Author: johblogs

The Modern Techniques of Sales and Negotiation

A local company, In2 Project Management hosted Jack Corbett to deliver sales training and I was fortunate to win a ticket to the event. Neil Betts and Chris Allford from In2 have been supportive of our project – The VRI – and worked with me in 2014 to help me realise the vision we had for a community space. They are an appreciated part of our whole community approach that has made The VRI what it is.

Jack Corbett practises what he preaches. I got a pre-event call from his sales team to ask what I was most seeking from the training and this was well and truly covered with humour and humility by Jack in the training. He packed a lot into the 5 hour session, covering the process of sales and negotiations as well as sharing a lot of learning, presenting and business improvement tips. I received a call after the event and had the opportunity to work on my elevator pitch with one of ISR’s team members, which was a bonus.

Jack’s company ISR gave participants access to his LMS allowing us a vast range of resources to interact with. The training session was packed with value and my friends who attended were impressed. One of the bonuses he offered was a live call on overcoming objections a couple of mornings later, lots of us showed up.

The last sales training I did, was in the 90’s with Money & You, when I was on the sales team. When the opportunity to do this training came up I reflected on what I needed to improve. That’s where the learning process begins isn’t it? Looking at yourself and thinking about the results you are getting and what could be better. This was reinforced by the call from ISR.

What I most wanted to improve was closing a sale. One of the distinctions I got was to stop talking and give the client/customer/person the opportunity to think. Interestingly I’ve been doing the Lifeline training this year and the learning has been similar. It is more powerful to listen and to allow people to think for themselves.

I’m very grateful to the In2 team for sharing this learning opportunity with our region. The training was very affordable and improved sales is something we can all benefit from. The investment of time (and $$ if I hadn’t been a winner!) was entirely worth it.

18th August 2019

The past couple of weeks I’ve had turmoil and challenge and it was upsetting and frustrating. It came from a direction I wasn’t expecting yet there is nothing like an upset to focus my thinking and throw me into reflection. I tortured myself for a couple of days before remembering I had people. People who would listen and help, and they did. It turned out that things were not as they had appeared and the deception instigated a lot of positive action. I feel humble and grateful for people that rallied around me and helped me work through it (again) stronger and more committed.

I went to see ‘Truth Bomb!!!’ last night with Jenny and Pollyannar. We enjoyed it. Kerri Gannon has been at The VRI for most of the week, setting up for the show. It was a pleasure to have Kerri in our space. The performance was brilliant, honest and thought provoking. Truth Bomb!!! is coming to Sydney and Melbourne, so if you get the chance, go see it.

This TED talk is a classic – Barbara Sher is very funny.

I love the stories Barbara tells and the grounded simplicity of her message. She delivers her message with a lot of humour and humility. I see this type of thing happen at The VRI. When people come together and say what they want , others help. We are born to be problem solvers.

Who doesn’t love an Aha moment? Why not participate in some research about Aha! moments.
The Aha! Challenge takes about 15 minutes www.ahachallenge.net.au.

I listened to Soft is the New Hard by Leah Mether this week. Leah is a local communications expert and the book subtitled ‘How to Communicate Effectively Under Pressure’ is brilliant and I recommend it to everyone. Communication is such an important ‘soft skill’. Leah’s models are sound and I got some excellent distinctions about my communications listening to it.

11th August 2019

I’m doing a course, it’s great. I love learning, getting into the space of developing new skills is one of my favourite things. One of the fun activities in our course last week was to pick our favourite film and there were two films from other participants I hadn’t seen – “Song for Marion” and “Cafe de Flore“. I watched them this weekend and they were brilliant. I highly recommend them.

I finished reading 21 Lessons For The 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari. Are our governments focussing on the technological disruption that is coming? What should we pay attention to? How do we know the truth? The main conclusion I came to was that we need to meditate more. Bill Gates has written a thorough review of this book here.