How are you selling?  Is it using brochures and an approach which means building successful customer relationships depend only on a sale?  Or do you try and understand your customers from a more holistic perspective?  Don’t just flog your product - know your customer - connect with them help them and add some value.  Use your interpersonal skills to engage and with them.   After all, they can learn about your product on the web!  Q: What is your job as a sales person?  A: To know your customer.  Do that and you will find success.

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The future of effective sales leadership by Malcolm Dawes

• Understand the importance of 10 core competencies for sales managers
• Know the essential qualities to allow you move from sales management to sales leadership
• Be able to focus on your own strengths to develop the effectiveness of your personal leadership style

Overcoming fear to create great sales results by Suzanne Mercier.

 What is fear, and why is it a natural part of the human condition?

Can I really overcome fear in a competitive sales environment?

How can I build more sustained resilience in my sales prospecting and negotiations?

Selling is one of the most critical activities in the work environment.   Without the ability to sell, ideas would be nipped in the bud, products could “rot” on the shelves and services would remain unused potential.

Extensive research has proven that even the best of sales people will, at some point, miss opportunities and underachieve because of fear. It can be fear of rejection, call reluctance, fear of failure – or one of the many other ways fear can be manifested.  But fear is also natural.  Anyone who needs to sell – from a sales professional to a business development person to a non-sales employee – knows and feels fear when it comes to selling.  Picking up the telephone to make a prospecting call can feel traumatic.  Closing the sale can be equally daunting.  Yet, both those activities are critical to the sales process and to the business.

Research has identified that the interaction through selling accounts for 53% of the influence on a purchase decision. Building on that, what increase in sales and bottom line could you achieve if you could transform fear into energy that propels you forward to action and success?

By improving your sales skills, you can overcome the reluctance that many people experience around selling, but this is not the only solution.  By addressing the fear that makes it so challenging to put yourself on the line, your selling skills can be put to great use.

Over the last 10 years, Suzanne Mercier has become an expert on the limiting nature of fear.  In this session, Suzanne will lift the veil from fear and share how – by understanding our fears – we can overcome them to achieve better sales results.

During this compelling session, you will:

• Understand the nature of fear and how it inhibits our actions
• Receive tools to transform fear into more productive energy
• Recognise the triggers of fear and address them before they hit
• Feel more willing and able to increase prospecting activity
• Increase your ability to close the sale

Talking with people at the Australian Institute of Training & Development, the Institute of Learning & Development Professionals and similar bodies around the world, there seems to be a growing demand for eLearning and Blended Learning.  What is your experience?  Vote now on our poll - just follow this link:  http://polls.linkedin.com/p/85800/wveor

In some interesting conversations recently, leadership and management have been hot topics.  It is fascinating that leadership and management are seen as the same thing in many peoples’ mind.  They are totally different.  There has been so much written on the difference, yet it still amazes me that management persists as the way forward.  For sure, we need management skills and good managers to implement and achieve business outcomes.

Equally, it seems that the ability of managers to use leadership skills is limited.  We need to be innovative & creative, demonstrate high levels of interpersonal flexibility, involve people and give them opportunity to excel by giving them support.  When we make mistakes, accept them and learn from them.  Leaders allow this through continuous learning both for themselves and encouraging others to do the same.

In a recent example of management gone mad - I heard that the sales of a particular company had not been so good.  They had implemented a ‘new’ selling skills process and involved the managers to implement it.  Several indicators have since shown that sales are low and customers not happy.  The solution put forward……… more management time to get the sales people doing more of what they have done so far!  Surely, that will give them more of what they got before - low sales!  What really is needed is a look at leadership (as well as the selling process) and how to learn from the mistakes that have been made.  Innovate some new ways of doing the task and improve the performance and outcomes.

In a new report from Bersin & Associates in December 2009 some very interesting findings have emerged about the way learning and development impacts organisations.  The report also focusses on what future training trends will bring.  These include although are not limited to a shift towards a blend of e learning, social network learning and performance assignments and feedback - known as embedded learning.   Whilst the days of formal classroom based training are certainly not gone, there is an increased demand for flexible delivery methods.

The study also found organisations with Superior Talent Management have significant advantages:

26% higher revenue per employee

28% less likely to have downsized during 2008 -2009

40% lower turnover among high performers

17% lower overall voluntary turnover

87% greater ability to “hire the best people”

156% greater ability to “develop great leaders”

92% greater ability to “respond to changing economic conditions”

144% greater ability to “plan for future workforce needs”

In order to acheive these figures you need to have some decent Learning and Development in place across the business.  As a Learning and Development provider, dta WORLDWIDE has been working with  organisations for a number of years and is shifting its thinking toward blended learning. 

