person is in a protected class, they can argue that you imposed overly strict discipline on them BECAUSE of their race, or sex, or age, or whatever.

And whether the person has a viable discrimination case or not, they’re far more likely to go to court when they’re fired abruptly — because your anger makes them mad in turn.

"How to Terminate an Insubordinate Employee – Without Provoking a Lawsuit"

Wielding the ax
Of course, there may still be cases where you have to wield the ax immediately — when somebody threatens or commits violence, intentionally damages company property or creates a serious safety hazard, for example. But in many if not most instances, termination for a firing offense doesn’t have to be done on the spot.

So instead of acting on the spur of the moment, walk away and calm down. Then document the incident and, if necessary, consult with HR or higher management about the termination you think is warranted. You’ll make better decisions this way — decisions that will stand up if challenged in court.

Rescuers needed rescuing, and one didn’t make it

Lori Sereditch — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:24:17 +0000

In a life-threatening emergency, people naturally want to rush in and save co-workers. But that can make things worse if the rescuers end up in trouble, too.

That’s what happened to an Arizona employer, with heavy financial and criminal consequences.

The scenario: A worker for the employer, a sewage handling and treatment company, was told to enter an emptied sewage tank to perform upgrade work on it. Through a series of bad supervisory decisions and misunderstandings, he was inside the tank when sewage began to flow back into it.

Floating face down
A co-worker discovered him a few minutes later floating face down in the sewage, overcome by fumes. The co-worker climbed down into the tank to attempt a rescue, but was in his turn overcome.

Another worker rushed in, to suffer the same result, and eventually the supervisor herself did, too. Of the three would-be rescuers, one died, one was left with serious lung injuries, and the supervisor alone escaped with no lasting damage. And for all that, the employee who was the object of the rescue attempts died anyway.

The state filed criminal charges of negligent homicide and aggravated assault, partly as a result of the original situation and partly the botched rescue. The lack of an emergency plan figured high in the state’s evidence proving negligence.

The decision
And when the charges got to court, a jury convicted two company officers. They got suspended jail sentences, and the company was fined almost $1.8 million.

The court said there was a known danger in working in confined spaces where colorless toxic gas could accumulate. Company employees frequently had to do this.

Thus, the company and the supervisor should have been prepared with an emergency plan that took account of the danger and avoided putting rescuers in further peril.

The company took the case to a state appeals court, but got nowhere. The judgment stood.

Takeaway
OSHA lays down detailed procedures for monitoring and, if necessary, rescuing workers who work in confined spaces. But there are many other situations – work at heights or over water, for example – where rescue may become necessary.

Prudent Safety Directors will want to make sure that:

supervisors, the first responders in case of emergency, are thoroughly conversant with the company’s rescue plan(s),
reminders of what to do and who to call in case of emergency are prominently posted, and
employees are trained to implement the rescue plan under adverse conditions that may include time pressure, communication difficulties and incipient panic.

Cite: State of Arizona v. Far West Water & Sewer, No. 1 CA-CR 06-0160, Ariz. App.

How you can use ‘impact questions’ to make more sales

Michael Boyette — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:35:21 +0000

When a prospect complains about a current vendor, it’s like sounding an alarm. He’s telling you that the relationship is bad for his company. And inviting you, indirectly, to show why you’d be better.

Unfortunately, many salespeople have no idea what to do, says sales guru Paul Cherry. They start blabbering about how great their product is. Or they badmouth the vendor, thinking the prospect wants empathy. These responses don’t work.

But here’s a technique that will work just about every time if you do it right. It takes thought. It takes preparation. And it takes skill. It’s based on the assumption that when a customer signals unhappiness with a current vendor, what he is really doing is asking you to initiate an exploratory process that will help him understand why he’s unhappy, and make him feel totally comfortable switching to you.

All about consequences
The idea is to use “impact questions” to get buyers focused on the consequences of their current course of action.

Of course, most buyers are well aware of the problems they’re facing. That’s why you’re there in the first place. But the more you can get them to dwell on those problems – and what’s at stake – the more urgency you create for them to change course.

