One of the guys on my swim team is brutally uninteresting. Now, you’re probably imagining some poor, quiet, introverted chap who can’t make eye contact and hardly ever speaks. Wrong. This guy is talkative, chatty, garrulous, and chronically outgoing. In fact, he has verbal diarrhea—he hardly takes a breath in between sentences. He is an [...]
Southwestern Sales Talk
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I had an interesting message forwarded to me from Paul Matthews, Founder of People Alchemy, Ltd. It stresses the value of your reputation. In sales, your reputation is vital. The other day I overheard some people speaking about me. I was both surprised and grateful for what they had to say. A few days later [...]
A few weeks ago, I dealt a glancing blow to the topic of how to teach people how to treat you. In other words, we discussed expectations in a Southwestern Advantage recruiting context. In other other words, we discussed unwritten rules people make up in their heads. Let’s go a bit deeper and explore how [...]
Here’s a fun activity for your next Southwestern Advantage campus meeting: grab a friend and tell them that no matter what, they cannot smile. Next, sit across from them and smile. See how long they can last without smiling back. Most people last less than a minute before breaking into a grin. And all you [...]
I had the chance to share some ideas recently at Southwestern’s Great Recruiters Seminar, specifically in a workshop on communication strategies. One of the points I stressed to student managers was to teach new team members how to treat you, from the start. First impressions are tricky. People make rapid assumptions about new acquaintances. Oftentimes, you can [...]
Last blog, we were discussing how to break out of the state of being stuck mentally in a Southwestern context. We talked about using the phrase, “What would it be like if I could ________ (insert impossible thing)?” By pretending you have the skill or ability which you currently believe you lack, your brain opens [...]
Many of you Southwestern managers may have already seen this if you’re paying attention to youtube…Kenny Brooks, a self-styled comedian who uses a barrage of funny one-liners to sell his cleaning product, has gone viral. Kenny’s sales technique is caught on camera by a prospect. From the looks of this, he didn’t attend a conventional [...]
Here is an installment of Seth Godin’s blog that I found pertinent for Southwestern executives and student managers alike. Think about these seven questions he poses: “Do you let the facts get in the way of a good story? What do you do with people who disagree with you… do you call them names [...]
In the last Southwestern sales blog, I explored the notion of 4 conversational levels, and how it helps to get a prospect to a feeling level when you are selling. People buy products for a variety of feelings: Peace of mind Love A sense of security Fear of loss Providing a good environment for their children [...]
People won’t buy your Southwestern products unless they’re clear that whatever you’re presenting feels intuitively right to them. In other words, your selling proposition must fit their vision of what they want to create in the long term, and combine with their most deeply held values. So, as Sydney Walker tells us in his book, [...]
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