John Boe International

Adversity Gives You Strength

Every challenge, setback, and personal difficulty you encounter in life also brings with it the seed of equivalent or greater benefit! The key to overcoming adversity is to avoid the temptation of panic and instead, focus on finding the greater benefit. Adversity will never leave you where it found you; it will either strengthen your character or weaken your resolve.

How can you stay self-motivated and productive in the midst of turbulent times and a sluggish economy? How do you persevere as a salesperson when times are tough and customers seem to be holding on to every penny in fear of economic uncertainty? Herodotus, the Greek philosopher, said, "Adversity has the effect of drawing out strength and qualities of a man that would have lain dormant in its absence." The Chinese word for crisis, pronounced “way-gee,” is made up of two separate characters, the first representing “danger,” and the second meaning “opportunity.”

I find it interesting that people faced with similar adversity often experience remarkably different outcomes. Some people become weakened, some become hardened and some become stronger. If you place a carrot, an egg and a coffee bean into a pot of boiling water, each reacts in a completely different manner to their conditions. The carrot goes into the boiling water firm and comes out soft; the egg goes in fragile and comes out hardened; while the coffee bean turns the hot water into coffee by releasing its flavor and aroma! 

Selling in these challenging times demands determination and personal fortitude. Having the will to persevere when times are tough is a characteristic commonly found among self-made millionaires. Are you a quitter? The last time you failed, did you stop trying because you failed or did you fail because you stopped trying? 

Thomas Edison documented 10,000 failed attempts to develop the electric light bulb. A reporter asked the great inventor how it felt to have failed 10,000 times trying to invent the light bulb. Edison responded, "Young man, I didn't fail 10,000 times trying to invent the light bulb, I simply documented 10,000 ways that it wouldn't work." Imagine how different our world would be today if Edison had been a quitter. You must expect to encounter detours, roadblocks and potholes of adversity along the road of life. The next time you are faced with adversity, learn from it and know that you are becoming a much stronger person because of it!

Key Learning Objectives

• Tips on how to maintain a positive mental attitude during tough times
• Stress management techniques to increase productivity
• Strategies to promote creative thinking, personal responsibility, and teamwork
• 9 Tips for overcoming adversity
• Developing an Action Plan

Leadership in the Face of Adversity

Leading your sales team is easy when things are going well... when sales targets are being met, when customers are satisfied, work is busy, and everyone is performing at their best. The challenge for leaders is when times get a little tougher... when the budgets get tighter and your customers’ expectations seem much harder to meet. Whether we like it or not, adversity is part of life. As a leader, your ability to successfully handle setbacks, challenges, and obstacles is one of the most robust predictors of your personal growth, future contributions and happiness in life. Leadership in testing times can be difficult, frustrating and can breed fear and despondency. Difficulties are always going to arise, but it’s not the situation, it’s how you handle it that defines you as a leader.

Great leaders are lauded for their successes. But, paradoxically, what makes good leaders great are the trials and tribulations of failure. Very often, the lessons learned from confronting fear and uncertainty, and from experiencing frustration, transform good leaders into great ones. Today, leaders who have endured adversity are most likely to be the ones with the resilience and resolve to succeed.

When we think of business careers, we assume that great leaders develop and rise to the top in a hierarchical progression. Modern organizational life exists to celebrate success and deny failure... no one ever notes a significant setback or mistake on their résumé. But the fact is, successful careers are not successful continuously. There are ups and downs, twists and turns, detours and digressions, some triggered by professional events and some by personal ones. And even though it may be embarrassing or painful to discuss how they stumbled, an overwhelming majority of leaders privately admit that that’s when they learned the most.

As a student of military history, I have always been impressed with the ability of famous leaders to seemingly bounce back from just about any difficulty or adversity. This is also true in the fields of sports, politics and business. In some ways, great leaders are also great survivors. They often thrive on chaos and adversity. No adversity seems too great to prevent them from finding some advantage. While I certainly don’t believe in deliberately creating difficulty, there are nonetheless some principles that you can apply to turn adversity to your advantage.

Key Learning Objectives

• Leadership by example sets the tone for the team
• Stress management techniques to promote to increase productivity 
• Strategies to enhance creative thinking, personal responsibility, and teamwork
• 9 tips for overcoming adversity 
• Developing an Action Plan

The Art of Motivating Salespeople

After years of dealing with a tough economy and declining market conditions, even the best sales reps on your team can sometimes become discouraged and lose their motivation to close sales and develop new business. As a sales manager, senior executive, or business owner, I am sure that this scenario is very familiar to you. What if there was a simple, yet effective way to inspire and motivate your sales team to close more sales in this difficult economy... would you be interested in learning how to do that?

