How do you make sure that your pitch is effective? Make your presentations relevant to your customers. Robert Cialdini, persuasion guru has been researching persuasion since 1970. In his 2016 book Pre-suasion, he explains when to use his six universal principles of influence. But how should you apply these during your pitch?
Read MoreGuest blog by Graham Godbee
www.learndevelop.com.au
I recently attended a business conference in Sydney and was fortunate to attend the session: Negotiate or Perish by Stephen Kozicki. As an experienced practitioner in executive management development programs, I found the session highly motivating and am keen to use some of his practical examples in my business negotiations.
Read MoreIn a previous blog, we looked at the outcomes of negotiation. To reach these outcomes you need to take into account your own principals and those of the parties with who you are negotiating.
Read MoreSo, you need to persuade a customer you can't afford to lose? Where do you start? If we ask persuasion expert Robert Cialdini how to persuade your customer to act, he would suggest a few ways. Two are scarcity and consistency.
Scarcity is the best known technique, Consistency is not well understood and under-used.
Read MoreThe business environment is constantly changing. These changes in markets, competition and technology are hurting the results of many companies.
The priorities for companies are to create superior customer value, retain high-value customers, be more innovative and be more efficient. However, there is immense pressure to drive down operating costs, compete increasingly on price, and respond to rising customer demands.
Many companies find it impossible to respond to change and simultaneously pursue strategic priorities. So, they end up mainly reacting to change.
How can you use these changes to your advantage and find opportunities for improving your business results?
Read MoreDonald Trump would probably say: Just tell em!
In the real world it's often not appropriate to just tell em! So, we need to have more sophisticated tools available.
At the end of 2016, Persuasion guru Robert Cialdini published his latest book Pre-suasion. To condense his 300 page book into two sentences he says:
So, what's so important about Pre-suasion?
Read MoreImagine you are in an Australian industry with about 200 competitors, how do you compete and grow? Back in 2001, that's the problem faced by John Casella of Casella wines. He quickly concluded that he needed to be more strategic than his well-resourced competitors.
But how did he do it?
Read MoreIn a previous blog we looked at the types of negotiation, but it is equally important to choose your outcomes before you begin negotiating. Let's take a look at the different outcomes.
Read MoreIt is not just the volume but the complexity of data being collected that makes it difficult for us to analyse and interpret in a clear and simple way. As we are bombarded with data, most people still reach for excel to create charts to explain this data. After all, it's easy. Select our table of data, find the command for insert chart, chose one of the types of chart and then choose one of the options for that specific chart. That's easily done.
But as Samuel Johnson may have written over 200 years ago: charts created without effort are read without insight.
So, with a little time and effort how can we create charts to be read with insight and pleasure?
Read MoreManaging accounts strategically is a proven way to systematically monitor changes in your customers and competitors and make strategic choices for the future. Companies across many industry sectors have successfully applied the Strategic Account Management (SAM) framework to drive relentless positive change in their business.
So, what are the benefits of working more strategically?
Read MoreWith a tsunami of data it is easy to create large tables of data. However, with such large amounts of data, it is difficult to see what the message is. When presenting these tables, some people leave them in the default order. So, if it was a list of sales by country or sales by product then these would be listed alphabetically. Unfortunately, insights rarely occur alphabetically. So, if you sort alphabetically then you are burying your insights and making it hard for your audience to find the insights.
Find out how to make your insights clearer.
Read MoreTo be a successful negotiator you need to understand that a negotiation can only take place when everyone involved thinks they will get some benefit from the transaction. Both sides want to be in on the deal and all will influence the outcome.
To be successful you must:
In essence - be a TOP negotiator.
Read MoreI have previously resisted sending out a Christmas blog because I believed that the Queen or a world leader waited all year to send out their Christmas message, and I shouldn't create another one. However, it has been a busy year, Brexit, Trump, Turnbull and too many other things to mention. A couple of things happened this week that changed my mind.
Read MoreThe third method of the 'interactive image' is the 'common image'. This special method has several features and benefits that warrant separate discussion.
Read MoreExecutive sponsorship is any change initiative is imperative to success. It is just one of the five risks to managing the change: implementing strategic account management, as discussed in 'What are the risks with organisational change?'
With a SAM program the entire business must own major accounts. There must be genuine commitment and active involvement from the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and other senior executives..
Read MoreManagers in today's complex business environment require negotiation skills for business success. They need to develop a tool kit of negotiation strategies and understand how these influence and are influenced by their surroundings. Being successful in leading groups and shaping group decision making is vital, both internally and with key customers and suppliers.
In your tool kit you need tools to manage:
How do you manage organisational change with Strategic Account Management (SAM)?
Introducing a SAM program into your organisation must be treated as a major change initiative. Treating the project as purely a sales project is setting yourselves up for failure.
A SAM program takes time to get results and is an initiative to change organisational culture.
Read MoreAs the world reels at the second big shock in 2016, Donald Trump elected as President of the USA, after the UK voted for Brexit. What can we learn about persuasion? So many polls, so many authorities got both events wrong.
We might be tempted to believe as Richard Thaler, Professor of Behavioural Science & Economics said after Trump won, ”This is …a defeat for science and expertise.” No, this is not a defeat for logic. Logic could never win; this is a win for emotion.
Read MoreWe have already explored the theme from market trends: Are procurement undervaluing suppliers? In this blog, we will concentrate on the need to understand culture in global negotiations.
The secret of great global negotiations is not one thing, but many: communication, planning, risk taking and cultural differences. But, one key item or secret of success can be gleaned from Aristotle in his book Rhetoric . The secret is: balance your negotiation argument with logic and emotion.
Read MoreIn a previous blog, we discussed the presenter's image as an interactive image. Now we will move onto the second method.
In this second method, the Persuasive Presenter allows the audience to select their own images for their own reason. This suits a workshop format and produces plenty of interaction.
Read More
