Hiring a Salesperson? Hire for Attitude.

Seasoning is great “on” food and “in” people! One of the things employers often look for in a sales candidate is past sales experience and “seasoning.” However, sometimes when you hire one of these seasoned pros, they come complete with complacency. In sales, like in many things, attitude counts. I don’t ever discount a salesperson’s…

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5 Ways to Deal with Back-Stabbers

Back-stabbers also known as back-bitters or back attackers, might seem easy going, even complacent, with a “don’t worry” attitude but don’t let them deceive you. Their strategy is to be nice to your face and act like your best friend, lulling you into a false sense of security that tricks you into revealing information you…

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Traditionals, Boomers, X, and Y Are People Too

There is a debate raging as to whether all this talk about the different generations is evidence-based or mostly media-driven simplistic categorizing. A recent article in People & Strategy Journal reports on a thorough study done of the peer-reviewed literature on generational differences in two areas: Career Management and Organizational Loyalty Work-related Values and Attitudes

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9 Presentation Emergencies and How to Solve Them

Always hope for the best, however, be prepared for the worst. This is good advice for preparing for any presentation. By being prepared for things that may go wrong, your presentation will go on without skipping a beat. Here are some common mishaps from the upcoming book “Deliver Every Presentation with Power, Punch and Pizzazz”…

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Connect In Before You Connect Out

One of the things I love the most about traveling around and speaking at conferences and meetings about Perfecting Connecting ® is the conversations I have afterward with audience members.  They often start with, “I really would like to be a better networker and connector but I’m so bad at it!” People have a very…

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A Framework For Performance Management

City councils, boards of administrators and other governing systems demand a performance management framework that focuses on what outcomes employees will achieve, and how success is going to be measured. This tool reveals how to construct an integrated performance management framework that takes into account the many different functions which a city or a county…

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Four Styles Of Communication

In the book Straight Talk: Turning Communication Upside Down for Strategic Results, Eric Douglas describes four different communication styles: the director, expresser, thinker and harmonizer. Each different style is based on a unique set of assumptions. Here’s a quick snapshot:

4 Keys to Building Instant Rapport

The foundation for building rapport is based on the exchange of a few basic communication signals. Here are 4 key ways to build instant rapport. This is based on the book, Get Along With Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere by Arnold Sanow and Sandra Strauss.

Formal Strategic Planning Process

This tool is useful for visualizing the steps in a typical strategic planning process, from the initial environmental scan to the narrowing of strategies and developing of related performance targets. Managers and leaders can use this tool to communicate their planning process to other managers, employees, board members and other stakeholders. This tool is best used…

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20 Leadership Qualities

This tool defines the 20 qualities of leadership that researchers have identified as common to virtually all organizations. It may be used to determine the leadership qualities people revere most within the organization. It can also be used to aid an individual leader gauge his or her own leadership skills.

Being a Leader is All about the Group

Professor Alex Haslam of the University of Exeter, in a recent presentation put on by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, took the following position in answer to the question, “What makes a great leader?”

Onboarding Salespeople for Fun & Profit

Getting your new salesperson started off on the right foot is an important part of them having fun and you making even more profit. I recently did another of my gems of wisdom titled The New Hire – Doing It Right where I provided an outline of the sales-related items that a new hire needs…

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Leadership Lessons from the Top 20 Corporations

The respected consulting firm, Hay Group, has just announced the release of its 6th Annual Best Companies for Leadership study. The top 20 are major corporations with a global presence. Collectively, over the last five years, they have generated shareholder returns that are 36 times better than those from the Standard & Poor 500 companies.

The New Hire — Doing It Right

Too many companies still insist on pumping their new hires full of product knowledge and then dumping them on unsuspecting prospects, fully expecting the new salesperson to sell up a storm. These “talking catalogues” start running around “telling” instead of “selling” and the expected storm decays to a light drizzle. The salespeople get depressed at…

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