Tips for effectively relating to people

Posted on 12 October 2018 by Maya Saric

A few simple cues and small adjustments in how you relate to others can improve your life, at work or socially.

When a group of people are laughing each person looks at the individual he or she likes the most because they want to make sure that the object of their desires approves and shares their sense of humour.
Chew on something when you’re nervous or before an important conversation, a public speech, or any event that makes you nervous. Nobody eats when they’re in danger, so while you’re chewing your brain thinks it’s safe to relax.
Staring passively at the other person can help you get any information you need. If you don’t like the answer or it seems they’re not telling you the whole story just keep staring at them. The silence will be so unbearable that they’ll be ready to tell you anything just to end it.
Imagine that your future employer is a good friend of yours to avoid getting nervous during an oral exam or a job interview. Imagine that the person in front of you is a friend you haven’t seen in ages.
Consider the possibility that the interviewer is as nervous as you are. Hiring the right person is important and most managers outside of HR specialists do not do it often.
Come into the interview, or a meeting, with a smile. This will make you feel more confident and put them at ease too.
Put a mirror behind your desk to reduce conflict. You’ll find that many people will be polite and ready to meet you halfway in negotiations. People are social creatures and one of our survival tactics is cooperation, so nobody likes to see themselves angry or annoyed.
If you want to break up a fight, get something to eat. Eating is associated with relaxation and being calm, so the probability of a person attacking someone who is eating is very low.
If you want to easily become friends with someone just ask them for a favour. It can be something simple like; passing the sauce, a napkin, the sheet of paper or even asking for some advice. The person who’s doing the favour will think they like you because they’re doing something for you i.e co-operating so you must be an ally.
Schedule important meetings for the beginning or the end of the day because people remember things best when they happen at the beginning and end of the day.
To make participants attend and be punctual for meetings, specify a weird time and duration for the meeting. This is called the Swiss trains approach. If a person sees a meeting from 9:22 to 9:46 on their schedule they’re more likely to be on time and things will stick to the agenda more precisely.
Pay attention to the direction of feet while talking to other people. Their feet can help you understand their true feelings in a conversation. If they turn their body to you, but not their feet, it means they’re not interested in talking to you or are hiding something. Also, if the tips of their shoes are facing a different direction, it means they want to get away as soon as possible.
Subtly copying other people’s body language will help you win their trust. The person doesn’t consciously realize that they see themselves in you because of the familiar gestures.
So that people see that you’re paying attention during a conversation, smile when you’re listening to their good news and frown at the mention of bad events in their life.
A sincere smile is a great way to build trust in any situation. When your smile isn’t forced your mood also improves, you start to exude warmth and people feel it. But if you are forcing the smile it can have exactly the opposite effect, so be sure to be thinking of something that makes you happy enough to generate a sincere smile before you approach or enter the room.

Should I start a trainee Real Estate salesperson at the reception?

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I get asked this question a lot as it seems the best way to ‘ease’ young or inexperienced people into the world of real estate. But why waste their energy if you know from their SIP results that they are capable of prospecting from the first week and becoming profitable members of the sales team within months?

This is a great idea ONLY if it is a busy reception where they have plenty of interaction with the public so they can start evolving their communications and rapport skills. The high-speed variable nature of a busy reception will energies them making them great representatives of your business.

However, in any downtime or if the reception is always quiet, they should NOT be doing real admin/PM work as they will:

1. be bad at it, no matter how often you show them and upset the PM staff

2. get discouraged that they shouldn’t be in RE when what they shouldn’t be is doing detailed admin work and so you will waste their early enthusiasm which often gets people through the barren start-up stage of sales.

3. leave you as they will feel useless, but with a strong EXP score, they will have the courage to leave and find something better. They have poor memories of your business and may harm your reputation as they will become a good salesperson somewhere.

With digital payments and mobile phones, most offices do have very quiet reception desks. In that case, you could have them share reception with someone who is a real admin person and do sales work in the other half of their time, like;

1. Being a leasing officer, ie showing rental property and general making phone calls to set up things for the PM’s. Again, don’t expect them to be good at processing the applications.

2. Prospecting for either sales or management

3. Out doorknocking and expanding the database for the business. If they did two half days a week that could be hundreds of new contacts over a few months and get them into great prospecting habits for when they are ready to be in sales.

If you have hired using SIP, no matter their age or background, they will take to selling, including cold calling, with minimal angst and be productive members of your sales team within months.

How to become who you want to be

Posted on 11 October 2017 by Maya Saric

What we say to ourselves is often an echo of what other people said to us that we accepted as true. I’ve accepted a whole bunch of things over the years, some of which has served me well, like ‘I’m sporty” and ‘if she can learn to be good at that I can too’.

My tactics for letting go of the unhelpful ones

Decide what characteristics I want for myself
Start developing the skills needed for the new characteristics.
Look for evidence that the old message is false.

We only took on the old messages because at some level we believed them. Maybe because there was real evidence of our stumbling’s when we were younger or just because someone powerful said so and nothing at the time contradicted them.

It is harder to let go of a belief without evidence that it is wrong. To get this evidence sometimes you need to learn new skills first. You say to yourself ‘I cannot sing’. If you decide you want to be able to sing, even at a simple level amongst friends, get singing lessons. Singing is a learnable skill even if you are tone deaf. Record yourself at the beginning and again after 10 lessons. Then you can hear just how much you can sing. Decide if you want to be an even better singer and how much more training you will need. Learning to be a new, singing, you is a very simple mechanical journey. Or at the end of the ten lessons, you can at least edit your old message from ‘I cannot sing’ to ‘I didn’t learn to sing’.

Choose who you want to be and start learning to be her.

Sell it to me!

Posted on 26 September 2017 by Maya Saric

Is selling something one person ‘does’ to another?

Nothing could be further from the truth. Selling is not a one-way process and without clarity, about what it really is it’s impossible to become very good at it.

I believe selling is a conversation between two or more people at the end of which somebody makes a decision.

Ultimately customers buy from us when they come to a point in their decision process that gives them the confidence to act. That decision journey, if you like, starts firstly with clarity about the need for the item/service based on many factors that have nothing to do with you or your competitors. That intrinsic first level decision is the basis for how urgently they will search for the ultimate item, how much they will pay for it and when they will act.

If all of that occurs privately before they engage with potential suppliers than the salesperson has very little influence over the decision processes and they become nothing more than a talking brochure and price is the only issue left to resolve.

True selling is being part of the fuller journey of bringing that need up from a subconscious idea or unplanned issue to a conscious detailed process. The earlier in that process you are talking with your prospect about all aspects of their actual or possible need the better you can position your offering when it’s time for them to act.

