“My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there” Charles F. Kettering.

That quotation very accurately sums up my commitment to looking out and predicting what I believe is going to take place within the sales space over the next three to five years: I have nothing whatsoever to gain from making such forecasts; my statements are not sponsored; I have no revolutionary solutions, which will earn me millions of dollars if I am right …. it is simply what I believe, and I am unafraid to voice those opinions.

You may consider that my opening paragraph sounds somewhat defensive: If it does, then that is unintentional. Neither is it correct to surmise that I am in anyway feeling defiant – I have deliberately eschewed confrontation on this topic. However, as I suggested to my good chum and learned colleague Paul McCord this evening, I am going to challenge a blog post he wrote last week.

It would be dangerous to simply pluck a few quotations, as the piece deserves a full reading – “In 2012 the New Normal in Sales Is . .” but I am going to anyway, because essentially my interpretation is that he disagrees with my assertions regarding the rate of change we are witnessing.. and can expect to continue witnessing over the next three to five years. Whereas, I genuinely believe that there is a momentum building, and we can either adapt and thrive, or resist and possibly become isolated. I am not a lone voice …

“Customers everywhere increasingly prefer virtual interactions with sellers. Trend data reveal that sales organizations are shifting resources from outside to inside sales. Inside sales growth is 30% faster than their outside sales counterparts. The number of Inside Sales departments is projected to grow from 800,000, in 2009, to over 2 million in 2013.”

Dave Stein CEO ES Research (And lest I be accused of simply “extracting” quotes for my own argument, you can read the entire post HERE)

“Over the past few decades, selling has changed. The changes have been incremental, giving salespeople time to adjust. Not so today. The degree and speed of change in the sales world over the past two years is revolutionary — in how, why, and when customers buy and, therefore, in how you sell.

Selling has been turned on its head, and sales organizations are trying to catch up. If you have any doubts about the magnitude of change, just think about your level of control over the last major retail purchase you made and multiply that by twenty, and you will have a sense of the revolution in buying that is going on with your customers. The revolution has created a shift of control — away from you as a seller and toward your customer.”

Linda Richardson, Best Selling Author and Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson

“Inside sales has never been more important, and it seems like every minute brings new changes. Keeping up, staffing up, and preparing for the coming year has never been more important — and for that, you need the inside track. Our trend report is 100% accurate — loaded with great advice on tactics, tools and talent that will keep you on track and ahead of the curve.”

Josiane Feigon, President of TeleSmart (Download her FREE Inside Sales Trend Report HERE)

And most radically of all …

“There are currently 18 million sales professionals in the USA, by 2020, there will only be 3.6 million”

Gerhard Gschwandtner, Selling Power

So, back to Paul McCord’s post:

“My argument is simply that in 2012—and probably for the foreseeable future—there will not be a “new normal.”

•Almost all sellers will find their offline activities will still be more vital to their success than their social media interaction.
•Getting out of the office and in front of prospects and clients will still be the primary relationship building and selling format
•More than likely business travel will increase again this year—and for the foreseeable years to come—including travel by sellers
•Sales jobs will continue to be created with the corresponding opportunities for both experienced and inexperienced men and women
•Social media will continue to be an area that sellers need to learn how to effectively engage—but the reality is it isn’t going to take the place of a seller’s offline activities such as cold calling, networking, and seeking high quality referrals and when a connection is made through social media, for it to be effective it will have to be taken offline.”

“In other words, for now and at least the next few years, the “new normal” will be the old normal. Do those activities this year that have been successful for you in the past and you’ll be successful again this year.”

“It’s fun and exciting to talk about the “new normal,” but the fact is not much has really changed.”

Human nature hasn’t changed since last year.

The phone still works and people still answer it.

Referrals will still get you more and better business than any other prospecting format.

You will still have to work to develop relationships.

You’ll still have to educate, be a real problem solver for your clients, and bring more value to the table than your competitors.

The world hasn’t shifted on its axis—yet anyway.

So take all the talk of the new normal with a grain of salt.  Don’t ignore social media and by all means use technology to the fullest, but if you want to be successful in 2012, pick up the phone, fill up the car, and hit the streets just like you did last year and the years before that.”

