Potential customers may either have expressed or unexpressed needs
Types of customer needs
There are two types of sales situations, each requiring a different sales approach:
- expressed needs — Customers have defined their needs and are searching for suppliers that can fulfill those needs.
- unexpressed needs — Customers are either unaware of their needs, or are ignoring those needs because they don’t know…
How to save yourself time and confusion
There are several steps you can take to ensure your business meetings are a success. You need to circulate all the pertinent information to the meeting participants ahead of time, and prepare the room before the meeting. In addition, to perfect your meeting process, you need to plan for follow-up.
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Your big issues might not look so important when you consider them next to your whole life
Using a life chart
Have you ever taken time out to take a long, hard look at your life? By stopping to review all aspects of your life, you can take the first step to addressing imbalance, and move toward leading a more energizing life.
A life chart can help you to take this…
Spark that elusive creative genius
Okay, you’ve clarified the purpose and objectives, and decided a meeting is necessary. Now who should you invite? Having the right people there can make all the difference to the success of your meeting.
Cross- functional or problem-solving
In some cases, it’s obvious who should be there — a finance staff meeting, for example…
Why 20% of causes may account for 80% of effects
Have you ever noticed that sometimes your team’s hard work doesn’t have quite the impact you had expected? Or maybe a small effort from your team had a much greater effect on your goal than you had anticipated.
You might expect that all your team’s efforts would have the same…
How to achieve operational improvements, better employee performance, and a more positive work environment
1. The impact of staff turnover
In any organization, some staff turnover is natural. For example, people may retire, decide to change careers, or go back to college. But when top performers or critical employees depart their jobs — especially if this is happening often — you need to start worrying.
Like other employees, talented employees…
On brainstorming, interviewing, documentation reviews, root cause identification, checklist analysis, and Delphi techniques
What is a risk?
Risks are inevitable in most business environments. Many organizations constantly face threats that come about because of technological changes, market volatility, and regulatory changes.
But what exactly is risk? Risk can be described as the combination of the likelihood and severity of an event. …
Focus on the customer’s problem, be well prepared, and build the customer’s trust
To be effective in the solution selling approach, you need to adhere to three important principles.
1. Focusing on the problem
Solution selling is “problem-centric” — with the customer’s main challenge or business need — also called a “pain point” — as the focus.
Pain points could include:
- declining product sales increasing input costs,
- inefficient…
How to prevent problems from arising during your meetings and increase your odds for success
Have you ever been to a meeting where the room was too hot or the lights were too bright? Have you ever had to wait too long for the audiovisual equipment to be set up? How did you feel?
An ideal meeting environment is one in which all the participants…
On planning, reviewing, nonurgent tasks, and buffering
The management guru, Peter Drucker, recommends that executives get a firm grip on their discretionary time. …
