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Author Archives: Dasha Amrom

Советы профессионала: Успешное собеседование в 3 шага

Uspeshnoe sobesedovanie

Вы недавно заполнили анкету, претендуя на работу вашей мечты, и сейчас находитесь в состоянии нервного ожидания и разноречивых предчувствий о предстоящем собеседовании? Или, возможно, Вы уже получили долгожданное подтверждение даты и времени встречи с вашим будущим нанимателем? Тогда продолжайте читать эту статью – она для Вас.

Как сказал великий Бенджамин Франклин, провалишь подготовку – подготовишься к провалу. Поэтому мой главный совет: нужна предварительная качественная подготовка, которая должна стартовать не за неделю или пару дней до Вашего собеседования, а в момент, когда Вы определились со своим выбором.

И дабы потом не пожалеть об этом выборе, начните с глубокого всестороннего изучения компании, в которой Вы собираетесь служить, а именно: ее финансовой мощи (или немощи), ее административного штата (всегда дотошного и въедливого), ее конкурентов и деловых сделок (успешных или провальных). Отправной точкой могут служить независимые отчеты, выполненные в Mintel и Euromonitor.

Эти отчеты, зачастую, содержат подробные списки конкурентов и оценку их рыночного потенциала. Помните: каждая индустрия (в бизнесе, промышленности, производстве) имеет свой четко очерченный круг авторитетных отраслевых изданий, которые и следует читать в первую очередь. Помимо этого, на данной стадии сбора информации, полезным источником может служить социальная сеть для поиска и установления деловых контактов LinkedIn: здесь Вы можете разыскать действующих и бывших работников компании, возможно договориться с ними о краткой, информативной  телефонной беседе.

Настоятельно рекомендую отслеживать новости компании и отзывы о ней в масс-медиа. И поможет Вам в этом система Twitter, благодаря которой Вы будете в курсе всех деловых новостей, достоверных фактов и слухов относительно «предмета» Вашего интереса.

Второй совет: постарайтесь проникнуться сутью и содержанием того дела, которым Вы собираетесь заниматься, будучи принятым на работу. При этом Вы наверняка натолкнетесь на проблемы, факты и данные, которые не в состоянии самостоятельно осмыслить или прояснить их смысл до конца. Систематизируйте их (обязательно в письменном виде), чтобы затем,  «сымпровизировав»,  трансформировать их в  вопросы для обсуждения  во время собеседования.

Это наиболее результативный и наименее затратный путь, позволяющий решить триединую задачу:

  1. подготовить компетентные вопросы к интервью
  2. продемонстрировать свою деловую осведомленность и заинтересованность
  3. восполнить пробелы в своих знаниях о компании и сути вашей будущей работе.

Помните: интервьюеры предпочитают кандидатов, всесторонне осведомленных (вплоть до самых мелких деталей) об их компании, даже тем, кто может похвастать документально подтвержденными достижениями в прошлом.

Третий совет: попрактикуйтесь в роли интервьюируемого, выбрав в качестве интервьюера квалифицированного консультанта, друга, члена семьи  или даже … зеркало, поскольку язык тела иногда говорит о человеке гораздо больше, чем он может предполагать. При этом попросите Вашего визави быть откровенным при оценке содержания и формы Ваших ответов и жестикуляции.

Лапидарность и лаконичность ответов-вопросов должны сочетаться с их содержательностью и компетентностью, ибо пустословие и «растекание мыслью по древу» быстро утомляют обе стороны, участвующие в собеседовании.

Примерные типы вопросов для тренинга: «Укажите на наиболее чувствительный просчет в вашем послужном списке» или «Назовите слабые стороны ваших деловых качеств» или «Если бы вы говорили с вашим прежним боссом, в какой слабости вы бы признались ему сейчас» и т.д. и т.п. В интернете существуют мириады подобных вопросов, и нет ни одного повода отказать себе потренироваться отвечать хотя бы на некоторые из них.

