"WHERE KNOWLEDGE IS WEALTH"

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Professor M. S. Rao’s Vision 2030: One Million Global Leaders : Professor M. S. Rao’s Vision 2030: One Million Glo...

Professor M. S. Rao’s Vision 2030: One Million Global Leaders : Professor M. S. Rao’s Vision 2030: One Million Glo...: Dear global leaders, Wish You Happy New Year 2015! I have a lifetime goal to build one million students as global l...

The Eight Competencies of Relationship Selling: How to Reach the Top 1% in Just 15 Extra Minutes a Day – Reviewer Professor M.S.Rao






“When two people want to do business together, the details won’t keep them apart. But if two people do not want to do business together, the details will not confirm the deal.” - Dr. Tony Alessandra


What are the Details of the Book?

If you want to acquire knowledge on presentation skills and negotiations skills, read this book. If you want to acquire selling tools and techniques to excel as a successful sales professional, read this book. If you want to grow as a great speaker and presenter, read this book. Jim Cathcart’s authored book The Eight Competencies of Relationship Selling: How to Reach the Top 1% in Just 15 Extra Minutes a Day gives you the simple essential skills for your self-directed performance improvement.


What is Inside?

The book outlines ten keys to active listening as follows: resist distractions; take notes; let people tell their story; offer verbal feedback; listen selectively; relax; listen with your entire body; be aware of personal space; ask questions; and show that you care about what they’re saying.

The book outlines fifteen ways to stay close to customers as follows: show them that you think about them; drop by to show them what’s new; follow up a sale with a free gift to enhance the purchase; offer valued customer discounts; let customers know they should contact you when they hire employees; compensate your customers whenever they lose time or money; be personal; always be honest; accept returns unconditionally; honor your customer’s privacy; keep your promises; give feedback whenever you get referrals; make your customers famous; arrange periodic performance reviews; and keep the lines of communication open.  It outlines some tips that will make you more effective and make your speech more powerful.
1.    Know your audience.
2.    Know your stuff. In other words, get your material together. Know what it is you’re going to talk about. Know what key points you’re going to make. Make no more than three to five key points. Illustrate each one with a good story or state some facts. Provide a demonstration or a visual to drive that point home and then summarize it.
3.    Create a catchy title for your own presentation.
4.    Do your homework. Research company records, the library, magazines, telephone interviews, websites, whatever is necessary to bring interesting and vital current information to your speech.
5.    Stick with your outline.
6.    Introduce the subject you’re going to talk about.
7.    Concentrate mainly on your introduction and conclusion.
8.    Plan a question-and-answer period at the end.  
9.    Rehearse regularly for your speech.
10. Stay on time.
11. Show up early. Make sure all the systems are a go. Be extra sure there is plenty of light on you the speaker.
12. Vary your eye contact during your speech. While you’re presenting, don’t just speak to one group of people; speak to the entire audience. Move around during your speech. But make sure you don’t move so much that you’re distracting the audience. Have a purpose to the movement.
13. Finally, hang in there.
Here is what the author has discovered, in his twenty-five years of professional speaking to over 2,400 organizations around the world, about “one percenters” and the characteristics they possess. One percenters:
·         Think differently about what they do. (They are building, not just doing.)
·         Build relationships in advance of needing them.
·         Take personal responsibility for making things happen.
·         Intelligently work the odds.
·         Intentionally form habits and cultivate patterns that work.
·         Know the payoffs of each of their activities.
·         Are impatient with those who don’t take charge of their own lives and careers.
·         Are generous with their time and resources toward worthy recipients.
Here is a quick formula for generating abundant sales right away without compromising your reputation, profitability, or long-term goals: notice more; cover the gaps; increase human contact; begin a series of chain reactions; keep the ball in your court; maximize your leverage; and think beyond today.
The author shares an anecdote with Bill Clinton as follows: In 1994 he had the opportunity to visit the White House with a small group of professional speakers. At the end of the tour while their group was standing in the foyer, Jim’s wife, Paula, suddenly said, “Oh my gosh, here he come.”
They looked across the room and sure enough, there came the President of the United States. At that time it was Bill Clinton. He walked over and he spent about ten minutes with our group, one-on-one, chatting with each of us. Someone in the group mentioned that they were professional speakers and commented that President Clinton, too, was in many ways a professional speaker. Clinton looked directly at Jim and said, “Half of my job is keeping people in the right frame of mind.”

