Archive for February, 2009

What is sales leadership and what are some of the ways to close a sale?
Thursday, February 26th, 2009

Today’s success tip comes from Paul Hanna.

Paul Hanna is regarded as one of Australia’s leading motivational speakers with a client list that reads like a who’s who of the country”s corporate elite: Qantas, Telstra, Lexus, Vodafone and BMW are just some of the organisations that have used his service.


What is sales leadership and what are some of the ways to close a sale?

Top sales professionals take accountability for closing a deal and never wait for the customer to ask for the product. This is called sales leadership. The following closes are used by sales leaders all over the world.

The assumption close - as its name suggests, the assumption close is all about assuming your customer is ready to buy and that they just need your leadership to cross the line. For example, ‘So, Mr Jones, will you be using our direct debit system to pay for the monthly deductions, or would you prefer to send us a cheque every six months?’ or ‘So which day of the week would better suit you for delivery - Monday or Thursday?’

The deadline close - this is a common close used especially at electrical stores. Even though there might be 100 yellow toasters out the back, the sales assistant will come back to you with: ‘Wow, this is the last one. You’re so lucky’, which creates a sense of urgency for you to complete the deal. Another example is, ‘This is the last PC we have in stock that has the built-in DVD player. After this one goes, there will be a two-month wait’.

The Benjamin Franklin close - this close is designed to set out all the facts in a simple format that makes the right decision virtually leap out at you off the page. It is a close often used after you have handled every objection with diligence and patience and yet the customer still remains undecided. So what you do is you pull out a piece of paper and ask the customer to write ‘for’ and ‘against’ lists, providing reasons why they should or should not proceed with the purchase. This is actually the process that I use when making tough decisions, and I tell the customer this too. You often find that they will struggle with one or two reasons why they should not purchase your product or service.

The paperwork close - this is a great close to be used after the Benjamin Franklin close and requires choosing your words very carefully. For example, ‘Susan, which state would you like to start delivery of the phones in - New South Wales or Victoria?’ After she replies ask a very powerful closing question: ‘Susan, could you please okay this paperwork down here?’ Don’t say, ‘Could you please sign the contract now?’ The word ‘contract’ implies long commitment, big dollars and legal obligations. In contrast the word ‘paperwork’ is harmless and doesn’t scare anyone.

The puppy dog close - this is one of the all-time favourite closes, and for good reason - it works brilliantly! Let’s say your five-year-old son decides he wants a puppy dog for his birthday. You take him to the pet shop and he finds a labrador pup that is just like the one he wanted. The pet shop owner knows all about the puppy dog close and encourages you to take it home for a couple of days to see how it fits in with the rest of the family. You know where this is going! As soon as that puppy gets into your home, it’s never going back to the shop. Its big eyes and cuddliness have your son hooked. And guess who else will be too? The person with the money.

The ‘no-rush’ close - this is a great close to use when your customers are feeling a bit of pressure, either from your push to close the deal or internal pressures from their company to make a decision, any decision. When you say, ‘There’s no rush - whenever you’re ready’, the customer feels totally in control. If you’ve been a bit impatient and perhaps a bit pushy, this kind of statement is a brilliant way of tipping control back to the side of your client.
This website contains even more great tips from Paul Hanna.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE NOW.

Filed under: Success Tips — Rob Orriss @ 1:25 am
Why do you believe that pushy sales techniques do not work in Australia?
Thursday, February 12th, 2009

Today’s success tip comes from Paul Hanna.

Paul Hanna is regarded as one of Australia’s leading motivational speakers with a client list that reads like a who’s who of the country”s corporate elite: Qantas, Telstra, Lexus, Vodafone and BMW are just some of the organisations that have used his service.

 
Why do you believe that pushy sales techniques do not work in Australia?

Simply because Australians don’t warm to the pushy sales techniques that stereotypically define the American sales industry. Yes, we might like American movies and television shows but Australians are not as upfront when it comes to purchasing, nor do they like the hype that some salespeople carry on with.

I am not having a go at American sales trainers here, it’s just that Australians are different. We watch the nightly news at 6pm; Americans watch it at 9pm. We drive on the left side of the road; they drive on the right. We sit on the right-hand side of the car; they sit on the left. We all still get to the same destination, but in Australia we like to do things differently.

I think the one thing that really differentiates Australians from people of other cultures is the way we view aggressive salespeople. When I used to work in the travel industry, one of the toughest parts of my job was to escort Australian travel agents overseas on familiarisation trips.

These trips were designed to allow agents to grasp a sight, feel, smell and touch for the city first-hand. As part of their itinerary, I would always include a city tour. No matter how many times I did this, I was constantly amazed at how intimidated the travel agents would get when market vendors hustled them for a sale. No matter where we were - Hong Kong, Rome, San Francisco or Bali - Australians really didn’t like being pushed.

