Why People Buy To be successful in sales, you must learn why people purchase products and services. The answer to this vital question is far more important than learning the answer to another: “How do I sell?” People buy for numerous reasons. Here are some of the most common: I have a high opinion of…
You Can Teach Yourself to Become Effective You cannot manage others if you cannot manage yourself. For the executive – the ultimate “knowledge worker” – this means managing your own effectiveness. This is not a complicated task. It involves adopting a few specific practices and five pivotal habits. Being effective is a linchpin requirement for…
Live Long and Prosper Children born in the US in 2016 can anticipate reaching their 100th birthday. The last two centuries have seen an increase in life expectancy of two years per decade. Unforeseen or unfortunate circumstances aside, you will live longer than your parents and grandparents, and your children will live longer than you.…
Insights, Not Product Details In sales in the past, buyers relied on salespeople for the information they needed to make intelligent purchase decisions. Now, thanks to the Internet, buyers can easily research alternative products and services and compare prices. Today’s buyers rarely deal with salespeople until they have progressed through 60% of the sales cycle.…
Hot or Not? When a product, idea or topic becomes the newest hot talking point, it has gained “social contagion”; this is a good thing, and it can happen spontaneously. For example, a new house of worship can naturally experience a boom of interest within a community, or a pressing political cause can inspire people…
Seven Habits The seven habits of highly effective people are: 1. They take initiative. “Be Proactive.” 2. They focus on goals. “Begin with the End in Mind.” 3. They set priorities. “Put First Things First.” 4. They only win when others win. “Think Win/Win.” 5. They communicate. “Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood.”…
Modern Bloodletting The problem with management is that it still works under the flawed Industrial Age paradigm. Consider that physicians in the Middle Age practised bloodletting. As barbaric as that may seem today, using leeches to draw blood from a sick person simply followed from the era’s paradigm that if you were ill, bad material…
The Happiness Regime Corporations now create such positions as “chief happiness officer.” They draw on neuroscience to track employees’ moods and hire behavioural consultants to craft programs to cheer up the members of their workforce. Governments keep statistics on national wellbeing and offer optimism coaching to the unemployed. At least one municipality experimented with “positive…
A Fish Story When a man on a train sees a fellow passenger eat an entire herring except for the head, which the passenger pockets, he can’t restrain himself from asking, “Why did you put the head of a fish in your pocket?” The passenger explains that fish is good for you and that the…
Secrets of Successful Selling Many salespeople will gladly give advice on how selling works. A typical lesson on selling would be: “Know your product. See a lot of people. Ask everyone to buy. Use common sense.” Great tips – but they need some tweaking to fit today’s globalized, competitive economy: 1. Know your product…and your…