Итак, сделайте только три шага: 1) сбор информации, 2) анализ и систематизация, 3) тренинг, и успех тоже шагнет к Вам навстречу.

The original article can be accessed here: http://thebusinesscourier.co.uk/2013/05/10/sovety-professionala-uspeshnoe-sobesedovanie-v-3-shaga/

Quickfire career questions – Number1

For each of the next few weeks I will be posting and replying to a career-related question. This week…

How can I get a consultant job at McKinsey, Bain, BCG etc?

  • Do in-depth research on each company and its latest news. Researching general industry trends can also come in handy at interview
  • Get to know someone who can be your point of reference at the company prior, during and after you submit your CV and an application form. Aim not to submit a single application through the website
  • Attend networking events at the consultancy of interest to you and make sure you leave a positive impression
  • Practise, practise and practise case studies! Allow at least a couple of months for this crucial part of the process and do role plays with different people to get as much exposure to relevant case studies as possible. You are sure to encounter a case study at a second or third interview round
  • Get an MBA (if possible!)

How to write an effective business email – avoiding common pitfalls

During my professional career, I have read a lot of business emails and have written a fair number too.

I am sure you have seen emails like the one below all too often. It is ineffective for a number of obvious reasons: the CAPITAL LETTERS and multiple exclamation marks in the subject line, the weird salutation in bold text, the poorly written message including spelling errors (“hear in your area”), and the fact that the message is sent from the address ‘sexybeast@gmail.com’. I’m sure you can spot additional problems.

 Bad Business Email

So what is a perfect business email and does it even exist? I would say that the layout and tone of an email is heavily dependent on the target person/organisation, how well you know them and which country they are from.

For instance, an addressee from Eastern and Central Europe, France or Italy would most likely prefer a more respectful and formal tone. However, if you are writing to somebody from the United States, your email may be quite informal (of course depending on the level of personal knowledge of the person and their seniority).

I would also suggest that formality of your email would also depend on the industry or organisation your recipient belongs to. For instance, financial services prefer more formal and succinct emails, which sales are more open to an informal conversational style.

But there are some universal truths about effective written business communication and if you would like your recipient to open your email, you should probably consider the following key points:

  1. Aim to write a captivating subject line – something unusual that is certain to stir recipient’s curiosity and make him or her open your message. Avoid just putting your company name in the subject line as these emails are rarely opened. Sometimes, adding a humorous line can also serve you well but be mindful of the industry/organisation you are dealing with.
  2. Spend some time on laying out your email and breaking the text into more manageable and easy to read paragraphs. Due to lack of time, a lot of people end up scanning through their emails so add the most important points in the first paragraph. Aim to be brief and to the point.
  3. Proofread, proofread, and proofread. I can’t stress the importance of correctly spelt words and lack of avoidable mistakes. It goes without saying that you can undermine your chances of closing a sale, finalising an important contract or being invited for an interview if your message is full of grammatical mistakes and incorrect punctuation. You could perhaps print out a copy of your email to check as it is easier to spot mistakes on a printed version. You could also read your email backwards to re-programme your mind to spot mistakes more easily.
  4. Provide a brief account of case studies, testimonials, and statistics to support your proposition but make sure it is all accurate and honest.
  5. Add a proper signature: your name, position, company name, website, Twitter and LinkedIn links. You want to make it easy for people to search for you online and to check your credentials.

These are just some suggestions on how to improve your business email communication. I would be interested to receive your own stories of what makes you click ‘open’ or delete when you receive business emails and feel free to email me the worst emails you have encountered!

Dasha Amrom

 

Your four pressing questions on social media marketing answered

1.      How do you measure the Return on Investment (ROI) of your social media marketing efforts?

Some say it is quite difficult to measure return on investment of your social media marketing campaigns but in reality it is all about careful planning and setting clear and achievable every day objectives. You could, for instance, outline what your targets will be with regard to each social channel you will be concentrating on.