In the Emotions in Selling course, I teach how to conduct these conversations from the earliest stages and how to prospect so you can engage your prospects long before they are actively ‘shopping’. Equally importantly you will learn how, through conversation, you can manage their fear to effectively build trust so that they can confidently complete the transaction and not withdraw or becoming swayed by competitors.

Call 0407 005 290 or email maya@salesinventoryprofile.com to find out more.

Success means staying on one path

Posted on 15 July 2017 by Maya Saric

“Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing until it gets there.”
– Josh Billings

What are you going to be when you grow up? It’s a cute question to ask a 5 year old. Sadly with the endless array of choices, it’s easy to get trapped into asking this throughout your entire life. There are all these different pulls and pushes that tempt us to stray from our path. But being a jack-of-all-trades can be detrimental to your success; it’s about choosing one thing and getting really good at it!

But how do you know what is worth sticking to?

Ultimately you don’t. It’s a decision you make.

Many of the worlds greatest achievements and success stories resulted from stepping into something radical but then many failures are too. Business plans and market research will give you some clues and it’s worth spending a few (many???) months doing these before you decide. But there are no guarantees and ultimately it’s just your choice to commit.

Once you commit there is nothing else but to persist, till success or bankruptcy do you find.

If you want to find out if you have the tenacity/persistence/endurance to stick to your path we invite you to complete a Sales Inventory Profile.

http://salesinventoryprofile.com/prk=re-41ac-sale-001

A Positive Mental Attitude is key to success

Posted on 22 March 2015 by Maya Saric

“Sales are contingent on the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect ” William Clement Stone (May 4, 1902 – September 3, 2002) Author of the book ‘Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude’ 1960

Stone is one of America’s rags to riches super stars. From selling newspapers at 6 years old to owning the news stand at 13. Together with his mother they started what was to become America’s largest insurance company, Combined, when he was 16. Within ten years they had over a thousand agents selling insurance across the United States.

He credits his success to Napoleon Hills book Think and Grow Rich.

More quotes by Stone https://thesecretmeister.wordpress.com/2007/04/25/w-clement-stone/

Coffee powering your health

Posted on 22 March 2015 by Maya Saric

Coffee the power food? Did you know that a cup of espresso coffee has 23 times the potassium of a banana? But NO SUGAR, how cool is that!

TOTALLY weird as this sounds, I nearly died from lack of coffee in December 1999.

In 1999 I was suffering with a gastric infection and barely digesting anything for 2 weeks, certainly not getting my morning takeaway on the way to the office or using the local cafes as meeting venues (what a great business innovation this has been!!!). I ran out of potassium and my body started to shut down.

Along with potassium, coffee also contains caffeine. Sadly caffeine has negative effects on your body so should be minimised. As always there is a down side, right? Luckily dark roasted espresso coffee has the least amount of digestible caffeine per shot. It’s unlikely the amount of caffeine in a single shot of espresso will do as much harm as the potassium can do good.

The amount of potassium coffee contains drops off but caffeine increases as coffee is processed, so instant coffee has the worst ratio making caffeine the dominant feature.

To maximise the potassium released from coffee beans grind the beans immediately before using them. Then add intense heat, like keeping the brew at boiling point for 20-30 seconds as Southern Europeans do, or go to a Cafe where steaming hot water is forced through the shot. Using a plunger and pouring boiling water over the grind will not release as much potassium.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/09/16/coffee-health-benefits.aspx

The absolute power of NO

Posted on 31 October 2014 by Maya Saric

Learning to effectively say ‘no’ without flinching or thinking it was damaging my relationships is a lesson that took me many years to get. Maybe I’m a slow learner? Maybe it’s my female instinct to value relationships above myself. It used to strike me as too confrontational to simple say ‘no’. But not learning to efficiently communicate ‘no’ can be a huge time drain in our busy lives and creates uncertainty and resentment in relationships.

I finally learnt this lesson at home from my children but it has proven to be an important tool in all my relationships, with adults both personally and at work.When I first became a parent I was a very collaborative and soft individual. When my son did things I didn’t like and I wanted him to stop doing it I used statements like;

That’s not a very good idea
Try it this way…
How about we…

When I only had the one child this style worked. While it was exhausting and frustrating, I could still continue to do things that way. After my second child learned to crawl it became obvious that my systems were no longer working. Having two little boys in the house the available time to negotiate and persuade became zero.

I learned that a clear and firm direction was not only better on my nerves but better for the troops as well. Now, when I say NO, in a clear and serious voice, everyone knows exactly what that means, even the baby (child three, a daughter).

The power of the word NO comes from its meaning. Its meaning is absolute and to the point. So to execute it properly your voice and demeanor needs to be absolute and to the point. There is no room for lightheartedness or absent-mindedness; nor is there room for any hesitation.

For NO to have absolute power it does not need to be used in anger, or frustration; or used sternly or loudly. If something, in this case a word, has real power it needs no force in its execution to be effective. To have absolute power NO needs no threat or consequences.

Continuously threatening is just as ineffective and exhausting as being too soft. As a parent, or as a leader, you cannot present every requirement as a closed statement; you will do this, or … You cannot run any team, including a family, in a permanently adversarial state. If you follow through with every threat you become the enemy. But then if you don’t follow through with every threat you get ignored and become ineffective, so stop threatening.

I have learnt that none of these things means no:

I don’t think so
That’s not what I meant
Let me think about it
Maybe another time
I’m not sure
That’s not a very good idea
I’d prefer you didn’t
I don’t like that

No means no.

As a parent my job is to lead and at times that requires making some really tough decisions, and holding my ground. My job as a parent is also to teach. I teach my children how to weigh up issues and make decisions. I will share my thinking processes to give them examples of decision-making. I will take them through situations and ask them to make the decision to let them practice under supervision.

But when it’s my place to make a decision, the quicker and more precisely I relay my decision the better. If the decision is no then saying NO is the quickest and most effective way to say no. All those other ways I used to say it just prolong the tension for everyone.

Greatness is a team act

Posted on 25 June 2014 by Maya Saric

“We are, each of us, angels with only one wing, and we can only fly embracing each other.” – Luciano Decrescenzo

Like me Luciano must have believed it is too hard to achieve greatness alone. The focus on the individual genius in business, the push for a ‘personal brand’ takes us further from the reason humans have become the dominant species on the plant: our strength is in our ability to co-operate.

Co-operation is our greatest strength. Whether that be physical co-operation (circling the wagons) for our safety or intellectual co-operation, sharing medical research, we get better outcomes when we work together. When we are isolated we do less work which means we achieve little, as we preserve our energy to survive till help arrives.

Humans have very complex social structures underlying our survival and quest for greatness. Co-operation not competition brings out our best. The smallest workable unit is the couple, then a family of three, to villages and then tribes. Where do you belong?

