12 Ways to Make Sales Fly With Content Publishing

Most companies focus their online marketing efforts around website Search Engine Optimization (SEO) using keywords and Google AdWords which is all very well for when buyers know they want what you’re selling. But the savvy online sales and marketing professionals create content to attract buyers much earlier in their journey… when they experience a trigger event, consider change and then conduct online research.

Content publishing is hugely powerful and strategically essential for online success. Yet, according to Peter Strohkorb, 75% of content created by marketing is not used by sales people... what a staggering waste of resources! Sales people should work closely with marketing to create content to be published in their LinkedIn profiles because:

• Buyers research sellers before they engage. Rather than seeing an uber sales person, they need to see someone with credibility and insight. Their profile must show the business value the offer and the values by which they operate.
• Writing is a fundamental skill that today's sales people need to possess. Writing about a topic is the best way to learn. Sales people should write blogs that proactively deal with potential objections, and also that set an agenda around insight and value.

Social publishing can also attract buyers if the content is good but potential customers certainly don't want a product pitch or marketing spin. So how do you identify what content to write?

Here is the important question to ask: “What do my buyers look for online before they look for me?”

It is so very important today for all sellers to adapt to the way people now research, engage and buy. We must all adopt modern selling techniques, bringing sales and marketing together, creating customer eXperience (CX) models and building the right attitudes and skills into our teams. Social selling is a catch-all phrase that Idefined with five pillars. The following 12 recommendations address the CEO's 6 social selling fears and can transform sales and marketing efforts to turbo power the revenue engine of your business.

1. Lead your sales and marketing teams to collaborate in identifying the trigger events that cause people to consider change and begin their research.

Relentlessly ask: “What starts a potential customer down the path that leads to us?”

2. Provide training for staff to write content and then implement incentives to measure, recognize and reward those who shine. Identify the content topics that will attract buyers early in the buying cycle by asking: “What do customers look for online before they look for us?” Marketing people or sales managers can be editors and approvers of content for publishing.

3. Transform staff LinkedIn profiles away from being online CVs.Everyone who interacts with customers needs a profile that provides 'social proof' of their integrity and value, positively linked to their employer's products, services and solutions. Once the sales person is evangelically promoting the transformation delivered for clients through the company's solutions, it makes it very difficult for them to go to a competitor and still maintain their credibility. They will also be more loyal knowing that their company wants to help them build their personal brand and advance their career.

4. Identify individual brand champions. Think of Richard Branson, Michael Dell, Joel Manby and others. In your own way, who will you build personal brand campaigns around? Which loyal long-term team members can deliver insightful thought leadership content that others within your company can amplify through their own social platforms? These other people can post updates, like and Tweet the ‘hub’ content with additional commentary.

5. Implement a social listening/monitoring tool and identify where your customers are in social media and what’s important to them. Identify how you can assist and engage anyone who is unhappy but do so with empathy rather than defensiveness. Social listening is a key strategy and defined here.

6. Create a content calendar around monthly or quarterly content campaigns with high value thought leadership or insight publishing to attract buyers and be amplified by as many people as possible in your company and the marketplace.

7. Go and be where your customers are online. Constantly ask yourself this question: What are my prospective customers looking for online before they look our product, our service or our solution? Where are they searching online and what cyber-communities are they part of? I moved away from my own website for blogging to write here in LinkedIn Publisher for this very reason... it's hugely powerful.

8. Create incentives for customers to write positive content and create their own mini case studies and testimonials on social sites. Your customers are the ones that your prospects will believe. Customers who advocate for you are the more influential than the best sales people.

9. Integrate with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system so that you can create a ticket/case for unhappy customers. Your CRM software is where you should be enabling sales processes and creating a single source of the truth about prospects and customers to manage their entire life-cycle with you.

10. Implement an effective web to lead system to automate website traffic into opportunities within your CRM and with a marketing automation toolto execute lead nurturing / drip marketing with valuable content rather than sales and marketing collateral alone.

11. Have a social media and social selling policy. Be clear about what people can and cannot do on social platforms, especially when it comes to expressing opinions. Distinguish between content curation (posting other people's content) and social publishing (original thought leadership). Offer training and support while providing access to best practice tools such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator

12. Be brave and set your people free. Provide training to enable them to intelligently execute. Hold people accountable but also empower them to make decisions that create delighted customer advocates.

It won't be long before 75% of the workforce will be Gen-Y or Millennials. The new generations of executives and workers have experienced the consumerization of IT which means that people increasingly expect to be able to execute their workday in a similar manner to how they engage in their social lives. They believe there should be an app for everything and that social platforms are a normal way to research, communicate and collaborate.

The CEO must change their job description to accept responsibility for creating best Customer eXperience (CX) with a genuine customer centric culture that listens through social monitoring tools. Did you know that when customers leave, more than 65% of the time it is because they feel you just don't care. Richard de Crespigny delivered exception CX aboard an Airbus A380 and on the ground to transform a near disaster into legendary customer service.

If you enjoyed this post, listen here to my interview with Kelly Riggs on Biz Locker Room Radio where we discuss Strategic Social Selling.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main image photo by Flickr: Gray Lensman QX! SR-71 Blackbird

How To Rise Above The Competition With Content Publishing

I define Strategic Social Selling as the strategy and process of building quality networks online that attract clients and accelerate the speed of business. People and technology work together to drive efficiency in personal human engagement through social listening, social publishing, social research, social engagement, and social collaboration. These are the 5 pillars of B2B Social selling for sales enablement.

After social listening, social publishing is the most important pillar for those who are seeking to build their pipeline and create a narrative that earns conversations at the right level. Publishing also has other benefits... it evidences our credibility when buyer's research us before meeting or purchasing, and having sellers write is the best sales training they'll ever experience. Anyone who doesn't constantly read to remain current in their industry cannot honestly call themselves a professional, and anyone who can't write can't sell in complex B2B selling today.

According to Corporate Executive Board (CEB) Research, 95% of buyers expect insight from the seller. Yet Forrester Research highlights that 85% of sellers fail to meet buyer expectations while CEB research found that 86% of sellers fail to differentiate in the mind of the buyer. We clearly have a problem but it can be solved when sales people embrace imperative to write within the guidelines of their company and with management and marketing serving as editors.

Constantly ask yourself what do people see when the find me online? ... uber sales person? ... job seeker? ... or do they see a person of credibility, insight and integrity who can help them transform or improve their business?

What should sales people write about? The first thing I encourage my client's sales people to proactively write about is the objections they encounter. For example, my recruitment industry clients hear a common objection of "I'm too busy to meet so just send me CVs if you have any candidates", I therefore help them write a Publisher post in their LinkedIn profile about how much time is wasted by poor filtering of candidates caused by not understanding what defines cultural fit (beyond qualifications, skills and experience). I also encourage them to write about the real costs associated with hiring the wrong people. All of this reinforces the value of a recruitment consultant who takes the time to understand what defines a successful employee beyond the obvious things in a job description.

Social content publishing is powerful on so many different levels. Some believe that sales people should not be content creators but I disagree and here is why. Done well, it can achieve the following:

• Evidence credibility, insight and domain knowledge when buyers research us
• Set the agenda about the value we offer and the values by which we operate
• Proactively deal with objections and position ourselves
• Attract audience and even leads. Don't believe this is possible? This screenshot is from a blog post I published about why Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software must evolve to Customer eXperience Management (CXM) and Peter posted a comment which was a lead for any CRM provider.

Here are my tips for standing our from the crowd and rising above the wall of white noise in social media.

1. Ensure you have a strategy for themes, brand champions, publishing channels and content amplifiers.
2. Identify your audience and then write for the one person or role you are seeking to influence. This makes it targeted, personal and on point.
3. Be clear in your own mind about why your message is important and what you want them to do about. But avoid any call to action that overtly seeks to sell or paints you as a salesperson.
4. Create a catchy headline (think like a newspaper editor).
5. Use an eye-catching picture that has an abstract relationship to your topic. This post is a good example (it's a real photo and always provide attribution) Flickr creative commons is an excellent source of pictures that don;t breach copyright.
6. Have an opening that hooks, a body that informs and a close that motivates or inspires. Deliver insight rather than mere information.
7. Aim for 700 words and don't ramble. Longer is okay and some of my best posts with more than 200,000 reads were well over 1500 words long).
8. Create back-links to other content but never use click-bate to take people to another site where they have to complete forms or register to view content.

If you're the leader of a business, bring sales and marketing together to create a social content publishing strategy to amplify corporate initiatives and enhance personal brands in a manner consistent with the corporate image and message. People buy from those they like and trust; then they focus on best value and lowest risk. The buyers journey begins online so ensure they find you and your people, and they they are attracted by what they see. Content publishing really is the best social strategy to stand out from the crowd. Be inspired by the 3 minute video below showing how Mobula Rays soar.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main image photo by: www.bbusinessinsider.com - Octavio Aburto / iLCP

How To Operate With Gravitas Even If Young

Every career has a sweet spot where you're living in the Goldilocks Zone. Before and after this period you're battling prejudice... 'too young or inexperienced' or 'too old and past it'. I recently wrote about how to avoid age discrimination for those who are older and now we'll cover the topic for those at the front-end of their careers.

