You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2007.
Apologies for the lack of posts on here recently but we do have a very good reason. Watch the video below to find out more!
You know the old saying “If it ‘aint broke don’t fix it”? Well I saw a great example at the weekend of traditional sales techniques being put into action.
I went to a conference at the weekend, the subject of which centered around how to make money.
Put simply it worked like this. A speaker would come on stage and explain for 2 hours how they made their millions at the end of which the audience was offered a product such as training DVD’s or mentoring or resale licences etc, etc.
Around 3/4 of the way though just before the presenter went into their pitch they would all pull out the traditional sales technique of the 3 yes’s. This is where the audience gets asked 3 questions which they will hopefully say yes to by default.
For example:
I bet you’ve all learned something today… yes!
Did I share some of the greatest secrets with you… yes!
Do you think you can do this yourselves… YES!
By the time you reel out the forth question the audience have gone into autopilot and will say yes without really thinking about it.
What do you think the forth question always is? I’ll tell you…
What would you say if I told you there was something you could take away today that could make this even easier. Does that sound good?
YES!
There was 12 speakers all using that same technique and believe it or not it worked every single time. The cash register didn’t stop ringing.
Quite an eye opener I’m sure you’ll agree? Pssst, you’re supposed to say yes here!
I’ll talk more about my experiences over the course of the week.
You know on the TV when it’s a slow day for news because they’ll run some story about a cat who has just coughed up it’s 1,000,000th furball as the main story.
So…
You know those pay per click ads you see down the side of a Google page? Well some kind soul has taken it upon themselves to build a collection of the most amusing.
Check it out for yourself at funnyppcads.com
Following on from Steve’s 10/20/30 rule, if you really want to liven up your presentations you can learn a lot from this guy. This video featuring Don McMillan is an amusing look at what not to do.
Hey if you really want a laugh put on a whole conference filled with speakers and their PowerPoint presentations, then hire Don to give his presentation up front.
Then sit back and watch with amusement as presenters frantically try to change their slides before they go on!
Julian had an interesting experience on the way into work this morning. Walking up the street he saw a postman cycling towards him, frantically waving his arms to get Julian’s attention. Thinking something was wrong Julian stopped.
It turned out nothing was wrong, the postman just had some mail for Julian that needed signing for.
Amazingly the postman knew who Julian was and even called him by name. Even more amazing is the fact that Julian lives in a block of flats and is rarely seen by the postman.
A postperson’s job mandate doesn’t state they have to work hard at customer satisfaction. As a monopoly the Royal Mail don’t have to think about customer retention for day to day standard deliveries. So when it happens it’s all the more of a pleasant surprise.
Years ago the local postman was a part of the community, everybody knew he and he knew everybody. This is something that has slowly disappeared over the years as communities have grown larger and more faceless.
Soon there will be competition to the Royal Mail and something in their business attitude needs to change if they want to retain customers. Their current line of thinking is to offer as many different services as possible if you were to go into a branch, but this seems to be over diverse.
Maybe a back to basics angle is exactly what is needed, where the postpeople offer that personal touch once again.
Recently as part of The Platform we completed a section on work-life balance. One of the people we interviewed, Caroline Bannock former segment producer for ABC News and Channel 4 News, pointed out that because she concentrated so much on her working life her old friends had just stopped phoning her.
This was also because she had stopped phoning them.
With this in mind Tim had an interesting experiment on Sunday where he set aside 3 hours of time to work his way through his friends, calling them up out of the blue. Many were surprised to hear from him, many had plenty of stuff to catch up on and most of all everybody he rang was pleased he’d called.
Sometimes we forget that we need to take the initiative too. A friendship is a 2 way thing.
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