About Lucian o Decrescenzo

Luciano Decrescenzo, the Italian writer, filmmaker, and intellectual, has published 28 books on subjects ranging from Greek philosophy to his own childhood in Naples. He was born in 1928 and worked as an engineer for IBM for several years before turning to philosophy and writing. He has also directed, written, and starred in a number of Italian language films and received honorary Athenian citizenship in 1994.

Could you have a career in real estate sales?

Posted on 24 November 2013 by Maya Saric

Ever dreamed of a job in the country’s highest paying industry? Why not a professional career within your own community that can give you a six figure income after 2-3 years and where it is possible to break through the million dollar personal income barrier.

Start at $35,000 and in 5 years build to $350,000 and in 10 years the world is your oyster. Spectacular success is possible for those who are suited. You cannot achieve the same in any other industry that quickly no matter what your qualifications.

But what happens to most people that enter the industry? 90% fail and are gone within 2 years. Luckily 50% of those that start in residential sales are gone within 3 months. Lucky that they haven’t wasted more of their lives living at the basic level before working out it’s not for them

Step 1

Find out which job within Real Estate will suit you so you build a career around work that you will be successful at doing.

There are a few very different paths in the industry and they each require a different temperament of person.
Our selling IQ system, Sales Inventory Profile, will show you where your natural abilities are the best match. Then you have to develop skills. There is no point in learning about the whole industry if you are best suited to one area.

The major roles in real estate are;

Residential listing and sales (this is the best paid but hardest to do)
Buyers agent
Property Management
Commercial property
Project sales or Display homes

Step 2

Once you know your fit the best way to get a job is to approach the bigger agencies within 10 KM of where you live and ask for an interview. Most owners will say yes just out of courtesy to members of their local community. Agents out side of 10 KM won’t be interested in hiring you anyway as travelling longer distances every day and at night is too hard and you will exhaust yourself and leave them.

Step 3

If you are under 25 or have been out of the work place for a while you will need to work on reception for a few years to build skills and area knowledge. Don’t let yourself be rushed into taking on more than you can do well.

Feel free to Email me directly if you want to discuss any of this.

Maya Saric

How To Series Episode 6: How to Sell

Posted on 10 October 2013 by Maya Saric

Many of us get into selling entirely by accident and many of us are petrified of being sold to. But selling is just a conversation – it is as simple as that. But selling is a conversation with a purpose; selling is a conversation at the end of which someone makes a decision. As a salesperson, you need to guide the conversation to a point where somebody can make a decision and that is the only thing to it. It’s deciding when is the end, and how much information do you need, to buy?

So, it’s a conversation between people, which means you need to ask as many questions as you’re giving answers because in order for a customer to make a decision, they need to have all of the facts and figures. Yet, when they come to you when you first meet them, they don’t have any questions because they don’t know, yet, what it is that’s missing in their framework, and that’s why it’s a conversation. You need to explore what they know, and what they believe in order to fit the new information in so that it makes sense to them. So, giving your blanket product information and the Ten Top Benefits of buying my teaspoon is not a conversation, and therefore, it’s not selling. You need to find out, first, what they know, what they believe, and why they wish to buy one. And then, you present your information.

Emotions in Selling program provides lots of various, specific things about how to converse, how to provide information, and how present yourself in such a way that engenders trust. Because if they don’t trust your information, then they won’t accept you.

Selling is a conversation – it is as simple as that.

How To Series Episode 5: How to Close the Sale

Posted on 19 August 2013 by Maya Saric

Selling is a conversation. At the end of which, somebody gets to make a decision. At the end, we close.

How do you know when that conversation is at its end?

Some training programs will say, close, close, close. Close a million times. Close all over the place. Close every second that you can. In fact, that’s not true. If you close too soon and all of the issues haven’t been fully resolved, in your prospect’s mind, they won’t be able to make that decision. If you force it or in some way try to corner them into it, you get a generic reaction where they will automatically say no and it’s very hard to recover from a point blank No. you can also let the conversation ramble on way too long, spend way too much time, give them way too much detail, not be really clear on what the final aspect that they need to resolve is, and talk your way around the conversation so that you totally confuse them, and then you can’t close because now they are overwhelmed. You need to be really clear about what sort of information they need form which they are capable of making that decision.

So what sort of information needs to be contained in the conversation?

While selling is a conversation and we all know how to converse, it is much more complicated than that and you need to understand both the psyche of the person that you’re dealing with, the content of your product, and how that fits into their current situation or their current… the way they run their current business.

If you are interested in learning how to sell and learning how to close and when that moment is, and how to maximize your calling rate, you really need to understand those facets. We run a training program called Emotions in Selling which clearly identifies how people make decisions. What will get in the way? How to build trust? Because if they don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you no matter how well you explained the product. Finally, when have they had enough content that they can make a stable decision that they won’t freak themselves out the next day or when they talk to somebody else back at the office or at their own home, and see that in fact, they’re not ready to decide? They need to be fully aware of what they are buying and confident before close will stick.

Learn how to identify what the needs are thoroughly and how to have that conversation so that your product answers those needs before you close them.

For more on Sales Training & Coaching, contact Maya on 0407 005 290 today.

Enjoying the series? Check out the next episode: How to Sell

How To Series Episode 4: How to Build Trust

Posted on 19 August 2013 by Maya Saric

It’s a fundamental process in human interaction whether you’re building a relationship or trying to sell a product, and the process is exactly the same.

In the Emotions in Selling program we spoke a lot about the mechanisms of fear – and fear is an instinctive and absolute reaction; we are hardwired for survival. And that means that the tiniest, little flicker, of uncertainty or danger, will instantly freeze the person you’re speaking to. And why is that important? Because you can only develop trust in the absence of fear.

So if your friend, your customer, your business partner, is in a state of fear they cannot trust you because you are bundled into the equation. So you have to look at your environment, the really simple attributes of where you’re standing and what’s happening around you, through to how you look, and how you dress, and how you speak, and then to the information that you’re giving, because that person will take the data in from the biggest cues down to the most sophisticated.

So what you say, matters least. If they’ve already been frightened by standing in an environment that’s a bit open, exposed, their fear of being overheard…or you’re wearing something that’s out of context with what they expect of you. So if you’re a professional, then you need to dress like a professional. You need to dress like that person expects of you, not how you expect, or would like to dress. So if you’re a medical professional, you have to look like their vision of a medical professional, not your own. And when selling, same in any important financial transactions, we have this stereotypical accountant or bank manager impressions of the world. People expect, when they go to the bank, to see people dressed like their stereotypical visions of a bank manager. So exactly the same thing applies to the words that you use and the things that you say; what you say has to be congruent – that’s a really big word – it means, it needs to fit in to the context of their current knowledge, including their belief system.