Here’s an example:

Prospect: Our vendor missed a shipment of 10,000 bathing suits – some stores were without the suits for four weeks.
Seller: Help me understand what effect that had on your company.
Prospect: We missed half the swimsuit season. We had empty racks in our stores.
Seller: And let’s see … a swimsuit costs…?
Prospect: $30. Instead of selling 10,000, we sold only 2,500.
Seller: So you lost $225,000 in revenue?
Prospect: That’s about right.
Seller: How much does a customer spend on a typical visit?
Prospect: About $200. They come in for a swimsuit, but end up buying sneakers, soap or something else.
Seller: Gartner Group says 20% of customers leave if they can’t find the thing they came in for. So what’s your estimate of how many people walked away with nothing during that four-week period?
Prospect: 2,000.
Seller: So 2,000 times $200, that’s another $400,000 in lost revenue, right?
Prospect: Come to think of it, yeah.
Seller: So this one incident cost you $625,000. Does that sound right?
Prospect: Yes.

A closer look
Let’s examine what the seller did. First, she never mentioned her product. Second, she never bad-mouthed the other vendor. Her strategy was to ask Impact Questions that allowed the prospect to focus on the full cost of doing business with a bad vendor.

Here’s the key insight: The prospect might not have really understood how badly this vendor was hurting his business. Or even if he did know, he hadn’t really focused on the consequences.

This prospect, like yours, probably had too much on his plate to do a full analysis. He may have been facing political pressures to keep the bad vendor. He may have been dreading the process of finding a new one. Or focused on the risks of a new vendor more than the costs of the old one.

Our seller gave him everything he needed: The ammunition to argue for change; the motivation to make the change – and, of course, the perfect vendor to replace the old one.

‘How to Unseat an Entrenched Competitor: Selling Techniques That Work’

Source: Adapted from “Questions That Sell.” To learn more from Paul Cherry, visit www.pbresults.com

EEOC charge against you? It need not turn into a long, costly war

Dave Clemens — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:54:03 +0000

So the worst has happened, and an employee or job applicant has decided to take legal action against your organization for – supposedly – discriminating against him or her.

You sigh. Now you’re in for months or even years of adversarial, expensive proceedings with the EEOC and/or in court. Things look bleak.

But wait. Don’t start counting the sleeping pills in the drawer of your night table yet. The case doesn’t have to waste a lot of time and money, and cause a lot of bitterness. There is a possible out: EEOC mediation.

What it is
What’s that?

Well, it’s not a formal investigation, and it’s not a court. It’s not even binding on the employer or employee – unless they reach an agreement on the dispute that both sides are OK with.

Here’s what happens: Most times, after an employee files an EEOC charge, the agency will suggest to both employer and employee that they sit down with a mediator. This is a specialist third party who’s seen dozens of employment discrimination disputes, and can recommend a number of ways of voluntarily solving the disagreement. Both parties have to accept mediation for it to take place.

The mediator’s magic, according to experts who have attended mediation sessions, lies in his or her ability to back the parties off their initial positions, which are usually both firmly held and emotionally fraught, and get each side to see the other’s point.

The EEOC says the typical mediation session lasts just three or four hours. If the parties reach agreement through mediation – sometimes a simple apology is enough to do the trick! – the process ends. A written agreement is signed by both sides, and becomes an enforceable document.

Less time, expense
The EEOC says mediation, when it works, usually takes less than three months to settle a case – compared with the months or years that a resolution may take when the case goes through the full EEOC process and/or the courts.

There is no cost to attend the mediation session, although you’ll likely have costs associated with it, such as for lawyers to help you prepare. Experts estimate the cost of mediation somewhere in the low four figures, a very economical price tag compared with the alternatives. (There could be additional costs if, say, an employer undertook to pay an employee money as part of the agreement.)

Either or both parties can bring lawyers to the session, and the mediator will decide what role they should play.

Other advantages
Experts on mediation point out that there are many advantages associated with it, beyond the savings in time and money.

Among these advantages:

No fault. The mediator’s job isn’t to determine the guilt or innocence of either employer or employee. It’s to try to find enough common ground on which to base an agreement.
Confidentiality. The parties sign an agreement that the mediation will remain confidential. This means nobody – not other employees, not even EEOC investigators – will get a look at the information produced during mediation.
Calming influence. It’s axiomatic that an angry employee is the employee who’s likely to cost you the most money in an employment discrimination dispute. The mediation process helps remove anger and bitterness from the equation.
Information on workplace conditions. One employee’s grievance may be a grievance waiting to happen for others. Suppose a female employee complains that a certain supervisor mistreated her. You learn during mediation that he’s also mistreated other women who haven’t yet complained. This knowledge may allow you to deal with him and head off further complaints.

