Tag Archives: Performance

How to be selective?

Selectivity has been the foundational element of trade since the very beginning. And in today’s current terms, it is the core of commercial effectiveness. Being selective about the geography where you want to sell, market segments, type of customers, offering, pricing…

Yet, it is not that easy to implement. Because selectivity is the product of deep thinking, analysis, and reflection…and sometimes intuition and feeling, it requires a certain level of clarity.

On the other hand, without being selective, getting lost in a commercial activity is very easy. So, how to become more selective?..

Handling Objections

One of the leading sales training topics is “handling objections”. In this part, we discuss potential scenarios where the customer would come up with some arguments for not buying the product or the proposed service. And we teach the salesperson how to handle such situations and come up with additional arguments and explanations to convince the customer.

Firstly, I was curious whether customers/buyers were trained to develop objections. I always had a hard time understanding that part. Why would they even keep talking to the salesperson if they had valid objections for not buying?

Love what you do…but how?

Confucius made it clear more than two thousand years ago: “Choose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life”. It turns out that it is not easy as we keep reminding ourselves of the same phrase for centuries. Moreover, when we think about “the job we love,” selling is not necessarily at the top of our list…

Competitors as valuable rivals

The other day, an executive I coach, let’s call him Bill, came up with a problem he faced with a business partner in Morocco.
Recently, the Moroccan partner explained that he wants to expand his business to other products that do not exist in Bill’s product range. He was investigating opportunities with one of Bill’s competitors with those products in their range.

According to Bill, this was a problem because he was afraid that his competitor would use this opportunity to “steal” his business partner…

Motivation = Clarity

Let me put it straight; I do not believe in motivation. I even take it further and claim that any motivational speaker or motivational book is a product of great marketing. Their impact never lasts. For me, it is straightforward… You either want to do something or don’t. When you want to do it, you will do it; when you do not want to do it, you will not.

When people say they lost motivation, I understand they no longer want to do it. However, many claims to lack motivation for what they want to do. When coaching, I realized one thing about those people. What they are missing is not motivation; it is clarity.

Simplicity

sometimes (indeed, most of the time), you do not need big visions, revolutionary ideas or disruptive technologies to succeed.  Working on your offering, price positioning, go-to-market, conversion rates, commercial efficiency etc, might sound too overwhelming.  And I can tell you that most of the ancient merchants used those approaches even before they were called like this.  They used those methods simply to survive.  For them, no other way was possible….

How to make learning last?

I believe the biggest problem with learning is not about how to learn. It is about making it last. And it goes through three stages:

-learning the knowledge
-learning how to implement
-learning how to become

Any learning experience (training, workshop, course, etc.) reaches its limitations because we often do not go to the third stage, which is the most challenging part…