Yes Paul, and it took us ten centuries to accept that the world wasn’t flat after all!

Returning to Linda Richardson, and to quote from an interview she did with me recently (which you will be able to read in its entirety on February 14th – and no, no significance!)

“Jonathan is not one to skirt an issue. He is outspoken and clearly never satisfied with the status quo. His vision is to get a global sales conversation going. Top Sales World is a place where experts and practitioners meld and everyone learns.  It reflects Jonathan’s take on life: “Never stop learning. If you do, it is time to pack up and go home. Looking three years to the future, he sees a very different sales landscape”

Yes, I do very much see a very different landscape: I believe that we need to adapt; to embrace the exciting changes that are happening, not resist them, and hope that it is all a figment of the imagination of a few “crazies” I have been openly discussing these changes for three years, and I am happy that more and more well respected thought leaders are now seeing what I first saw all that time ago.

Final Word: “Some people make things happen, some people watch what happens, but most wonder what the heck happened” Anon

News: Exciting w/e ahead; there is a buzz in the air, and no doubt we shall see some responses here. Me? I do think it is important that we “commentators” remain impartial, so “Go Giants!!!”

I am right in the middle of a new blog post, which should be ready tomorrow. You know that feeling when you think you have something important to say, and you are determined to articulate it comprehensively?

The main objective of the post is to challenge something my good chum and learned colleague Paul McCord wrote last week, which he titled “In 2012 the New Normal in Sales Is . .”

Whilst it may not have been his intention, he does disagree with a number of assertions I made in these recent posts: “Professional Selling – Will it Soon be the Survival of the Fittest?” and “Thinking of Buying Sales Training? Then Think Very Carefully!” But you will need to wait until tomorrow to read my response in full!

However, yesterday I read something which resonated with what I have been writing about for a very long time, and I wanted to share it with you:

Becoming a Sales Superstar: The Challenge of Change by Kathleen M. Adams, Ph.D.

Becoming a strategic and consultative Sales Superstar requires significant changes in your “world view” – how you think about yourself, and how you think about your relationships with key stakeholders. You are faced with new ways of thinking, many of which directly challenge what you have been taught and believe.

When faced with significant innovations in thinking, we tend initially to find ourselves in one of the following three characterizations:

The “Authoritative Critic”
The “Authoritative Expert”
The “Enthusiastic Apprentice”

We can think about these three characters as being on a spectrum that runs from outright rejection to eager acceptance.  As we take a brief look at each of these, allow yourself to wonder where on the spectrum you fall in your process of becoming a Sales Superstar.

The Authoritative Critic

This individual quickly dismisses new ways of thinking, outright rejecting them as ridiculous, foolish and unwise. What is this individual’s motivation?

Motivation of the Authoritative Critic? Fear of change, of loss.

The Authoritative Expert

This individual is one who typically responds to the introduction of innovative ideas by rejecting the reality that the ideas are indeed innovative. This individual is typically thinking “What’s the big deal? I’ve always done it this way.”

What is this individual’s motivation? Fear of losing face, of appearing inadequate.

The Enthusiastic Apprentice

This individual is excited by innovative thinking and is eager to learn. She may not understand or totally embrace the innovative concepts, but she is excited about the possibilities that well-informed change may bring about.

What is this individual’s motivation? It is hunger for knowledge and excitement about the possibilities that may come with new knowledge.

The nature of change is dynamic. As much as we might like to believe that change is linear, the truth is that deep transformative change develops in a spiral pattern. As you reviewed the above characteristics, you may have seen parts of yourself in each description.

Knowledge is power. The more aware you can become of your own process of “spiraling” through the process of change, the more conscious and intentional you can be about choosing change, choosing growth, and choosing to become a Sales Superstar!

Kathleen Adams received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1988. She is a sociocultural anthropologist with field research experience in Indonesia (Toraja and Alor) and San Juan Capistrano, CA.

So where do you fit in? Recognize yourself? Tomorrow, I’ll reveal where I fit in, and indeed where I think my colleagues fit in. Be sure to join me for a very interesting final post of the week.

