14 Tips For Improving Communication

Is there anything more important in sales than being able to effectively communicate?  I dare say no – it is a crucial skill for any sales or sales leadership role.  This Entrepreneur article states that 55% of communication is nonverbal.  I have seen other studies estimating that number to be closer to 90%.  Either way, you get the idea – words are the smaller part of the communication equation.  Salespeople must have the ability to pick up on the subtle “tells” that prospects unknowingly share. The first step in improving your communication abilities is to know yourself.  A communication style assessment is a good first step at understanding your natural… Read More

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Texting Is Trending

Texting is becoming the best communication channel in the business world.  It seems that phone calls are answered less often even when considering business lines.  The backdoor, surest communication channel is the cell phone and, specifically, texting. Texting/app messaging is the preferred communication tool for younger workers.  When you are hiring today, you need to keep this fact in mind.  I still find LinkedIn messaging to work well.  However, nothing works as well, or as quickly, as texting.  The response time is typically minutes or less.  The ability to send attachments and links has improved also. So is it a trend when dealing with Millennials?  According to HR Executive it… Read More

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Launching New Leaders

I’ve been working with a couple clients considering internal candidates for first-time leadership roles.  This process is always tricky.  We can assess the person’s leadership style, aptitudes and motivations, but there are many more aspects to leadership than just these components. This LinkedIn post provides 6 mistakes rookie leaders often make.  The article is on point and you will quickly notice that the mistakes are polar opposites.  Often, a weakness is a strength taken too far.  That being true, a couple mistakes from the article jumped out at me: 2. Too hands off What a lot of people fail to realize is that with every promotion comes more work not… Read More

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1 Minute On The Internet

This information is difficult to comprehend.  These are the activities that happen in 1 minute on the Internet in 2019.  I don’t know how this information is calculated, the numbers are staggering.

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Email Etiquette – The Sign-Off

This Entrepreneur article hits on topic you may have overlooked.  What sign-off do you use for your emails?  Did you know there are different levels of etiquette?  Not kidding, there are certain formalities to consider. An example: The salutation: “Best” Bates: “Best” is colloquial, but fine for someone you know. “Best wishes” or “Best regards” would be better for business. Kerr: This is another acceptable sign-off, especially if you’re using it with someone you know really well. That is my preferred sign-off, but I am currently rethinking it.  Here is the one I really dislike: The salutation: “Ciao” Bates: This isn’t for business, except for fashion, art or real Italians. Kerr: “Ciao” should only be used… Read More

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Emotional Intelligence Of Leaders

What are the keys to EQ?  This post from TTI provides great insight into the entire topic.  A couple traits to consider: 1. Possess self-awareness Before someone can be effective interacting with others, they need to have a conscious knowledge of their own character, feelings, motives, and desires. The “feelings” part of this equation is very important. When those feelings are not positive, having the ability to control emotions is paramount to managing interactions successfully. When a person is self-aware and able to employ self-regulation under stress, they tend to have more successful outcomes (and less regret). Personally, I believe all EQ flows out of self-awareness; without it, the person is unable to… Read More

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How To Fix Employee Conflicts

If you have been in leadership for any length of time, you have had to deal with employee conflicts amongst your team.  Some of the issues are trivial, others substantial, but what do you do to fix these problems?  The source of most conflict in the workplace flows from one specific area – Motivations. We assess motivations as part of our tools in helping companies hire and evaluate talent.  Motivations are an interesting aspect of our psyches.  They are deeply seated and have the power to drive behaviors, decision-making, and more.  The difficulty of motivations is that they are difficult to determine from simply interacting with someone.  Maybe if you… Read More

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How To Pace Your Coworkers

The DISC assessment provides volumes of invaluable information for dealing with others.  One key aspect is understanding the pace of others as it can create tension in any office…or sales situation. There are certain aspects to pace that are specific to individuals including whether they focus on people or tasks first.  Are they detailed or rapid fire?  What drives the pace they prefer? TTI provides a terrific description of how the differences in styles presents a difference in pace.  A few, quick takeaways: The D of DISC is called Dominance. A person possessing this behavioral style will tend to be fast paced a majority of the time. Direct in their communication,… Read More

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The Creativity of Sarcasm

Sarcasm leads to creativity.  Creativity is a needed trait in most leadership positions today. From INC.com: What did the researchers find?  Sarcasm, it turns out, is a pretty good mental workout. “To create or decode sarcasm, both the  expressers and recipients of sarcasm need to overcome the contradiction (i.e., psychological distance) between the literal and actual meanings of the sarcastic expressions. This is a process that activates and is facilitated by abstraction, which in turn promotes creative thinking. … The result was “those in the sarcasm conditions subsequently performed better on creativity tasks than those in the sincere conditions or the control condition. I have had the opportunity to assess… Read More

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The Non-Verbal Advantage

Sometimes successfully closing a sale comes down to slight advantage. One of the overlooked aspects of selling is communication, specifically nonverbal communication.  I get the chance to discuss this topic with salespeople often…and often it is overlooked.  This Inc.com article provides a good reinforcement to nonverbal communication’s importance. Consider this fact: …there are three elements that account for how well we receive someone’s message and they impact us differently: 7 percent words 38 percent tone of voice 55 percent body language I’ve read articles recently that bring up these topics in different forums.  Smile while you record your voicemail greeting, tell your story to your prospects to connect on a… Read More

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