14 Mar 10 3 Deadly Sales Mistakes to Avoid

The sales department is the lifeblood of any company. It is the only department that brings money for the company, rest of them incurs cost. Therefore, it becomes very important for you to keep performing well. After all you and your department earns bread for your company. I am going to talk here about 3 mistakes everyone in your sales team should avoid.

Mistake number 1: Data, data, and data

Yes, no one is interested in your long boring bar graphs, or your endless number of slides. No one cares about them, not even your clients. You should not excessively indulge in churning numbers and discharging them on slides to show your clients. They are bored of all these things. If you want sales to happen, avoid doing that. And start connecting with your clients.

Mistake number 2: Words, words, and words

Do not rattle off the speech you memorized yesterday. Do not even try to make it sound like an extempore. No one cares what you have to say, especially not your clients. Your words don’t mean anything to him. What matters to him are his own words and his alone. Listen to him intently and try to figure his needs from his own words. Be mum, if need be. Your goal is not to talk, but to sell.

Mistake number 3: Sell, sell, and oversell

I have seen many sales person who will start selling the moment they enters the room, and keep on selling until they are either metaphorically kicked out, or their battery get discharged. Do not do so. You should not oversell yourself. Draw a line and never cross it. Do not speak even a single word related to the product, until asked to, once your client agrees to your point. Overselling backfires!

Keep these mistakes away from your organization, and you will see a difference in the inflow of orders as well as in customer satisfaction.

Tags: Bar Graphs, Boring Bar, Customer Satisfaction, Endless Number, Inflow, Lifeblood, Mistake Number 1, Money, Sales Person, Single Word, Slides

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22 Nov 09 5 Reasons Why You Should Join Twitter

Twitter is hot, very hot. Everyone is embracing this 140-character phenomenon, but still there are some people who are not as excited about twitter as rest of us are. They do not see any point in joining twitter. I am writing this post for those who are living in the twitter-dark-age, and here I will show why one should join twitter.

Reason 1: To search what you need

Twitter is not just a micro-blogging platform, but it is a potent search engine as well. The keyword search tool of twitter is very powerful, and can fetch the result you are looking for in real time, for example, if you type #Movie 2010, Dallas in the twitter search, you will get all the results of recent tweets matching the word you entered. Check out advanced Twitter search or use the operators.

Reason 2: To filter the inflow of Information

Let’ face it. The amount of information produced on the Internet in one single day will require more than a lifetime to consume. You will have to born again 2 to 3 times to consume the information we produced in one day. This is what we call information overload, which confuses us big time and leave us paralyzed.

We need a filter, rather many filters, to make sense of the world around us. Twitter and tools based on its API help us filter the information without missing on the things we need to know.

Reason 3: To get breaking News

Reuters and Bloomberg are panting, and twitter is donning a proud smile of a winner who has achieved the goal faster. Breaking news reaches faster to twitter than it goes to any big media houses. Check out http://Twitter.com/breakingnews.

Reason 4: To know what others are thinking on a topic

Use # tag (keyword) feature of twitter to find out the opinions of people on a certain topic. See how people are reacting to the event or occurrence that matters to you.

Reason 5: Track a trend

Every day many trends and countless micro-trends come into and go out of existence. If you are an information junkie or a social scientist who wants to keep eye on what is happening in the world then nothing can help you as much as twitter will. Use #tag (keyword) to track what people are saying, doing, and talking about.

Tags: Api, Big Time, Bloomberg, Inflow, Information Junkie, Information Overload, Keyword Search Tool, Media Houses, Micro Trends, Occurrence, Phenomenon, Proud Smile, Reason 2, Reason 3, Reuters, Sense Of The World, Single Day, Social Scientist, Tweets, Twitter

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26 Jul 09 How to Build a Home Office

In the last article, we talked about why a freelancer need to have a home office, and I guess, I succeeded in building case in favor of a small home office. Hence, in this article, we will see what all we need to have in our no-frills small home office to help us work efficiently. Before we begin with buying stuffs for our home office, let us first unclutter the space where we want to create our imagination-pod.

Get a lonely unused corner

The first step in establishing a functional home office is to leave your bedroom, and search for an unused space, not necessarily corner, to setup your home office. By shifting your works to one designated area, you will free up your personal space and time, and the home office will send a signal to your unconscious mind that as soon as you start moving towards that special area, your body should get prepared for work.

By separating your work place from your bedroom, you can also control the inflow of distracting stimuli to your work space. I would suggest you to keep the decoration of your home office to painting the wall with a darker shade of your favorite color, and having a clock or clocks, depending upon the geographical locations of your clients.

The agenda of this article is not to tell the rich kids about what all fancy stuffs they should keep in their home offices, but the goal of this article is to provide a list of basic things that you must have in your home office.

Must-have Home Office Tools

Well, if you are building your home office to impress your friend, family and relative then go for the latest hi-tech gadgets, but if your intention is to do some real work in there then invest your hard-earned money in buying the tools that you cannot do without. The following list includes the things you should keep in your home office:

Personal computer, or a laptop
All-in-one printer, fax, copier and scanner
At least a landline or a cell phone
Stapler, pen, pencil, blank sheets, glue, adhesive, tape, sharpener, eraser, scale and other stationary.
A portable Hard disk for data backup
A coffee-mug holder to save your desk from coffee spills
Visiting card holder
Blank Media
Bulletin Board to affix to-do list
Ideation board
Stickies, and
Dictionary

Can you come up with more must-have office tools? Well, help me out in making this list exhaustive.

Tags: Adhesive Tape, Blank Sheets, Building Case, Fancy Stuffs, Favorite Color, Friend Family, Geographical Locations, Hard Earned Money, Hi Tech Gadgets, Inflow, Must Have Home Office, Office Tools, Painting The Wall, Pen Pencil, Rich Kids, Scal, Space And Time, Unconscious Mind, Unused Space, Work Space

Filed in Career Management with 1 Comment

14 Mar 10 3 Deadly Sales Mistakes to Avoid

Mistake number 1: Data, data, and data

Mistake number 2: Words, words, and words

Mistake number 3: Sell, sell, and oversell

26 Jul 09 How to Build a Home Office

Get a lonely unused corner

Must-have Home Office Tools

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