News: My colleague, Jonathan London provides today’s tip over at Top Sales World - “Prospecting: 24 Ways to Get People to Call You Back” – always an interesting chat with him “Hi this is Jonathan London” I reply “Yes, this is Jonathan in London” “Hi Jonathan” “Hi Jonathan”

Meanwhile, over at Top Sales Management, you can catch me in conversation with Dave Kurlan – that is the multi-medal winning Dave Kurlan- “Is Selling Going Indoors?”

“Why should I be nice to someone who slags me off?” says one of your people. Well, that’s not an unreasonable question. Let’s try to understand the psychology of people who grumble – or worse, complain.

Believe it or not, complaining for most people - apart from the psychotic few - is a very stressful thing to do. Apart from whether the problem itself has made the customer angry, having to pump oneself up enough emotionally to have this ‘confrontation’ makes people short tempered. So people dealing with customers must expect them to be upset and angry.

Let’s analyze the language. The customer says “That’s not good enough!”  – quite probably with a few expletives thrown in for good measure. For a start, the person handling the call probably didn’t cause the problem themselves, someone else did. Why take stick for that? Well, because that person is part of the team and happens to be the one taking the call. Feeling part of a customer sensitive team is a vital element in wanting to and being able to deliver sensitive, constructive customer relations but, by ‘team’ I don’t just mean the Customer Service Department, I mean the whole organization.

Too many organizations operate ‘Customer Support’ (you can see the language varies a bit) as a quite separate entity from the operations of the business. They are in their own sterile ‘bubble’ charged with keeping customers from ever speaking to the people in ‘Operations’ who have normally caused the problem in the first place. That’s not how it is supposed to work – but it is convenient for the business that doesn’t want to deliver good customer relations. It just wants to shut customers up for as low a cost as possible.

Empowerment Pays

The problems facing staff members are: knowing that no-one wants to hear what the problem was; that they can make no changes in the way the organisation operates; that they cannot set out to improve things for future customers so that particular problem will never recur. They simply try to ‘win’ discussions with customers and give them anodyne replies in accordance with ‘the rules’. Is it any surprise that those people simply don’t believe in customer relations? They do what they are told to do and get paid for that.

Think of your own experiences. Think of how often you’ve been ‘put in your place’ by someone. Think how you detest being forced to talk to ‘Customer Service’ because you expect not to have the problem resolved.

Technical Support Is ‘Customer Service’ Too

The ideal model of a Technical Support Department is that the phone never rings. The trouble is that most people who operate one expect the phone to ring in proportion to the number of customers. The missing bit is that if the people on help desk have no involvement in making changes, then they cannot prevent the same problem recurring fifty times a day.

The basic rule should be that the moment you deal with a customer problem, you put in place changes so that problem will not recur for that reason. Staff with power are highly motivated to be helpful. People without power hate having to deal with cranky customers and simply try to fob them off.

We Must Work to Change the Entire Ethos

Sadly, I have reached the following conclusions: Directors and Management often see customer relations as the affair of a ‘Complaints Department’ whilst they get on and run the business – which is a form of warfare carried out against the irritating habits of customers seeking fair treatment - a fair deal or equality of relationship.

Salespeople often see customers as an unruly, disobliging and dishonest source of commission.

Support staff accept that they are paid to (try to) cope (on a good day) with unreasonable, whining, stupid, ungrateful customers who just won’t be told.

Administrators see customers as dunces who must be forced to follow the rigid procedures developed for the convenience of the supplier (an endless nuisance to the customer).

Technical people often see customers as stick-in-the-mud know nothings to be loftily put in their place by the use of elitist techno-jargon.

Production people ignore customers entirely, because otherwise they would get in the way of how they want to run the place.

Finance people treat customers not as people, but as reference numbers with obligations required to fit processes.

Unkind comments? Not at your place? Great! But anti-attitudes like this abound all over the commercial spectrum. You do business with your customers – not despite them! Customers pay the wages for everyone, not just the sales force.

There is always a penalty for poor customer relations. It plays its way out over the weeks and months ahead when people – and those they influence – simply avoid your firm – they allow their feet to do their talking!

News: Big treat for you today: I managed to get some time with Trish Bertuzzi yesterday, and we talked about the current very high demand for inside salespeople – you can listen in HERE

A very good friend and ex-client of mine runs a highly successful information technology service in the South of England and his private-sector customers include many Times Top 100 companies.

