When you are creating a presentation to a client or a workshop presentation - be sure to include some visuals to help make your message memorable and to increase your credibility.
More than 80% of what we learn is linked to what we see.
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Today, thanks to my friend Ian Byrne of Pegras, I read that everyday its estimated humans are producing data equivalent to 10 million blu-ray discs. The world in general and business in particular is overflowing with data. Back in 1978, Samuel Coleridge Taylor wrote: water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. Perhaps if he wrote this line today he might say: data, data everywhere and not a bit to persuade.
As the tsunami of data washes over us, we drown. While the tsunami of data is new, techniques for understanding data are old.
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One of the most common problems people selling complain about is pressure to reduce their prices. There are several ways to prevent price pressure. In this blog we will discuss how to resist price pressure when negotiating.
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Imagine you could start your business again. What if you could start with a blank piece of paper and design your business to take advantage of the internet?
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Many of us are time-poor, so we rely on social media to keep up to date. Recent research from Italy warns us this can be risky.
While the research was based on Facebook, the conclusions apply to all social media including more business-relevant social media like Twitter and LinkedIn. One questions tested was:
“When online do people encounter opposing views or do they create the equivalent of gated communities?”
The short answer is people create the equivalent of gated communities. People select and share content that supports their views and ignore the rest. This is hardly surprising because it has been known for many years.
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As the year begins we start to plan. On my desk when I arrived back at work was a brochure. A brochure for the Strategic Account Management Association (SAMA) conferences.
SAM is helping some of the best performers in markets deliver faster growth and higher profits. At the same time SAM is building stronger strategic relationships which uncovers more sales opportunities and makes their competitive position even stronger.
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Recently we chaired a panel session at a conference run by the Medical Technology Association of Australia. The title of the session was Sustainable Healthcare, a panel discussion exploring the differing business needs of suppliers and hospitals. While it was about health, the problems with KPI’s apply to many businesses.
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On my desk is a book called Catastrophe. The subtitle of the book: The story of Bernard L. Madoff, the man who swindled the world. In case you don't know who he is, he was a respected fund manager and former chairman of the NASDAQ who was arrested by the FBI for the "white-collar crime of the century": swindling investors out of US$50 billion.
So, how could so many professional investors and regulators be fooled, and for so long?
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Recently in China we delivered a three-day workshop in Strategic Account Management. Many things were different. China has 33 provinces or states. Account Managers can be responsible for one or more province? So what? The ten biggest provinces have populations between 54 million and 104 million. So an account manager can be responsible for a region with a population of between 2 and 4 times the population of Australia. How's that for a challenge in managing your time?
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There is no doubt that Big Data is coming. No, let me correct that: Big Data is here.
But how much big data are we generating?
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I have been studying and practicing Negotiation for three decades. For much of that time I have understood the power of asking good questions. In the last few weeks I attended a breakfast being delivered by one of my colleagues, Stephen Kozicki, and discovered a great negotiation question.
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As more companies move from sales management to account management, we regularly get asked "how can we measure improved strategic relationships?" In sales management, we are focused on the short term so typically we measure sales results and sales prospects in dollars. Yet if we are serious about developing strategic relationships, then the results will typically being to appear between 18 and 24 months after we start behaving strategically.
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You are different, there's nobody just like you. So, how can we be persuaded in predictable ways? Well, there's a one word answer: process. We can all be persuaded in predictable ways by using a process. This process needs to be based on understanding the psychology of persuasion.
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One of the triggers for changing your organisation is time. Whether you realise it or not, when you design your organisation you build it to suit a timescale. The timescale for many organisations is the month. Every month your report sales, margins and profits. Doesn't everybody?
Let's look at how time affects your organisational design.
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We are all busy, too short of time with our too long to-do lists.
When I suggest spend some time preparing to persuade, some people roll their eyes. They have too little time without taking more time to persuade. So, they will do nothing or ....
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This week, a manager asked me: “what should my account managers be doing today?” My answer was, I don’t know exactly what they should do today. But at the end of the month, I call tell you exactly how you know if they are doing their job.
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July 13th, 2015: Greece has a deal, or has it?
When you read the fine print, there are many conditions and many qualifications which the seven-page statement from the summit says are: “our minimum requirements to start negotiations with the Greek authorities”. So, the multi-party negotiations are not over and will continue probably for months.
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Tell more stories to persuade. If you have attended our persuading for results workshop, you will have experienced the power of stories. At the end of day one we ask participants to come to day 2 ready to tell a story about themselves.
Read More![Kill the hunters and feed the farmers [Strategic Account Management]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5385613ee4b0883f7108f96f/1489620707083-JD1SHIZRS6VA0CMY6JGT/cavemen+compressed.jpg)
Often in conversations about sales and customers, people talk about hunters and farmers. For those of you not familiar with the idea, the idea is that sales people can be classified as either Hunters or farmers. Hunters are sales people who go out and make the kill: get the new order or get the new customer; farmers are those sales people who manage existing customers to gain more orders from them.
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Interesting to see Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has joined UTS as an Adjunct Professor, the first appointment he has accepted at any university in the world. I can’t imagine that anyone would have predicted he would choose an Australian university. Most of us still think within the constraints of geography...
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