I found that it was the Japanese who were the most successful in selling to Australians. Despite the language barrier, the Japanese were always willing to spend a little more time with their Aussie prospects.

The lesson I learnt here was that if you really want to bring in the dollars and make more sales, you need to do what the Japanese do - present the product or service at an extremely high standard, be courteous and patient when demonstrating it, and charge a bit more than your competitors because of the perceived higher value.

 
This website contains even more great tips from Paul Hanna.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE NOW.

Filed under: Success Tips — Rob Orriss @ 12:55 am
How to Detect Lies
Sunday, February 8th, 2009

How to Detect Lies

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Watching facial expressions in order to determine whether a person is lying might just save you from being a victim of fraud, or it could help you figure out when somebody’s being genuine. Jury analysts do this when assisting in jury selection. The police do this during an interrogation. You have to learn the little facial and body expressions that can help you distinguish a lie from the truth.

Steps

  1. Observe how the person smiles.
  • Forced SmileForced smiles are easy to spot since they only involve the muscles around the mouth. The person will appear as being overly relaxed and not really happy. Look at the mouth and see if the teeth are showing. A real smile will usually reveal a bit of teeth but a forced smile may or may not. A real smile will go up to your eyes.
  • True SmileIn a real smile, more facial muscles besides the mouth are involved. A dead giveaway is tightening around the eyes, which sometimes causes crows’ feet. While it is not difficult, very few people are conscious enough of this fact to fake a smile and still control their eyes in this manner.
  • Notice the behavior of other body parts. Watch their hands, arms and legs, which tend to be limited, stiff, and self-directed when the person is lying. The hands may touch or scratch their face, nose or behind an ear, but are not likely to touch their chest or heart with an open hand.
  • Look out for microexpressions. Microexpressions are facial expressions that flash on a person’s face for a fraction of a second and reveal the person’s true emotion underneath their facade. Some people may be naturally sensitive to them, but almost anybody can easily train to be able to detect microexpressions. Typically, in a person who is lying, their microexpression will exhibit the emotion of distress, characterized by the eyebrows being draw upwards towards the middle of the forehead (sometimes causing short lines to appear across the forehead skin).
  • Watch their eyes. A secret that always works if they are making eye contact is that if a person is telling a lie, their pupils (the black parts of their eyes) will dilate (get slightly bigger). No joke, this works!
  • Check for sweating. People tend to sweat more when they lie. (However, some people may sweat a lot more during nervousness/shyness.)
  • Mind exaggerated details. See if they are telling you too much, like “My mom is living in France, isn’t it nice there? Don’t you like the Eiffel tower? It’s so clean there.” Too many details may tip you off to their desperation to get you to believe them.
  • Notice the person’s eye movements. Contrary to popular belief, a liar does not always avoid eye contact. Humans naturally break eye contact and look upwards when remembering something. Liars may deliberately make eye contact to seem more sincere. Liars also tend to blink more often. A typical right-handed person tends to look towards their right (your left) when remembering something that actually happened (remembered images, sounds and internal dialogue: often to support a statement or arguement) and towards their left or downwards (constructed images, sounds and kinesthetic sensations) when they’re making something up or deceiving you.
  • Be sensitive to the person’s emotional expression.
    • Timing and duration tends to be off when someone is lying. Emotions can be delayed, remain longer than usual, then stop suddenly. Likewise, they might not match appropriately with verbal statements. And, as with smiling, facial expressions of a poor liar will be limited to the mouth area.
    • Pay close attention to the person’s reaction to your questions. A liar will often feel uncomfortable and turn their head or body away, or even subconsciously put an object between the two of you. Also, while an innocent person would go on the offensive, a guilty person will often go immediately on the defensive.
  • Listen for a subtle delay in responses to questions. An honest answer comes quickly from memory. Lies require a quick mental review of what they have told others to avoid inconsistency and to make up new details as needed.
  • Be conscious of their usage of words. Verbal expression can give many clues as to whether a person is lying, such as:
    • Using/repeating your own exact words when answering a question
    • Not using contractions
    • Avoiding direct statements or answers
    • Speaking excessively in an effort to convince
    • Speaking in a monotonous tone
    • Leaving out pronouns (he, she, it, etc.)
    • Speaking in muddled sentences
    • Equivocation or “Non-Answers”. For example: Q:”Are these your drugs?” A:”I don’t even smoke.” Q:”Did you kill that man?” A:”I don’t even own a gun.” In essence, these subjects are answering truthfully; however, the answers they are providing do not address the actual questions in any way.
    • Using humor and sarcasm to avoid the subject
  • Allow silence to enter the conversation. Observe how uncomfortable and restless the person becomes when there is a pause.
  • Change the subject quickly. While an innocent person would be confused by the sudden shift in the conversation and may try to return to the previous subject, a liar will be relieved and welcome the change. You may see the person become more relaxed and less defensive.
  • Watch his or her throat. A person may constantly be either trying to lubricate their throat when he/she lies by swallowing or clearing their throat to relieve the tension built up. A person’s voice can also be a good lie indicator; they may suddenly start talking faster or slower than normal, or their tension may result in a higher-pitched speaking tone.