Dr. Tony Alessandra, author of The Platinum Rule and Four Personality Types
Author’s friend, Dr. Tony Alessandra, author of The Platinum Rule, says that we should practice the Platinum Rule: “Do unto others as they would like to be done unto.”  It’s a play on the Golden Rule, treat other people the way they would like to be treated. Many years ago, Tony and I worked together as partners in the creation of a program called “Relationship Strategies.” Relationship Strategies” was based on understanding different types of people, and relating to them using different strategies, based on what kind of person they were.
There are two dimensions to this. One is openness. With any person you meet, it’s pretty easy to determine whether they’re being open or not. Someone who is not open we call “guarded.” They tend to keep things close to the vest, not show their feelings. There are more thinking-oriented. They tend to be a little bit more fact-focused, more formal and proper. People who are guarded tend not to share information readily.
Someone who’s open and direct is called the socializer. The socializer is the outgoing individual who will tell you what they’re thinking at any given moment. You can read them like a book.
The open person who’s indirect, slower paced, we call the relater. The relater is someone who’s a people person, a team player, more soft and easygoing about things.
The indirect person who is guarded is what, I call the thinker. The thinker is someone who is more task-oriented. They’re someone who will analyze and take time to study the details before making a decision.
The guarded person who is direct is a fast-paced person that we call the director. The director is a person who gets right to the point. They want something done, they want it done right and they want it done now. They are very assertive people.
So there are four modes – the director, the socializer, the relater, and the thinker – four types of people. When you learn to recognize these four types – you’ll be more effective in selling, because each type requires a different approach to reduce the tension with them and increase the cooperation to generate more sales.
Notice the kind of person you’re dealing with so you can practice Tony’s Platinum Rule: “Do unto them the way they would want to ne done unto.”
The relaters strengths are listening, teamwork, and follow through. Their weaknesses are that they are a little overly sensitive; sometimes slow to start, they tend not to set very big goals.
The thinkers are guarded and indirect. They are slow and systematic, their priority is on the task, their focus is on the process, and their appearance is a little more formal or a little more reserved. Their strengths are planning and organization. Their weaknesses tend to perfectionism, a bit hypercritical, slow to make decision.
The director is someone who is guarded but direct. They’re fast and decisive, they focus on the task, and they want to get results. They are businesslike and powerful. Their workplace is busy, efficient, and structured. Their internal motivation is winning, being in charge. Strengths are delegating, leadership, inspiring others. Weaknesses are impatient, insensitive, they dislike details. They are irritated by inefficiency and indecision. It drives them nuts. Under stress they get highly critical and become dictatorial. Their decisions are decisive and quick and they seek from you bottom-line results.
Finally, there is the socializer. What they fear is loss of prestige or boredom. They measure their personal worth by recognition they’ve achieved, status, the number of friends, the kind of attention they’re drawing to themselves.

High, Medium and Low Velocity: The modern society tends to reward the people with higher velocity. High velocity-those who are genuinely self-motivated, who love to work toward goals. They prefer long hours, they like those hours filled with a variety of activity. They use even, their leisure time to advance toward their goals. In moderate velocity, people prefer a standard work day with a moderate mix of activities.  In low velocity, people are motivated primarily by others, or by needs, rather than inner desires. They even enjoy occasional inactivity, they like quiet time, and they don’t expect a great deal from themselves.

Operational, Strategic and Conceptual Bandwidth: People have bandwidth. Some people have operational bandwidth. Their intellectual capacity may be potentially able to handle all the information in the world, but not all at once. Someone with operational bandwidth can handle a few ideas at a time, efficiently. However, if you start presenting several different ideas at once, they get confused and frustrated. The next level is strategic bandwidth who can handle more information, but still there’s an upper limit to how much they can handle. Next, the highest level, for our purposes is conceptual bandwidth. Conceptual bandwidth would be about two percent of the population. These are people who have an enormous capacity for processing different ideas at the same time and doing so efficiently. These are people who can juggle a lot of different tasks at once, keep all the plates spinning on the poles, as they say, and keep these ideas, really, clearly in mind. They can shift from one to the other without any real confusion.
Strategic represents about eighteen percent of the population. When they look at something, they look at it not in terms of the overall concepts, they look at it strategically and they think. “How can this be used, what are some other options or alternatives?” Typically these are the people who are drawn towards sales, management or leadership positions. Not always but typically. Just learn to recognize whether the person you’re talking with is more conceptual, more strategic, or more operational.

