Recent Articles From EvanCarmichael.com http://www.evancarmichael.com/ http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Achieving-a-Customerfocused-Culture.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Achieving-a-Customerfocused-Culture.html Since customer satisfaction is key to increased sales, premium margins, and company growth, it makes sense to instill a customer-focused culture throughout the company. However, talking about customer satisfaction and taking the necessary steps to achieve it are two different things. Though many companies talk the talk, few are able to walk the talk. Here are seven hurdles to maintaining a customer-focused culture and how you can clear them. http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/A-Strategic-Plan-from-the-Bottom-Up.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/A-Strategic-Plan-from-the-Bottom-Up.html How do you craft a strategic plan that becomes an integral part of business as usual? You build the plan from the bottom of the organization to meet the focus from the top. http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Resolving-A-Conflict-Between-Two-Sales-Staffs.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Resolving-A-Conflict-Between-Two-Sales-Staffs.html How do you get two competing groups to work together as a team? Here is a case study of salespeople on the road and a telemarketing group within the same company that just discovered they were both talking to the same customers. How did anger and recrimination turn into cooperation and partnership? http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Six-levels-of-competitive-readiness-How-to-get-ready-for-the-ambush.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Six-levels-of-competitive-readiness-How-to-get-ready-for-the-ambush.html To succeed today you need more than the right product or service. As soon as the market catches on, someone else will find a way to provide a similar product or service. To stay a step ahead of this competition you must already have a plan to move your product or service up a hierarchy of competitive levels. Once you have provided the need at one level, you have to be prepared to provide the need at the next level. This is product readiness for the competitive ambush ahead. This is how to stay ahead of the competition with what Theodore Levitt once described as the generic product, the expected product, the augmented product, and the potential product. http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Sell-Benefits-Not-Advantages.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Sell-Benefits-Not-Advantages.html Sellers are often too enamored with the advantages they have over their competition, but the customer is less impressed. They want to know “What are you going to do for me?” and even more important, “What will that do for my bottom line?” Here is a test to see if you are selling advantages, products or benefits. http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Use-the-Magic-Words-in-Consultative-Selling.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Use-the-Magic-Words-in-Consultative-Selling.html At some point in a sales meeting with a client, a professional is expected to offer some course of action. If the professional is focused only on what he or she came to offer the client, there is a great risk of rejection. Using these four questions—we call them the magic words—the professional has a greater probability of closing a sale. http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Tell-PSR-Stories.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Tell-PSR-Stories.html Perhaps the oldest and greatest communications tool of mankind is storytelling. Stories have per¬petuated the fabric of civilizations, families, and religions. Stories inform, teach, entertain, per¬suade, and bind together peoples. They also sell. http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Share-the-Pain-and-Share-the-Gain.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Share-the-Pain-and-Share-the-Gain.html How to be the one to help clients with the right solution before they set upon the wrong approach and started looking for help among your competition. Clients are giving professionals subtle and even strong signals of pain. But professionals with tunnel vision do not catch these signals and lose the opportunity to be of real help. http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Compensate-for-Lack-of-Experience-with-Preparation.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Compensate-for-Lack-of-Experience-with-Preparation.html How a consultant prepared for a visit with a prospect in an industry he knew little about and impressed the prospect by reading a junior high school book his wife found in the local community library. http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Go-Fishing-with-a-Frying-Pan.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Management/1039/Go-Fishing-with-a-Frying-Pan.html One of the greatest reasons sales are lost is because of our weak expectations. Closing is a matter of attitude. Your basic assumption must be that you and your firm have the solution the customer or client needs. If you negatively and unjustifiably prejudge the quality of a prospect or the outcome of a sales call, you will betray these feelings to the prospect without saying a word.