We can all name them: Who in your organization holds your attention when they speak up? Who can you count on to be the most engaging dinner conversationalist? What speaker do you see on a program who pulls you in? The names that come to mind are those who tell stories so well that time seems to stand still.

How can outbound sales reps stand out in a sea of competition? When every salesperson sounds the exact same, it’s time to do things differently. Dale Merrill is a highly sought-after international speaker, sales thought leader, and co-author of Strikingly Different Selling: 6 Vital Skills to Stand Out and Sell More. Dale joined the Predictable Revenue podcast to break down those six skills and how we can use them to drive revenue growth.

This past winter, my daughter learned how to snowboard. So what? Big deal. Kids do that all the time. What made this kid different, though, was how she learned: by watching YouTube videos, talking with friends who snowboard, observing others on the slopes, and then doing it (over and over again).

One negotiating technique you see used all the time is what I like to call the nibble. This occurs after you've shaken hands to close a deal, and just as you're getting ready to sign the papers to make it official, the other side tries to get one last concession on the table.

Fabian was feeling anxious as he left the leadership training course. He knew what he had to do, and yet he didn’t know how to actually do it. Fabian had been promoted up through the ranks of a global construction firm, starting in 1994 out of his university as part of a rotational management program.

The first time I interviewed Adam, he sat across from me in my office adjusting his glasses, and speaking in a low, calm tone. He didn’t radiate charisma, the way you imagine a hot shot leader would appear, with a fancy suit and tie. But I wasn’t looking for some hot shot executive either.

When applying for a job, there are many ways to optimize your resume. You can check the listing to see where the employer’s priorities lie in terms of experience, and make sure to highlight what’s most important to them, for example. You can include any major achievements like exceeding sales goals. And you can include a link to your LinkedIn profile.

Though they’ve been warned for decades about the dangers of over-relying on gut instinct and personal experience, managers keep failing to critically examine—much less challenge—the ideas their decisions are based on. To correct this problem they need to think and act like scientists. That requires doing five things: (1) being a knowledgeable skeptic and relentlessly questioning assumptions; (2) investigating anomalies—things that are unexpected or don’t look right; (3) devising testable hypotheses that can be quantifiably confirmed or disproved; (4) running experiments that produce hard evidence; and (5) probing cause and effect.

When I was a child in the 1950s, my friends and I had two educations. We had school (which was not the big deal it is today), and we also had what I call a hunter-gatherer education. We played in mixed-age neighbourhood groups almost every day after school, often until dark. We played all weekend and all summer long. We had time to explore in all sorts of ways, and also time to become bored and figure out how to overcome boredom

Many years before I fully understood extrovert and neurotypical privileges, I took part in a variety of experiential learning sessions. The ostensible goal of one of the sessions was to solve a problem as a team in a high-stakes simulation. The underlying goal was to do so in a way that made people trust you and want to work with you. The most “trustworthy” people at the end were the “winners.”

The fifth edition of Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer report reveals how trust, personalisation, and digital-first experiences are increasingly central to meeting customer needs. Based on a global survey of consumers and business buyers, the report also highlights how customer expectations and behaviours have changed over time.

OK, your sales process isn't working. Now what? Change it. Change anything and everything. There are a billion reasons why you don't sell a product, and when it's a new product, it's a baby-step-and-learn process. There's just no other way.

But there is a list of potential weak points that you, as a leader, can focus on, so you're not wasting time running down dead-ends.

Following the expenditure of resources and time in developing a new product, the next critical consideration is locating customers who purchase it. You may be perplexed about the best way to contact a customer or have difficulty defining go-to sales strategies that produce results. Salespeople use a variety of approaches, tips, and techniques daily to get new leads. New methods are entering the picture as a result of rapid technological advancement.

Customers are, more often than not, willing to talk about your business. When they do talk, the information they share is called customer feedback, and it can help you improve all aspects of your business. In this post, learn exactly what customer feedback is, why it’s important, and discover insight from HubSpot experts about the specific benefits it brings.

Ask any communication professional or skilled speaker and they will tell you that the first step in getting results through your communication is knowing and connecting with your audience. But that’s easier said than done. Often we fall into the trap of trying to impress our audience rather than making sure what (and how) we’re communicating is what will resonate with them.

It wasn’t so long ago that a CEO was considered effective if they could keep the board of directors happy, appease shareholders, and steer clear of major reputational issues. Not so anymore.

The job description for the CEO of today is being crowdsourced, with nearly every segment of society — employees, customers, suppliers, governments, and activists — registering their expectations and demands.

“Oh, I pretty much know my strengths and my weaknesses.”

If we had a dollar for every time we’d heard this from an executive we were coaching, we could have retired a long time ago. When probed, they often proclaim that while they might not recognize all their strengths, they are confident about knowing their serious weaknesses.

Business, technology and innovation are evolving at a faster pace than ever before in history. Employees are also transitioning jobs and careers at an increased rate amid The Great Resignation. While these changes create new opportunities, it also elevates the urgency of the already increasing need for employees to have skillsets they may not currently possess, in other words, a skills gap.

Compared with other business functions, sales has a tendency to be less adaptable. At many companies, sales process remain the same for long periods of time. Now, as digitization changes the way many customers buy, sales teams need to evolve continuously. Four practices can help with this shift: Anticipate where customers are going, redeploy resources to match customer behavior, shift emphasis from closing sales to helping customers realize value, and embracing agile decision-making.

Power Boats? The 10 fastest in the world reach speeds of up to 317 MPH.

Salespeople tend to be in a rush to present - before an opportunity is even qualified. Most salespeople are in such a hurry that they completely skip things like qualifying and discovery. And when salespeople do perform discovery they accept the very first indicator they hear and rush to explain how their product or service addresses that indicator,