As I write this I'm speaking at an annual 4 day international leadership conference that's been running for two decades. It's been a privilege to share the stage with Michael McQueen who is 20 years my junior but in my opinion was the best speaker by far at the exclusive event. He delivers with genuine insight, gravitas and humility and I invested some time with him to understand how he operates beyond his years both on and off the stage.

Some people have 10 years of experience, others have 2 years repeated 5 times, but Michael has learned timeless lessons of embracing the wisdom of those who have gone before him.

He is an avid reader and student of success. He's worked hard on himself to become a masterful consultant and presenter. The main picture in this post is not a baby photo of Michael but here is what he told me he has embraced in his life form an early age to operate at the highest levels.

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Remember your manners - it may not be sexy, but old fashioned good manners are a powerful way of achieving credibility and gravitas with older generations. remember, good manners will always open doors that a good education or great talent can not.

Be present - the danger of always looking for the next opportunity, the next key conversation at the networking function, your Facebook newsfeed or emails is huge. Make eye contact. Focus on the person you are speaking to and stay in the moment to build trust.

Aim to be interested rather than interesting - while you may been keen to show how capable you are, being a good listener rather will earn massive respect. Ask for questions, ask for advice, then listen. You will learn heaps but make the other person feel valuable.

Be humble - avoid the trap of appearing arrogant in your desire to seem knowledgeable and competent.

Don't take yourself too seriously - laugh at yourself and be willing to take some risks. And remember, you won't get it right every time.

Slow down - there is something disarming and attractive about a young person who can remain calm. It engenders strength without toughness and certainty without arrogance

As much as we may like to believe that it's not about age but instead about ability, you need gravitas and wisdom to succeed. Here is Michael in action talking about the next generation coming into the workplace. Book him for your next event if you're focused on generational change or market disruption and need an inspiring and brilliant speaker.

And now a brilliant piece of bonus content... these kids operate way beyond their years! There really are some brilliant ads out there.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main image photo by Flickr: Chris Madeley Evil baby!

Catching The Right Technology Wave

Everyone is seeking brand cut-through yet automation usually results in people being bombarded and blasted rather than being provided with relevant insight and assistance. Amidst all the tools for sales and marketing, which ones are right for you? The most important thing to focus on is social listening and social engagement but this migraine inducing infographic from Scott Brinker at chiefmartec.com shows the overwhelming scale of choice that befuddles many.

I believe that the key to delivering best Customer eXperience (CX) is to adopt a mash-up of technologies to listen and engage with potential and existing customers but the choice is bewildering. There are 43 categories in the infographic above and they include social media, mobile marketing, video marketing, content marketing, CRM, sales enablement, e-mail, SEO... all offering a cornucopia of choice.

I recently sat down and discussed the importance of technology tools for social engagement with Adam Fraser, founder of social media technology specialist EchoJunction, and he told me which five he uses to great effect with his clients. His wisdom will help you navigate the sea of choice to decide what's right for your social sales and marketing efforts. Here is Adam's opinion about the plethora of sales and marketing tools and how they can be harnessed.

There are a few issues worthy of note about the MarTech landscape report:

• We now live in the world of the API and web services – all software companies now pretty much have to “play nicely” with partners/potential competitors alike, hence opening up their platforms for integration and development purposes.
• A number of niche, specialist tools now exist across a wide range of marketing technology areas.
• One tool is unlikely to be suffice for all of your marketing software needs; integration between a variety of tools is a likely outcome – think “mash-up” not ‘marketing ERP’ when developing the technology solution that is right for your business.
• Maintaining “one version of the truth” and “one view of the customer” are key over-arching objectives – don’t allow data silos to form, meaning different departments would be acting on different data pools/views of the customer
• Strategic planning your technology architecture is critical: don’t rush out to procure a range of tools without thinking about your overarching data integrity, security and governance needs.
• No question – the worlds of the CMO and CIO are converging. The marketer of today needs to be familiar with blueprints, roadmaps, cloud solutions and data architecture. Familiarity with technology and analytics are now table stakes for marketers.

Even within the social media marketing sector (a single sub-sector in the visual above) a broad and deep range of options exists. To help make some sense of this, I segment the enterprise social media software market (at a high level) along functional lines as follows:

• Social listening tools such as Brandwatch, Netbase, Radian 6 and Sysomos.
• Social customer service tools such as Conversocial, Lithium and SparkCentral.
• Social reporting and analytics tools such as Simply Measured and Social Bakers.
• Social publishing tools such as Buffer, CoSchedule and Postplanner.
• End to end social media technology platforms (which can perform all of the above) such as Tracx, Spinklr, Sendible and Hootsuite.

Of course there are many more segments, particularly in the tactical social media marketing execution area. Yes, even the social media software sector arguably needs its own segmentation and infographic! At a high level the choice comes down to ‘best of breed’ verticals connected to each other via API integration and an ‘end-to-end’ platform for all of your social media needs. With either approach, integration to a CRM system is likely to make sense to ensure that critical one view of the customer is facilitated.

Which approach and software solutions are right for your business? That of course depends. Start with the business problem you are trying to solve, develop your marketing strategy, and create specific IT requirements; then (and only then) think about the technology solutions you need to facilitate your strategic plan. Too often I see people jumping to a “shiny new toy” before they know what business or marketing objective they are trying to achieve. This is cart before the horse.

The choice can certainly seem over-whelming for digital marketers but with the right approach and strategic planning, these marketing software tools can be a great facilitator and accelerator for your business and marketing operational needs.

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Useful insights above from Adam Fraser and I also asked him about which social tools he prefers. Here's his answer: Brandwatch for social listening; Conversocial for customer service; Simply Measured for social analytics; and Marketo for for lead scoring, nurturing and drip marketing. As an end-to-end tool he likes Tracx which does a bit of everything and also content scheduling to multiple social platforms. There are many other excellent tools other than these but after much research these are the ones Adam has identified as enterprise capable, high quality offerings in this space which cover the vast majority of use cases.

Adam also does a weekly podcast which makes for great listening where he recently interviewed me on the misnomer of 'social selling'.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main image photo by Flickr: Jeff Rowley Jaws

Snatching Defeat From The Jaws of Victory

If you didn't see this recent video, be awed by the majesty of the Great White and the quick thinking of the diver and boat crew. A wise teacher once said to me: "Confidence is the feeling you have just before you understand the situation...

True story. One of the people I coach was recently in a meeting with their reseller and the room was filled with all the stakeholders and decision-makers for a huge enterprise opportunity they had been working with a large government department for 15 months. Toward the end of the meeting the CIO (who owns the budget and signs-off on a purchasing decision) asked; "How long will it take to stand this up for us?" The channel partner sales person didn't miss a beat and jumped-in; "That's an interesting question... the really good thing about what we're offering here is ..." He went on to talk about the joys and wonders of the features they were offering. I kid you not – it really happened.

The best response would have been to ask; "When do you need to have it up and running?" Then follow-up a little later with; "Why is that date important and what happens if it's missed for some reason?"

We need to really listen rather than simply wait for our next opportunity to speak. So many sales people are not really engaged in listening and instead focus on projecting their message or pitch. No matter what the situation – counselling, resolving conflict, interviewing, consulting or selling – we need to lead by being fully immersed in the conversation and ask insightful open questions. It's always a mistake to use clumsy outdated questioning techniques to attempt manipulation. Transparent sincerity and a genuine interest in the other person is the best way to build trust and positive influence.

So, how do sales people manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory after they've done so much good work to develop an opportunity and establish value? 

A lack of situational awareness causes failure in business and other areas of life. Here are other things that sales people must avoid:

• Being distracted and failing to be fully there. A sure-fire turn-off for anyone you are seeking to influence.
• Acting without first thinking. Every action can have unintended consequences and all tactics should be executed within a well conceived strategy.
• Failing to plan a meeting or leaving without creating progression. You're not a professional visitor; instead you need to be an engineer of value, process and tangible business outcomes.
• Failing to understand the customer's internal processes for evaluation, selection and procurement process. What date matters to them and why is it important? What's their process and who needs to approve?
• Introducing unnecessary new information or people. Beware your chest beating boss who wants you to take them out there to close the deal.
• Allowing lawyers to hijack the process. Lawyers need to be instructed rather than be allowed to engage in esoteric ego-fests. Especially beware external lawyers who make more money the longer it takes and the more complex it becomes

Join the conversation... what are some other common pitfalls you've seen? Let me know by commenting within this post and I'll add them to the list.

