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Did Someone Say Kiss This Guy

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Posted on 18th August 2010 by Jade Handy in At Your Best |Persuasion |Selling Language

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Single channel communication can sink your ship, if you don’t know how to send clear signals. Don’t Let Your Communication Skills Sink Your Ship by Tom Vander Well reminded me of this lesson. Thanks.

Here’s the actual lesson.

Just like when someone is blind, the other senses pitch in to help when communication is limited to certain channels, e.g. lack of visual senses leans on auditory senses. In the process, they become more developed and more sensitive. So, it’s not just more overtime they’re putting in.

Similarly, when you are persuading on the phone, the other person’s auditory senses heighten and amplify your auditory messages.

So, all the submodalities of sound, including your voice, volume, intonation, pitch, pace, speed, rhythm, resonance and alliteration, amongst many other qualities, take on whole new meaning.

The length of your sentences. The timing of your breaths. The number of words.

All of these qualities and much much more are taken into account when your brain is searching for meaning and coming up with what ever is there and putting it all together in a formula outside of but including the actual words you’re using to create the meaning you are attempting to create so that the number of messages being sent multiply by quatum leaps which is why it’s even more important to have your purpose in mind clear as a bell before you even open your mouth and say, “This makes sense on some level.”

So, the next time someone like Jimi Hendrix in a Purple Haze says, “Excuse me while I kiss the sky,” you get it.

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Photo Credit: YouTube, silly

Go Gary Vee

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Posted on 23rd July 2010 by Jade Handy in At Your Best |Coaching

I wasn’t aware of Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library) until I came across this YouTube video.  It impressed me enough to spontaneously post on it.  Watch it to see if it will do the same for you.
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Good Stuff? I thought so…

Employ Through Simulations

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Posted on 23rd March 2010 by Jade Handy in At Your Best |Peak Performance

Dave Stein has written a solid post on Why You Should Employ Simulations For Sales Hiring.   

I, too, am a big fan of simulations for hiring.  Unless the new hire’s job will be interviewing other people, the traditional interview doesn’t reveal all the important information about how a prospect persuades. Maybe you’re thinking, “I shouldn’t have to.”

I’ll never forget when I was in college.  There was a very successful local office supplies store (sounds past tense, but only because the owners sold out for boo koo bucks!).  It was well-known that the interview, in order to get a sales job, entailed selling the 3 bigwigs a pencil.  They were no push-overs.  And, a pencil?! Egad!

I often ran scenarios through my mind how I would answer that request…  I would start something like this, “So you are interested in buying a pencil.” 

Simulations sound like a good idea.  And they are.  Worth the time and expense?  To get the right person, yeah! (thinking Dumb and Dumber here, Lloyd: Mock! Harry: Yeah!  Lloyd: Ing! Harry: Yeah! Lloyd: Bird! Harry: Yeah!) Now reread this paragraph where it says…”to get the right person, yeah!”  Much funnier.

Back to simulations.  Not only for sales positions, though.  Most companies are asking scenario-based questions, but how many are putting the prospective employee in as-real-to-life-as-possible situations in order to track their stress response?  You do want to know how they handle stress, don’t you?  As well as, their natural tendencies. 

“Sell me this pencil” is better than “Tell me about a time when you…” is better than “How would you sell me this pencil?” is better than “What’s you’re selling style?” is better than “Are you a good sales person?”  You can ask someone how they react to being scared, or you can pop out from behind the door and “BOO!”

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Do you want imitation crab or the real thing?  -Jade Handy (#repeater for you Twitterers)

The actor apes a man –at least in shape; The opera performer apes and ape.”  -Ambrose Bierce ( #repeater for you Twitterers)

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fun3/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

The Right Watch, It Makes a Difference.

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Posted on 22nd March 2010 by Jade Handy in At Your Best |Persuasion

I have been watching blog posts roll through my Google Reader lately.  And two posts caught my attention.  They both have to do with watches.  Why watches?  I have no idea.  Why not suites, shoes, or head bands?

In The Wrong Watch.  What are you communicating?, Mari Pat Varga pulls a Three Bears approach to watch what your wearing, doing and communicating.  Under-qualified, overqualified and just plain out of touch.  Don’t let this be you, read the article and take heed.

In What Do You Know About Her? , Sales Posse drills it down.  Pictured is a neck down photo of a business woman wearing a gold stopwatch. With the following comments.  “Watches display power. The larger the watch, the more power. Notice the three buttons on the side. One probably serves as a stop watch, so she may wear it for athletic events as well.”  But, personally, I think it just says she doesn’t know how to wear what looks good!  Just wear what looks good.  If you don’t know, watch and replicate what you see people you respect wearing.

Coincidentally, the morning of the day I found these posts, I tweeted “Something’s going to dominate someone’s impression of you. -Simple, but not simpler”  I kid you not!

I can’t say this is what every trainer should be doing. I was at a seminar in Orlando just a few years ago now.  My friend, Robert, and I were just walking into Universal Studios.  I stopped in the surfer shop right there as you enter.  I told him I wanted to stop in and look at watches.  Normally I don’t go jewelry shopping with other men, but I did this time.  He tells me about a time he was meeting with a C-level lady for a sales appointment.  He said the lady asked him about his watch.  She said he was the first guy with real style in watches, so she bought his training program.  Next thing you know, I’m the one walking out with the most expensive watch I have ever bought!  I’m a sucker for watches, anyways, but to hear about an ROI on one, just more justification on the cake!

Hey!?  Bad decision or big impression?  Later that night, we were at Pat O’Brien’s® in Universal CityWalk® and a gal from a Colorado-based finance company commented on my watch and next thing you know we are talking about her bringing me into her company.

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You never get a second chance to make a first impression.  -Author unconfirmed

Outside of a dog, a watch is man’s best friend. Inside a dog, it’s too dark to tell time.  -Groucho Marx

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29225114@N08/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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