Top Executive Coaching with Tony Mayo

Bad presentation–or resistant audience?

In November of 2007, I was in San Diego attending a weekend training for coaches. A breakout sessions was led by the author of one of the best-known books on coaching. It is a good book and I was very eager to attend. He gave the ninety minute workshop six times over two days–I was in a morning session on day two.

The author struck me immediately as irritated, aggressive, and arrogant. His opening seemed vague and rambling and his responses to questions were not pertinent. People were shaking their heads and looking at each other. Coaches are a fairly supportive audience but in the first fifteen minutes five of the thirty people walked out, one while the author was responding (elliptically) to his question! I decided to Read the rest of this entry »

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Sales Skills for Top Managers Podcast

A conversation with executive coaching client Ron Dimon. Part 8

This latest podcast is part eight of a funny and practical conversation between top executive coach Tony Mayo and his longtime client Ron Dimon. Ron is an expert on the use of information by executives of large organizations. Listen as two experienced business people play with useful ideas in this episode including:

• Boost your sales by employing Tony’s insight into the related power of affinity and similarity.
• Why it is important to sell to people rather than persuade positions.
• The proper roles of laughter, emotions, product knowledge in sales.
• How and why Tony refused a check for $250,000.
• It is not what you say that makes the sale,
  it is what you hear!

Just click here and either listen through your computer or subscribe through iTunes to have this and all new episodes placed on your device as they become available.

You may also set up an automatic “feed” to non-Apple devices by using this link: click here for other devices.

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Could a simple five-minute interaction with another person dramatically increase your weekly productivity?

…

employees who know how their work has a meaningful, positive impact on others are not just happier than those who don’t; they are vastly more productive, too. … “Even minimal, brief contact with beneficiaries can enable employees to maintain their motivation,” the researchers write in their paper, titled Impact and the Art of Motivation Maintenance: The Effects of Contact with Beneficiaries on Persistence Behavior, published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

…

the one-two punch of knowing the beneficiary’s needs and meeting him in person generated the largest impact on motivation.

 

–The Art of Motivating Employees
Knowledge@Wharton

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I assume that you already know and do not need to be convinced that:

• Your most profitable sales and easiest growth come from existing clients.¹
• Unhappy customers are 5-20 times more likely to tell others about their bad experience than satisfied customers are to spread good news.²

A simple, high-return method of learning from your happy and unhappy customers, of knowing your customers better while making them more loyal to you is to listen to them. Customers are people and people love being listened to.

There are many ways to do this. I hope your Read the rest of this entry »

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I hesitate to share the details of my first breakthrough in selling because I once thought I was the only salesperson with this problem and, to put it bluntly, the reason for the problem makes me look like a jerk. What follows may be of no use to you because you’re probably one of the people who learned this in kindergarten or before.

Years ago, my business was deteriorating fast for lack of customers. One of my suppliers offered to become my sales coach to get me through the slump. She was a very effective salesperson, so I eagerly agreed. She had me demonstrate my pitch (I was still doing pitches in those days, but that’s another story.). She then tried repeatedly to alter my approach. I kept missing the point and she kept trying to make it simpler and more basic, searching for some fundamental, common ground where we could meet and communicate. She was running out of ideas and we were both low on patience.

I sensed a shift as she willed herself back from the brink of exasperation. Phyllis relaxed her shoulders, leaned toward me, and said, brightly, in her most charming southern accent, “Tony, do you like people?”

I knew the right answer, but it is foolish to lie to your coach, so I replied, “No, Phyllis, mostly I don’t.”

She was astonished into a rare silence. She sank back into her chair for support and appraised me cautiously, as if confronting a strange and dangerous beast. “Tony,” she asked, “why Read the rest of this entry »

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I was near the desk at my health club when I overheard a woman ask the attendant if anyone had found a book she had forgotten earlier. The attendant said she had seen it by the exercise bikes, but now it was gone. The member said, “If you had brought the book to ‘Lost & Found’ I would have it now.”

The attendant explained, “I thought if I left it there you would find it when you came back.”

“Isn’t it the policy of the club to place property in this bin behind the desk?” the member insisted.

“It was only out for a minute. I would have Read the rest of this entry »

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