In line with the shark theme here... did you know that more people died this year from selfie mishaps (taking daring pictures of themselves in precarious situations) that by shark attack? We have seen a record number of shark attacks here in Australia recently where we breed them to be very big. I'm a wakeboarder and every time I jump in the water here in Sydney I have flash-backs of the movie Jaws which I saw as a young teenager at the movies.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image: Flickr: Bristol ridin: pete Great-White-Shark-ride

10.9 Reasons Selling Is Easy

Like any other science, selling is easy – all you’ve got to do is be good with people and know how to read personalities. Are they a driver, expressive, analytic or amiable? Are they Type A, Type B or type-casted? It doesn’t matter... just nail their learning style – auditory, visual or kinaesthetic – adapt how you communicate.

The latest thinking in NLP and Challenger domination enables you to inject insight through ideation to completely change the game. All you need to do is ensure that you don’t offend them with any cultural gaffs; which means always keep your eyes up, never mention anything to do with The Middle East, the age of the Earth or L. Ron Hubbard. 

Once you’ve established rapport, all you have to do is understand their business; engineer value, navigate the political power-base, discover their evaluation, selection and procurement process... while also creating a bias for your solution. It’s just like shelling peas – simple!

But never mention the competition… except the “do nothing” competitor, the one of apathy or the status quo... that competitor needs to be hammered relentlessly with your outrageous ROI claims.

Now, you might need a few tools to help you execute, but they’re all straightforward too. CRM integrates with ERP to deliver SFA. Do a few courses to ensure you understand SPIN, Efox selling, Tareget Account Selling (TAS), blue sheets, gold sheets, green sheets, RSVPselling, BATTLEPLAN, and The New Solution Selling. Mash them all up into your own epiphany of sales process enlightenment, then use data analytics to provide gazillion reports to while away the day – it will help you avoid rejection on the phone.

The big winner among all of this is "qualify deals properly", and do it so that you know all of the acronyms.

Then book-end qualification with the hammer-time of closing techniques, like the alternative choice close, the assumptive close, the stutterer’s close, the Arnie close... "I'll be back... if you don't sign."But the best one is the “I’ve got pictures of you with a goat!” close. Be creative, as creative as you like!

Mash them all up – your boss will have no idea what’s going on, and he’ll be throwing resources at you for deal pursuit like you’re about to get acquired! But always sell the future in mind by using design thinking to create optimal customer experience.

Embrace question-based selling, it’s just like numbers-based accounting

Support the entire customer life cycle through territory analysis, segmentation, targeting, micro-marketing, lead nurturing, events, research, account and opportunity planning, qualification – just like we talked about – discovery, core planning, collaboration, bid management, close plans, negotiation techniques, customer on-boarding, service and renewals, bring them all together with complaints, get reference – everything! Are you seeing how easy selling really is? On top of the basics, which we’ve just covered, you simply need to manage up – always look busy and stressed all the time! Tell your boss you’re dominating the white space! By the way, that’s the part of the market that will never buy anything from you, but don’t tell him that. 

Learn how to say, “It’s strategic,” and say it with gravitas every time you’re challenged about wanting resources for something that is a long-shot.

Lastly, embrace the paradigm of social selling; the new ABC of selling is always be connecting. LinkedIn is the new publishing, introduction, referral platform, Google+ is the new Google Juice, Twitter is the megaphone of amplification. Facebook? Well, it’s for old people. Monitor all the social platforms that matter and be where your customers are, but make sure that you jump in with relevance and context! Get upstream through social listening 56.8789643% of the way through the buyer’s process!

Well, that’s it really, plain and simple. You can do it – I believe in you!

Ooops! I forgot to mention how important it is to be masterful with 100-slide PowerPoint to bedazzle your audience, using your melodic NLP droning to tune their alpha brain waves into the subconscious need to purchase something from you. Great tips here from Don McMillan. Pay special attention to where the term 'bullet point' came from.

If you're a sales manager, then the last thing to know is that it's super important to innovate in the way you train the team. This is a cutting edge mash-up of Wizard of Oz meets Jeff Slutsky Sales Magic... strap yourself in to be entertained and educated all at the same time. Imagine the impact of immersing your team in this assault on their senses on day three of your sales kick-off. The awards night was the night before and they'll be even more receptive in their hung-over state.

Hope you laughed and as Zig Ziglar used to say, “See you at the top!”

The truth is that selling is far from easy. If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

What Do You Do... Guaranteed!?

Wow... and now backwards... WOW! I just discovered Joel Bauer on YouTube. He is a sales trainer extrordanairre. I wouldn't dare reject his business card after seeing the video embedded here. It has received 2.5 millions views and if this video doesn't make you smile... you're working too hard.

"My business card is THE tool! It took me 25 years to design and it won't fit in your rolodex... because I don't belong in your rolodex!!!" Joel Bauer

I can't say that I relate to Joel's style of delivery but maybe he could team-up with Grant Cardone to 10X the opening of every sales call with the next big thing in business cards... maybe an Adobe Flash 'pop-up' integrated within a LinkedIn profile?

A good friend of mine, John McInerney, sent me the business card of Dick Burley, aka Justin Wright. He is someone who also guarantees a whole bunch of outcomes... I certainly hope that Dick doesn't combine all of these pursuits in the one client engagement... he would make a hell of a mess.

But back to the amazing Joel Bauer... here is another one of his videos with indispensable wisdom on how to pack a suitcase for uber-effective business travel. I must now buy a jacket just like his that fits my laptop and pop-up business cards in the inside pocket... along with my hair drier, pillow and travel blanket... so handy when you're on the road. I dare you to watch this all the way to the end and then send me your top 60 travel tips.

But amidst the 'over the top' approach and advice from these sales legends, there is actually an important point to be made. Have you stopped laughing? (I laughed so hard my socks got wet). Are you ready for something serious here?

We need to be clear about 'our promise of value'. What outcomes do we deliver for those we serve?

Everyone in sales and marketing needs to stop talking about themselves, what they do and how they do it; to instead transform the approach to lead with why a conversation should matter to the buyer.

This 'why' narrative needs to be front and centre in your LinkedIn profile because 75% of buyers research the seller online and the #1 place that they find us is in LinkedIn. Is your LinkedIn profile at the standard that it needs to be to support the agenda you want to set by sharing insights that are relevant to your market? Do you show the right kind of values to attract and engage new clients? This guy has the right kind of approach.

Finally, here are the world's top 30 most innovative business cards... but none of these come close to the sheer mastery of Joe Bauer. How are you innovating your LinkedIn profile to make it stand out from the crowd?

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image: Flickr

Microsoft's LinkedIn Acquisition - What It Means

Microsoft purchased LinkedIn for a record US$26.2 billion which makes it the biggest deal Microsoft has ever done. In my view there is no product or 'solution' overlap which makes it look like a good fit but only if Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, allows LinkedIn to operate as a stand-alone business unit just as they've done with Skype.

Acquiring LinkedIn is Satya Nadella's first big play to reinvigorate Microsoft's growth but although LinkedIn's shares rose more than 45% on the news, Microsoft dropped almost 3% (Image courtesy of Bloomberg).

This is probably because Microsoft acquisitions have a mixed track record in recent times with both Nokia and Yammer (business instant messaging collaboration) failing to deliver the intended results. Skype, on the other hand, has been largely left alone to continue as the video conferencing giant... LinkedIn should be managed the same way.

Microsoft's heritage and core value offering is integrated office productivity tools and LinkedIn fits the bill while also being a mature and elegant suite of cloud applications. Approximately 420 million professionals (including recruiters, sales professionals, entrepreneurs and marketers) all use LinkedIn to manage their professional networks and careers. But where is the potential benefit for the huge number of joint LinkedIn and Microsoft customers?

Value Driver #1: Microsoft CRM (Dynamics) and LinkedIn Integration. The roles of LinkedIn versus Dynamics (Microsoft Customer Relationship Management) are fundamentally different and this is because one enables people to build both their network and opportunity pipeline, and the other manages qualified opportunities and provides the database for executing lead-nurturing and customer experience.

LinkedIn has the hearts and minds of salespeople because it helps them find the people they need to build pipeline and also the next employer to progress their career.

CRM should be the engine for managing sales process and with real-time LinkedIn data, Dynamics has the capability to do this as the 'single source of truth' about prospects and clients to manage the entire customer lifecycle for marketing, sales, services, support and finance. The very best implement CRM as a coaching platform for sales managers with their people to review opportunity qualification and discovery, call plans, relationship mapping, sales stage progression with action tracking, close/win plans, and much more... all integrated within the CRM.

LinkedIn helps build opportunity pipeline and CRM manages sales process. Integrating the two creates an accurate real-time platform to deliver game-changing customer experience for the entire interaction lifecycle.

LinkedIn and Microsoft CRM create value in their own right but together there are genuine synergies. Could LinkedIn replace CRM? This video discussed that very question and here is the transcript.

Value Driver #2: Integrated Cloud Office Productivity: Google will be watching very closely as this acquisition could enable LinkedIn's InMail adoption to skyrocket if Microsoft intelligently leverages Office365 against Gmail's cloud mail dominance. Salesforce and other CRM vendors will also be worried about this acquisition and what it means for them competitively. Real-time data within CRM is massively important. Microsoft have other cloud application capabilities that start to bring everything together. These include cloud collaboration, messaging and mail.

