Over 70 people interested in learning the latest ideas, trends and innovation in professional selling and sales management joined me recently at Luna Park in Sydney for the fourth Sales Effectiveness breakfast event for 2010. As with the first series, the feedback was fantastic – I hope to see you for the fifth breakfast for 2010 on October 15, 2010. Till then, here are some highlights from September for you.
Sally-Anne Cotton. “The alchemy of 21st century selling: aligning balance, congruence and intent to deliver golden results”
Sally-Anne opened her presentation by pointing to a growing body of evidence to demonstrate that organisations with strong adaptive cultures which are based on shared values will outperform companies with a rigid or weak culture by a significant margin.
Based on these studies, Sally-Anne presents a compelling case for the need for all sales teams to achieve balance, congruence and alignment to allow positive cultures to thrive, and, consequently, for organisations to thrive. These items can be summarised like this:
Balance – between the needs of customers, salespeople, sales teams and organisations
Alignment – between the values and beliefs of the individual salespeople and the vision and mission of the organisation
This balance and alignment between individuals and organisations then needs to be delivered with intention. This intention needs to be purposeful and focussed on the common good. When combined in an authentic manner – the chance of long term individual and organisational success is dramatically increased.
Find out more by ordering your copy of the DVD of the full presentation:
http://www.saleseffectiveness.com.au/sales-effectiveness-breakfast-event-series-september-2010/
Mo Fox. “What you see is not always what you get: changing how you perceive things to achieve better sales results”
Mo’s presentation was in interactive delight.
Her message for salespeople – in fact for all of us – is that we need to understand that underlying structures and patterns exist everywhere – and that the better we understand these structures and patterns, the better outcomes we will achieve.
Mo took us on a journey to discover our inner artist. Artists understand structure – and the structure that Mo taught us was the human face. Despite some protestations and suspicion, we all took up our crayons, and proceeded to draw one of our breakfast companions. For most of us, our early efforts were somewhat juvenile – and a touch embarrassing.
However, when we were learnt some basic underlying structures – where eyes sit in faces, the relationship between our ears and our eyes, and a few more – our second efforts overall were much better than our first.
A great lesson for those of us in sales. Look for underlying structures in our customers and prospects business. Look for patterns in our clients industries. Take the time to look and the picture we build will take on greater clarity – and deliver vastly improved outcomes.
Find out more by ordering your copy of the DVD of the full presentation:
http://www.saleseffectiveness.com.au/sales-effectiveness-breakfast-event-series-september-2010/
There’s more information about Mo Fox and her work here:
Special Guest – Eddie Paterson (Telstra) – “Getting things right: An introduction to Human Performance Improvement approaches, tools & techniques to maximise sales performance & avoid wasting time, effort and budget”
Of all organisational functions, the sales function has the greatest focus on outcomes – and outcomes are determined by performance. In this short presentation, Eddie Paterson introduced the group to a range of little known – but highly effective – performance models and tools.
We were reminded of Tom Gilbert’s base model of performance:
P(erformance) = B(ehaviour) X E(nvironment)
Building on this, Eddie suggested we consider the following questions in terms of sales performance:
- How much of traditional classroom training gets applied in the workplace?
- What proportion of the causes of an employee’s performance gaps can be attributed to a lack of knowledge and skills?
- If training is the answer, what was the question?
- How often do we treat the symptoms of performance issues and NOT the cause?
- How many of the root causes of performance gaps are likely to be successfully closed by a single intervention?
This leads to a summary of Human Performance Technology (HPT), as expounded by the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI). Put simply, HPT is:
- A process to influence behaviour and accomplishment.
- A systematic combination of three fundamental processes:
– performance analysis
– cause analysis (pain chain)
– intervention selection
Find out more about The International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), here:
Find out more about Thomas Gilbert and his performance model here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gilbert_(engineer)
If you missed the event – you can still see and hear the complete presentation set on DVD. Order you copy here by registering as a virtual attendee of the breakfast series:
http://www.saleseffectiveness.com.au/sales-effectiveness-breakfast-event-series-september-2010/
********
Thanks for reading this post – Paul Sparks, Sales Effectiveness Australasia.
“Taking you beyond sales training and keeping you informed about the latest ideas, trends, innovation, research & best practice in professional selling and sales management”
If you would like to connect with Paul Sparks please email paulsparks [at] saleseffectiveness.com.au