So say if you’ve got a piece of knowledge that conflicts or is incomplete then they cannot accept the truth of what you’re saying. So you may have to start at the beginning and educate them if it is some important and complicated procedure that you’re explaining. Or you may have to have a really long chat about what they currently believe so what you say, is then fitted in with what they currently know. And if it does contradict then you’re able to discuss why it’s still safe information, despite the fact that it doesn’t fit in. Developing trust is the first step in any relationship – it’s the most important in selling.

If you’re in sales I recommend that you explore the Emotions in Selling program and understand how to guide your clients through a simple process of conversation to making stable decisions.

Learn how to build trust with the Emotions in Selling Program blog series.

Call Maya on 0407 005 290 or send her a message on Facebook.

Want more? Watch the next episode in our How To series: How to Close a Sale

How To Series Episode 3: How Resumes are Killing your Business

Posted on 15 August 2013 by Maya Saric

Recruiting sales people is the trickiest part of your company.

Recruiting sales people is harder than recruiting any other part of the business because the number of people who can sell is actually quite small. But the number of people who think they can sell and are certainly interested and willing because sales people earn such good money, have flexible working hours and all the benefits of being in the sales department, amounts to a huge level of interest. There’s a larger level of interest than the people who are capable of doing it.

How do you work that out?

Traditionally, we’ve been doing it with resume. Resumes are incredibly flawed as recruitment tools. They talk about the past. They are full of historical facts or historical fictions sometimes. They’ve been edited somewhat but regardless of whether its fact or fiction, it’s about the past and where that has been and what they claim to have done for themselves. It’s totally impossible for you to prove any of it. It doesn’t tell you what they are capable of doing for you. It doesn’t show you the feat between their history and their abilities and your job.

What we do in the Sales Recruitment Process is identify people’s ability to sell and their ability to sell is based on 75 different attributes so impossible for them to articulate that document. We, however, have a sales IQ process that will identify all of that in 30 minutes of their time online before you meet them. Don’t rely on what they say about themselves. Allow us to measure their current ability which is core to their capacity regardless of whether they have already started to learn the skills and have had some experience.

Learning skills and having experience is important, but even how small a population can actually sell, you sometimes don’t have the luxury of recruiting just within the pool of people who have already done your job for another company.

Find out who can sell and whether or not they are sufficient of those attributes before you interview them, not by reading their resumes but by allowing them to do the sales inventory profile assessment.

You can contact us, Corporate Coach Australia, on the details provided below and allow us to help you recruit people who really can sell.

Call Maya on 0407 005 290 or send her a message on Facebook.

Next in the series: How to Build Trust – watch it here.

How To Episode 2: How To Cold Call

Posted on 5 August 2013 by Maya Saric

The first part of the process is, can you really do it? It looks easy and many people think that anyone can do it. We all have phoning blitz or a called calling day, get the whole company out there, do a bit every day or have some major function where we all get out there on the street and hassle up some new business – but less than 5% of the sales population, now that’s 5% of the sales population, not the total population, can actually do it.

The first part of how to cold call is to find out if you are able to because you don’t want to spend. This is the hardest part of the sales cycle. Despite it looking so simple, you don’t want to spend endless hours following my instructions first of all and perfecting your script or rehearsing your technique only to find that really you can’t do it. It’s going to slaughter your energy. It’s going to make you feel miserable and dejected and horrid.

First of all, do our Sales Inventory Profile IQ system. It will identify a whole bunch of things about your selling ability and one of those is whether or not you can cold call. If you can cold call, then develop the skills Then, prepare a magnificent killer script, rehearse it to depth so that it performs naturally and practice it to a whole bunch of people before you start doing it with prospects. Because cold calling regardless of how clever you think you are or how magnificent your product is, take the whole bunch of energy. It’s really emotionally draining.

So, how do you develop a killer script?

There are 3 key components. The first 10 seconds is the most important. In the first 10 seconds, you want to do only 2 things. You want to identify yourself in the simplest, clearest way possible, and you want to give them a reason to listen. A reason a listen so that you can interrupt their current activity. You can bring their attention to you and your content. They will make all sorts of polite noises about whether or not they are listening. You can ask them on what hours they come home, if they’ve got a moment to talk and most polite people will say yes certainly. But what you really want to do is slice through their attention so that you’ll have a 100% of it yourself, that is about what is in their current environment that you can fix. So the first 10 seconds is about knowing what pain your product will address and clearly articulating how in those first 10 seconds.

When you introduce yourself that’s, “Hello, this is Maya.” That simple, right? That clear. My name is a bit harder than hopefully yours is, but you don’t want to say, “Hello, this is Maya from Corporate Coach. That’s just too many words. And why do you want to listen to me? Because I know how to improve cold call outcomes. That’s the biggest pain that most of my prospects are in, is their ability to generate cold call outcomes. “Hello. My name is Maya. I’d like to talk to you about increasing your cold calling rate.” Those are really clear why they should listen to me and it has identified a specific pain that my business can address.

Next is, how your product does that and the final thing is getting permission to take further action. In the middle is a little bit about your product and how you do that. Then, is the permission to proceed.

What is the next step that you can gain permission for during that one cold call? Is it to meet in person? Is it to send them some information? Is it for them to attend an event? Is it to do some sort of demonstration? Be really clear about what you’re trying to achieve. Introduce yourself and your product and then ask permission to proceed to the next stage.

First of all, find out if you or your staff can in fact cold call, then get really clear about the script and do some rehearsing before you engage with clients.

Lovin’ the series? Check out How Resumes Are Killing Your Business here.

How to choose a Business Coach

Posted on 26 July 2013 by Maya Saric

Lets leave aside the question of when do you need a business coach and skip to: How do you choose the right one for you?

I often hear comments by people trying to sell their coaching services that only current superstars in any profession have the right or capacity to coach others to excellence.

Really?

What I think all good coaches need to have is not the ability to perform particular activities well themselves, but the ability to bring to consciousness your performance on those activities so that they can help you improve. But – changing human behavior is a difficult thing. Thus, the profession of coaching has moved into the business world as the bridge between classical training, i.e. giving people new information about how to perform tasks and creating sustainable changes in behavior.

Coaching is about helping people move from ‘knowing’ to ‘doing’. That is a complex process.

A good coach – a coach that will give you the outcome of better performance – is one that is able to translate your current performance, which you may be unconscious of, into consciousness, then help you to improve from there. A good coach is someone who understands the psyche of the human being; how to guide people through change; how to support people through levels of insecurity and fear and doubt, all of which dominates the process of change and learning; who are able to guide you through that process, and bring to consciousness your abilities. Then they have a good long look at where you’re currently at, how much runway you have ahead of you (i.e. ability to change) and formulate a plan that has absolute clarity from your perspective about how to make changes in your current behaviors to create a performance improvement.