See: www.eeoc.gov/employees/mediation.cfm

Free Training Video - "Retaliation: Four Key Mistakes That Supervisors Must Avoid"

A different kind of sales coach

Michael Boyette — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:47:57 +0000

How many times have you heard that achieving success isn’t about what you know but who you know? Think how much easier it is to penetrate a company when you can simply drop a name.

But too many salespeople overlook the value of influencers after they’ve made the initial contact and begun pursuing an account, says author and consultant Steven Heiman. One such influencer is what he calls a “Coach,” someone within the organization you’ve identified and cultivated who can be your primary source of information and guidance as you navigate the prospects’s business.

For example, this kind of “coach” can help you:

Find the real key players who’ll enable you to achieve your sales objective.
Verify the accuracy of information you gather.
Help you tie information together and make connections your rivals can’t make, and
Understand how each decision maker perceives your areas of strength and weakness.

The 3 key coaching criteria
An effective Coach can be found anywhere – in your organization, in the buying organization, or somewhere outside both (e.g., a consultant). A good Coach meets three key criteria:

Criterion #1: Does the Coach believe in you? The Coach must trust your professionalism and selling capacity. Generally, when you have credibility with a Coach, it’s because this person has “won” with you professionally in the past. So the first thing to ask when you’re considering “Coach” candidates is, “Do I have a track record of performance with this person?”

Criterion #2: Is the Coach credible? A good Coach has credibility with decision makers at the buying company. They must trust the Coach enough to share inside information with him or her. This trust can’t be based on imagined prestige (e.g., so-and-so is a “high-level” executive who “no doubt” commands respect). It has to be someone with whom decision makers have won in the past. So Question #2 is, “Do the decision makers for my sales objective trust this person?”

Criterion #3: Does the Coach want you to succeed? For whatever reason, this person must believe that when your proposal is adopted he or she will benefit. So the third question is, “Does this individual see a personal win in my making this sale?”

Why you need all three
Experience has shown that your Coach must fulfill all three of these criteria. Suppose your were considering Toni’s suitability as a Coach in the following situations:

Situation 1: Everybody at Manetti trusts Toni, and she could benefit from your doing a deal with them, but she doesn’t know you from a hole in the wall. That would fit Criteria 2 and 3, but not 1.

Situation 2. Toni’s worked with you well in the past, she loves your proposal, but nobody at Manetti knows her from a hole in the wall. Okay on 1 and 3, but zero on 2.

Situation 3: Toni trusts you and they trust her, but she’s so preoccupied with operations glitches in another department that she sees talking to you as a giant distraction. Okay for Criteria 1 and 2, but nothing on 3.

In each of these cases it would be reckless to go along with the expression, “Two out of three ain’t bad.” Two out of three here could be terrible. In Situation 1, Toni can’t advocate persuasively for you. In Situation 2, her support could be a negative. In Situation 3, you may waste your time cultivating someone too busy to give you useful information.

Get Free Training Videos - "The Top 5 Sales Skills Your Salespeople Must Master"

Avoiding false coaches
Some people look like Coaches but aren’t. Watch out for these two types:

1. The “Friend.” The biggest mistake salespeople make is targeting a Coach who likes them but who is indifferent to their sales objective. “He likes me” is not the same as “He likes the product or service I’m attempting to sell.” Know the difference.

2. The “Random Information Giver.” You need information that’s “unique” (that you can’t get elsewhere) and “useful” (that will help improve your position with decision makers). Watch out for people who fancy themselves as “helpers” and are eager to talk, but deliver little of value.

Adapted from Heiman’s book “The New Conceptual Selling.” To learn more visit www.millerheiman.com

Employee claims callous boss caused her pregnancy to miscarry

Dave Clemens — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:10:33 +0000

“We just heard from Amber Austin,” HR Director Cal Norris told supervisor Frieda Kohl. “Actually, from her lawyer. She’s suing us for pregnancy discrimination.”

“That doesn’t surprise me, after she just stopped showing up for work,” Frieda said. “But I don’t see that she has any grounds for a suit.”

“She says she miscarried, and it’s our fault for not accommodating her,” Cal said. “She claims it was the heavy lifting here that did it.”

“She miscarried once before, so obviously she has a tendency to lose her babies,” Frieda said. “That’s not our fault.”