Your ROI metric could be:

–          For Facebook campaigns: the total number of ‘likes’, people talking about your business, shares

–          For Twitter: number of followers, re-tweets and mentions

–          For all channels: the number of new prospects and leads, getting meaningful consumer insights (through polls, surveys etc), understanding customer demographics through statistics

–          For your blog: number of comments and subscribers

–          Your ultimate ROI measure for your overall campaign would be the value and volume of new sales achieved

2.      What are the latest trends in social media marketing?

Social media marketing is a constantly evolving field and I would advise people to regularly update their knowledge by reading articles and publications on the topic to keep abreast of new developments.

–          I would say that various social promotions (social coupons, group deals, sweepstakes) have been gaining more popularity among marketers. An example could be Facebook Offers.

–          Another intriguing issue is the continued rise of Pinterest: “Pinterest users reported a surprisingly high correlation between pinning and subsequent purchasing: more than 1 in 5 Pinterest users has pinned an item that they later purchased. In the social world, this is a high conversion rate”. (Harvard Business Review : “Moving customers from pinning to purchase”).

3.      What are the most effective social media marketing channels?

–          It all depends on your business goals and objectives and on your target audience. For instance, LinkedIn is a great platform for B2B marketing and Facebook and Twitter are effective channels to market to consumers. You can have a mix of channels to cater for both business and consumer audiences.

4.      What are the advantages and disadvantages of social media marketing?

The advantages of devoting time to social media marketing definitely outweigh the disadvantages, but it is crucial to remember that businesses and entrepreneurs should strive to combine online and offline marketing to achieve balanced and high quality outcomes. Social media marketing alone is not going to acquire you as many clients or make your brand as visible as offline and online strategies combined.

From my experience, however, the main advantages of social media marketing are as follows:

–          It provides you with extensive word of mouth advertising

–          It has potential to ‘humanise’ your brand

–          It results in engagement of wide audiences

–          You can provide great customer service and demonstrate true consumer orientation of your brand

–          It can significantly improve SEO (search engine optimisation) of your company

–          You can conduct cost-effective market research online (polls, surveys etc)

With regard to disadvantages:

–          It is very time consuming to put in place an effective integrated social media strategy

–          Your efforts can fail if you over-promote, over-advertise

–          It takes a lot of commitment and consistency

 

I would be happy to receive further questions on social media marketing and will endeavour to answer them in my next post. Please feel free to email questions or comments to careercoaching.ccv@gmail.com or via the comment box below.

Dasha  Amrom

Guest Blog: Cultural differences between working in the UK and US

British workplace

I moved to London after working in the US for nearly 6 years, thinking, “How different could it be?” And oh boy! Was it different! That said, I wouldn’t trade the 5 year-London experience for anything else! For me working in America was about political correctness (i.e. no “F-bombs” in the office) long hours and short holidays. I brought that with me to London and was surprised. Jaw-droppingly surprised.

Pens dropped and the familiar computer shutdown tunes sounded mid-sentence at 5:30PM; people actually took 2 to 3 week-long holidays (vacation, for you Americans reading this) without worry of losing their job. I was amazed by the natural ease at with the perceived work-life balance played out and dug it! But my two all-time favourite experiences were –

1)      A liquid (read: multiple Guinnesses) lunch & a test of my knowledge of football (soccer, for you Americans reading this) rules with my sales guys. I passed and I was declared one of the team!

2)      A business meeting after work with a French client from a prominent American corporation. I nearly fell of my chair when the conversation started with (imagine heavy French accent), “You American women are just not sexy… we French men like women showing a little bit of lingerie.” I hung in there and finished the meeting and the pitch.

When working in multiple geographies, a thick skin helps, so too does a sense of humor, flexibility and the ability to “not hear” odd-ball comments. I didn’t win the business with the aforementioned client but I doubt it was due to my sex appeal (after all he did want to take me to dinner after). And I will forever have a great story to tell about my rocky start at the London office.

This is a guest blog by Rema Iyer, who now works in Boston, USA

Lessons for women in male-dominated professions

Margaret Thatcher died on 8th April and the United Kingdom is bitterly divided on the kind of funeral proceedings befitting the former prime-minister. It is true, she was disliked by many due to her controversial policies and convictions but she was Britain’s only female prime-minister (for 10.5 years) – a great achievement in itself and a tough act to follow.

