What’s the best way to psych yourself up for an important sales meeting, a job interview, a special date, or the big game?
We all have different routines to help us get in the zone – what’s yours?
One classic technique found in lots of success manuals is to “pre-view” the outcomes you want by visualizing yourself achieving the desired goal.
Envisioning ourselves attaining desired outcomes is a helpful confidence-raising practice – but it only works up to a point. Continue reading →
It’s amazing how forgetting just one detail, one part of the overall process, can change an outcome. Take cooking, for example. We have successfully followed the same great recipe again and again, but this time the sauce just isn’t right. What could we have done wrong? Of course! It needs to be puréed in the food processor before serving.
In sales, too, leaving out key steps (even small ones) can lower our hit rates. Even seasoned pros can go through unexpected slumps by overlooking familiar steps in the process. Continue reading →
It’s May, and colleges and universities are breaking for summer vacation. Soon the high schools will be letting out as well. Lots of young people will head for summer internships to learn something different about the world and earn a little money. Perhaps your agency will provide that kind of opportunity—maybe even with the hope of cultivating a future employee.
Last year, IA magazine, the IIABA members monthly, published an article on avoiding the legal pitfalls of using unpaid interns – a worthy consideration, along with other possible concerns that the presence of interns might complicate regular office routines and siphon off staff time because they need to be trained and supervised. But interns bring tremendous benefits. Continue reading →
We all know the saying “seeing is believing,” but how often do we apply that practical wisdom on phone calls and at sales meetings?
Years ago I was voicing my frustrations to a rep from a list company because they’d promised to send me a catalog that never arrived. The rep on the phone clearly understood my annoyance, and without a lot of apologies made me trust that she was solving the problem right then and there. Continue reading →