Whose fault?
“She says both her miscarriages were because we wouldn’t accommodate her,” Cal replied. “Look, I don’t believe we did anything wrong, but you and I need to go over the whole thing before we talk to our lawyers.”

“OK,” Frieda said. “You know that stock handlers like Amber have to be able to lift up to 30 pounds. Well, the first time Amber told me she was pregnant, she had a doctor’s note saying she couldn’t lift more than 20.”

“I tried to help out and gave her light work for a couple of shifts, but the third or fourth day I needed her back on the heavier stuff,” Frieda went on. “So I moved her back there. And, yeah, a couple days later she miscarried.”

no light work
“Under our policy, you didn’t have to give her light work at all,” Cal put in. “You could have insisted she apply for an open position elsewhere in the store, or take a leave of absence. That’s what we do for everybody with a short-term health issue that isn’t work-related.”

“I know,” Frieda said. “I’ve applied the policy to other people in the past. So, when Amber got pregnant again a couple of months later, and had a 10-pound lifting restriction, I told her we had no light work for her. I said she’d have to take leave, per the policy.”

“But she insisted she wasn’t sick, and needed to keep working, but on something light, like folding clothing,” Frieda said. “She accused me of being heartless when I refused. She left, and that was the last time I saw her.”

“Apparently she miscarried for the second time a few days later,” Cal said. “That doesn’t look good for us, but I think we acted properly.”

Did Amber win her pregnancy discrimination case?

Management Lesson
No, a judge said the company didn’t discriminate against Amber because of her pregnancy.

The key: Supervisor Frieda applied the company’s across-the-board policy on short-term disability in the same way to Amber as she had to others.

The judge said employers are under no obligation to treat pregnant employees better than other workers with short-term medical conditions. And that is essentially what Amber was asking for.

Cite: Arizanovska v. Wal-Mart Stores, No. 1:09-cv-1404, S.D. Ind., 9/22/11.

"The ‘Self-Check Technique’ for Revealing Unconscious Bias"

When are workers most likely to become injured?

tjoneill — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:15:46 +0000

Everybody knows fatigued workers tend to be unsafe workers. That’s very old news.

But now a leading workers comp insurance provider has published startling statistics that shed new light on the fatigue factor, and also point to some interesting ideas about how strategic scheduling can improve safety.

What to look for
Here are some of the key findings in the report from the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety, an arm of Liberty Mutual Group:

Factors like hours worked per shift, number of consecutive shifts and timing of breaks are just as important as total weekly or monthly hours in accident-causing fatigue.
Risk of injury rises dramatically after the eighth hour of a shift, quadrupling by the 12th hour.
The relative injury risk of night shifts is more than triple that of day shifts.
The amount of time between rest breaks has a sharp impact on injury risk. Where breaks were allotted every two hours, the last half hour before the next break was twice as risky as the first half hour after a break.
Risk of injury rises along with the number of successive shifts. This effect is particularly pronounced for night shifts.

For night-shift workers who worked four consecutive nights, the average risk relative to the first night was about 6% higher on the second night, 17% higher on the third night, and 36% higher on the fourth night.

The increase over successive day shifts was more modest: 2% higher on the second day, 7% higher on the third day, and 17% higher on the fourth day.

Six scheduling suggestions for injury avoidance
Based on the research, Liberty Mutual makes six suggestions for scheduling that will help reduce the risk of accident and injury:

Schedule shifts starting in the morning, rather than afternoon or night shifts, if possible
Limit consecutive night shifts to four. For day shifts, you can go to five or six without significantly increasing risk.
Provide frequent rest breaks. For many kinds of work, hourly breaks are appropriate. However, more frequent breaks are recommended for highly repetitive or strenuous work.
Schedule work so that all employees have at least two consecutive rest days. Saturday and/or Sunday should be one or both of the days off.
Keep schedules regular and predictable.
6. Alternate weeks of overtime with weeks of normal time.

Not the end of the story
Liberty’s study covers types of shifts and overtime. But what about varying dangers within an eight-hour shift?

OSHA statistics identify times when workers are more likely to get injured.

Pre-shift: 0.3%
0-2 hours: 19.5%
3-4 hours: 26.6%
5-6 hours: 20.1%
6-8 hours: 21.8%
Overtime (+8 hours): 11.8%.

Second two hours
As these statistics show, the first, third and fourth quarter of a shift present about the same level of injuries.