Image courtesy of LinkedIn.

Value Driver #3: Customer Experience Platform. Outstanding 'customer experience' (CX) is what CRM, marketing automation, business intelligence, process automation, mobile, social engagement and other technologies are meant to enable. Microsoft has assured its relevance in the CRM arena with this acquisition and also brings and new dimension to professional 'productivity', in the office and working mobile. If Microsoft 'does no harm' to LinkedIn while they carefully create a strategy to become the world's leading customer experience platform, then the result will be good for shareholders and customers alike.

The verdict. Although Microsoft is paying top price, this acquisition makes sense if they can deliver the world's leading suite of solutions for creating customer experience. CX is more important CRM... it's already the next big thing. The biggest negative for LinkedIn members is that the acquisition almost certainly means there will be more advertising on the platform as they seek to recoup their investment... let's hope that LinkedIn does not become as cluttered with ads as Facebook.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image: Source: CNBC screenshot

A.I. Salesbots Driving Sales Extinction?

This post is a reprint of an article I recently wrote for Sales Mastery Magazine and thanks Mary Poul for allowing me to reproduce here!

Advances in social media platforms and the ubiquity of mobile devices are creating disembodied engagement like never before. You only have to observe the digitally distracted herds of people wandering down the street like Brown's cows, gazing into their devices, meandering across the paths of others, clicking away in their narcissistic pursuits to see that society has changed.

Harold Diculous, Adjunct Professor of Social Anthropology and Special Assistant to Australia’s Science Minister, recently quoted a USL report highlighting that the brainwaves of pedestrians engaging in social media platforms on their smartphones are remarkably similar to sleep-walkers with both being open to suggestive behavioral stimulation. “PDSP [Physically Disengaged by Social Platform] consumers are highly susceptible to sales messages delivered in social”, said professor Diculous, “and that’s what’s driving the acceleration of advertising in Facebook and now linkedIn... which is very concerning.” Messages from social platforms bypass all filters nature has designed into human reasoning functions, implanting directly to the belief system.

While governments are considering how to legislate against the unintended consequences of social engagement platforms, tech-savvy entrepreneurs are harnessing the hypnotic power of social for commercial advantage to rid their companies of unnecessary sales overhead. the rise of ‘Dark Social’ combined with the rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be signaling the decline of the sales profession. Dark Social is the unintended consequence of interconnected social platform metadata and APIs.

In a world where most products, services and solutions are increasingly seen as commodities, differentiation has been desperately pursued by business through the ability of sales people to create relationships of trust. But even trust has become a commodity with the recent advances in Siri, Cortana and Google Now which leverage back- end AI algorithms fed by social proximity beacons, wearable devices, the Internet of things, metadata harvesting and predictive big data analytics.

According to Professor Diculous, “By linking all social platforms together through APIs and metadata tags, dark social can power AI cyber- selling.” When asked what it will mean for the selling profession, Diculous responded, “All the elements are now in place and I predict 65% of inside sales roles with be replaced by AI Cyber Sellers (AICS) by 2018. Many sales people will have to turn to burger-flipping to make a living.”

Field sellers are next in the line-of-fire. Just last month a humanoid robot named Ham drew breathtaking reactions at the Asia World Expo in Hong Kong with its lively eyebrows, wrinkled cheeks, and eyes that could follow a person around the room. Amazingly, Ham speaks in tweets that create a hypnotic trance with anyone within a three-meter radius. the robot can be programmed to leverage Dark Social influence to program listeners to buy.

Ham is designed to be an exceptional closer in sales applications and according to a discredited unnamed source, “More than half of the Fortune 500 are set to place orders this year, meaning Hanson Robotics could outsell the iWatch.”

The second generation robot will become a complete AI salesbot, traveling to customers using a Google Car to deliver Challenger insights. the bot will effectively build rapport during presentations where the audience is handicapped by PDSP (Physically Disengaged by Social Platforms), which is spreading at epidemic proportions. Customers are wide open to the salesbot’s dulcet tones that auto-suggest volume purchase orders and high Net Promoter Scores.

The article above is satire and here is the original article on the Sales Mastery website. The thing you may not know is that Ham is real! Have a look at him interacting with visitors at the Hong Kong show in early 2015.

I encourage you to subscribe to Sales Mastery Magazine and if you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' button and also share via your Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook social media platforms. I encourage you to join the conversation or ask questions so feel free to add a comment on this post. Pleasefollow my LinkedIn post page for all my articles.

Bonus content! Here is one in a series of interviews that I conducted with Professor Diculous. To see more, search his name in YouTube or click here.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main image photo by Flickr: 'Aye, Ham!': Presentan un insólito humanoide que sabe dialogar

Your Personal LinkedIn SSI Ranking Revealed!

If you want to dramatically increase pipeline and revenue then you must invest in social selling strategies, tools and techniques. Here's the proof. Independent researcher C9 Incsurveyed 36 companies and 9,000 sellers, finding that those who embraced LinkedIn's Sales Navigator tool created 7 times more pipeline and 11 times more revenue. LinkedIn themselves analyzed a cross section of new and existing sellers who increased pipeline by 45% and the probability of achieving their sales targets by 51% simply by improving their social selling index (SSI) scores using both free and paid editions of LinkedIn.

"For sales management and sales leaders; ignoring the power of social selling amounts to professional negligence."

I will provide you with a link for you to obtain your own Social Selling Index (SSI) score, where you'll receive a report just like mine in the screenshot below, but please allow me to first briefly state the case for why social selling matters.

Sales people need to become micro-marketers to build their own credentials and create opportunity pipelines. They need to engage earlier and at senior levels to create the necessary value for both the buying and selling organizations to fund their roles. Social selling techniques that focus on listening for trigger events and content publishing for attraction, education and credibility are all important but consider these points:

• Social listen dramatically reduces customer churn. 68% of the reason that customers leave is because they think you don't care (Forrester). Listening and having empathy has always been the key to resolving customer satisfaction issues. Failure to monitor where customers are communicating almost guarantees substantial brand damage with unnecessarily high churn and low Net Promoter Scores (NPS).
• Social strategies enable sellers to research and engage early in the buyer’s journey which is essential because purchasers are progressed somewhere between 57% (CEB) and 70% (Forrester) of the way through their own buying process before they invite non-preferred sellers to the table. It’s impossible to execute strategically in sales today without embracing social selling.
• Social buying is a reality with 75% of buyers doing their research online before engaging sellers (for significant purchases as published by IDC). We must be where our prospective customers are and also attract them as early as possible in order to have the opportunity to influence.
• When sales people use social well they dramatically increase their pipeline and revenue performance. Using social engagement platforms masterfully increases pipeline by 45% and the likelihood of a sales person achieving their sales target by 51% (C9 LinkedIn research). It’s not overstating the situation to say that it’s negligent for sales management not to invest in LinkedIn for their B2B sellers.
• Social publishing transforms the way people sell.  Sales people need to learn to engage earlier and more senior levels by leading with insight. Publishing blogs is the key to them honing their narrative to move away from talking about who they are, what they do and how they do it; to instead lead with why a conversation is important for the buyer and how they can assist through insight and value in delivering the client’s most important outcomes and managing the client’s risks.

Achieving a strong SSI score is about a holistic approach and content publishing contributes only 12.5% of the overall SSI score (including updates and Publisher posts).

To see how you rank in the use of LinkedIn for social selling,click here and your own report will appear.

If that does not work, ensure you are logged-in to LinkedIn and past this into a new tab: https://www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi

To understand how the SSI algorithm works and how to improve you ranking, click here. Also, this post by LinkedIn explains more. This infographic from LinkedIn reminds you why it's important.

If you've achieved a SSI score of 90 or above please let me know in the comments of this post as I am creating a honor board.

The highest SSI score I've seen is by John Dougan with 99 and he is a brilliant writer. Follow John Dougan's LinkedIn Blog here. Congratulations also to these other SSI leaders!

• Ryan Rathwell... 90
• Larry Levine... 90
• Robert Chandler... 90
• George Bronten... 91
• Thijs van der Acker... 91
• Tim Grosvenor-Jones... 91
• Joe Sienkiewicz... 91
• Tudor Saitoc... 92
• Nick Ogle... 92
• Anthony Margo... 93
• John Dougan... 99

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main image photo by : LinkedIn

Action vs. Reaction Culture

What does it mean to be truly proactive? As Elvis put it: "A little less conversation, a little more action." Are you guilty of waiting around for the phone to ring? Is it your start-up culture? Are you leaning far too much on Marketing and Demand Generation or are you going out and proactively hunting in named accounts?

Leonardo da Vinci said: "I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do."

Ask yourself, are you doing enough? Or, just chatting about it at the water cooler. This is the most insidious threat to the success of the modern sales practitioner. It goes beyond GTD or 'getting things done'. Timing is the X factor of the elite sales hunter.