Despite her contentious political legacy, one thing stands true – her amazing work ethic, determination to achieve what she had set out to do, and an immense amount of perseverance and thick-skinnedness she exhibited to carry out these goals despite often strong resistance of her cabinet and the British people. Moreover, being the first woman prime-minister surrounded by the cabinet full of men required high levels of confidence and assertiveness.

There are a few lessons I believe women in male-dominated professions can learn from Mrs Thatcher and her career to be successful at their jobs:

  • Don’t hide or suppress your femininity. There are numerous occasions when it can be used to your advantage. Your unique abilities, empathy, specific communication style can differentiate you from others in your organisation. For instance, in top sales jobs usually dominated by men, women can really make a difference working with challenging clients. The same is the case in the sales environment at investment banks where employing ambitious women has become a regular occurrence. Being yourself is the best way to earn respect of your colleagues and bosses. Mrs Thatcher was not unknown to use her charm (and sometimes even tears) to get her own way. 
  • Don’t be afraid of failure. Everyone will encounter various setbacks during the course of their careers. One can either get ‘subdued’ and ‘sunk’ by failure or, on the contrary, can use it as a springboard to attempt something new and to turn this negative experience in their favour. Failure and challenges should inspire you to act, to change something, to prove you can still succeed and get to the top. The key theme here is not to give up in the face of unavoidable challenges. ‘Defeat? I do not recognise the meaning of the word!’ (M. Thatcher)
  • It is really a given that to get promoted, to exceed your boss’s expectations and stand out among  your colleagues you will need to work hard and work hard every day. Thatcher once said, “I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near”.  If it is so obvious, then why do so many people slack and cut corners in their jobs? Well, oftentimes we do not like what we do and end up in a particular job by pure circumstance or out of financial necessity. We are all guilty of this but once we realise that we don’t get inspired by what we do, we can try and re-assess are career path and aspirations. I believe that it is never late to take a step back and try to change the course of your career, attempt something new, something that you have always dreamt of doing. Fair enough, it takes a certain degree of courage and determination, but it can well be worth the effort to escape the ordeal of having to show up somewhere you would rather avoid every morning. So work hard and find something you are truly passionate about. “What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose” (M.Thatcher).

My interview at the Warwick Knowledge magazine

 SHARED KNOWLEDGE: DASHA AMROM

 

A profile of Warwick alumna Dasha Amrom

Warwick alumna Dasha Amrom (MBA, graduated 2012) is the Managing Director of her own career and business coaching consultancy, Career Coaching Ventures. She is a contributor to the Guardian’s Small Business Network and enjoys passing on the knowledge she has gained from working in large international organisations. Here she tells us why she loves her job and how being daring in your career can sometimes pay dividends.


1. What are you working on?

After graduating from Warwick Business School, I set up my own career and business coaching consultancy in London. Currently, I’m concentrating on running individual and executive career coaching sessions and developing sales and social media marketing training programmes for small business owners and entrepreneurs. I also contribute articles and editorials, both for the Guardian and for a local paper. My article on the Guardian’s Small Business Network was published recently ( ‘If you have an idea for a business, don’t let it slip through your fingers’ ). I was also invited to participate in a couple of the Guardian’s live Q&A career advice sessions to advise individuals about MBAs and placements and internships.

2. Aside from the money, what do you get out of your job?

I love interacting with people, talking to them about their life experiences, dreams and aspirations. It’s amazing to see again and again how different we all are and a lot of people I speak to as part of my job have diverse international backgrounds, so I tend to learn a lot about their countries, culture and specific working practices. So I am lucky to be able to both share my knowledge and receive new exciting information in return!

I also like to see people succeed – if anything, this is one of the main reasons I have decided to set up my company. I wanted to share the knowledge I have accumulated during the years of working for large international organisations so that other people can use it to advance and, hopefully, avoid the mistakes that I made along my career path.

