What's New

Members

• Sandor Kiss
  Sandor is an independent marketing and business consultant with 10+ years of experience executing both traditional and digital marketing campaigns; leading web site and e-business initiatives; providing marketing, strategy and general consulting in many industry sectors; and has been contracted to develop business on behalf of clients.

Events

• Consultative Selling - Coaching Series
  The world of selling is under siege. Transactional sales are moving to extranets; companies are dramatically reducing the number of suppliers and moving toward strategic partnerships providing higher value-add; buyers are better educated using powerful on-line search tools; product quality is dramatically improved with shortened life cycles, making true product differentiation harder to accomplish. What\'s a sales rep to do? The only possible answer to these challenges can only come from changing selling behaviour from pitching to consulting. Prospects are demanding that sales reps who get their business exhibit a sincere interest in understanding their specific situation and environment, actively listen and respond, provide value unrelated to the immediate sales opportunity. In short, more attuned to a consultative advisor, with motivation driven by successfully solving their client\'s issues.

Resources

• The Power of the Drip
  In this final article on Referral Marketing, Brenda explains the why immediate revenue may not always be the outcome of your referrals. In this article, Brenda suggests how \"drip\" marketing and thanking the referral source can have significant payback to your Referral Marketing System.
• Watch the Masters and Improve
  If you want to improve your golf game, watch and learn from Tiger Wood as he drives, pitches and putts. While the chances of you or I ever being as good as the master is next to zero, the chances of improving our game, even a little bit, is pretty good. Barry Siskind, trade show marketing guru, in Watch the Masters and Improve, shares his insight on how you can apply the same principal to trade show marketing.
• Debunking LinkedIn: Part 1
  Social networking continues to rage on as a hot topic. Everyone it seems is trying to understand what it means to them and their organization. To help quell this rage in a practical way, this is the first in a series of articles to help readers like you better understand how to use LinkedIn effectively.
• Creating a Toxic Shield
  As we enter another decade, the pressure on organizations to survive, sustain growth and boost profits within new economic realities has resulted in increased stress on leaders and employees. Mergers, globalization and declining returns have launched waves of job cuts creating leaner companies. Surviving employees are left with far greater workloads. And the need for leadership is just as great!
• A New Brand of Selling
  In the February 2010 edition of Business in Calgary, a feature article by Derek Sankey captured the changes occurring in sales training. Brian Pleet, was interviewed for his insight, as was Jeff Hayter, President of BerryWorx, one of Stratetgico\'s long-term clients.
• Technology versus Face-toFace
  His kids think he's a Luddite. Barry Siskind is from the world where the value of face-to-face marketing was one I understood. Now I live in a world where people communicate with their thumbs. However lately I’ve seen that faces and thumbs can live in harmony. In this article, Barry Siskind, trade show specialist, compares technological to human interfaces, providing excellent perspective about which works when.
• Curing Competitive Blindspots
  Just as a horse with blinders on has its field of view limited - so do companies that make assumptions about the world around them. The good news? Your competitors probably suffer from competitive blindspots. The bad news? Left unidentified, your own blindspots may hinder decision making. Alli Marshall, competitive intelligence specialist illustrates the cost of blindspots and most importantly, how to remove them.

Workshops & Speaking

•    Business of Listening     Lisa Dennis    [ view pdf ]

  Poor listening skills result in more time wasted in fixing mis-communication problems than taking the time to listen for understanding. Learn how to listen for context and meaning.

•    Marketing vs. Sales: The Great Divide         [ view pdf ]

  There exists no absolute definition of the difference between marketing sales, but there is clarity about what happens when they don't work together...Chaos!

•    Business of Questioning     Lisa Dennis    [ view pdf ]

  Questioning in selling is the sales person’s second most important skill - second only to listening. The selling process requires qualification, or identification of which opportunities have the greatest likelihood of success for the smallest amount of effort. Qualification is impossible without good questioning techniques.

•    Goal Setting & Planning     Brian Pleet    [ view pdf ]

  In the absence of a plan sales people are always busy. Their efforts and activities, although well meaning, can only be seen as making them busy, not necessarily effective. A workable plan is activity-based, measurable and priority setting. In its absence, sales people fall into the trap of addressing the most urgent, but not necessarily important tasks.