Each day when you come to work, grab a pen and paper and write down the top 3 actions you will take before lunch to move the needle. Go confirm them with your manager. She will be very impressed, especially after you've done this a few days and achieved many milestones by 9am while your contemporaries are still reactively chasing e-mails.

Excessively over-planning is a cancer. One imperious executive stopped his Board in its track to build a "plan for the plan." I can't make these stories up! We don't need a deeper Gantt chart. One wrote about one CEO who doesn't believe in business plans... 90 days action plans instead. We don't need reporting on the reporting. We need brass tacks action: face time with dream clients. Call the switch, charm the EA, get to their neighborhood. Spend time with your clients understanding their pains and its implications.

The behavior of your leader is the culture. Do you work for someone that works as hard as you do. Are they phoning it in or using delegation as a proxy for action? Leaders that act decisively succeed in battle. Delegation is an action, make no mistake, but as Marissa Mayer says in interviews, she makes a list every day and if she gets to the very bottom something went wrong.

Effective action is a constant process of 80/20 prioritization. The rocks and the sand, I've written about it before. Don't spend all day with happy ears working on speculative proposals to make them letter perfect. Act now. Strategize after hours, come to work with your A game ready to execute. You can accomplish more in 3 hours than most sellers do in a day. After all, the average seller sells for about 1.5 hours per day. Why not crush it and go out to lunch! Never Eat Alone I might add: great book!

Before you go home, always make one last call. Make sure you always hit that 5 to 12 touches sweet spot in social selling or otherwise. Blend your channels together. The law of convergence holds in modern prospecting, it holds true at every aspect of the 2015 funnel – even closing. Test, tune and optimize. Ready, fire, aim!

Write your LinkedIn update and Publisher blog content at night after dinner... shoot the television just like Joshua Peters did. Blogs are not like books, publish then edit. Set 20 minutes to plan, then call. But don't waste time. Connect and set the appointment – then deep dive! The main thing is to actually know why meeting you should be important to them... can you answer these questions: Why meet with you? The follow-up is just like it: What can you do for them at a business level?

Is your culture active or reactive? What are you doing to change it? What strategies do you personally use to manage your day so that you're optimizing your output and effort? How are you proactive as a manager of other people? Please answer below.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main image photo by Flickr: Yun Huang Yong

Value Quadrant for Sales People

All sales people rate themselves highly in relationships and many regard themselves as being strategic. In truth, few operate strategically and even fewer interact at the most senior levels of power. The Value Quadrant for Professional Sales Agents is designed to highlight the four possible modes of operation and all sales people move between the quadrants during their career.

The bottom left quadrant — Transactional — represents the lowest value for all concerned. A transactional sales person can be likened to a professional visitor offering only marginal value due to their inability to differentiate or exert influence. The Transactional quadrant is the realm of commodity products or services where sales success is usually dependent on representing a strong brand. Transactional selling is most subject to price sensitivity as customers seek to drive down price for what they perceive as commodity products and services. Buyers want responsiveness to their procurement process and expect sales people to assist them in transacting with best commercial value. But because, in the Transactional quadrant, the seller is responding to client demand and participating in the buyer’s disempowering (for the seller) process of reducing price, the sales person’s role represents limited value and pays accordingly.

As a sales person progresses in their career they tend to move out of the bottom left quadrant to become either an Account Manager focused on incremental business through maintaining and developing customer relationships or they become a Business Development Manager seeking to generate new business in more competitive environments. But transactional sales people usually struggle to evolve and attempts by them to position ‘solutions’ are often perceived merely as the bundling together of products and services. More worrying is that there is often a lack of understanding from both buyer and seller concerning genuine value in the delivery of outcomes and management of associated risks. Instead there is myopic focus on features, functions and price. Although the transactional sales person may seek to use tactics and relationships to position their value or outmaneuver the competition, their limiting characteristic is dependence on recommendations from technical and middle management people well below those who set the agenda and hold real economic power.

Relationship selling (the bottom right quadrant) is important because people buy from those they like and trust; positive relationships are therefore prerequisite for success at any level. However, relationships must be built with the right people in the buying organization and as already stated, transactional/relationship sales people are usually limited by relationships with lower level and mid-tier operatives. All sales people leverage relationship skills in the role of Account Manager (bottom right quadrant) or Business Development Manager (top left quadrant) but the level of genuine influence is what actually defines the value of a relationship for the seller. On the other hand, for lower level buyers, they define relationship value by the perceived level of responsiveness and trustworthiness of the seller.

The top left Tactical quadrant is populated by Sales Executives or Business Development Managers seeking to influence the buyer’s process and requirements. Here the sales person employs tactics to differentiate and overcome the buyer’s efforts to drive down price through commoditization and competition. Sales people operating in this quadrant are usually assertive and competitive; positioning unique solutions and helping purchasers identify differentiating value. Tactical sales people also tend to suffer from being stuck with mid-tier relationships and they easily focus wrongly on features and functions.

A sales person makes a significant jump in the value they offer an employer when they move from responding to transactional demand (bottom left) to influencing the buyer (bottom right) or tactically competing (top left). The giant leap however in value for both employer and customer is achieved when the sales person operates in the top right quadrant strategically creating value for all parties. This quadrant is where buyer and seller value is balanced and where the return on investment is high for both parties. Value is maximized and price becomes less important as the focus moves to managing risks in realizing the business benefits of delivering high value outcomes.

Moving away from transactional selling into any other quadrant is often labelled ‘solution selling’. Beware of this cliché term however as ‘solution selling’ can manifest as the sales person acting like the cure looking for a disease — when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The concept of solution selling is valid but only if it is preceded by a consultative approach to understanding the actual problem that needs to be solved. Solutions are an integral part of strategic selling but no strategy can be effective without trust, value and excellence in execution.

The top right quadrant is therefore populated by the very few who operate strategically with excellence in the execution of tactics and management of senior relationships. The very best sales executives masterfully engineer business value through alignment to the seat of genuine political and commercial power within the customer organization. They recognize that demand creation is achieved through early engagement and by understanding and aligning with serious problems or opportunities. They also know that differentiation is achieved through becoming a trusted adviser with intimate understanding of the customer’s operational constraints and potential risks — internal and external — in the delivery of business value.

Being strategic is therefore evidenced by proactive demand generation with effective strategy to defeat the competition while building compelling business value.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Seongbin Im

Questions Missed By Qualification Frameworks

Qualification is an important phase of opportunity management because pursuing business you cannot win wastes precious resources and damages morale and credibility. We all suffer from a shortage of time to sell rather than a shortage of prospects in the marketplace to sell to. The best sales people seek customers with whom they can align for the creation of value. They take the time to understand how the customer defines value and risk.

There are three types of questions that need to be asked of the buyer: discovery, qualification, and ‘leads to value’. For opportunity development conversations with a prospect there is nothing better than Neil Rackham’s SPIN questioning framework. The book, SPIN Selling is a timeless ‘must read’ for every sales person but when it comes to pure qualification, there are many frameworks including:

• ANUM: Authority, Need, Urgency, Money
• BANT: Budget, Authority, Need, Time-frame
• BMANTR: Budget, Method, Authority, Need, Timing, Risks, Roadblocks
• FAINT: Funding, Authority, Interest, Need, Timeframe
• MANDACCT: Money, Authority, Need, Decision criteria, delivery Ability, Competition, Coach, Timescale
• MEDDIC: Metrics for ROI, Economic Buyer, Decision process, Decision criteria, Identify pain, Champion coach, Compelling event
• NUTCASE: Need, Unique, Timing, Cash, Authority, Solution, Enemies
• RSVP: Right Relationships, Winning strategy, Unique compelling value, strong Process Alignment
• SCOTSMAN: Situation, Competition, Basis of Decision, Timescale, Solution, Money, Authority, Need

But none of these address the most important two qualification questions of all; and these two questions must come before everything else. They are questions for the sales person:

1. Why will they buy anything at all (is ‘do nothing’ the biggest competitor)?

2. Why will they buy from us (can we positively differentiate in the mind of the buyer)?

No matter which qualification acronym you use or opportunity management tool (Miller Heiman Blue Sheets, TAS 20 questions, Battleplan, eFox, etc.), always ask these first two questions first. If you’re a sales manager, make it clear to your sales people that they don’t get any resource for deal pursuit until they can convincingly answer these two questions.

"It's not a qualified opportunity unless you believe you can win against the status quo and your rivals competing for the business"

Unless we address the ‘Do Nothing’ competitor and the critical issue of effective competitive differentiation, everything else is a potential waste of time and resources.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Marco Bellucci

CRM, SFA, and Sales Enablement. Not The Same

Customer churn is a cancer eating away at most businesses. To combat this and be truly customer-centric, you must have an effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy supported by the right CRM technology. Yet placing customers at the heart of a business is all about people, culture and processes rather than technology. Beyond client retention, businesses also need to acquire new customers and this is best driven with Sales-Force Automation (SFA), usually also from within a CRM integrated with other best of breed marketing automation and social selling tools. SFA is about bringing sales and marketing together to align with the buyer’s journey and also support sales people’s early engagement for proactive demand generation.