We often exchange opinions and I recently asked his views on leadership, because I have always been impressed with his commitment to “people development”

He believes leadership is all about bringing out the best in the firm’s 1800 employees. “We have a very informal, non-hierarchical structure,” he says. “The task of our leaders is not simply to issue orders but to act as role models in providing our customers with what they want in terms of teamwork, friendliness, delivery and, in general, supplying a top-class service.” Many of those who join the company are former customers. “We first of all put them through a programme which helps them to understand what we are trying to do, then a management team shows them how our ideas are put into practice.”

When trying to identify future leaders, he and his management colleagues adopt the premise that anyone possessing sufficient motivation can become a leader. “But obviously some are better than others, and the best are likely to end up as managing directors,” he says.

“I believe that leadership is something that can be taught, but that’s not a reason for trying to teach everybody everything. We need good team players, and the leaders are those who enable them to give off their best.”

The ultimate test of a leader, he believes, is whether the individual can generate trust in others.

“We are not one of those companies where self-interest is dominant,” he says.

He would not comment on the general quality of British management, often portrayed in a negative light in the media. “I don’t know whether we are ahead of other firms in our thinking, but we are certainly doing something different. I don’t know anywhere else where the staff can talk to the boss in the frank and informal way that they do here. I go around meeting each member of the staff individually twice a year to brief them on what’s going on and on our plans for the future. Because they know they are not going to be shot for speaking their minds, they’ll all have a go at it. It’s not just one-way communication.”

I find it very difficult to comprehend reporting to a leader I couldn’t trust – it has to be one of the key characteristics – doesn’t it?

News: And staying on that theme, you might enjoy my article over at Top Sales Management today,  “Sales Leadership – The Changing Role” or “The Four Step Process I Use When Probing for Pain” over at Top Sales World – bit of a JF day then!

I first became seriously interested in objective sales team assessments in 1993 when I created my own consultancy. Up until that point, I had used various psychometric tests for recruitment purposes, and they were useful, but somehow, they always left me wanting more. In fact a couple of years ago, I wrote an article called “Psychometric Tests and Professional Salespeople – Happy Bedfellows?” and I said:

“You see, returning to my Attitude + Skills + Process + Knowledge formula, at what point does a psychometric finding have reliable relevance?

The attitude element is uncertain and for me this is critical, as it drives the motivation of all the other elements: Skills, including; negotiation, presentation, account management, relationship building, opportunity assessment etc, cannot be assessed. The individual’s commitment to appropriate sales process which might include; forecasting, pipeline development, activity analysis etc, cannot be assessed. And finally, knowledge, that includes industry knowledge, sector knowledge, company knowledge, product knowledge and even self-knowledge, cannot be assessed.

Having recruited, trained, mentored, coached and developed more than 70.000 thousand front-line sales professionals and sales leaders since 1994, my question is a simple one:

“In the field of professional selling, have we been seduced into allowing psychometric testing to become our bedfellows?”

All of this compelled me to begin work on my own set of highly relevant, sales specific assessments – ASP Profile.

ASP Profile is the most cost effective sales competence assessment tool available.

It represents the culmination of eighteen years ongoing research and experimentation. It has involved consultation with hundreds of individuals including, captains of industry, psychologists, professional buyers and front line salesmen and women from every industry sector.

The end result is that we are now able to recognize the three levels of selling that exists – four if you include sales management – and as a consequence, we have produced a model at each level that accurately profiles the characteristics and working styles of the very best performers.

It assesses existing strengths, limitations and ongoing development requirements in three specific areas: Attitude, Skills and Process.

ASP Profile is a unique concept which is rapidly gaining recognition as a world class product in the field of sales team performance assessment and has already been adopted in earlier and current forms by hundreds of forward thinking organizations around the globe including: – Autodesk, France Telecom, Global One, Computer 2000 Group, Northumbria Water, ISI Group plc, F.I. Scotland, CISCO, Platinum Technology, Computer Associates, Belle Systems, Allied Dunbar Assurance plc, Exodus, Mclaren Consulting, Domino UK Ltd and Parker Hannifin.

