Success Tips Newsletter

In this issue: How you come across is a hidden factor in winning sales

How I "come across?" How does that affect my ability to market and sell?

Who am I in the world? We ask people this question in many of our Performance Leadership Group workshops (www.performanceleadershipgroup.com). Every answer we hear is both right and wrong. Here is why I say that.

The workshop participants suggest all sorts of things that they are in the world. What we ask them to consider is that, for all practical purposes, in marketing, sales and leadership, we are what other people say we are.

Ouch. Personally I don't like to hear that at all. Please read on. This is powerful.

You and I have an idea of who we are. Sometimes that idea agrees with how others see us. Often it does not.

A Story:

One sales representative found, when he overheard a conversation at a client's office, that people in that office felt like he always put them down in subtle ways. He asked his wife. Sheepishly, she agreed that it was a consistent habit of his. She hadn't said anything, because she didn't want to hurt his feelings.

He started recording some of his phone conversations with pipeline prospects and customers. When he listened to the recordings later with his wife, he felt ill. He was consistently playing one-up on everyone and being slightly negative about everyone he was talking with.

He wasn't sure why he had gotten into doing this. He did admit that while it sometimes made him feel superior to do what he had been doing, he could see he was paying a steep price for that fleeting feeling.

This sales rep quit putting people down and his sales soared. This rep's little indulgence at feeling superior had been costing him tens of thousands in lost income.

How we come across to others: our reputations, the stories others tell about us, and so on, are who we are in the world, to others. Sadly perception is reality when it comes to how others act in relation to us. How could it be otherwise?

Whether it's true or not, is, of course, not the point. How you come across, the stories your behaviors inspire, are, for all intents and purposes, the "truth" about you that others operate on. Make them feel put down and they get even with you by not buying. Even if you have the best product.

For most people, just recording some of your calls, and listening to them with a loved one who will tell you the truth, might be all the insight you need to stop coming across in ways that hurt sales. Others might want to go into it more thoroughly.

I don't have a class or book to offer you about this yet. However, If you feel that coming across differently might enhance your ability to achieve results in your business, you can check out the new six-week, 90- minutes-a-week tele-class, entitled "Enhancing Organizational Performance."

This class is for leaders and is all about the foundation skills necessary to consistently come across well and get results through others. I suspect it will be a revelation if coming across well is important to you and your sales performance.

Every day, people buy inferior products from the person who is superior at coming across best. I'll cover the major dimensions of the issue over the next four weeks in this newsletter.

Each week in August, I will cover one of the fundamental areas that can affect how you come across, beyond just the "dress for success" stuff.

This will be truly-advanced stuff that I have never shared with anyone before, outside of my www.performanceleadershipgroup.com clients in the Global 2000.

We will cover the following areas that affect how you come across:

• How human nature can make us come across poorly.
   

• How a few simple words can help us come across infinitely more successfully.
   

• The listening filters that make it difficult for us to come across well.
   

• The number one key to coming across effectively.

Monday newsletters will cover topics about coming across. Thursday newsletters will be the same as always: About how to succeed in business, via better marketing, sales, and execution.

Please take a minute to do me a favor:  Refer this newsletter to any of your friends and associates who might benefit from reading it. Helping those you care about to come across as they intend, is a real gift.

Thanks,

Eric

 PS: I do have an advanced offering on how to make your business, service, or product come across at its best, most understandable and most actionable. It's called the Marketing Fast Track program. This program is simply one of the best ways available today to dramatically improve your ability to get and keep more customers.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Albertson
Portland OR
August 6, 2007 

eric@succeedinginbusiness.com

(503) 635-2319

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