How can you win people over?

I recently ran seminars for two groups on a similar topic. The first was a class of business students with goals of setting themselves up as entrepreneurs, aiming to sell their products and services either to other businesses or perhaps home consumers. The second was a group of experienced travel agents who wanted to improve their ability to sell luxury holidays to their clients.… Read more

I run workshops on presentation skills for lawyers, fund raisers, sales people and all manner of people who need to pitch or present to clients and customers. Sometimes, I also get asked to help individual executives to polish how they come across.

Here are the 5 commonest mistakes that I see people making when giving presentations:

Mistake 1. Throwing too many facts at an audience

Just because you know your … Read more

I gave a seminar at The Business Startup Show a few days ago on how to win at pitches and presentations – whether that’s to investors, customers or clients.

One powerful technique involves putting ourselves into the shoes of the people we’re dealing with.

A couple of years ago, my publisher shot a handful of video clips to promote The Extra One Per Cent (which is now available under its … Read more

A client organisation I’ve been working with recently analysed some data it has collected on its sales people. The company wanted to know what differentiated its top sales people from the rest.

Interestingly enough, the top 25 per cent experience more rejections than the rest. Yes, you read that right. They got turned down many, many more times a day.

Why? Because they were making more calls. They were sending … Read more

Quickly, off the top of your head, what would you describe as the stereotype of a sales person? You might think a sales person should be smooth, fast-talking, outgoing and persistent. But of course successful sales people need to ask questions and understand their customers and clients too.

So would you guess that the most successful sales people would be introverts or extraverts?

Introverts tend to be better listeners. They … Read more

I was asked to speak at a media organisation’s sales conference recently on the psychology of selling and the mindset that it takes to succeed. Towards the end of the day, there was a panel discussion in which five people (who had all been nominated by their colleagues as inspirational people) took questions from the room.

One of the questions asked of the panel was: ‘What qualities do you most … Read more

More than 90 per cent of the lectures and workshops I run are only for the managers of organisations such as KPMG, Baker Tilly and the Boston Consulting Group as well as universities and business schools. I very rarely speak at events that are open to members of the public.

However, I’m speaking at one such event next week on the 10th of July at the SOLD conference, which … Read more