I often hear coaches selling their personal sales success as the key to being good sales coaches. You know, currently, the best blah, blah, blah in the whole planet, or, the most squirms of any human ever blah, blah, blah. Well congratulations on your personal success! But often these people are successful, but can they coach someone else? They may have a great natural grasp of their topic and they may have been on a journey of growth, maybe they’ve received support or good training from somebody else and they have merged all of those things together into a system that works really, really well for themselves. Their intuitive knowledge, their education, the support they’ve received from people around them whether that was from an official coaching process or just from the warm and the encouraging words of their peers or their parents or sometimes even the insults and challenges that they’ve received, that they’ve been able to rise and prove them wrong.

But, as a coach, how do you recreate that process to another person?

How we motivate ourselves, how we change, how we responded to fear, how we deal with the uncertainty, these are the things that stand in the way of our success. And what you want in a good coach is somebody who knows how to systematically guide you through your fear, uncertainty, confusion, boredom, irritation, etc.

You don’t need a coach who is good at the individual tasks but has no consciousness of how they got good at these things themselves. A good coach is someone who is conscious of how success comes, and thus will be able to guide you through change.

I’ve recently saw this awful caption of “Is your Coach yesterday’s Hero?” Meaning, have they been a great performer in the past but have long since lost their touch. First of all, I find that kind of thinking offensive and secondly, it’s actually irrelevant whether the coach is yesterdays or today’s superstar in the performance of the actual activity. It would be like saying that you can’t coach Olympic athletes unless you were yourself currently an Olympic athlete. Unless you hold the world record in breaststroke, you cannot teach, or more to point, coach to excellence a current star in the swimming pool.

For more on training and improving your sales skills, check out our Emotions in Selling training blogs here

How To Episode 1: How To Recognise a Sales Person

Posted on 22 July 2013 by Maya Saric

You need staff and you need to interview a pool of candidates and see which one of them can sell.

There is a myth that some people believe that they can recognize sales people as soon as they see them, as soon as they chat. To some extent, that is true because during the chat, they will exhibit some of their selling abilities. Certainly, they will exhibit their communication style but whether that style is the right one for selling or not is harder to tell, so being able to be a good communicator is a really small fraction of the equation for being able to sell.

Another myth is that, it’s their energy, the twinkle in their eye, the spring in their step, their motivation, their ambition that really counts, so people that really want to succeed, that are passionate about selling or the product, or some other aspect of their life, this energy will exude when they are selling. This energy may indeed exude when they are selling but it isn’t going to help them sell. Their energy levels is about how interested they are in selling all their product which is certainly helpful, but their ability to sell is what’s crucial. There’s a huge chasm between being interested in something and then you are able to do it.

I have a great passion for quantum physics and a whole bunch of engineering topics but I’m never going to make an engineer because despite my passion and interest, I don’t have any of the relevant abilities. So we have a sales test that identifies the 75 attributes which you can never see in an interview that allows people to sell. It’s not a skill-based test because skills are something that people can develop, you can teach them, you can change them, and you make skills better. what you need is that they have the core capacity on which to build those skills. Find out if your candidates can sell before you interview them, before you get mesmerized by their passion and certainly do observe for yourself as many of those skills that they may possess, but remember the current skills can be topped up, that core capacity. It’s either there or it isn’t.

Visit our Facebook page and leave a message for Maya, or call her on 0407 005 290.

Next in the series: How to Cold Call

Sales Myths Episode 5: Anybody can sell

Posted on 8 July 2013 by Maya Saric

Sales Myths: There’s no skill required to sell. Anybody can do it.

Indeed, there are lots of people who have tried to sell and failed miserably. The mutli-level sales organizations of the world would testimony to that. They have thousands of members but less than 1% of those are generating their revenue. It’s a very small percentage of the population. It’s less than 5% if you need to proactively make phone calls and initiate sales conversations.

Find out if you are one of those 5% before you waste your life and oodles of your money learning to sell when it just isn’t you.

Liked our series? Watch more videos: Starting a sales career

The Importance of the Herd effect in selling

Posted on 10 June 2013 by Maya Saric

Having started in previous posts to talk about the role of fear and trust in selling, we now introduce two additional concepts; “herd” and “separate”. The Herd response signifies safety in numbers and falls into the trust side of the decision making process as they keep as safe. Much as media use the term “following the herd” as a negative concept it is fundamental to our nature as we as humans are, after all, herd animals.

The alternative to being part of the herd is to be “alone” and “separate”. Being separated is scary for most of us as humans; we only have to see psychology experiments which confine people in rooms to see how much it really affects us. Being alone and separate heights our fear response and subsequently triggers our expectations of danger or death. This heightened anxiety is no state for calmly making commercial buying decisions or splurging out on personal luxuries.

How does this relate to the commercial world? Being part of the “herd” is about staying with the majority, doing the things the majority are doing and definitely buying the things that the majority are buying. There are only a few brave souls who are able to explore uncharted territory, implement unproven technologies or make decisions without regard to the opinions and reactions of their peers. There may be a reasonable number of people showing interest in new products but few will take action and buy them while they are in the minority.

Obviously then, when making sales, you want your prospects to feel the comfort and safety of staying in the “herd” and keep them miles and miles away from this dangerous “alone” and “separate” zone where they associate themselves, or you, with danger during your sales call.

The first issue in the safety of the herd is whether they perceive you to be a trusted member of their herd or an outsider. Do you clearly belong to a herd they expect for the product you represent? Or do you appear as an obvious outsider of their herd or any they want to relate to? Your membership of the herd can be about simple appearances and dress code or it could be about the content of your conversations. Are you making them feel like they belong to a safe herd when they are talking with you? Or are you talking about things that are unknown and are trying to draw them away from what is known and safe?

Making prospects feel safe buying your service or product is easier if your product is well established with many testimonials, great client case studies or endorsements from people they trust and admire. As the old advertising said “no one ever got fired for buying IBM”. Getting fired is definitely a commercially dangerous outcome to be avoided by clients.

However if you’re selling something new to your market, no matter it’s obvious revolutionary benefits you are effectively asking your prospects to make a stance alone by taking the risk of a new product. To achieve the sale you will need to develop much more trust on other issues to compensate for the lost sense of safety being alone in a new market will trigger for them.

Stay tuned for our next installment about what motivates people to make decisions to change their current state including making decisions to buy new products.

The Hunter vs. The Farmer

Posted on 31 May 2013 by Maya Saric

In our world, there are a lot more Farmer types than Hunter types. The people that interview and hire you, such as HR Managers, Sales managers, and even some Managing Directors, tend to be Farmers. This means that they are more likely to “buy in” Farmers to their organisation – and if you happen to be a Hunter, it is much harder to come across as someone they would like to hire, and much harder to show them your sales abilities in the interview if the interview is geared towards showing off Farmers’ skills. It’s like trying to show how fast you can swim, when you’re made to fly!