But here is an important distinction: CRM and SFA are actually two different things. They may be enabled by similar technologies but real sales enablement is all about methodology, process, training, coaching, playbooks, planning, profiling, research tools, insight creation, and much more. CRM success or failure has little to do with the technology you use and everything to do with how it’s implemented. Although it's true that you cannot manage what you don't measure, CRM must be implemented to serve users and customers rather than as a database for management. CRM should be a strategy and a process, rather than a product and reporting tool. The best CRM implementations therefore incorporate sales methodology integrated within an organization's specific sales processes so that sales people can be coached to ensure that tactics and actions are linked to strategy. This approach delivers best practice and accountability in the sales team.

CRM software should be where sales methodology, process and coaching all come together. The system should obsessively put customers at the heart of the organization with account managers and sales people fully equipped through a single view of everything that can be managed. This means integration with social selling tools such as LinkedIn and marketing automation tools is essential. When implementing SFA or CRM, think about the buyer’s journey and customer lifecycle… how can you support your sales people to deliver an integrated, high value experience for prospects and customers?

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo: Copyright Tony J Hughes 2014

The Seven Sins of Selling

There are certain sales behaviours that can actually damage the chances of success. Assertiveness is often interpreted by prospective purchasers as unwanted aggression. Persistence can translate into being annoying. Positive questions from the seller are usually received as rhetorical and manipulative. Focusing on features often triggers concerns with price or confirms that the seller is just not listening. The stark reality of selling is that pushing creates resistance, and assertiveness creates defensiveness. We all prefer to buy rather than being ‘sold’. Here are the seven pitfalls of B2B selling that should be avoided.

First Sin: ‘Selling is the transference of information’. Selling is actually building trust and transferring belief. Information can easily be sourced by customers without the assistance of a sales person who should actually serve to filter and distil the mass of available data down to what is relevant and benefits the client. Facts merely serve to support an emotional decision to buy from someone they like and trust. Emotion creates more influence than information.

Second Sin: ‘Talking is the best way to influence’. Only if your goal is to bore people into submission or negatively push them to your competitor. Words account for only 7% of received communication. People think at approximately 500 words per minute and you can only talk effectively at 125 per minute. You must engage the other person visually with positive and congruent body language or they will tune-out. Effective communication means asking insightful questions and actively listening to clarify your understanding and get to the deeper meaning. Listening rather than talking is actually the best way to influence.

Third Sin: ‘Features are benefits’. Not necessarily. Benefits must specifically solve acknowledged problems relating ultimately to time, money, comfort or risk. Prattling on with spurious features early in the sales process creates distracting noise and potential price concerns, preventing the buyer from focusing on the real value you offer in meeting their business needs.

Fourth Sin: ‘Objections are opportunities’. Not so. Objections actually reveal that the sales person has sought to close prematurely or that they do not fully understand the needs of the buyer. Objections are not buying signals nor are they opportunities to close. Yes, objections need to be overcome when raised but they are usually generated by amateurs. It is always better to avoid objections by first having them expressed by the client as problems before any attempt to close. Only seek commitment once you have complete understanding and the buyer’s readiness to purchase has been confirmed.

Fifth Sin: ‘The product is the product’. Not really. Selling the product, service or solution is the third and final sale in any engagement. The prospective client first needs to be sold on your worthiness (credibility) for investing their time and effort. The next thing they need to establish is trust in you and your organisation. Can they actually trust you with the information you are requesting and can they trust you to competently and ethically make recommendations in their best interests? If the first two sales are made, then selling the product, service or solution becomes very achievable once you align with their buying criteria and procurement process. The product is therefore problem resolution through the sales person. The buyer will engage effectively only once both credibility and trust have been established.

Sixth Sin: Skill and knowledge define value and success. Although these are important prerequisites, the real differentiator in the workplace and market is positive attitude and ability to influence. Knowledge and qualifications can easily create alienating arrogance and pride. People don’t care about what you know; they care about what you can do for them. This is why having a positive attitude and proven ability to deliver is crucial.

Seventh Sin: ‘Success is just a numbers game’. Work ethic is important and understanding the required activity levels for building and maintaining a sales funnel is essential. Yet the mediocre focus on being efficient in the least important activities. Be effective and avoid the busy fool syndrome. This means doing the right things, with the right people, at the right time. Yes, understand and honour the required activity levels for a healthy pipeline but progressing a prospect to becoming a customer is not about numbers; it is all about people, process and strategy.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: KungPaoCajun

Behind every great sales person is a surprised CEO

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In my first sales job, at age 25, I was crap… for a little while until I became good, then great, then the most successful person the industry had ever seen. I sold to IBM at prices 70% higher than the incumbent competition and IBM remains a customer for my old employer 25 years later. My run-rate success took 120 days and within two yearsI won the biggest deal the company had ever done. When you consider my starting point, it is staggering. I had much working against me inside my head (just lost my business, mother just died, car stolen, dog run over, relationship breakdown and family imploding, combined with a negative attitude about my new career).

A colleague once joked to someone as I walked into the pub after work: “Here’s Tony; you run a warm bath and I’ll get the razor blades.” So how did I set sales records that were never broken and make President’s Club for BellSouth globally? The answer is that a small group of people believed in me and were willing to take a chance on me. They invested their credibility, time and emotional energy. Especially my first sales manager, Keith Sutton, who invested a whole day with me on the road every week without fail. He didn't rescue me or do my job by jumping in to make the sale. He let me fail, then he debriefed me, asking great questions, coaching and mentoring me. He also sat with us at one of the workstations rather than in an office. He did this so he could hear us on the phone and he would often walk over and offer to buy me a coffee where he would chat about my technique or choice of words and questions with a prospect. My sales manager was the biggest reason for my success.

The best CEOs understand that the value of a sales manager is defined by how many hours they invest with their people in the field and the time poured into coaching on opportunities, instilling strategy and disciplined execution. But sales management is typically the weak link in the revenue chain because they become bureaucrats, administrators and CRM jockeys who spend most of their time managing-up to bosses who destroy their productivity by endlessly asking about the forecast. Who contributed most to your success?… track them down and say ‘thank you’.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Flazingo Photos

5 Topics That Sellers Should Write About

Every real profession demands that its members read to remain relevant. Their members research topics including the latest trends, industry obligations, case studies and research findings. Those within their ranks who are respected most are the ones who develop insights, achieve the best results and publish their findings.

Don't claim to be a professional and then tell me you don't read... you're joking, right?

According to CEB research, 95% of buyers expect insight from the seller. Yet Forrester Research highlights that 85% of sellers fail to meet buyer expectations while CEB research found that 86% of sellers fail to differentiate in the mind of the buyer. We clearly have a problem but it can be solved when sales people embrace imperative to write within the guidelines of their company and with management and marketing serving as editors.

If you want to transform the way you sell, commit to reading and then writing. Don't just read about how to sell, also read about the issues that impact your clients. Researching and writing is the best possible sales training a person can have because it forces the individual to go deep and test assertions while creating their own authentic narrative.Here is why sales people need to write but...

Should sales people write or 'curate' content during office hours or selling time? ... No!

Sales people should instead invest 30 minutes a day in their own time, before or after work, for career development. They should also work closely with their marketing department and manager to ensure quality, leverage tools, and be aligned with corporate messaging and policies. There are two types of content publishing:

1. Content curation. This is where you work with other people's content and publish Updates via LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or other social platforms in which your clients and target market monitor and engage.
2. Content Authoring. This is where you create your own blog posts or articles that demonstrates insight and value for your target market. It is also how you evidence your credentials and set the agenda with those whom you seek to engage.

Content publishing is important because 75% of buyers use social media to research sellers before engaging (Source: IDC) and 74% of buyers choose the seller who first provides insight and value (Source: Corporate Visions). It begs the question: What do people see when they find you online? Do they see a sales person's CV or do they see a warm professional person offering insight and value?

Go beyond the basics of personal branding to also attract and engage with content

Content Curation

'Content curation' is the process of working with other people's content where you add brief commentary and then share with your network. Your goal is follow those who are relevant for your target market and then become the 'forager for the tribe' as David Meerman-Scott says. Everyone is busy and you can provide value by being a content aggregator where your market can simply follow you to see content from dozens of sources they don't have time to research individually themselves.

Who are the journalists, bloggers, analysts and industry leaders that your market audience follows and respects? By attaching yourself to these personal brands you elevate your own, and by sharing their content with short additional insights and commentary you can create value for those who follow you. From this list, highlight the individuals with substantial following within your target market whose followers you would like to become your own. Who has substantial following within your target market?

The above format is my simple way of recording the details of those who can provide you with valuable content to then share with your network. Hootsuite or Buffer are excellent technologies for easily creating a scheduling content to be automatically published at the best times. 

5 Topics to Inspire Content Creation

We need to publish content write about what interests our audience instead of projecting our 'value proposition' or factoids about our company, product or service. Importantly, we must be clear about who we are targeting with our content and here are content categories that sales people and marketers can use to create blog articles to write that attract and engage clients.