One of the most concerning aspects in the report relates to managers.  We come across this issue frequently and this research states:  "One of the disturbing trends we continue to see is the struggle by organisations to build leadership, coaching and management skills among first-line managers.  In fact, our research continues to show that HR leaders rate their first-line managers as their “least ready” workgroup in the company, even less capable than their entry-level employees"

  How many high performers do you have - and how many might you lose - or have already left?  Do you want higher revenue per employee?  What are you doing about developing the talent in your business?

At this time of year people are talking about New Year Resolutions.  Whats yours?  How often do you look back and see if you achieved them?  What about making 2010 the year of New Years Revolution? 

Now is the time to get rid of the thoughts and feelings of 2009.  The lack of budget and resource.  Maybe even the lack of ability to develop anything within the business, let alone your most precious asset - the people.  How about making your revolution one which pushes the boundaries of working with the best. 

Look at how you might reinvigorate your people.  Improve their skills, increase their sales, reduce the conflict and tension in the workplace.  Now is the time to make your revolution in learning and development happen.

dta WORLDWIDE will be working with more partners globally in 2010 than ever before.  We will be bringing in new products and solutions to upskill people to take advantage of the improved business conditions we are all expecting in 2010.  We look forward to working with you during the coming year and helping develop the achievers in your business.  Contact us now to see how we can work together to make 2010 the best possible year for you and your business.

Coaching is currently a hot topic in business right now.  A lot of people are involved in providing ‘Life’ or ‘Executive’ coaching and some are very good at it.  Recently, at dta we have been on the receiving end of some excellent business coaching from Mags Bell at CPR - Creating Powerful Results.  Business coaching in its true sense may well involve aspects outside of business itself and which impact performance.  Whilst dta WORLDWIDE has it’s own coaching workshop; perfomance COACH, we often underestimate the need to be coached.  dta’s programme provides skills to first and second line managers to coach the people in their teams.  CPR takes a different approach in that they provide one to one business coaching in a way that gets to the centre of business issues.

Mags Bell excels by using a robust ‘real world’ approach to coaching that focuses on the cause of business challenges rather than the effect.  In that way the real issues are tackled and a more positive and effective outcome is achieved.  Many coaches who purport to coach at executive level coach the effect - leaving the cause to exist and continue to aggravate the effect.  Whilst we provide training to become a better coach, we strongly recommend CPR and their method in getting the best coaching at a business executive level.  Take a look at the CPR website here.

A few other things I did on day 5 were to make up some styleFLEX workbooks, and update the mailing list for the dta newsletter.  We then set to work on writing the next edition of the newsletter which should be out soon, so keep an eye out for it.  If have not yet subscribed to the newsletter, then you can do so by filling in the form on the right-hand side of the page.  Read more about what happened on day 6, tomorrow.

Again, another busy day at the office at dta WORLDWIDE yesterday, on day 4.  The majority of the day was spent doing some major changes on the dta website.  Although it is a long process, it needed to be done and the end result is great.  The changes make the website look a lot better, easier to navigate and understand.  Loads of new links have been added as well, and the home page has been completely transformed.  I think that it all looks really good, and hope that you agree!

Some other things I did yesterday included learning about invoicing; how to process them through the computer and send them off to the client, and of course some more accounting!  Most of day 4, though, was mainly focussed on improving the website, which continues today on day 5.  You can have a look at the changes, and read about them when I am back in the office on Monday.

Yesterday was another busy day at dta WORLDWIDE on my work experience at the headquaters.  After the usual accounting necessities out of the way, I was taught how to score the interactionPROFILEs in preparation for a course being delivered by a client.  Using the scoreBOARD software, the results were analysed and scored for each person.  I then packed them into envolopes ready to be sent off and delivered to the participants.  We also set up a new leadershipPROFILE for a client.  Then I helped to write a proposal and learnt about what it is for and how to make it effective and appealing.

Afterwards, I continued with the reconstruction of the website. I added many new links and sections to explore and learn more about what dta does, so you can take a look at those.  The hits have been going up and we hope that it can continue!  The reconstruction is still in progress today on day 4, which you can read about tomorrow.