But the second quarter of a shift, that is, the third and fourth hours, are actually the most dangerous.

Some possible reasons:

Workers have settled into their routine for the day and may not be as alert; and
The work site may start to get cluttered by then, as workers leave hazards for others, such as tools and electric cords for others to trip over.

Some suggestions:

Take a look at your inspections during those second two hours. If you’re not out on the floor or work site, it may be a good idea to schedule some inspection time.
Check housekeeping. Do workers keep their areas free of debris, tools and the like?
Consider “housekeeping” breaks to give them a chance to do something different for a while, refreshing their concentration and allowing them to clear away any hazards.
Warn workers of the increased dangers of those second and third hours. Remind supervisors to pay extra attention during those hours.

Low-stakes quizzes boost retention

tjoneill — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:46:52 +0000

Present low-stakes quizzes during training sessions – research shows that quizzes improve later performance on testing.

In fact, trainees will likely retain material better with a quiz than if you simply review material – that’s how effective quizzing is.

The experiment: Three groups of students were taught lessons. One group was given regular, multiple-choice quizzes. Their grades would not be affected by the quizzes.A second group was given lesson reviews, but not quizzes. A third group received neither lesson reviews or quizzes.

All three groups then received a final exam.

Results: The quiz group scored between five and 12 percent higher than the other groups. The review group finished second.

These results were seen across a variety of subject matter and final testing formats: essays, short answers and multiple choice.

Source: Roedinger, H., et al., Test-enhanced learning in the classroom: Long-term improvements from quizzing.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: In press.

Negotiations: Whose problem is it, anyway?

Michael Boyette — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:42:06 +0000

A business owner is tossing and turning in bed one night. Finally his wife turns on the light and asks him what’s wrong.

“I have a terrible problem,” the man says. “The company owes a million dollars to the bank. The note comes due tomorrow and we don’t have the money to pay it.”

“Do you have the banker’s home phone number?” the wife asks.

“As a matter of fact, I do. Why?” the husband replies.

His wife reaches for the phone and starts dialing. After a few rings, a sleepy banker answers. “Hi,” the wife says, “my husband owes you a million dollars. It’s due tomorrow. He’s not going to be able to pay you.” And then she hangs up the phone.

“Now it’s his problem, not yours,” the wife says. “Get some sleep.”

As a salesperson, you want to help solve your customer’s problems. But you have to be careful not to confuse problem solving with problem shifting. That’s what the business owner’s wife did. She didn’t solve anything. She simply dumped the problem on someone else.

Some buyers will try to do the same at with you. “We need to cut costs,” the buyer says. “So you need to cut your price.” Or “My boss is a jerk, so you need to give him everything he wants.”

No you don’t.

‘Tough Sales Negotiations: How to Stay in Control and Get What You Deserve’

By politely refusing to accept your customer’s problem as your own, you set the stage for problem solving. “I understand you need to cut costs, just as I’m sure you understand we need to get a fair price. So let’s look at how my products and services can help you reduce operational costs. And I understand your boss is demanding. So let’s figure out how to deliver what she needs at a price she’s willing to pay.”

Practicing avoidance: Why it’s deadly for a manager’s credibility

Dave Clemens — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:52:20 +0000

Every manager hopes to reach a point where they are viewed as a credible leader. But it takes hard work, and few managers get there. Check out this action plan for achieving leadership credibility:

1. Identify your Confidence Base

That’s not always easy. In fact, lots of failed and mediocre leaders go their entire lives without ever figuring it out. But successful leaders do. They may be good at many things, but they know they’re GREAT at one thing. They focus relentlessly on developing that skill, it becomes their Confidence Base, and they use it to build credibility and advance their careers.

‘Leadership Credibility: The Confidence Base’

2. Commit to Knowledge Transfer

The world is full of mediocre leaders who fail to achieve results through others. They may lead a team but they rely on their OWN competence to get things done. They don’t replicate their competence. They don’t empower others. And so their impact is limited.

Successful leaders channel the passion they had for building their own Confidence Base into passion for transferring their technical competence to others. They develop, in effect, a new Confidence Base and a new source of credibility, in leadership. They achieve the multiplier effect, and their impact is enormous.

3. Remember that credibility is fragile

It takes years to build your leadership credibility, but you can lose it very quickly, through one or two incidents where your words don’t match your actions. Your followers watch what you do and remember these slips. A simple rule: Be consistent about walking the talk.