Influencing vs. Manipulating

Have you ever made a purchase that you came to regret after the initial excitement wore off?  Most people have.  You spend hard-earned money on a product only to discover that it really doesn’t meet your wants or needs. Sometimes the only one to blame for this fleeting excitement is yourself, but at other times…

Benefits

It’s your job as a sales professional to help your prospective customers find the product that will work best for each of them.  As this is your objective, you do not want to introduce your products by focusing on their specific features.  Rather, you want to talk to the prospects and determine their wants and…

Why Practice

Practice avails the sales professional with risk-free opportunities to develop skills that might not be applied in every moment of actual selling.  Think about it: you could try out some new pitch or selling technique during a sale, but if the trial falls flat you’re likely to lose the prospective customer.  No, no, no.  Scrimmage…

One-on-One Coaching Sessions

One-on-one coaching sessions provide the ideal forum to encourage employees to communicate with you, advance strategic vision, and attain goals.  Here you have a place catered to the needs of your individual employees, where you can focus on each of them in turn, working to improve their strengths and overcome their weaknesses.  Your sessions should…

The Past and the Future

Your past does not predict your future. Not if you don’t let it. The successes you’ve achieved and the failures you’ve suffered can be lessons for you on the road, but they do not determine whether you will walk it.  Or how fast. Or how well. Learn from the past, build a new future.  This…

The Habit of Waiting

Sometimes we have to wait to get what we want, putting aside instant gratification to achieve something lasting and worthwhile.  You’ll notice that the waiting in this case is not passive.  You’re not sitting around, lazily, doing nothing. Often you are working hard and diligently, in patient preparation for what is to come.  This is…

The Logic of Achievement

Some people have achieved something never once done before.  Had they believed themselves incapable of succeeding where all others had failed, they would not have done the unthinkable. They would not have sought greatness and lost it.  They would not have tried.  They would not have reached out.  On the contrary, they succeeded in large…

Dream Big!

Goals are great. Necessary even.  But if you want to advance in your career and your life you need to set extraordinary goals.  You have to reach for the stars.  You have to dream. And dream BIG! Set your ultimate goals as far as your dreams will take you, and each and every day do…

Real Coaches Practice Coaching

Coaches expect their players to practice, not merely because the coach tells them to practice, but because practice is precisely the way in which players improve, honing their attributes and developing their skills.  Of course, the act of coaching demands its own set of attributes and skills.  If coaches are to improve as coaches, they…