Presentation Skills: Whether you speak well, or not, you still must give a logical flow to your ideas. In your presentation, be sure to cover five general areas - the calm, the need gap; the solution; documentation and a call to action. To be more effective in making presentations, here a few key tips. Be entertaining or interesting. Play off needs. Customize your presentation, follow a structure, only discuss the features of your product or service. Build perceived value. Differentiate yourself form your competition; create carefully worded phrases. Present simple, broad concepts first, complex detailed concepts later in the presentation. Lay the groundwork, and then get specific. Finally, don’t make it a lecture, make it a dialogue, and involve your prospect.
To find out the real reason behind resistance use the following four-step process for handling resistance:  listen carefully, don’t interrupt them, hear them out; check your understanding by giving feedback, such as “Let me see if I understood you properly, here’s what I hear you saying, is that accurate?”; addresses the issue effectively, use logic and emotion. In other words, talk about the feelings, but also talk about the logic; and confirm the acceptance of your solution. If you handled it well, it shouldn’t be an issue any longer. So ask, “Does that put your concerns to rest?”

Selling Takeaways
·         If you were to spend merely fifteen minutes each day gaining one new sales idea or sharpening a skill, within just a few years you would become an industry leader.
·         A healthy and productive relationship requires three elements: a mutual commitment to making the relationship work; open and frequent communication between the participants; and knowing what you expect from each other.
·         Not all sales can be generated by today’s activity. Some of today’s actions need to be sent ahead to prepare us for tomorrow’s sales.
·         People do business with people they like.
·         Answer phone calls in no more than four rings. If your phone traffic is too heavy to allow this, hire someone else or get some way developed to get the call answered before the fourth ring. A good receptionist is not measured by how quickly he or she handles calls, but by the positive outcome of each call.
·         Time spent on hold is often referred to as being in “voice jail,” and that’s what it feels like when you’re waiting endlessly to get your message through.
·         Measurement helps you determine what you’re doing right and what you’re not. If you don’t keep records you don’t have a clue as to how to improve.
·         The five areas for any manager to measure are sales calls, expenses incurred, non-sales activities, new market opportunities, and the results you’re getting.
·         Lifelong learning is essential in today’s world, but there must also be some lifelong “earning.”
·         When there is no graduation, there is no commencement of one’s career.
·         Sales don’t come from what you know; they come from what you do. Knowing makes you more capable but action brings results.
·         Society advances based on two things: the solutions we produce, and the connections we sustain.
·         Technology has advanced so much that our biggest problem is choosing between good alternatives, not simply identifying the bad versus the good.
·         Today we recognize that we don’t live in a mechanical world. We live in a world that is biological. Therefore, we are entering what could be called the organic era.
·         When you don’t have an edge in product or price, then you must have an edge in the way you connect with people.
·         Relationship selling is about making sales while building relationships.
·         When someone asks you a question, you should have a series of micro presentations already thought through in your mind, so that you can instantly describe, in the way you’d like to, the benefit or value that you want to convey to the customer.
·         There’s quite a difference between merely being prepared and being prepared to excel. For one, all that is expected of you is competence. For the other, you are expected to achieve excellence.
·         Each of the assets that you build eliminates a liability that could inhibit your career growth. Together these assets constitute your professional equity.
·         An opportunity is only an opportunity if you are ready for it.
·         A market is a group of people who have enough in common with each other that you can establish a reputation among them.
·         The goal of marketing is to give you a large number of people who are wiling and eager to see you.
·         The quickest way to grow your business is to ask for referrals. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
·         We need different people in our life who do different things for us and for whom we can do different things-people who have a certain effect on us, who we are, and how we live our lives. Look at what your relationships do for you.
·         And listen better. Good listeners generate more openness than those who are just good talkers.
·         One very effective way to get your message out to the community, or your marketplace, is by giving presentations. That means speeches and public presentations, not just individual sales presentations. The reason this works so well is that you’re able to reach many more people. When you have a group of people gathered together and you’re able to present your message, you have their undivided attention. You’ve got the opportunity to dramatize your message.
·         Every person has seven natural values; sensuality, empathy, wealth, power, aesthetics, commitment and knowledge.
·         Marketing, selling and service are not the same thing. Marketing is generating a desire for your product or service. Selling is converting that desire into transactions. And service converts those transactions into satisfied clients.