When the tide comes in, all the boats in the harbor go up!

The long-term benefit of an incentive program is to coax your sales force out of their production comfort zone. Once a salesperson stretches to a new level of personal production, their self-confidence and expectations skyrocket. Traditionally, sales managers have relied primarily on commission to motivate their sales force. Unfortunately, a compensation structure based solely on commission does not address separate motivational factors and therefore, commission alone will not motivate your sales force to peak performance.

The challenge of designing an effective sales incentive contest is that it should not only appeal to your top producers, but it must also excite average to below average salespeople as well. A successful incentive program is a mixture of awards, recognition, and peer pressure. To encourage salespeople to reach their full potential, successful managers personalize incentives.

Creating a culture of trust; leveraging the power of peer recognition; and focusing on the enablers and tools that help salespeople reach their potential in an increasingly complex business environment... these are all critical parts of the overall picture of motivating a sales force more effectively. By gaining a deeper knowledge of human motivation, sales executives can put in place a more holistic approach... one that integrates people, process, technology, and compensation strategies... to encourage and reward the behaviors that help produce high performance.

What's more, gaining insights into what really makes a sales force tick has benefits that go well beyond the sales organization, since many of the lessons also apply to workforces in general. Not all workers, of course, have motivations and incentives as tied to the very definition of their jobs as salespeople do. But today, those managing all types of workforces are beginning to understand what chief sales officers have known for years: When it comes to motivating people toward great performance, it's not just about the paycheck.

Key Learning Objectives

• Customize an incentive plan to maximize results
• Tips, tactics, and techniques for team building success
• How to motivate a sales team with money, recognition, and peer pressure
• The Sales Contest That Never Fails
• Developing an Action Plan

Selling to the Four Temperament Styles

Have you ever wondered why you seem to hit it off right away with some people, while with others it's more like oil and water? A person's temperament style not only determines his or her energy level, behavioral traits, body language patterns, and buying style, but it also influences compatibility with other people. Yin Yang, the ancient Chinese symbol for balance, depicts the strong attraction and complementary nature of opposites. Just as oil and water repel, while magnet and metal attract, we too are attracted or repelled by other people instinctively. For example, each of us have met someone for whom we felt an immediate affinity or, for some unknown reason, an instant dislike. In reality, we are intuitively responding to the natural chemistry, or lack thereof, between temperament styles.

Today we have access to revolutionary tools such as the Internet, cell phones, and video conferencing all to support us in communicating effectively. Even with all of these high-tech tools at our disposal, the alarming number of lost sales, disgruntled employees, dissatisfied customers and failed relationships are evidence that none of us are as effective at understanding people as we might like to believe. For example, what about that sale you thought you had closed, but for some unknown reason your prospect changed his or her mind and didn't buy... or at least they didn't buy from you. Chances are you lost that sale, not because of a lack of effort or product knowledge, but because of your inability to recognize and adjust to your prospect's temperament style. A temperament style mismatch is often referred to as a "personality conflict." Sadly, commission-based sales reps who don't know how to make adjustments to their sales presentation to match their prospects' temperament style or "buying style" end up with skinny kids!

Research indicates that there are four primary temperament styles; Aggressive, Expressive, Passive, and Analytical. Each of these four temperament styles requires a unique marketing approach and sales presentation strategy. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, is credited with originating the basic theory of the four temperament styles twenty-four hundred years ago. Since the days of ancient Greece, there have been many temperament theories and a wide variety of evaluation instruments, but essentially they utilize the four temperament styles that Hippocrates identified. Hippocrates observed that these four temperament styles have a direct influence on our character traits, personal preferences, and general outlook on life. A person's temperament style is determined genetically and has nothing to do with his or her gender, skin color, astrology sign, birth order, or childhood experiences. Environmental factors don't create a person's temperament style, they merely reveal it. For example, if you are born into the analytical temperament style, you will be shy and reserved for your entire life. This is why you can have children with different temperament styles raised by the same parents.

