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Brian Tracy
Aug 7, 2007 Friends and Partners Comments
Brian Tracy is a kind, dear, and very smart, man.
Needing the ear of a mainstream sales guru, I asked Brian Tracy to help me think through some tough business problems. Not only did he offer to support me through confusion and a bit of ranting, he did so with elegance, wit, brains, and good ideas.
No wonder he’s the sales guru he is. The world is a better place with him in it.
Make sure you go to his site (www.briantracy.com) and buy one of his tapes. He knows what he’s talking about – and he really cares about people.
What a delight and honor.
It’s the Buying Decision, Stupid
Aug 6, 2007 Sales Related Comments
After years and years of me being the lone voice in the wilderness, crying IT’S THE BUYING DECISION, STUPID!, there are now several training folks talking about sales being about the buyer, not the product. Cool. But is that the underlying thought here?
Sales Coaching: Choosing the right coach. Targeting the right outcome.
Jul 18, 2007 Decisioning & Change Management Comments
I recently got a call from a young man whose boss suggested he find a sales coach, adding that he’d have to pay for it himself so that it would have value for him.
I have a few thoughts here:
- Why is the manager delegating his/her responsibility for employee/salesperson success to an outsider who s/he doesn’t know and has no authority over?
- Great! That means the manager isn’t biased around the route to success so long as the salesperson is successful;
- The manager is replacing or blending group sales training with individual skills enhancement to give each seller the ability to discover their own favored model for learning and success;
- The manager should be a co-sponsor, and fund the endeavor as soon as the seller starts to bring in addition revenue and enhanced results;
- The manager should be part of the final session to ensure s/he can follow up and continue the work of the coach, and understand how best to supervise the coachee to ensure the learning gets carried forward.
Unfair Practices/ATT
Jul 13, 2007 Random Thoughts Comments
Just got off the phone with AT&T after calling to change my address. As soon as the rep had me on the phone, she began reading a doc I had to agree to: in order for her to help me, I’d have to agree to hear about new AT&T products.
Coaching
Jul 10, 2007 Sales Related Comments
Apparently coaching – which we used to call consulting – is now the new new thing. What’s amazing to me is how few people either get properly trained, or – if trained – really know what they are doing. How does a client choose one coach over another? How does s/he know when a coach is ‘good’ or ‘bad’? What does success or failure look like – and do those concepts get confusing?
If I need to do something I don’t want to do, and a coach gets me to do it somehow, and I’m not comfortable but do it anyway, was that a success? or a failure? And how do I explain to my psyche why I’m doing something I hate?
“We Space”: Getting Things Done Through Rapport
Jun 15, 2007 Decisioning & Change Management Comments
I recently went through a stressful move – but of course all moves are stressful. Given I had to continue running my business, travel for work engagements, and help with my son’s wedding (thankfully my future daughter-in-law is as obsessive as I am), I had to get all the moving parts very well organized in advance.
The most difficult thing was to manage people in different states with different communication styles (differences in communication styles between Texas and New Mexico were potentially problematic) including two realtors, middle people, money people, survey people, transfer people ….. you know the deal. A lot of stuff that I wasn’t used to dealing with in my normal life. And lots of chances for delays and lost paperwork. Read More..