However, I would add that it is appropriate for organisations of all sizes from F.T.S.E. 100/Fortune 500 companies to the S.M.E sector and furthermore, it is not industry specific.

The sales team is our forward line, if they are not scoring regularly; we cannot possibly
achieve our overall commercial objectives i.e. nothing happens until somebody sells something and all of that investment in costly accounting systems, and new office equipment, expensive IT systems etc. will count for nothing.

The primary aim of ASP Profile is to assist management in making effective human resource decisions objectively; the decisions made about people, their recruitment, ongoing development
and promotion. This will enable organisations to minimise the cost of recruitment and selection and also improve the overall quality and therefore productivity of their existing staff.

In summary, I believe that this initiative is an essential first step towards developing
‘Optimum Performance’ levels.

As you will have probably already seen somewhere, my new consultancy, JFA (Jonathan Farrington & Associates) is launching on April 17th - and more about that soon – so as a pre-launch “taster,” we are offering you the opportunity to sample ASP Profile for a massively discounted price.

If you are serious about becoming the best you can possibly be – or, as a sales leader, you wish to benchmark your team against the best in your industry, then I urge you to learn more HERE – it might just be one of the smartest decisions you make in 2012!

News: It’s changeover day at Top Sales Management, which means a fresh set of resources – for example, today’s article comes from Dave Kurlan “Are Your Salespeople Still Cold Calling? The Ugly Truth” HERE

Regular visitors here will know that over the past couple of weeks, I have been talking to some great fellow thought leaders and I am really enthused about all that is in store for 2012 – and the years to come!

But today, I have some exciting news that you don’t have to wait for ..

I am pleased to announce that Smartr Contacts for iPhone is now available in the iPhone App Store.

Many of you, like me, have been using Xobni’s products on Android, Gmail, Outlook and BlackBerry and have been waiting patiently for the iPhone version of Smartr Contacts.  The wait is over, it is available to you today!

Download Smartr Contacts for iPhone

What this means to you is that if you already use Smartr or Xobni on Gmail, Outlook, Android or BlackBerry, you can now access all those contacts on your iPhone.

In case you don’t already know, Smartr Contacts is a free app that makes it easy to search all your contacts, even those who aren’t in your iPhone address book – Automatically. See photos, job title, company info, message history, and social updates for anyone you’ve ever communicated with. Instantly know who your contacts are, how you know them, when you last talked, and who you have in common.

If I’ve sold you, click here to get started with Smartr Contacts for iPhone.

You can also check out this video to see the app in action.

If you like the app as much as I do, please share it with your friends - they really will thank you!

Full Disclosure: I am receiving no financial – or any other form of compensation - for this post, but Xobni are one of our sponsors over at Top Sales World and Top Sales Management. I am a big fan, and I want to share them with you! – JF

In recent weeks, I have been discussing the future of professional selling, and amongst other predictions, I have suggested that in my humble view, within five years, just 5% of external salespeople will remain.

It will therefore come as no surprise that I have received a number of emails asking if I will clarify what these survivors will look like, what will be their characteristics, and what will differentiate them.

Over the past twenty years I have trained, developed and mentored almost one hundred  thousand sales professionals - from foundation right up to “master craftsman” level -and I think this has given me a unique opportunity to formulate an accurate profile of a “Top 5% Achiever.”

So What Is It That Top 5% Players Do?

They:

o Position themselves with the real decision-makers and avoid those without ‘approval power’. They are able to first identify and then access the formal decision making unit – right up to “C-Level” where most of the decisions are being made these days.

o Not only get the order but a satisfied customer, repeat sales, enthusiastic reference sites and constantly increase sales penetration within their accounts.

o Know how to minimise the uncertainties of a cold call on a new account, by careful planning and rigorous opportunity assessment. They concentrate solely on opportunities that they can win – and that they want to win!

o Recognise when to treat an old account as a new prospect and keep the relationship fresh, alive and maintain profitability.

o Never entertain business they do not want because they recognise that it takes just as long to work an unprofitable opportunity through the sales funnel, only to lose it at the death, as it does a profitable one. They trust their own judgement but also rely heavily on objective assessment.

o Readily identify and know how to deal with the three different buying influences present in every sale and they also develop strong allies.