1. Your customer’s fears and concerns (competition, disruption, etc.). Without writing from a negative perspective: What are the risks that your customers face? What competitive risks that worry them? How are they being 'disrupted' by technology, changes in the economy or legislation, agile competitors, off-shoring, etc. These topics and more can be the subject of posts you write
2. Insights from research data that impacts your customer’s world. Search and subscribe to analysts that comment of your customer's industry or the trends that impact them.
3. Blind Case studies evidencing how things can be improved. Every sales person needs to be masterful at telling powerful true stories of how their customers solved problems, created business cases, managed change and delivered transformation. Even if the client won't do an official case study or testimonial, it can be written by the sales person and attributed along the lines of: One of my clients shared some insights with me recently concerning how they ....
4. Objection neutralizers that positively position and set the agenda. As an example, I work with a client in the recruiting industry and a common objection is: 'I'm too busy meet but if you have a candidate then send me their CV'. I've coach recruitment sales people to write posts along the lines of: How 20 minutes saves 12 hours and dramatically reduces hiring risk. Skills, experience and qualifications are easy to screen but cultural fit is where the greatest risk resides in a hiring decision. List all of your common objections such as 'I'm too busy', 'We have an incumbent supplier', 'You're too expensive', etc and write about why that is the very reason they should meet you.
5. Newsjacking topical events to create interest. When Harrison Ford crash-landed his plan on a Californian golf course, I had this post up within 90 minutes.

Trigger events are excellent opportunities for both content creation and initiating contact with potential buyers. What events provide potential opportunities to improve your own customer service, intercept competitor customers, or engage potential clients early in their buying process? In the mind of the buyer, trigger events create awareness of opportunity or need and can amplify perceptions of pain. These events can motivate people to take action to change the status quo? Trigger events can include changes in personnel, a major scandal, legislative changes, new compliance obligations, products going ‘end of support’, suppliers being acquired or dropping the ball, competitor staff leaving or retiring, new leaders coming into the organization. My worksheet below is ideal for identifying trigger events and establishing the best way to monitor.

Sales people should work with their marketing team to formulate strategy, select the right tools and secure the right levels of training and support to build their individual sales pipelines. Here are my tips for going beyond content curation (working with other people's content) and writing your own material that sets you apart as a sales person:

1. Identify your audience and then write for the one person or role you are seeking to influence. This makes it targeted, personal and on point.
2. Be clear in your own mind about why your message is important and what you want them to do about. But avoid any call to action that overtly seeks to sell or paints you as a salesperson.
3. Create a catchy headline (think like a newspaper editor).
4. Use an eye-catching picture that has an abstract relationship to your topic. Honor copyright by using 'common use license' images and attribute source, or use your own photos.
5. Have an opening that hooks, a body that informs and a close that motivates or inspires. Deliver insight rather than mere information.
6. Aim for 700 words and don't ramble. Longer is okay and some of my best posts with more than 220,000 reads have well over 1500 words.
7. Create back-links to other content but never use click-bate to take people to another site where they have to complete forms or register to view content.

If you don't read, then you're not a professional. If you can't write, then you can't sell because you are incapable of building a strong personal brand online that shows insight and attracts clients.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Joe Flood Follow Writing = Breathing

The Test For Assessing Sales Aptitude

I’m giving you my sales aptitude test linked here absolutely free but I encourage you to first read this advice. I’ve been in professional selling for more than 3 decades and during that time I’ve been a sales rep, sales manager, sales director of public companies, and Managing Director of my own businesses and also for the Asia-Pacific region of global operations. I've written a best selling book on sales leadership and I teach sales master classes for the MBA program at the University of Technology Sydney.

You’d think I would be masterful at hiring the right sales people. But I have a confession to make – it’s incredibly difficult!

What defines the right sales person and how do you screen-out those who look good but can't deliver? Once you’ve got a short-list, how do you get past the masterful façade being projected? How do you differentiate the candidates and find those with the right attitude and values? I’ve written about the importance of cultural fit and how to best execute a job interview but for the employer or recruitment consultant, how do you uncover the truth about their capabilities, values, and weaknesses?

Without doubt, the biggest mistake a manager can make is to hire the wrong person. This is because it damages your own personal brand and wastes huge amounts of time and emotional energy in managing the person out. It also has devastating consequences on revenue and lost momentum. Finally, it can also damage corporate relationships in the market-place. Never hire the best of the bunch. Only hire the right person – the one you feel strongly will be successful in the role and fit within your team culture. Here is what I regard as the best process for hiring and also rules that should never be broken if you are committed to managing risk.

Go beyond the job description and qualifications. Forget generic job descriptions! Instead write an ad that talks about what the person is expected to do and how they will need to execute. Ask them to write a one-page letter, attaching their CV, highlighting why they are the ideal candidate to join your team. Don't accept something that merely plays back the advertisement and obviously reject those who do not have prerequisite qualifications and experience. Does their CV provide evidence of consistent high performance? Have they been with past employers for sustained periods of time? Do they possess the necessary qualifications and experience?

Progressive screening to qualify out. Now that you have an initial group of candidates who have the necessary qualifications and responded as requested; it’s all about a progressive qualification process to continually screen down to a short-list.

Can they write? If they could not write a good letter (structure, grammar and spelling) or failed to do basic research and adapt their pitch, then reject them immediately. The covering letter and CV should also have been tailored to show relevancy for the role. You don't want a generic sales person and neither do your prospects and customers. Seriously, this is important because if you hire someone with poor written communication skills, you will forever be editing or rewriting proposals or correspondence – you don't have time. Worse than this, they will submit losing proposals that miss the mark with prospects. In complex B2B selling, written skills are essential.

LinkedIn social proximity. LinkedIn is phenomenally powerful and it is likely that you know someone who knows someone who knows your candidate. Use your network to check the candidate out informally. Do it as an ‘off the record’ conversation, nothing official. Ensure the conversation is nuanced and that you pick-up the subtext of commentary about the individual. None of these conversations should be with a formal referee listed on the CV and certainly not with their current employer.

Psychometric Testing. The next step is to conduct psychometric testing (intelligence and operating style) and personality profiling (if not incorporated into previous). Here is something controversial: I don't hire amiable personalities for business development roles – they have no chance of executing concepts such as Challenger Selling. Anyone who has a personality that avoids conflict or tension will be high maintenance and struggle to execute – you will forever be pushing them. The HR department will not like this, nor will they be in favour of informal ‘social proximity’ conversations but you cannot afford to get the hiring decision wrong, and you must take all necessary steps remove risk from the hiring process.

Written Exercise. Can they write under pressure? Before you run your ad, take the time to create a realistic sales scenario with a two page brief supported by a subset of your marketing collateral. This should be tailored for the sales role (field sales versus inside sales versus pre-sales / solution architects). Only give the candidates 24 hours to respond. For a business development role, ask them to write a two page executive summary that would lead a formal proposal. You’re looking to see whether they can construct a relevant, concise, professional, logical, evidence-based letter that focuses on business value rather than features of your company or functions of your product, service or solution.

The Interview. This is where you are laser-focused to determine cultural fit. They have already demonstrated that they have the skills and qualifications to do the job but now it’s all about their values, work ethic, attitude and personality. Put them under pressure and ask them to provide real examples of how they’ve dealt with difficult situations. Ask them these kinds of questions: 

• How do you define ‘strategic selling’ – what do you do that makes you ‘strategic’?
• What was your biggest loss and what did you learn?
• How do you qualify an opportunity?
• What was your biggest win and how did you create value and manage risk?
• What’s your approach for building pipeline and how do they leverage LinkedIn and other social platforms and tools for monitoring and research?
• What are the professional development books you’ve read in the last 12 months?

Integrity trap. If the candidate comes from a competitor, ask them what they can bring to role beyond their skills and experience. Ask them what IP they possess that can help them accelerate their success. If they say anything other than their insights, domain expertise and relationships; don't hire them. Anyone who offer to bring a contact database, pipeline report, or any other private and confidential information belonging to your competitor will most likely do the same to you when they leave. Integrity is everything – yours and theirs. There are also obvious legal issues you could become embroiled in. Your personal and corporate reputation is everything so reject anyone who shows poor moral judgement.

Reference checking. Never delegate reference checking and never make it an afterthought. Always select the people you want to talk with rather than the ‘buddies’ listed as referees on the candidates CV. You know they will say nice things and report back to the candidate afterward. Instead select the most senior contact of a large deal they won, or a senior contact with their biggest channel partner. The hiring manager (the person who the candidate will directly report to) must do the reference checks personally, over a coffee if possible rather than a phone call.

Hiring the wrong person is the biggest mistake you can make. It will cause you enormous pain and damage your own career. When in doubt about a candidate, don’t hire them. Wait, be patient, get it right. If you use a recruitment consultant, make them earn their fee by ensuring they understand your culture and that they define value in fewer CVs rather than more CVs. Don’t let them bombard you with marginal candidates or send you anyone that is not both technically and culturally qualified. The very best recruitment consultants work with a ‘less is more’ ethos and invest the time with you to understand your culture.