You have to be mentally prepared for a lot of disappointment and difficult times on the way to success

3. How did you get where you are today?

Education, hard work and confidence that I can do what I have set my mind to. I have to say that my parents first instilled the tremendous respect for education and constant self-improvement in me as a teenager, which has eventually led me to complete two Masters degrees and work my way up in the organisations I had worked in. I am fortunate that my husband has also been very supportive of the idea of me setting up my own business and has helped a lot along the way.

4. What’s the best advice you could give to someone wishing to follow in your footsteps?

I would say ‘be daring’ and prepare yourself for a lot of rejections and challenges! You have to be mentally prepared for a lot of disappointment and difficult times on the way to success. I have lived through a lot of low points when you start reassessing whether you have made the right decision but I learned not to dwell on negative points and to move forward through constant innovation. As a manager of a small business, you should never be complacent – strive to amend your strategies on a daily basis. If you see something isn’t quite working out, try something else until you find your optimum.

I would also advise that whatever you do, aim to provide your customers with best-in-class customer service and try to fulfil your promises. I find that people give great reviews and choose to stay with a particular service provider if they have received one-to-one attention – a follow-up courtesy phone call may be all that is necessary to ensure your current customer recommends your firm to others and comes back to you for more work in the future.

5. Tell us something unusual about yourself

I consider myself ‘a citizen of the world’ – I can’t really pinpoint where my home is. I have lived and worked in the United States, Belarus, the UK, South Korea, and Czech Republic and travelled in many other countries.

6. Quick fire round:

Favourite book: ‘Capital’ by John Lanchester

Favourite app: I like all kinds of WordPress apps for website development

Favourite artist: I really like the paintings of Claude Monet

Favourite place: The East coast of Australia

Favourite number: 5 (the top grade in the Russian school system)

Favourite idea: “Things do not happen. Things are made to happen”. JFK

Favourite food: Russian borsch

Favourite thing: Person, actually – my son!

Favourite thing about yourself: My optimism

 

You can access the interview here: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/knowledge/business/dashaamrom/

If you have an idea for a business, don’t let it slip through your fingers!

 

Small Business Network: Starting new business

If you have an idea for a business, don’t let it slip through your fingers

Most people think that starting a business will require sacrifices as well as money and knowledge they may not have. Entrepreneur Dasha Amrom explains why this shouldn’t put you off

 

President Kennedy at News Conference

Dasha Amrom takes inspiration to follow her dreams from a quote by John F. Kennedy. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
 
 

How many times have you watched Dragons’ Den and wondered whether you should follow suit and set up your own business? You may have even jotted down some ideas and calculated the upfront investment your venture would entail. You felt inspired and ready to commit all your energy and free time to mapping out your business plan and marketing strategy. And then, the next morning, when you weighed up the risks and the time commitment required, your inspiration suddenly dissipated and you decided to continue with the day job, putting your business idea on the back burner.

It happened to me as well, not once, but on a number of occasions. Before setting up my first business – a language school – in the Czech Republic, I had spent months deliberating my decision and whether it was something there was genuine demand for. Mind you, I was only 19 years old then and setting up a small business in Prague at that time involved overcoming thick layers of red tape and navigating the deep sea of stifling bureaucracy.

A lot has changed since then. I moved to London, worked for three international corporations, completed an MBA and had a son. But one thing hasn’t changed – my overwhelming desire to work for myself and run my own company. So, true to myself, I recently set up my own career and business coaching consultancy – Career Coaching Ventures.

To be precise, I have been flirting with an idea of a career advisory business for the past two years. I finally decided to make it happen as I believed that, although there are a lot of companies and individuals operating in the coaching market, there is significant demand for high-quality, fast and tailored services for graduates, those unemployed or made redundant, or for companies wanting to improve the performance of their sales teams and managerial staff. But most importantly, I felt it was a good time to start a business concentrating on improving individual employability and companies’ performance as the severe recession has been taking its toll on both people and businesses in the UK.