The book concludes with a message from the following story: Several years ago Jim (author of this book) was walking on the beach in La Jolla, California with a colleague of him, Dr. Spencer Johnson, who wrote the book Who Moved My Cheese? and prior to that, many other books, including co-authoring The One Minute Manager with Dr. Ken Blanchard.
They sat down in front of the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club and watched the sunset. And Spencer said to Jim, “I’ve been studying people who do what you do.”
Jim said, “You mean professional speakers?”
Spencer said, “Yes, trainers, speakers. Most of them seem to be working really, really hard but not getting as much in return for their effort as they could get. Then there’s a small group of them who seem to be getting almost everything they want, seemingly without effort.”
Jim asked, “Why do you think that is?”
“What I’ve found is that the large group, the people working hard and getting minimal results, seem to be working primarily in their head. To them, it’s all about logic, systems, linear thinking, details, specific hard plans and doing exact behaviors in an exact way. That’s useful, but that’s not what gets big successes in the long run.”
“What about the smaller group that seems to be getting everything they want and not working nearly as hard to get it? Jim asked.
He said, “Jim, those people seem to be coming primarily from their heart. They’re doing the things they love to do and they’re doing things in a way that they deeply care about and feel committed to.


What is the Recommendation?

This book contains lots of examples, illustrations, stories, case studies and quotes.  It explains listening skills, presentation skills, negotiation skills and selling skills. It is useful for any type of industry to apply to reap rewards.  This book is useful for sales and marketing professionals and also for leaders who want to improve their presentation skills, negotiation skills, listening skills and selling skills. It is a great book worth investing your time. You can gift this book to others. Enjoy reading this book!


“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” – Epictetus

References
The Eight Competencies of Relationship Selling: How to Reach the Top 1% in Just 15 Extra Minutes a Day by Jim Cathcart (Leading Authorities Press; First edition, October 28, 2002)


If you like this article, Like and share Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Professor-MSRao/451516514937414




Life is great!

Professor M.S.Rao, India
Founder of MSR Leadership Consultants India
Listed in Marquis Who's Who in the World in 2013
21 Success Sutras for Leaders: Top 10 Leadership Books of the Year (San Diego University) Amazon URL: http://www.amazon.com/21-Success-Sutras-Leaders-ebook/dp/B00AK98ELI


Thanks for reading!

Kindly share your thoughts and comments below, I’m sure someone out there will find your story useful.



Copyright©2015 MSR Leadership Consultants India. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

This is an educational blog for free sharing of knowledge, not for commercial use. Please don't cut articles from my blog and redistribute by email or post to the web. The use of this material is free provided copyright is acknowledged and reference or link is made to the Blog http://professormsraoguru.blogspot.com    This material may not be sold, or published in any form, or used in the provision of business services to a third party without permission.

Professor M. S. Rao’s Vision 2030: One Million Global Leaders : Namaste Telangana Published Professor M.S.Rao's Hu...

Professor M. S. Rao’s Vision 2030: One Million Global Leaders : Namaste Telangana Published Professor M.S.Rao's Hu...: Namaste Telangana featured my Vision 2030 URL: http://namasthetelangaana.com/Nipuna-Education/Pdf/17032015/pdf/17032015-07.pdf Read ...

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

“Extraordinary Leadership in Australia and New Zealand: The Five Practices that Create Great Workplaces” – Reviewer Professor M.S.Rao









“Jim, Barry and Michael have produced a truly enjoyable read in an Australasian context. Through a wealth of real-world examples and thorough research, they identify universal leadership practices that will be of value to all managers, from CEO to the front line, who want to take on new challenges or refresh their approach to achieve more.” —Josh Bayliss, CEO, Virgin Group (Worldwide)


What are the Details of the Book?

If you want to understand leadership from the perspective of Australia and New Zealand, read this book. If you want to acquire leadership behaviors, tools and techniques, read this book. If you want to grow as an extraordinary leader, read this book.  James Kouzes, Barry Posner and Michael Bunting’s authored book Extraordinary Leadership in Australia and New Zealand: The Five Practices that Create Great Workplaces is divided into seven chapters outlining the five practices that can help you achieve amazing outcomes.


What is Inside?