Bottom line: It’s important to know your sales style so you can present yourself well during an interview. If you are a natural new business style salesperson rather than an account manager styles you will most likely be the exact opposite of the people who hire you.

Know how you are coming across to ensure you are really understood and appreciated….and get the job!

All about SIP Recruitment: Why we write your adverts for you?

Posted on 22 May 2013 by Maya Saric

All about SIP recruitment program is that we write the adverts for you. We use your logo, your identity, and we write elaborate detailed adverts that are designed to attract a broader and deeper candidate pool.

So if you are a well recognized international brand, you may be swarmed with candidates. But to find those rare and few sales people who are suited to your job, we need as big a candidate pool as possible. The SIP software means that you only need to relate and to talk to the ones that are an exact match. So the staff who takes care of the majority of the people who are not going to be suited to your selling position, so it’s very time efficient. We attract the candidates. You only interview the small population who are suited to your job.

More videos about SIP: Why you should recruit with SIP

All about SIP recruitment: A Brief History of SIP

Posted on 20 May 2013 by Maya Saric

Sales Inventory Profile. Its acronym is SIP and it has been in the market since 2008. The research was conducted in the mid 1990s.

When I was offering sales training, I was going around the world saying, “Let me help your sales team.” “Let me make them do better.” The biggest objection to my sales training was nothing to do with the training or the quality of the content, or its workshop material. The greatest objection I’ve got through the training was the candidates. My customers will tell me over and over again. No matter who we train them with. No matter what program we put them through. They’re not getting better. One of my clients said that he would spend all of his budget on finding out who could sell before he trains them, and that has been my mission since 1994. It is to work out who can sell before you recruit them and then before you train them.

So you got people in a company that might be good at selling, don’t move them across and say you got _____, find out before you move them. If you move people who are currently not in selling to a sales job and they failed, you’ve lost them forever. Nobody wants to go back to their old life, their old job. We’re able to test your current staff and find out if any of them has this heated dominant sales potential and we are definitely able to recruit only amongst that pool of candidates who are able to sell.

More about SIP and the value of recruiting with SIP for your business

The Role of Fear in Selling

Posted on 13 May 2013 by Maya Saric

We get it when salespeople freeze up in fear when they start out. But what about when prospects refuse to listen no matter how convincing you are because they are in fear?

How does this work and how do you help them overcome this and close the sale?

To understand how to achieve anything , we need to look at the psychology of fear – the why’s, what’s and how’s of customer fear and overcoming it.

Let’s have a look at this diagram of a person’s head. Let’s pretend it’s transparent so we can see what’s going on inside.

Now at the very top of your spinal cord is the first part of the brain. That’s the part of the brain that all animals have in common. Among its medical terms, It’s also called the primal brain.

All animals have that sort of brain at the top of their spinal cord, and what that is designed to do is take in information from the senses. Your eyes, your nose, your mouth, from your body in terms of touch and your ears.

Now what does this primal brain do with all that information it receives from the senses? Essentially, it is responsible for keeping you alive. It manages all of your bodily functions, eating, digestion, removal, and all those good things.

Why it is important to you to understand this process is that predominantly, it is also a fear filter. When something is coming in from the senses, it is the first and dominant decision processing facility. We’re talking about how people decide to buy the Ferrari, the house, or the new pair of shoes. It’s exactly the same process. So this is the bit that can make selling a huge pain for you.

The first thing we have to think about – our primal brain has to think about – is whether that data about the new shoes/car etc passes our fear filter. And if it doesn’t pass the fear filter, as you already would know, then the primal brain triggers the flight, fight or freeze response.

Activating the fear reactor shuts down the rest of the brain, turns off our modern and bigger part of the brain and sends data back to the rest of the body to flee or freeze or fight. It quite simply makes decision making impossible.

So you have to be careful and aware that when people walk into your shop, car dealership, or you enter their home as a real estate agent, you could be sending people into instantaneous freeze, fight or flee response.

So how does it affect my ability to sell if the brain is in fear respond mode?

As mentioned, when in fear response mode, the larger part of the brain, the modern one, will shut down, meaning it will not be able to process information for logic. So…logical thinking? Gone. Rational thinking? Gone. Decisions making is still working as that is in the primal brain, but after the fear response is activated the only decisions the primal brain is willing to make are about survival.

So until the fear reaction is resolved, no other useful processing will occur.

You can understand this through the diagram where the Modern Brain is being “blocked” by the Fear Filter. The Fear Filter can thus be seen as the gatekeeper to which the Modern Brain can be accessed (or not).

So really, if you have triggered the fear filter, nothing you say after that, nothing coming in from those ears is being pushed through to the logic part of your client’s brain. They are not thinking about return on investment or how glamorous they will look in that new Ferrari or how fashionable the new shoes are, or any other positive thing that your product gives them.

They won’t be thinking about any of it.

They will be feeling and acting on fear.

That’s something you need to be aware of in how you present yourself, how you present your product and how you conduct the conversation with a client.

So how do you get past this tricky fear filter and start selling?

Read on about the role of trust in overcoming the fear filter for the second part of the article.

Eliminate time-wasters and finish your to-do list!

Posted on 15 February 2013 by Maya Saric

Time management is an essential part of everyone’s lives. It’s particularly important for salespeople as if you’re not careful you will only spend 10% of your time selling. SO what really happens to the remaining 90%? Here’s a breakdown:

Since a whopping 90% of your time is spent outside of direct touch selling – effective time management is not just helpful; it’s Vital (with a capital V)!

Although we always talk of time management and getting organised – it’s hard to actually get started, especially when we have a million things buzzing through our minds and tasks continually piling, and piling and piling on our schedules and to-do lists. Selling isn’t called ‘life in the fast lane’ for nothing and that’s never going to change. It will never be quiet enough to make tidy detailed lists of EVERYTHING that needs doing.

What you need is an easy strategy to help you work out which 2-3 things you will make sure get done each day and how to priorities the rest to get most of it done.

So, firstly, just stop everything, take a deep breath, slow down and implement the following tips that you will read in this article.

Key Tip to Successful Time Management for Salespeople –

CLARITY.

Be clear on what your primary role is and your top 3 sales objectives.

If you have any doubt re-read your sales plan and the commission rules or if you are working for yourself you may have a business plan. If you don’t have a plan consider this; if there were only 3 financial targets you could achieve in 12 months what would they be?

PLAN EVERYDAY

Write a list of the activities that contribute most directly to your top 3 objectives above. If you are an account manager define your highest yield customers. If you’re a BDM or new business sales person define your target prospects for these objectives.

