The skills that Sales Sherpas™ need to guide their customers through their buying journey are much different from what drove success in the past. The future of the sales profession seems to be changing daily. New technology and rapidly changing customer needs are combining to reshape the foundations of the success as we move into the heart of the 21st century. So it begs the question: How can you stay relevant and excel as a sales professional? What skills will keep you on the path to success? Luckily, LinkedIn puts out an Emerging Jobs Report every year which has some insights we can use. The first LinkedIn Emerging Jobs … [Read more...]
How to Build Empathy with Your Prospects (And Boost Your Empathy Skills at the Same Time)
The robots are coming. And they're here to take your sales job. At least, that's what we're afraid of. It might be true that technology can be integrated into many steps of the sales process. But it can't do everything. For now, there are a number of skills that computers can't learn. One of those is our human ability to create empathetic connections with prospects and customers. This is a key ability for the modern seller. By developing your empathy skills, you'll find your sales conversations much more effective. And more importantly, you'll create a skill set that is in demand and hard to replace with technology. What is … [Read more...]
Soft Skills Have Hard Effects
Why do bands break up? A lot of them cite "creative differences", but they are rarely arguing about whether they should play a song in A sharp or E minor. What it usually means is that the musicians in the band can't get along. If I was starting a band today, I wouldn't necessarily look for the best musicians. Instead I would look for people that can communicate well, that are emotionally stable, and have their act together. I would want to find people that I could get along with. It doesn't matter if everyone in the band is a great musician if they have such monumental egos that they can't stand each other (just ask The … [Read more...]
The Secret Reason to Like Job Anniversaries on LinkedIn
updated January 2022 I've been showing people how to leverage LinkedIn for over a decade. And one of the most consistently maligned pieces of functionality has been the job anniversary notification. Over and over I hear some form of, "Why is LinkedIn gumming up my feed? Why should I care if Bill Jones has been at Company XYZ for 6 years? Does "liking" that really mean anything?" Well, yes it does. The Science of Online Small Talk To explain the value of liking job anniversaries, we have to look at something else that people don't really enjoy: small talk. It's easy to bash small talk. We think that it's an awkward and … [Read more...]
Win the Crowd – Steve Cohen
This article was originally published a few years ago at the RockStar Success Library. Still one of my favorite public speaking guides. When you think about it, magicians are truly the masters of sales. We know that they are going to perform feats that are designed to fool us, we might even try to stay on our guard, but they always get us. And we love it – we even want more! For their illusions to work, magicians have to sell us over and over again. In becoming a top magician, Steve Cohen has also become a master salesperson and communicator. In Win the Crowd, it’s fascinating to see how he’s drilled down into the ways he … [Read more...]
How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less – Nicholas Boothman
This article was originally published a few years ago at the RockStar Success Library. It has great tools for connecting with other people! Nicholas Boothman’s book has a title that sounds like a infomercial at 2 in the morning. When you get past that it’s a solid piece of work. It examines the critical first moments of a new relationship, i.e., how to build rapport with someone. I often train groups on communication skills, and the first thing we talk about is building rapport. As I see it, rapport is the bridge that allows communication to flow between two people. How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less is powerful for … [Read more...]
Feeding the Media Beast – Mark Mathis
This article was originally published on January 28th, 2011. And after doing months of press for Networking in the 21st Century, it has proved invaluable! It seems that Good Press is the holy grail that every company and organization is chasing after these days. From the the biggest multi-national corporation to the newest one-person start-up, everyone is looking for that elusive media fix. Because of that, there is an overabundance of books/articles/websites that all promise to share their “secret” to getting media attention (most of them extolling the virtue of their particular style of press release writing). Mark Mathis’s Feeding … [Read more...]