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Guest Post: The Business Linchpin

February 22nd, 2012 | Add a Comment

[Today's post comes from Mark Bowser, one of the country's top motivational business speakers and sales & success coaches.  You can follow him on Twitter at @MarkBowser] Is there a linchpin that could start a domino effect that could devastate your business? Or, is there a tipping point that could start an avalanche of success like a runaway snowball? Interesting questions, but is there an answer? My wife and I love to watch the hit TV show Castle. Recently, they had an intriguing two part episode that explored this concept of a linchpin. In the story, an economic linchpin was discovered that if put in motion would destroy the United States economy and start a downward domino effect that would lead the globe to World War III. It was a very entertaining … Read entire article »

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Presentations Quick Tip

Once you have settled on key content points for your presentation, you still have to determine the best visual medium for reinforcing your spoken message. To accomplish this, you need to ask yourself three questions:  What size will my audience be, and how will a visual aid help support the point I am trying to make? Once you answer those two questions, you can then answer the last question, which is, “What visual aid method will work best in this setting?” When choosing the medium to visually emphasize your important ideas, keep in mind that PowerPoint slides, overheads and films or videos and DVDs displayed through large screen projection system work best for audiences of … Read entire article »

Watch Your Pace in a Presentation

Watch Your Pace in a Presentation

One of the biggest public speaking blunders is poor pacing. Inexperienced presenters often do not give a lot of thought to the pacing of their speech, but this is a factor that can make or break your presentation. Imagine this: You’re waiting for your turn to speak, and your mouth has gone dry. You wipe your clammy hands on your pants … Read entire article »

QOTW: What do you love about your company?

QOTW: What do you love about your company?

Too many of us spend too much time complaining about our jobs or our organizations.  And since tomorrow is Valentine’s Day – the day of love – we’ll flip it around: What do you love about your company or your job?  What is it that keeps you excited or engaged? Discuss! … Read entire article »

Friday Fun: Sounding Like an Authority

[Click on the Headline to See the Video] From the category of “It’s not what you say, but how you say it” comes the classic video of the “Turbo-Entabulator”. The background from the original source: Several years ago, Rockwell International decided to get into the heavy duty transmission business. We were getting ready to tape our first introduction video. As a warm up, the professional narrator began what has become a legend within the trucking industry. This man should have won an academy award for his stellar performance. Now remember this is strictly off the cuff, nothing is written down. I think you will enjoy this once in a lifetime performance from this gentleman. This just goes to show … Read entire article »

Leveraging LinkedIn to Grow Business

Leveraging LinkedIn to Grow Business

The Sales 2.0 revolution – spawned by innovative Internet-based technology solutions that support sales activities – is constantly creating powerful new tools to help sales professionals become more successful. One of the simplest and most effective of these tools is LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com). LinkedIn is an online networking hub where users create a profile of themselves, including professional portfolio, employment history, … Read entire article »

Conquering the Fear of Public Speaking

I hear from people all the time who are trapped by one of the most annoying Catch 22s in business. It goes something like this: in order to grow their businesses, they must make presentations, but they hate doing them and feel scared to death every time they do one. However, they do them, because they have to. Then the Catch 22 kicks in – the more their businesses grow, the more presentations they have to do! Some people come very close to quitting, because the presentation pressure never goes away. Here is what I tell them. First of all, I assure them they are quite normal. Practically everyone – even experienced, successful presenters – must … Read entire article »

Key strategies for managing your pipeline

Defining your sales stages By Walter Rogers Most sales professionals have been trained to follow a sales process that includes defined steps for assessing a deal’s potential and moving the deal forward. Any effective sales process model is designed to: 1. Build rapport with the customer 2.Uncover customer needs, goals, and pain points 3. Identify options that could solve the customer’s problems 4. Propose solutions that will deliver the outcome the customer wants 5. Come to an agreement and close the deal Whether you’re working for a small, medium, or enterprise-sized business, the basic process is the same. Sales organizations typically track deals through six or seven stages, which can be mapped in the opportunity object in Salesforce CRM to provide visibility into … Read entire article »

Is Negotiation Like Playing Chess?

Is Negotiation Like Playing Chess?

Many people have made the analogy between negotiation and chess. It seems like such an obvious comparison. In chess, as in negotiation, there is a back-and-forth exchange between two sides. Each move made by the other side will affect your next move, but there are generally a number of ways you could respond to any action they take. Negotiating, like chess, … Read entire article »

A Little More Conversation

A Little More Conversation

I am still surprised by the number of people who come to us for negotiation training who fail to grasp even the most basic and obvious concepts of the negotiation process. For instance, one of the most common requests we hear from clients is that they want us to teach them how to convince a vendor or a customer to … Read entire article »

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