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 [...]
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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 [...]
“No excuses.” It’s the mantra of almost every top Southwestern salesperson out there. We’ve all been told that to reach our goals, we can’t make any excuses—we have to be unconditionally committed. But I AM unconditionally committed, you say. I don’t make excuses, but I still haven’t reached my goals. What gives? The answer [...]
And now for a departure from my normal sales blog for a chance political encouner: I was running a Leadership Retreat for Southwestern student managers in Des Moines, IA last week. As we wrapped up lunch and were heading into the conference room, one of the managers remarked, “Rick Perry is in the restaurant.” Didn’t [...]
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 [...]
Hey Southwestern friends! Have you ever been selling or recruiting and gotten stuck mentally? In other words, you thought: “This can’t be done.” Or “Hitting that sales level is impossible.” Or “I could never approach that person for my team.” Of course you have. We all tend to limit ourselves at times–we get stuck in a [...]
Raise your hand if you’ve ever been guilty of talking to yourself. Out loud. If you’re selling with Southwestern and your hand isn’t up, you are costing yourself some serious cash. Why? Allow me to explain. Before my first summer with Southwestern, my manager Jake trained me on the principle of self-talk. Self-talk is prevalent [...]
Why is the Southwestern experience so valuable? One reason is the program gives students so many opportunities to fail. Yes, fail. There is value is stumbling! Failing can be useful long term. I ran across this bNet blog from Suzanne Lucas, entitled “Why Failure is the Secret of Your Success”. Here are the main bits [...]
I ran across an interesting sales blog in bNet from Geoffrey James. He calls it, “Why Sales Scripts are a Waste of Time”. It definitely runs counter to what we teach and use at Southwestern! I’ve reprinted it almost in its entirety (I added the nifty photos). Any thoughts or comments are welcome–especially if you [...]
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