o Understand how to prevent sales from being sabotaged by an internal enemy. They insulate themselves by using those allies.

o Are able to recognise fail-safe signals that indicate when a sale is in jeopardy. This comes from experience but also information supplied by their allies.

o Are rigorous in tracking account progress and are able to accurately forecast future sales because they use proven methodology, which allows them to weight every opportunity in the pipeline

o Avoid ‘dry-months’ by allocating time wisely to their critical selling tasks i.e. Prospecting for new business, covering the bases with existing opportunities and finally closing the best few.

o They understand that the old saying “People buy from people first” no longer applies to personality, but rather to professionalism, commercial bandwidth and superior knowledge

We can then go further and identify eighteen core competencies in which Top 5% achievers generally excel:

o Organisational Skills

o Communication

o Presentation Skills

o Business Development

o Opportunity Assessment

o Interpersonal Skills

o Creative Thinking

o Critical Thinking

o People Awareness

o Integration Skills

o Resilience

o Strategic Approach

o Pro-Activity

o Negotiation

o Key Account Management

o Team Membership

o Process & Methodology

o Political Awareness

If you then add into this mix an understanding of, and familiarisation of the importance that social media now plays, you begin to see just how different these Top 5% achievers really are.

In Summary:

Be assured, the very best sales performers do not achieve that status overnight. They work tirelessly to develop and hone their skills-sets, insist on regular top-up coaching and seek out those who are outperforming them, so that they may learn and improve still further.

They have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of their industry and sector. Finally, they concentrate on eliminating any weaknesses and are anxious to be assessed and receive feedback on a regular basis.

This post is not meant to be a “commercial” but if you are a front-line sales professional and you would like to receive an accurate and objective assessment of how you stack up against Top 5% achievers, or if you are a manager, and you are wondering which of your current team measure up – or indeed could become a Top 5% player, you will be very interested in reading my post on Monday.

News: Over at Top Sales World, we have announced the top ten sales articles for January, and you can check them out HERE

Meanwhile, over at Top Sales Management, you might enjoy my recorded conversation with Ken Thoreson “Sales Leadership – The Changing Role” HERE

Do look out for an exclusive post tomorrow, and be sure to have a great w/e – JF

Old ways of doing business no longer work: the increasingly intense competitive challenges of the world economy challenge everyone, everywhere, to adapt in order to prosper under new rules.

In the old economy, hierarchies pitted labour against management, with workers paid wages depending on their skills, but that is eroding as the rate of change accelerates.

Hierarchies are being replaced by networks; labour and management are uniting into teams; wages are coming in new mixtures of options, incentives and ownership; fixed jobs melt into fluid careers.

As business changes, so do the traits needed to survive, let alone excel. All these transitions put increased value on emotional intelligence. Competitive pressures put a new value on people who are self-motivated, show initiative, have the inner drive for outdoing themselves, and are optimistic enough to take reversals and setbacks in their stride. The ever-pressing need to serve customers and clients well and to work smoothly and creatively with an ever more diverse range of people makes the ability to empathize all the more essential.

At the same time, the meltdown of old hierarchies increases the importance of traditional people skills such as building bonds, influence and collaboration. And that is as true for employers as it is for employees. The task of the leader draws on a wide range of personal skills.

Research has shown that emotional competence makes the crucial difference between mediocre leaders and the best. Indeed, emotional competence makes up about two thirds of the ingredients of star performance in general, but for outstanding leaders emotional competencies – as opposed to technical or cognitive cues – make up 80 to 100% of those listed by companies as crucial for success.

Star performers show significantly greater strengths in a range of emotional competencies, such as the skills of persuasion, team leadership, political awareness, self-confidence, and achievement drive.

Empathy, one of the key elements of emotional intelligence, is central to good management; it is difficult to have a positive impact on others without first sensing how they feel and understanding their position. People who are poor at reading emotional cues and inept at social interactions are very poor at influencing others in the workplace.

Empathy has become more relevant as the whole world of work changes. These are troubled times for workers – it seems that no one is guaranteed a job anywhere any more. The creeping sense that no one’s job is safe, even as the companies they work for are thriving, means the spread of fear, apprehension and confusion.