I have come to believe that success comes down to skilfully carving out your own niche and clearly defining your target audience. Even in the most saturated of markets, there is still potential to be uncovered – you just need determination and perseverance to search for it. You will also need to get your basics right, of course, through thorough research of your market and your main competitors and making sure you have a useful product or service to offer.

From my personal experience, the main piece of advice I would give to aspiring small business owners is to be daring. There is not much point in doubting yourself, your skills and your goals. It is a sure way to stall your plans and it can prevent you from achieving your small business dreams. I would advise you to be brave and always aim forward. I have encountered a lot of obstacles and rejections on the way towards fulfilling my dream and I also learned never to give up, even in the hardest of situations.

You might ask: but what about the money? Well, there are always ways to reduce your costs. For instance, there is absolutely no need to spend a lot of money on marketing efforts if you would prefer not to. If you have enough time to dedicate to your campaign, you could always undertake DIY marketing. I have created my own website, for instance, and have acquired a lot of new skills in the process.

And finally – promote, promote, promote. Do it via all the key social media channels – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. Grow your network of followers and fans of your business and provide them with regular food for thought in the form of blogs, expert advice, video guides. Seek out the fairs, exhibitions, conferences relevant to your business and attend, present, build connections and customer base.

I love this quote from John F Kennedy “There are risks and costs to a programme of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction”. Act on your dream and don’t let good ideas slip through your fingers due to inaction. It will be difficult at first and it may take weeks or even months to get your first customer on board but once you’ve managed, it all becomes worth it.

Dasha Amrom is managing director of Career Coaching Ventures

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional.

The importance of a strong personal brand in improving career prospects

Just as every business should have a strong and unique brand that differentiates it from the competition, individuals should build and develop a personal brand for precisely the same reasons. This becomes particularly important in the case of someone looking to progress or change their career and to stand out in the super-competitive marketplace.

However, personal branding doesn’t always feature at the top of job seekers’ priorities and is certainly not seen as on a par with such activities as designing the perfect CV or allocating enough time to search for suitable opportunities.  It is a big shame, as the first thing many employers do when they decide whether or not to interview a specific person is to search for them online.

One of my recent clients told me that despite his great experience working for a transnational organisation, he has no presence online. Moreover, he mentioned that he didn’t realise the importance of creating a strong personal brand in his efforts to change his career path and secure a top job in the private sector.

I believe that personal branding should be everybody’s first step on the path towards securing their ideal job or simply ensuring timely progress in their current role. So what is personal branding?

Oxford dictionary defines ‘brand’ as ‘a particular identity or image regarded as an asset’. I like this definition since for me, personal branding is the process of creating one’s particular distinct image for a defined purpose – in our case, for career progression.

You may ask, ‘So how do I create this distinct image and how long will it take?’ It usually takes companies years to differentiate themselves and design powerful identities. The same is the case with individuals – you can’t expect to complete this challenging work in a week or month. I would normally suggest dedicating a certain amount of time per day to the effort of building your personal brand. If you do it regularly and consistently, you may be surprised how fast you can become known in the online and offline space. This in turn will boost your career prospects significantly.

So here come my three steps towards creating your personal brand:

  1. Define what you stand for. You should identify your unique strengths (and weaknesses!), values and beliefs for yourself, since if you are not clear why you are different, why should anybody else be? I would recommend conducting a short brainstorming session where you write down all the key things that make you ‘tick’ and differentiate you from everybody else. You could also ask friends how they perceive you and what they would define as your ‘unique selling points’. This would provide a different and valuable perspective and help you in your research.
  2. Just as companies create their own marketing proposition, you should use the things that have come out as a result of your brainstorming session in step 1 and write down in one or two sentences your own marketing proposition. This should aim to capture your essence – targeting it to a particular industry sector or company.
  3. Polish your online presence (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest) keeping in mind your new marketing proposition. Your updates on LinkedIn and Twitter for instance, should be written with your proposition in mind and you should try to avoid unrelated comments and posts that can dilute your brand. You should also aim to update your professional photos as to reflect your personal brand and not to divert from it. Make yourself memorable!