Schedule only these activities into the time of day when you are most effective. For some people this will be a personal choice based on your own productivity issues, like energy levels. For others your schedule is defined by some characteristic of your clients’ business or by the availability of an important resource.

Do not book more than half of the available time for these primary activities as no-one can maintain that level of concentration every day. This gives you the rest of the day to respond to immediate tasks that you could not plan for. As other activities arise during the day ask; ‘does this help me achieve one of my objectives?’ Or my favourite questions ‘will this help me close a sale?’

Then consider the most productive environment for your primary activities and if there any ways to boost your output. Perhaps you need to work away from your desk somewhere quieter to help with concentration; or just hide in a meeting room (café or car or someone else’s office) for a few hours to prevent interruptions. Perhaps you need to be away from your PC and all the electronic traffic. Saying you will only answer email or browse the internet for a specific time rarely works for most of us.

MAXIMISE YOUR ENERGY

Be realistic. No-one ever has time to complete all the tasks they would like to do or that are asked of them. To decide which ones you WILL NOT DO ask yourself a different question; ‘will not doing this get me fired/result in bankruptcy/land me in jail/lead to divorce?’ There will be some consequence in the tasks left not done so choose to complete the ones that contribute directly to your objectives and avoid the ones that will not create a disaster. For those second level jobs – they are neither a selling priority nor prevent disaster – fill your day to a reasonable level and sleep well at night knowing that you squeezed every productive movement out of your day and that no more was possible.

Take care of yourself.

Your body and your concentration are as much your tools of the trade as a phone or PC. Create some time each day to do something simple to recharge your batteries. On a sunny day take yourself for a walk for at least 10-15 minutes. Walk briskly or stroll and ponder but move your muscles, breath deeply, enjoy the sun and let the pressures of the day go for a moment. If you cannot walk, perhaps a drive or even some simple stretches away from your desk while you wait for the kettle to boil i.e. ‘move your muscles, breath deeply and let the pressures of the day go for a moment.’

Take an interest in nutrition and have real food available throughout your day. Don’t rely on having to drive out to buy everything each day as you may easily find your time too is tight and you’re having lunch from the vending machine and surviving on coffee and complimentary biscuits.

Learn a few stress relief techniques which you can do at your desk or in your car and finally sleep. Sleep, along with letting your muscles relax, is your brains why of tidying up and preparing for the next day. If you toss and turn when you go to bed, your brain hasn’t finished for the day. If it’s rehearsing for an important event then stay in bed so your muscles can continue to rest and let your mind rehearse. If your brain is full of activities not completed, get up; reach for your diary and start at the top of these tips by defining what is most important, which ones can feasibly be done, scheduling when to get it done and where you will be most productive; then return to bed.

More tips to help you prioritise (we recommend you print this off and keep it somewhere visible)

Set a monthly goal – calculate number of prospects/clients needed to hit that goal
Calculate the value of your time per hour by dividing your annual one target earnings by 1920 working hours per year
Designate priority time to make calls and prospect
Post your revenue goals somewhere completely visible and mark off as you progress
During work hours stay away from people who waste your time or make you feel low.

Reach those 2013 Goals without goal setting

Posted on 4 February 2013 by Maya Saric

Happy New Year! It’s always great to launch into another year; put the last behind and start afresh – of course, remembering what worked last year and learning from what didn’t – kicking off the New Year with renewed ambition and a whole new set of targets. It will be great to pull the team together and lay out the grand battle plan; 2012 was good but now let’s set the bar higher and get everyone working towards bigger goals – it’s an exciting time!

Now for the bad news – goal setting just doesn’t work.

Let me qualify that. Of course every good sales manager sets goals and of course these goals need to be communicated to the whole team concerned with achieving them. However these goals or sales targets in themselves have very little potential to generate the behaviour required to achieve the goals. If I can talk a little about the psychology of selling – after all that’s my main game! – sales targets have very weak motivational power for sales representatives who are experienced and capable; these representatives are in a comfortable space (relatively speaking,) and simply setting a larger sales target for them will not influence their work methodology greatly.

After all, what generates more leads and sales? Prospecting; and prospecting is seriously hard work. As a task in itself prospecting isn’t a huge amount of fun; it requires effort, discipline and resilience to stick with it until results start to flow from it. When a representative starts out fear of failure is a massive motivation to keep on prospecting hard. The situation of having no leads, no sales, no network of referrals or existing clients is extremely fear provoking and exerts a powerful pushing force upon the representative. Once a representative becomes more established, builds networks and has momentum from previous work generating ongoing sales then they find themselves in a safer place. They have moved some distance from the source of their fear which is no longer a powerful motivator. Motivations are now primarily about maintenance of this happy state.

How to encourage a representative in the “happy” zone to achieve more? Goal setting only provides a weak pulling force on the representative’s behaviour – not a pushing one. Anyone with a mechanical bent will know that it is much easier to push things than pull them.

In my sales training program Emotions in Selling I explain the Action Continuum to describe the process of motivation as it applies to understanding how prospects move to a decision to purchase. The psychology of this process also applies equally well to understanding how sales representatives make a decision to change their existing practice and perceive their own goals or “wants.”

Just as I train representatives to understand how and why prospects do or don’t make decisions to buy or in effect move from the position they are in I also like to help sales managers understand what motivates – and also demotivates – representatives from moving from the selling space they are in.

Those who have taken my Emotions in Selling course will readily understand why it can be difficult to motivate individuals to take a course of action which will actually benefit them – you are in effect asking the individual to cross a barrier; possibly even two barriers. And as is the case with prospects, even experienced sales professionals are subject to these same emotions and barriers.

Understanding why goal setting doesn’t work (or perhaps more fairly, why goal setting is a weak change driver,) is the first step. Knowing how to transform those goals into powerful change mechanisms is, of course, the answer to the $64- question; that’s a story for another blog ….

How will you drive yourself in 2013?

Posted on 1 January 2013 by Maya Saric

If something is truly important to us we are motivated to do whatever it takes to make it happen.

Very few people think getting more money is important enough to endure the angst of prospecting.

To have people push through their pain they must be clear on how important the result of their prospecting really is; self pride, glory, respect, providing for their children. It has to be really important to them.

— Maya Saric

Hire the right Sales reps and training them will also be easier

Posted on 25 December 2012 by Maya Saric

We don’t expect to be able to do accounts in order to employ an Accountant. So…why do we expect to be great Sales Reps before we allow ourselves to employ great reps?

Can we really expect a new sales person to prospect when no-one here does?

Yes absolutely!

If you choose people because they can do it (SIP can spot them for you)

You hire them with the clear plan that they will do it.

They take the job knowing they will need to do it

AND

When they start you teach them how to do it!

They will do it!

If you have hired well, it is a simple process to get great results. Yet, without SIP, finding the right people will be hard.