    • Tips

    • Just because someone exhibits one or more of these signs does not mean they are lying. The above behaviors should be compared to a person’s base (normal) behavior whenever possible.
    • The more you get to know someone, the better you will become at recognizing their thinking style and the better you will become at knowing when they may be straying from the truth. In the ordinary course of events, you will see a consistent pattern of eye movements. If a person breaks their pattern, this may well suggest that they are deviating from the truth, though they may not be lying deliberately. To test the pattern break, ask more questions to try and clarify whether the pattern break was indeed an attempt to tell a lie.
    • Some of the behaviors of a liar listed above also coincide with those of an extremely shy person, who might not be lying at all.
    • Some of the behaviors may also occur when somebody is very concentrated on speaking (for example, when the topic is sophisticated or the person is stressed).
    • Botox or other plastic surgery may also interfere with ‘tells’ and give false positives.
    • Some people may have reputations for lying; keep this in mind, but don’t let it mask your opinions all the time. You have to take it on a case-by-case basis.
    • If you are holding the person’s hand (such as with a boyfriend or girlfriend), you can often detect truth or lie by the increase of their pulse.
    • Some people are extremely experienced or even professional liars. He or she has told their made up story so many times that they are actually believable, getting all their days, dates and times down perfectly! Sometimes, you may need to simply accept that you can’t catch every lie all the time.
    • If it can’t be true, it probably isn’t. For example, if you ask somebody whether they broke your vase, and they say an elephant did it, they probably aren’t telling the truth.

    Warnings

    • Be careful of how often you appraise others’ truthfulness. If you are always looking for lies, people may avoid you. (See Cope With Having No Friends.)
    • Remember that eye contact is considered rude in some cultures, so this may explain why they are reluctant to look at you in the eye consistently.
    • Some people with developmental disabilities like Autism or Asperger’s syndrome are very reluctant to make eye contact or do not make eye contact at all. This is a trait of the Autism spectrum and not a sign of dishonesty. Also, some people like to stare at you eye-to-eye.
    • Forcing a smile is often just an attempt to be polite; don’t take this personally. If someone fakes a smile for you, it can also mean that they want to make a good impression on you because they value you as a person and are showing respect.
    • Someone who is deaf, or hard-of-hearing, may need to watch your mouth instead of your eyes, in order to lipread or better understand what you are saying.

    Related wikiHows

    Sources and Citations

    Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Detect Lies. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

    Filed under: Marketing, Success Tips — Rob Orriss @ 1:12 am
    Is one stock market strategy really better than the other?
    Thursday, February 5th, 2009

    Today’s success tip comes from Daniel Kertcher.

    In 1998 Daniel became fascinated with the stock market and went on to develop a multi-million dollar trading account. Today, he is a teacher and educator having helped 70,000 people across 22 countries.

    You are well acquainted with just about all stock market strategies. Is one strategy really better than the other?

    When it comes to trading the stock market there are many different strategies. Most people believe that the only way to invest in the stock market is to simply buy shares and hold them for the long term. While that is one strategy, there are many more that allow investors to make money in rising, falling and sideways markets over the short and long term. However, despite all the different strategies, they all fall into two categories: one is for capital gain and the other is for income generation.

    Options allow traders to make both capital gain and income. The simplest form of options trading is to buy a call option. If the share price goes up then you will make a capital gain. There is no income from buying a call option; it is purely a capital gain, which you make if the share price moves sufficiently in your favour. An alternative strategy would be to write a covered call. With this strategy you purchase shares and then write a call option against those shares. That way you can make a capital gain on the shares if they rise in value as well as an income from writing the call option.

    CFDs provide investors solely with a capital gain if the stock moves in their favour and if the company pays a dividend.

    Some strategies are easier and simpler to execute than others and some are potentially more profitable than others. It’s up to the trader to determine if they want to have capital growth or income (or a combination of both), and then choose the appropriate strategy that will enable them to achieve the desired outcome.

    Markets never just rise in value - they often fall and/or move sideways. Highly successful investors and traders do not rely on knowing how to implement just one strategy. Instead, they have a range of strategies with which they are familiar and experienced. They then choose the appropriate strategy at the appropriate time depending on the market conditions and their desired outcome.
    This website contains even more great tips from Daniel Kertcher.

    CLICK HERE TO READ MORE NOW.

    Filed under: Success Tips — Rob Orriss @ 4:48 pm