There are many articles discussing the need for salespeople to be good listeners though it seems like a challenge area for many salespeople. Entrepreneur.com’s Listen And Learn When Making A Sale provides 4 ways to start working on listening skills. I am particularly fond of this one: 2. Dig deeper. Don€™t settle for what the customer says on the surface; have him expand on his key needs and challenges. This helps me uncover hot buttons (very important points that the customer says and that I circle, highlight or star on my notepad), which I can use later to explain how my product or service will address them. Sometimes it might… Read More
Continue ReadingTraining And Retention
CareerJournal.com offers this quick read – Hiring and Cultivating Employees Who Succeed – which covers the critical topics of hiring and retaining top talent. This opening statement obviously caught my attention: Business owner Andrew Field says he used to hire based on gut instinct. No longer. My kind of owner – one who has experienced the debacle of bad hiring decisions made on instinct instead of objective analysis. Their solution has been to use a multiple interviewer process that I would question, but they have lowered their turnover by half. If they were to objectively assess in their process, they could lower that turnover rate even further. Here is the… Read More
Continue Reading21st Century Marketing
After the Cartoon Network debacle of last month in Boston, it now appears another company is attempting more moronic marketing in the same manner. A clue in a Dr Pepper promotion suggested a coin that might be worth as much as $1 million was buried in the 347-year-old Granary Burying Ground, the final resting place of John Hancock, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and other historic figures. After contestants showed up at the cemetery gates early Tuesday, the city closed it, concerned that it would be damaged by treasure hunters. It is obvious that this company knew what it was doing. Placing a coin in a national cemetery is pathetic. I… Read More
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