In this article, I have aimed to lay a basic foundation of how to build your personal brand. I would be interested in hearing your ideas on the best ways to design your personal brand and examples of how it has helped you in your careers.

Dasha Amrom

What makes a great salesperson? Three lessons

 

great salesperson

In my many years working in sales & marketing, I have been asked by junior salespeople on multiple occasions what the key ingredient to success in sales is. And my response invariably comes down to the personality of the person behind the sale. Yes, the actual person, not the number of prospects you have sourced or the quantity of cold calls you have made.

The old cliché ‘people buy people not products’ still holds true, as I have experienced in my own sales practice on many occasions. Say you are trying to sell your business intelligence product to an investment banking division of a large bank. Their purchasing team has probably met at least five other suppliers and received five different quotes. How do you give yourself the best chance of success when your value proposition is likely to be very similar to your competitors. I would go as far as to say that the only thing that significantly differentiates your offering from that of company A is yourself – your attitude, the way your talk to your contact at the bank, your smile (or absence of it), your general demeanour.

People pick up on the smallest cues that you may not be even aware of. And people like familiarity. Would you say you are more likely to buy a phone upgrade package from somebody you can relate to in one way or another or someone you have nothing in common with? So here comes my first lesson:

1. Find something you may have in common with the person you are trying to sell to and build on this familiarity. Make sure that in the first instance, you try to find out as much as you can about the person’s past, their family, where they went to university, what they like doing in their spare time (obviously, try to keep the balance right and keep your questioning within reason). This should be your special time to establish a bond with the person and the conversation at this point should never touch the product or service you are planning to pitch. Your aim is to relate to the person, understand their background and ‘befriend’ them. I would suggest that at this stage, your primary task is to listen. People love talking about themselves, especially in a job setting, when the opportunities to be heard are generally quite minimal. So lean back and enjoy listening to the stories of their lives (this is a fun side of being a salesperson)!

If you manage to do the above in a natural and sincere way, consider your sales job more than half done! Now that you have built the foundation of familiarity, it is time to gradually upgrade the conversation towards work-related matters.

2. Using the facts you have learnt at the first stage, you can now start asking about the person’s job (adding the ‘human’ aspect to it as well). You could, for instance, enquire what elements of their current job they enjoy the most and which aspects they don’t like as much. This will provide you with an opportunity to comment on their achievements and sympathise with their complaints, which will further build the rapport you have with the person sitting in front of you. Tell them briefly about how long you have been selling and here you can tie in the reasons why you started working for your present employers – a great chance to talk about your product or service. It will effortlessly lead the discussion onto your offering without you actually needing to make a formal pitch. And can you imagine how much more natural and sincere your fascination with your product and service will sound?

I would expect that here your prospect would start asking questions about your offering – feel free to engage in a more detailed discussion about the pros and cons at this stage but avoid mentioning the price until asked. You could point out that the prospect’s competitors take the full advantage of your product or service and provide some information on the ways they have benefited from it.

3. At the final stage, I would advise you ask your prospect about what they think of your offering and whether, in their opinion, they see a real demand for it in their organisation. It is essential you listen carefully to their responses, without interrupting and becoming defensive. If they feel the product or service will not get buy-in from key stakeholders, continue questioning as to why. Once you build a fuller picture of your prospect’s intent on purchasing, the sign off process and the challenges on the path to the final approval, you should try and switch the conversation back to the ‘personal’ discussion. You could say, for instance, that you really enjoyed the discussion since it opened your eyes on the complexity of the prospect’s organisation and its needs and that you found it very interesting to learn about his or her work. You could finish the meeting with the suggestion to meet again and discuss things further – possibly out of the office and at a neutral place, such as a coffee house.

And always remember – your personality, enthusiasm, charm and a friendly approach is what matters in closing a sale and building a trusting relationship with your prospects!

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on how you define a great salesperson so please feel free to post your comments here.