Rapport is the foundation for effective communication and positive relationship-building. It stems from finding and/or creating common ground. The ability to build rapport with customers is vitally important. Why? Because, if you have rapport with your customers they are more likely to trust you, listen to you and communicate openly with you. This in turn [...]

Consultative selling is a highly regarded sales technique used by sales people that provide the products and services that best meets their customer’s needs as opposed to using traditional pushy selling selling tactics to get the sale by any means necessary. Adopting a consultative sales approach means not selling something to a customer that he [...]

Murray Spangler worked as a janitor in Canton, a small town in Ohio, America. Murray suffered from asthma and the dust stirred up while he cleaned staircases and rugs made his health problems worse. Having given this matter some thought he came up with an ingenious solution. He took a soapbox, a fan, a silk [...]

Several years ago I read a book called How to be Brilliant by Michael Heppel, it was fantastic. I was working on quite a big customer service change project at the time and it totally changed my view on what we needed to do. Well not totally changed my view but we did take on [...]

The great british high street is quickly becoming nothing more than a set of abandoned stores and a customer-less zone. High street store closures increased last year as Clinton Cards and Game where given the shock of administration. Price Waterhouse Coopers have reported that the net number of store closures in 2012 was around 1800 [...]

I recently read that Carnegie Institute of Technology have presented research that shows 85% of your financial success is due to skills in “human engineering”, the way that you communicate, lead, negotiate and build relationships. This means that only 15% is down to your technical ability. The last few years have seen businesses go through [...]

  “No one ever left an organisation, they leave Managers”, I heard this said recently at a seminar I was attending. I have heard it said many many times before and have, on occasion, said something similar myself. In part, I think it is true but it is not as black and white as was [...]

I ran across the car park at Haywards Heath train station on Wednesday morning, keeping my head down from the wind and rain and hoping I wasn’t going to miss the train. I didn’t, in fact I had ten minutes until the train arrived. I looked for somewhere warm to hide and everywhere was taken [...]

In a recent survey, People Management, have highlighted the effects that Leaders have on their organisation when they don’t lead and manage effectively. The survey reports that around four in ten managers do not resolve conflict effectively and thus this leads to a lack of team work and low engagement. This low engagement is evident [...]

The most successful people in the world right now and throughout history are so because they dared to fail in order to succeed. There is no failure, only feedback…. Of course there is failure. If you take a driving test or exam you either pass or fail. Sales people will either succeed in achieving their [...]