An attitude of self-interest is, understandably, growing more common for employees confronting downsizing and other changes that make them feel their organisation is no longer loyal to them. This sense of betrayal or distrust erodes allegiance and encourages cynicism. And once lost, trust – and the commitment that stems from it – is hard to rebuild.

If employees are not treated fairly and respectfully, no organisation will gain their emotional allegiance. Sensing others’ development needs and bolstering their abilities is emerging as second only to team leadership among superior managers.

For leaders, developing others’ abilities is even more important – indeed, it’s the emotional competence most frequently found among those at the top of the field. This is a person-to-person art, and the effectiveness of counseling hinges on empathy and the ability to focus on our own feelings and share them.

Research suggests the best ‘coaches’ show a genuine personal interest in those they guide, and have empathy for and an understanding of their employees. Trust is crucial – when there is little trust in the coach, advice goes unheeded. This also happens when the coach is impersonal and cold, or the relationship seems too one-sided or self-serving. Coaches who show respect, trustworthiness and empathy are the best.

One way to encourage people to perform better is to let others take the lead in setting their own goals rather than dictating the terms and manner of their development. This communicates the belief that employees have the capacity to be the pilot of their own destiny.

Another technique is to point to the problems without offering a solution: this implies the employees can find the solution themselves. And people hunger for feedback, yet too many managers, supervisors and executives are inept at giving it or are simply disinclined to provide any.

Virtually everyone who has a superior is part of at least one vertical ‘couple’ in the workplace; every boss forms such a bond with each subordinate. Such vertical couples are a basic unit of organisational life.

Therein lays the blessing or the curse: This interdependence ties a subordinate and superior together in a way that can become highly charged. If both do well emotionally – if they form a relationship of trust and rapport, understanding and inspired effort – their performance will shine. But if things go emotionally awry, the relationship can become a nightmare and their performance a series of minor and major disasters.

While vertical couples have the entire emotional overlay that power and compliance bring to a relationship, peer couples – our relationships with co-workers – have a parallel emotional component, something akin to the pleasures, jealousies and rivalries of siblings.

If there is anywhere emotional intelligence needs to enter an organisation, it is at this most basic level. Building collaborative and fruitful relationships begins with the couples we are a part of at work. Bringing emotional intelligence to a working relationship can pitch it towards the evolving, creative, mutually engaging end of the continuum; failing to do so heightens the risk of a downward drift towards rigidity, stalemate and failure.

I believe we are witnessing that new dawn, and we have to embrace it with open arms.

News: You can catch Michael Griego’s Top Sales Tip of the Day – “5 Principles for Success” HERE and a great article from Colleen Francis – “Yes, No, Maybe .. What’s Worth the Most?” HERE

Yes, me too. Nobody – well hardly anybody – is talking about “Sales 2.0″ anymore, and yet less than twelve months ago, you couldn’t hear yourself speak above the incredibly loud din that rose to a deafening crescendo.

So what happened? Has it gone away? Have we moved on to “Sales 3.0″ and everyone forgot to tell me? Was it all a figment of my imagination, or perhaps a bad dream?

It is now more than five years since Nigel Edelshain first coined the term, on a balmy Sunday afternoon way back in 2006, and perhaps we all now accept that actually, it was just the next phase in a continuous cycle of change in the way we all sell.

But the silence we are witnessing now is almost as loud as the silence I experienced when I posed the question – frequently – “So, What is Sales 2.0? … Anyone?”

I didn’t just ask the question here on my blog: I asked during keynotes that I was delivering; I asked during training workshops that I was leading; I asked all my learned chums … and still no definitive answer or explanation.

However, let me be very clear here, the “sales space” has witnessed the birth of some superb new solutions; highly successful conferences; a plethora of books/articles/webinars etc. over the past five years, and if that was Sales 2.0, then bravo.

But did it need to be called anything? Wasn’t it simply a natural evolvement? Is it still with us?

Maybe it was like “Web 2.0?”

I remember a few years back, a very good chum writing a recommendation on LinkedIn, praised me for for “fully embracing” Web 2.0 tools: I didn’t really understand the significance of her compliment, but again, I do hope someone will alert me when and if I fully embrace Web 3.0

And what about our customers – the buyers – do you think they noticed the arrival of Sales 2.0? Mine didn’t, and to this day my perception is that they remain blissfully unaware.