• How to identify the four temperament styles; Aggressive, Expressive, Passive, and Analytical
  
• Tips for customizing a sales presentation to fit a prospect's temperament style
• Strategies to avoid personality conflicts and work with difficult people
• Understanding your temperament style to maximize your strengths and minimize weaknesses 
• Developing an Action Plan
  

Win-Win Principles of Persuasion and Negotiation

How good are you at negotiating or persuading others? Do you know the characteristics of successful negotiators? Are you a trained negotiator who knows how to use persuasion principles and negotiation tactics skillfully to find a win-win solution? Can you deal effectively with highly competitive negotiators? Do you have specific techniques for dealing with deadlock situations? Do you know how to use emotions to influence negotiation outcomes?  If you want to stand out from the crowd, get promoted or develop an award winning sales team you need to polish your communication and persuasion skills.

Throughout history, our most admired leaders are remembered primarily for their ability to instill courage and inspire confidence. Just think how different this world might be without the calming reassurance of FDR's fireside chats or Churchill's defiant eloquence. President Kennedy once remarked that Winston Churchill had the ability to take the English language to war. Churchill clearly understood the power of words and said that he had the English language deep in his bones. He would spend hours at a time rewriting and rehearsing his speeches and as a result, Churchill galvanized a nation with his words.

When we communicate effectively we succeed. Whether you're in commission sales or on a salary, your income and career advancement are directly linked to your ability to communicate and persuade. The higher you climb the corporate ladder, the more you will be called upon to speak. It doesn't matter whether you're an agent selling an insurance policy or a manager goal setting with your sales team, if you want to focus attention and gain consensus, paint word pictures. In her book, Knockout Presentations, communications coach Diane DiResta suggests using vivid language, "Metaphors transport the listener to a different dimension. They grab hold of the mind and stimulate the imagination. The brain thinks in pictures, not words." Analogies, metaphors, stories and anecdotes all work together to help you create vivid word pictures to keep your listeners emotionally involved.

Key Learning Objectives

• Techniques for developing trust and rapport  quickly... face-to-face or over the phone
  
• The Price Value Formula
• How to listen like a homicide detective to promote clarity and understanding
• How to use questions to gain commitment and help a prospect overcome procrastination and reach a buying decision
• Developing an Action Plan

Customers for Life: Going the Extra Mile

Are you someone who consistently goes the extra mile and routinely over delivers on your promises?

It's rare these days, but it's the hallmark of high achievers who know that exceeding expectations helps you stand above the crowd. Almost by force of habit, successful people simply do more. Do you exceed expectations? Do you surprise your customers and co-workers with more than they were expecting from you? Do you have the opportunity - but also the personal initiative - to go the extra mile?

To be successful you must change your thinking. You can only win by making extra efforts. People who go the extra mile always get payback. You will discover yourself becoming more self-confident, more self-reliant and more influential with those around you.

People notice the special services and all the small touches that make dealing with you so pleasurable. And when they are talking to their friends they will mention you and recommend you because you are the one who stands out. People will see that you pay attention to detail, that you consider all the small things that really make a business successful, that you care about your image, and that you belong with all the other people who work hard to achieve. You will attract new business and new opportunities.

The most successful companies place great value on developing lifetime relationships with their customers. In today’s competitive marketplace, they are aware that their customers are aggressively prospected and their loyalty cannot be taken for granted. Customer focused companies recognize that relationship building and follow on service are critical components for promoting both customer retention and revenue growth.

Rendering quality customer service is both a responsibility and an opportunity. Often salespeople view customer service as an administrative burden that takes them away from making a sale. The truth is that customer service provides opportunities for cross-selling, up-selling, and generating quality referrals.

Customers describe quality customer service in terms of attention to detail and responsiveness. Customer satisfaction surveys consistently point to the fact that the little things make a big difference. Not surprisingly, the top two customer complaints with regards to customer service are unreturned phone calls and a failure to keep promises and commitments. Make an effort to see yourself through your customers’ eyes. True customer service is meeting and surpassing your customers’ expectations.

Successful salespeople “go the extra mile” when providing service and turn the customers they serve into advocates to help them promote their business. Your referrals and follow on business are in direct proportion to the quality and quantity of service you render on a daily basis. Would you like more income and more referrals? Then it's time for you to improve your service and start going the extra mile!

Key Learning Objectives

• Tips for providing superior customer service that generates referrals and additional sales
• Strategies for handling complaints and upset customers
• Methods for managing customer expectations and avoiding communication misunderstandings
• Time-proven techniques to uncover cross-selling and up-selling opportunities
• Developing an Action Plan
  

Recruit Your Way to the Top

Essentially a sales manager's primary responsibility is to recruit, train and motivate his or her sales force to achieve peak performance. Of these three vitally important tasks, recruiting is the least understood and by far the most challenging.

