If everyone is agreeing with you then you are in an echo chamber and you have just chosen the people to speak to. Controversy is just saying something that someone else just doesn’t agree with. I’m never afraid to speak about any subject that I have knowledge about as I only say things that I believe is fair.
You can book me for workshops, keynote speaking, coaching, DEI trainings or implementation facilitation here.
There are a lot of factors
What separates an average salesman and a good salesman?
I think what separates them is the understanding that in sales it’s all about the customer and not about yourself. Most salesmen are trained to learn a bullet point pitch and closing related to the pitch, and they are not trained to understand why customers are not buying. Good salesmen know how to ask deeper questions which are not scripted. I think sales in general is about finding the customers pain points and guiding your customer through a sales process where your product or service metaphorically fixes their pain. I have been a salesman and nowadays I’m a consultant, and if you go through sales training or workshop with me, your sales team will learn the tools to communicate value. Contact me via e-mail for sales training and workshops.
How to test your North Star metric?
I think that every single person in your organisation SHOULD have a very clear sense of understanding the reasons why the organisation does what it does AND why the organisation exists. The problem is that I do not think there are many organisations where this simple understanding actually exists. You can easily test the theory, go and seek ten employees at random in your place of work and ask them these two questions:
1. What does our organisation do?
2. Why does our organisation exist?
It will be fascinating to see what responses you get. If the responses are very similar, then it is possible that there is clarity of purpose in your business. If the answers are varied and different – perhaps not. Contact me via e-mail if you interested in me facilitating a ‘North Star’ workshop for your organisation.
Speakers' corner
Storytelling is an undervalued and underused art in the world of business. I think it’s unfortunate that it’s only in our roles as businesspeople that we avoid using stories. We share the latest organisational gossip with our colleagues, and we tell our friends stories about our personal lives. Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park has been a traditional site for public speeches and debates since the mid 1800's when protests and demonstrations took place there. As a child my parents would take us to Speakers' Corner.
When was the last time you heard a story used to introduce and discuss a business issue? Do you have high anxiety around public speaking? Contact me via e-mail if you are interested in learning how to share a short story that other people in the room can relate to.
Designed to help you increase productivity
It’s essential to learn and practice time management if you want to increase your productivity and efficiency. Rather than feel you are at the mercy of your schedule, you can become a strategic master of your time and calendar, which empowers you to enhance your productivity. No one can create extra hours in the day, but you can manage your time well and create the sense that you’ve got all the time you need.
“As it is not one swallow or a fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.”
Would you like to increase your productivity and achieve more? Do you already have feasible strategies to make better use of your time? Contact me via e-mail to arrange a time management workshop which are tailor made for you and your team.
Conscious crisis
We are prepared by our biology to eat and sleep, mate and nurture, fight or flee, and exhibit all the other built-in survival responses in the human repertoire. Sometimes you must go down before you come up and most of these journeys must be taken alone. And in the dark times, one may have little but trust your own inner process and go on. I think that there is great power in self-reliance! And to me this simply means that you should look at yourself and take responsibility for your actions. I’m the person responsible and I have learned the necessary skills to help people learn their skills via my training and workshops. I have found this simple mindful awareness to be extremely rewarding because I have an empathic concern for others.
“Those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
Workshop idea & role play
“To inform is for free, the ‘how too’ requires a fee.” I have been using this quotation for almost 30 years. Anyway, here is a workshop idea based on an exercise from the wonderful “Kill The Company” book by Lisa Bodell.
Play the role of one of your top competitors for a day and see how if you switch perspectives you could figure out ways to kill your company metaphorically. When CEO’s speak about change and innovation they are usually asking the cliche questions, for example, “How do I think outside the box?” or “What’s the next big thing?” Cliche questions generate cliche answers.
Think about ways to eliminate and put your company out of business. Play the game and ask your executives to come up with ways to put your company out of business, then they by definition will be moving out of their current perspective or box, and look at it from the perspective of a competitor, who wants to destroy your company. Once you identify the threats, you then switch to the opposite perspective and return to being company executives and figure out ways to defend against those threats. You can also use this exercise in other contexts, e.g. “Why did I not get that job that I am applying for?” or “Why are people buying our competitors products?”
The answers may be simple! Maybe it’s because they see something that you are not seeing or because they believe something that you don’t believe. Perhaps this is because they are telling themselves a different story and you are not able to see that story if you are looking at the world from your own limited perspective. Kill the company is a great way of forcing yourself out of that perspective and into the perspective of someone else. This is better than a collective brainstorm session or being told to think outside of the box. Send me an e-mail and let’s arrange a physical or virtual meeting to discuss a workshop for your organisation.