My conclusion is that it is our secret – us sellers – and probably best to keep it that way.

These are just a few of the questions that keep me awake at night – or not!

News: Bit of a treat for you today: You can catch my recorded conversation with Dave Brock over at Top Sales World - “The Latest Sales Inflection Point” HERE

Today’s top sales tip is from Kendra Lee – “3 Reasons Prospects Ignore Your Emails” HERE

People have been debating the nature of leadership for as long as records have been kept – certainly as far back as Homer and his peers: The topic continues to fascinate and enthral us today, but the way in which we assess leadership roles is changing.

Where once we looked to military and political leaders for inspiration and insight, now it is increasingly business leaders who hold our attention and provide role models.

Ask someone to name a leader whom they have admired and they are just as likely to name Richard Branson as Winston Churchill; Bill Gates as Margaret Thatcher. This focus is reflected in the growing number of books and articles about business and the main players.

Most writing on good management and what it takes to get to the top focus on leadership. It is regarded as one of the most important areas of personal development. This also explains the growing interest in leadership courses.

Defining just what makes a leader effective, however, remains as difficult today as it ever was. But that does not prevent us from seeking to distil their secrets – quite the reverse.

Of course, there must be almost as many theories on leadership as there are leaders themselves and models for the best kind of leadership change with the times.

In the 15th century, Niccolo Machiavelli advocated a combination of cunning and intimidation as a way to more effective leadership. His philosophy, if not his practices became unfashionable some time ago. – thank goodness.

“Great Man” theories, popular in the 19th century and early this century, are based on the notion of the ‘born leader’ who has innate talents that cannot be taught.

An alternative approach that is still in vogue is based on trying to identify the key traits of effective leaders. Behaviourist theory prefers to see leadership in terms of what leaders do rather than their individual characteristics, and it tries to identify the different roles they fulfil.

More recently, attention has moved away from the individual in the leadership role to embrace a more holistic view and investing less in what some commentators refer to as the ‘myth of the heroic leader’.

Much recent work in this area has concentrated on trying to understand why some leaders are more effective than others by looking at their environment and the context in which their acts have been carried out.

Situational theory views leadership as specific to the situation, for example, rather than to the personality of the leader. It is based on the idea that different situations require a different style of leader.

The basis of Situational Leadership - which I have been working with for more than twenty years – is to provide a means of effective leadership by adopting different leadership styles in different situations with different people.

Situational Leadership is a model, not a theory. The difference is that a theory attempts to explain why things happen, whereas a model is a pattern of existing events which can be learnt and therefore repeated.

Requirements of a Leader:
An effective leader – in my humble opinion - needs to be:

o A good diagnostician, who can sense and appreciate differences in people and situations.

o Adaptable, in having the ability to adapt the leadership style to circumstances.

A leader must realize there is no one best way to influence people.

The Basis of Situational Leadership:

Situational Leadership is a way of describing and analysing leadership styles. It is a combination of directive and supportive behaviours.

Directive behaviour involves telling people what to do, how to do it, where to do it, when to do it and then closely supervising this performance.

Supportive behaviour involves listening to people, providing support and encouragement for their efforts and then facilitating their involvement in problem solving and decision-making.

There are four leadership styles: Directing, Coaching, Supporting and Delegating.

Each style is appropriate in certain circumstances. They can be shown as follows:

o Delegating i.e. Low Supportive & Low Directive

o Directing i.e. Low Supportive & High Directive

o Supporting i.e. High Supportive & High Directive

o Coaching i.e. High Supportive & Low Directive

In Summary:
To those who would suggest that great leaders are born not made, I would say this: We can examine all of the great leaders in history and identify some common characteristics but we cannot say they were “Born Leaders.” They all developed into their leadership roles over a period of time, learning the skills along the way – they served their apprenticeship.

I do believe that leaders can be developed – I have to believe that because currently we have far too few of them in the world!

News: Two very interesting reads for you over at Top Sales Management today: The latest “How to” guide is “How to Become an Action Centred Leader” and I think you will also enjoy “Sales Management – The Essential Core Competencies” – you’ll find them HERE