— Maya Saric

Book your January Sales Makeover – Build sustainable growth in 2013

Posted on 19 December 2012 by Maya Saric

If you’re wanting to Grow your Sales team in 2013, we’re offering our selling, coaching and recruiting expertise for a FREE planning session in January.

Making big changes in your life, personally or in business, is one of the hardest things we all face. It’s that time of year and everyone is trying to change for the new year. But achieving sustainable growth alone is near impossible. So don’t let 2013 be yet another year of good intentions.

If what you want to change has anything to do with selling, we can help!

We are experts in building sales results, by improving personal skills, crafting sales strategies and recruiting new members to the team who can sell.

Yep we know how to attract and spot real sales aptitude and then turn that into sales results.

We would like to offer our sales expertise for a free planning meeting to help you change your sales results, personally or for the whole company in 2013.

Ring now on 0407 005 290 or email maya@salesinventoryprofile.com to book your meeting at our Sydney office or by phone.

More info about SIP here

Hit the right notes. Recruit the Right Salespeople.

Posted on 19 December 2012 by Maya Saric

The quality of people’s resumes amazes me every day of the week in terms of details, consistency, layout and logical flow. I read thousand’s of selling CV’s a year now and even years ago the trend is always that, the better the BDM skills, the worse their résumé. Given some CV’s are total works of fiction I don’t know why BDMs don’t at least make the detail up more often.

In regards to grammar and spelling, I postulate this is because the fast paced style of a BDM is incompatible with spelling and structured detail. When you deal everyday with technical writers this must be very glaring for you. I say this also in my own defense. I‘m sure you have found stacks of typos in my communication. I used to have a business partner (Mez is what he calls himself) who was more of an Account Manager-style Salesperson than me and he was mortified with some of the mistakes in my emails. I certainly didn’t notice any in Mez’s.

As for KPIs, clear territory definitions and achievements are usually missing – and that baffles me too. Certainly in clear BDM roles, people don’t survive for years at a time like Mez has done without bringing in the numbers. I wonder if not bringing in the numbers is the real explanation for why Alex (a good old Hunter style Salesperson and I suppose a Jack-of-all-trades when it comes to careers) has moved so often.

Also, good Hunters are also by nature, risk-takers and so, they are willing to move more often. Though our Alex seems to have some underlying problem as he keeps moving in and out of recruitment. Yet here is something for recruiters and HR Managers to keep in mind – it is this constant moving about that indicates someone who is happy to take risks (or actually adores it), happy to push past their comfort zones; a trait that may possibly indicate an exquisite Hunter-style Salesperson.

Warm regards,

Maya Saric

Managing Director – Corporate Coach Aust P/L

SIP helping you build sales results quickly and cost effectively by identifying people who can sell.

More information on SIP: Why SIP has no age limits

The Story of Sales Tribe

Posted on 13 December 2012 by Maya Saric

Stories are born every day in simple ways and some grow to be legends. Here is our story.

Sales Tribe gathered for the first time on November 26th 2012– a fresh Monday start, where a gathering of our small team (a mix of 5 women and 1 man) of sales, marketing and one industrial design professionals resulted in something quite magnificent, no need to be modest here – our final, collective brand which you all now know as Sales Tribe.

So there we were in Maya’s living room, the official ‘board room’ for Corporate Coach Australia and above the sales office for Sales Inventory Profile, gazing into the bamboo trees that shot to the ceiling.

Maya called the meeting because of our growing frustration that neither of our official names really sums up who we are. Our company is called Corporate Coach, reflecting our starting point as Australia’s first professional coaching service back in 1994. Now in 2012 we have grown and do so much more than Coach. Our second identity Sales Inventory Profile (SIP) is one of our products – a sales IQ technology. Problem is, that doesn’t reflect the total service that product is a part of – hiring people that can actually sell – does it?

It’s time for a new brand that captures all of our services equally. We are all pretty clear on who we are and what we do for a living- helping our clients build High Performance Sales teams…but that’s way too wordy, urgh.

So there we were, on this Monday morning, brainstorming what we should call ourselves?

Something that encapsulates who we are and what we do – or something simple and completely random (we were inspired by Virgin and Apple for example)? Most of us loved the random, every day mundane type of names that are easy to spell and create curiosity and impact. Maya threw out “Frog” just as an example, which had enough impact that it made it to the final round of evaluations – was it that Maya was in charge of the marker pen?.

We debated over whether we should position ourselves as “smart” or “team-oriented” through our brand. Should we call ourselves something that screams intelligence and performance like “Smart”, “Avance” or trend more towards building teams, and towards collaboration? Or perhaps something young, fun, feisty, female? Someone, I think it was Eliza, threw out Bamboo – strong, durable, fast-growth and something that presents our history, this was inspired by the bamboo trees at Maya’s. Nonetheless, Bamboo became another favourite.

So there we were that Monday. 15 minutes walked by, 30 minutes ran by, 90 minutes flew by as more and more names were added to our burgeoning list. People were on their phones, searching up words in the thesaurus, adding to our inspired ideas. Time came when we were rounding down to the Finals.

It came down to “Tribe” or “Smart”. It was a 3 to 2 for Tribe. Tribe it was.

Then came problem #2: upon searching online we quickly realised that we weren’t the only ones to love this exotic, primal title. Tribe.com was taken, and after searching other domains we settled on Sales Tribe – blending both a hint as to what we do (selling the World’s First Sales IQ Technology!) and what we build for our clients: Tribes.

After our 2 hours of our creative branding meeting, the “geek” (Maya’s word not mine!) in Maya did some background research on tribes. That night, our inboxes received a small email from Maya about why Sales Tribe really is an awesome and suitable name for us.

So what is Tribe – and why does it fit us like sun-and-shine?

Here’s what Maya found and why she adores our new identity:

tribe (tra?b)
— n
1.	a social division of a people, defined in terms of common descent, territory, culture, etc […]
5.	stockbreeding a strain of animals descended from a common female ancestor through the female line

“This last one really appealed to me as I am a Taurean and that is symbolised by a boy cow (yes I know what they are called and that also has lots of negative selling connotations, ie BS) but the idea of growth and lineage based on the female genetic line and the other meaning of tribe being one third of the Roman empire seemed a great name for a huge organisation (soon to be empire) lead by a woman, a mother and a Taurean.”

That is the story of how Sales Tribe first gathered in an office in Sydney. No birds or bees – just great ideas from great minds. November 26^th, a Sagittarius. Just a small side fact; Beethovan, Churchill, Maud the Queen of Norway and Tina Turner (and Eliza Doueihi) are/were Sagittarians too. That’s definitely saying something about Sales Tribe’s future; look out for us!

Maya Saric – The Sales Psychologist

The Sales Psychologist

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