When you recruit the right person you will find that they're self-motivated and eager to train. On the other hand, if you hire someone that is not suited for the position, you'll experience low morale, high turnover and find yourself constantly in the training mode.

While there's no perfect system that can guarantee you'll hire the right person every time, there are fundamental guidelines you must follow if you expect to recruit your way to the top!

Are You a Buyer or a Seller? It pays to be patient and selective during the interviewing process. Obviously, what you're looking for is a hard- working, self-motivated, team player and not just a warm body to fill the position. By approaching the interviewing process with a buyer's mentality, you're more likely to maintain your objectivity and hire a long-term top producer.

During the initial interview, the vast majority of sales managers have a tendency to oversell the position. These well-meaning managers make the fundamental mistake of describing the sales profession in its most favorable light by over-emphasizing the compensation potential and understating the inherent challenges.

Buyers understand the importance and the responsibility of being straightforward and laying all of their cards on the table. They know through experience that it is better to run the risk of scaring off a prospective hire than to face a disillusioned salesperson after the fact. Buyers tell it like it is by emphasizing the demanding aspects of the sales profession such as rejection and hard work. By placing a few roadblocks and challenges in front of a prospective hire you are able to check his or her interest and validate their resolve.

Making the wrong hiring decision means throwing away a substantial investment of time and money on recruitment, training and benefits. This fundamental program is your ticket for making the right hiring decisions and building a world-class sales team.

Key Learning Objectives

• Strategies for interviewing preparation: Are you a Buyer or a Selling?
  
• Discover Best Practices for qualifying, interviewing, and evaluating a candidate
• Learn questioning methods to uncover a candidate's suitability for a successful sales career
  
• Techniques to encourage (or discourage) a candidate's interest in joining your sales team
  
• Developing an Action Plan
  

Powerful New Business Development Prospecting Strategies

Why is it that some sales reps consistently earn a six-figure annual income while other reps, putting in the same hours, selling the same products and trained by the same sales manager struggle each month financially to make ends meet? The answer to this question is painfully simple; the six-figure sales reps spend more time on the phone and never forget to ask for referrals! Top producers don't need to be told to ask for referrals or follow-up on hot leads, because they understand that prospecting is a necessity and not just an activity. The good news is that prospecting for new business, like any other skill, can be trained and developed into a habit.

To be successful in the sales profession salespeople need assistance from their clients in the form of referrals. Average salespeople do not invest their time nor spend their money developing their good clients into advocates. An advocate is a person who will go out of their way to recommend a salesperson to their friends and associates. Advocates aren't born they're developed over time!

When it comes to asking for referrals, timing is everything. Research indicates that the most effective time to ask for referrals is right after you've made the sale or provided a valuable service for your customer. Asking for referrals prior to closing the sale is a big mistake and may even jeopardize the sale itself. Once the sale has been completed, a customer will be on an "emotional high" and far more receptive to the idea of providing referrals.

Prospects, like food in your refrigerator, are perishable and therefore need to be contacted quickly. Each day you let slip by without making initial contact with your referral dramatically reduces the probability of you making the sale. Develop the habit of contacting your referrals within two-business days or sooner. Have a system to keep track of referrals so they don't end up falling through the cracks. It's critical to have a computerized client contact management system to record your remarks and track future contacts and appointments. Relying on your memory alone is a very poor business decision that will cost you dearly. 

In this powerful program, John will show your sales team how to use proven techniques to help them prospect effectively and have a steady flow of new business. It really doesn't matter how organized, knowledgeable, or motivated your sales team is if they can't effectively prospect.

Unfortunately, not every prospect will be interested or qualified financially to purchase your products or services. Successful sales reps don't waste time chasing after low-probability prospects and know when it's time to cut their losses and move on. For the majority of salespeople, prospecting for new business is without a doubt the most challenging and stressful aspect of the selling process. Selling is a contact sport and daily prospecting for new business is the key to every salesperson's long-term financial success. By integrating these powerful prospecting tips into your sales reps' daily business routine, they will be able to keep their appointment calendar packed!

Key Learning Objectives

• Learn best practices for training, motivating, and rewarding  your advocates to give more referrals
• Tips and techniques on how to ask for referrals
• Best practices for following up quickly on a hot prospects 
• Tips and techniques for qualifying a prospect during the sales process
• Developing an Action Plan