I promised you a free Sales Aptitude Test for complex B2B selling and here it is... Click the image below.

I won't use your email address to market to you – no spam. The self-assessment takes approximately 50 minutes but there is no time limit. Upon completion, summary scores are provided for the following seven competencies in professional selling:

1. Sales Process
2. Communication
3. Knowledge, Attitude and Skill
4. Opening
5. Closing
6. Objections
7. Opportunity Development

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Quinn Dombrowski - A bizarre job interview

"Confidence, the feeling you have just before ..."

It matters how we define words. This definition of confidence [the feeling you have just before you understand the situation] was instilled by my flying instructor and saved my life. Be positively paranoid: "Where will you land if you lose the engine?”, he would ask as he killed the throttle.

I was a pioneer in the ultralight movement and learned to fly in a single seat aircraft but when I bought an aerobatic biplane I thought I should get some formal training. I went solo in Cessna 152 in club record time (6.3 hours) because I could already fly. I crashed my biplane more than 27 years ago. The undercart was ripped away, the lower wing spars snapped, the engine mounts shattered; but it was a successful landing after an engine failure above the pine forest in the background. I'll write a detailed post about this incident later as it has many lessons for business and professional selling.

He taught me a little bit about the skill of flying and a huge amount about my attitude. I’ve carried these lessons into professional selling and business. I’m always ‘positively paranoid’ about what could go wrong in a sale. I’m not negative but I’m constantly thinking about things such as, ‘what happens if my key relationship leaves?’ or ‘what’s going on politically?’ or ‘what’s the competition up to in my account?’ or ‘what are their internal options?’ or ‘could their funding change?’ or ‘what could wrong with their process?’

The best sales professionals manage risk for themselves and their customers. Hope is not strategy. Planning, preparation and masterful execution are the hallmarks of a pro. Look at the top 3 deals in your forecast right now; do you really deserve to be confident? Don’t worry about things outside your control but what risks can you positively manage.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Bill Larkins

Suicide & The Workplace — Sales Career Truth

Natasha David worked for me ten years ago as Marketing Manager in a technology company where I was Managing Director. One morning I received a call... her husband had died and was in his late twenties. "I'm so, so sorry Tash... what happened?" an awkward silence followed. How do you talk about a loved one who commits suicide? How do you cope with the feelings of guilt about failing to save them or not being close enough to recognize what was about to happen? I felt paralyzed but we did our best to give her all the space and time she needed to be able to manage.

One in five people will suffer from mental illness this year... all of us work with people who suffer from depression, anxiety or other disorders.

Many questions and emotions swam around in my head in the months following this experience. Two years earlier in the same company where Natasha lost her husband, our Professional Services Manager lost his 20 year old son to Leukemia. There was a dramatic relapse just days from the twelve month anniversary of cancer treatment when he would be officially pronounced as being in remission. It was heart wrenching to witness let alone live through. We also supported him by removing all work pressure and providing complete flexibility on full pay for as long as he needed. Without any fuss, his team rallied and covered all work demands. He slowly re-joined work and we were able to tentatively talk about his son with him. There would be stilted conversations and tears but it was okay... all part of the process of creating a meaningful life without his beloved son as well as honoring his son’s memory.

For friends and colleagues, what is the boundary between showing care and prying into someone's personal life when they suffer loss or are seeking to deal with their own demons of depression or other mental illness? Is the workplace somewhere the grieving person goes to escape or can it be a place of healing? Is the workplace where those with invisible disabilities come to hide and deny or can they be accepted and respected?

Suicide seems to be different... a social taboo with stigma attached to the death of a loved one. I never did manage to have a conversation with Natasha; just a few hugs and as much workplace support as I could provide. She withdrew and coped in her own way... I did the same when I lost my mother at 25 – it was at times a dark lonely place. After losing her husband to suicide Natasha was pulled into a dark void and checked herself into hospital where she had a profound realization that can save lives …

The Life Saving Truth: "Suicide only transfers the pain to everyone else."

This something we should all share with anyone we think is in a bad place with depression or other mental health issues. Natasha is one of the most courageous people I have met and she is about to publish her book, Marrying Bipolar. It provides amazing insight for anyone wanting to understand mental illness. Winston Churchill described depression as the black dog but it is far more complex than applying labels.

Natasha decided that if she was to push on, she would make it the best life she could live. She has done exactly that and her book will make a difference in many lives. I'll be at Natasha's book launch at Dymocks in Sydney on April 1st (no joke) and you can sign up for the event here or pre-register for her book, Marrying Bipolar, here.

Natasha's story shows the devastating impact for those around someone suffering from mental illness but what if you are directly managing or working with someone who has a mental illness? I've managed sales people for many years and I am sensitive to the tell-tale signs. I have a personal experience with mental illness as the son and then the business partner of a bi-polar father. Others in my family also suffer from mental illness but I thank God not my wife, children or me.

Professional selling is brutal... it is not for the faint-hearted. High levels of emotional intelligence (EQ), business acumen, strong work ethic and resilience are all essential. I've seen sales people battle through massive highs and devastating lows, damaging the very relationships they need to succeed, going troppo on drugs and alcohol, going missing for days until they emerge from their dark fog.

All this raises two important questions for sales leadership:

1. Does selling attract those who are inadequately equipped to cope with the demands of the role?
2. What can sales leaders do to help and manage those in their teams that suffer from a mental illness?

1. Does selling attract people who are poorly equipped psychologically?

The research has evidenced that mental illness does not discriminate by ethnicity, age, gender or career choice (Meadows, Farhall, Fossey, Grigg, McDermott & Singh, 2012). Throughout my professional career, the most common mental condition I have encountered in sales people is bi-polar. This term used to be identified as manic-depression and both are apt descriptions for the huge mood swings that can damage relationships with clients, staff and partners. On top of this they require persistent, consistent management therefore consuming disproportionate amounts of a manager's time and energy. Although anyone with a disability ̶ physical or mental ̶ can be a productive and valued member of a team, they need to find the right job position, have a supportive manager and work environment.

The biggest mistake a manager can make is to hire the wrong person and the second biggest mistake they make is holding onto staff that need to be moved on.

This sounds very harsh but it's a truth all managers must face. The best way to do so is with empathy and compassion in seeking to help people work in roles that best suit them. A lack of compassion combined with relentless pressure and judgment exacerbates the risks and highlights a sales manger’s poor values or interpersonal skills.

Selling is one of the toughest jobs; for anyone to sustain success they need the following attributes:

• Resilience: The ability to cope with rejection and disappointment amidst relentless pressure to perform and deliver results
• Emotional Intelligence (EQ): The ability to truly understand your personal strengths and weaknesses while being able to read people and politics
• Good work ethic: The discipline and ethos of doing what it takes rather than your best by committing the required time and energy in paying attention to every detail
• Curiosity and intelligence: Beyond being smart, this is also being obsessed about the customer's world, how results can be delivered and how risks can be managed
• Insight and domain knowledge: Specialization in an area that matters to the customer with you being able to provide genuine insight to the people who make decisions.

Track record, qualifications and work history are easy to validate. Every hiring manager needs to go beyond these and be clear about what defines a 'cultural fit' for sales people by evaluating candidates against the above criteria.

2. What can we do to fulfill our duty of care for those who are struggling?

Make no mistake; leadership carries a burden both morally and legally. We have a duty of care to those we employ and to those with whom we share our lives. We need to create person-centered cultures rather than toxic performance-based furnaces. I've written previously about two contrasting corporate cultures (love vs greed) and we need to create environments where work has purpose, value and respect for those around us.

A healthy workplace is a community where employees are valued members of a team rather than mere units of production. Where relationships are real and the corporate values play out in the positive behavior of the leaders.

We need to ask people if they are okay and really mean it. The best way to create a high performance culture is to be authentic about delivering value for clients and building relationships of trust and respect. Executing this requires leaders who are the real deal and able to rally people to their cause; yet becoming a great leader in an inside job rather than projecting a persona.

Capitalism without compassion is commerce without a soul. We all want to make a positive different in the lives of others but not everyone can be a winner who stands on the podium in first place. Great leaders embrace diversity and leverage individual strengths within teams. As a leader, seek balance and value individuals as people who have their own fears and shortcomings as they pursue their aspirations. Have the courage to talk with an employee or colleague about how they are really going with genuine empathy.

Ask 'how are you going... really?' Then listen like you've never listened before. Everyone needs to be heard. Everyone needs someone who cares and believes in them.

For more on this important topic, please read The Darker Side of Selling by my good friend Bernadette McClelland. She provides three examples of the unhealthy pressure and destructive behaviors that plague many sales environments.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Reference: Meadows, G., Farrell, J., Fossey, E., Grigg, M., McDermott, F., & Singh, B. (2012). Mental Health in Australia: Collaborative community practice (3rd ed.). South Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Jo Christian Oterhals My heart burns there too