The book unveils the authors’ experience and research and their passion for leadership. They analyzed around the globe more than 5000 interviews and case studies and more than five million survey responses from all kinds of organizations, industries, functions, levels, occupations, ages and ethnicities. This book emerged from their global research. It outlines that when performing at their best, leaders: Model the Way; Inspire a Shared Vision; Challenge the Process; Enable Others to Act; and Encourage the Heart. It reveals strange research findings as follows: According to the Gallup research organization, a staggeringly low 13 per cent of employees worldwide are engaged. Worse, Gallup says, ‘over the past twelve years, these low numbers have barely budged, meaning that the vast majority of employees worldwide are failing to develop and contribute at work’.


Leadership Takeaways
  • Leadership can be learned. It’s an observable pattern of practices and behaviors and a definable set of skills and abilities.
  • You can move mountains if you’re prepared to involve people, and listen, and help them find a way.
  • It’s what you do with what you have before you die that makes the difference.
  • Being an exemplary leader means that you will have to clarify values by finding your voice and affirming shared values, and set the example by aligning actions with shared values.
  • Leaders report that the clearer they are about their leadership philosophy, the more committed and engaged they are in what they’re doing.
  • Articulating your values and beliefs clearly gives your team a framework for understanding what’s important. It guides them to make the right decisions. Just as the North Star guides sailors, your values keep you on course.
  • When you do what you think is right and give, it comes back to you. That’s what happens when leaders are clear about their values and are willing to live them.
  • When the lyrics and the melody of a song go together, you’ve got synchrony; for leaders, when the words and the deeds to together, you’ve got credibility. And credibility is the foundation of leadership. People will only willingly follow you when they believe in you. If people don’t believe in the messenger, they won’t believe the message.
  • People expect their leaders to be honest both with themselves and with others. Cynicism is bred when people feel that you are inconsistent-that is, you say one thing but you do another. You ask your team to do one thing, but you pay attention to something else entirely.
  • Where you stand depends upon where you sit. So you had better know where you are sitting (what your values are), so that you won’t end up standing (your actions) someplace else.
  • Doing this means you will have to envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities, and enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared aspirations.
  • Two of the most important things leaders can do to drive engagement are ‘communicate and reinforce with employees the organisation’s vision and values (and) ensure that day-to-day managerial behaviours, actions, and decisions are consistent with the core organizational values.
  • Leaders search for opportunities by seizing the initiative and looking outward for innovative ways to improve, and experiment and take risks by constantly generating small wins and learning from experience.
  • Leaders are not probability thinkers. They are possibility thinkers.
  • Exemplary leaders foster collaboration by building trust and facilitating relationships, and strengthen others by increasing self-determination and developing competence.
  • Trust is ultimately about opening yourself up to others making yourself vulnerable.
  • You can’t expect others to trust you if you are not wiling to trust them. If people feel trusted, informed and listened to, they are going to be far more productive in their jobs because they feel like there’s something good happening.
  • Praise and encouragement are the best gifts you can give anyone.
  • If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.
  • If you really want to make people feel valued and significant, you have to ‘make it relevant, make it in the moment and make it specific to what you’re recognizing or rewarding.
  • Exemplary leaders understand that great accomplishments are the result of team efforts, and that individuals are more engaged when they feel they are part of a team than when they feel they are all alone and no-one has their back.
  • If you want to boost employee engagement, you have to encourage the heart of the people you work with. People not sustain high levels of energy and productivity if they believe that nobody else cares about the hard work they are doing.
  • One of the fundamental reasons why people don’t take the initiative to lead is that too often they believe that leadership is for somebody else, not for them.
  • Leadership is local, but it’s also universal.
  • Highly engaged people become leaders. They do whatever is necessary to get the job done-they do what needs to be done through their sweat, imagination and sustained persistence without anyone needing to tell or cajole them to produce. In the highest performing organizations, everyone is a leader.
  • Leadership engages people and brings out the best in them. And engagement, in turn, drives higher levels of performance and more outstanding accomplishments. This virtuous cycle begins with you becoming a being the best leader you can possible be.
  • Clarify values by finding your voice and affirming shared values, and set the example of aligning actions with shared values.
  • Envision the future by imagining exciting and ennobling possibilities, and enlist others in a common vision by appealing to shared aspirations.
  • People will never follow you unless they know where you’re leading them and they’re inspired by that destination, that results, that future.
  • Leaders don’t sit around waiting for things to happen-they make things happen. They are constantly looking for ways of innovating and improving their processes and results. They are never content with the status quo. They despise mediocrity.
  • Foster collaboration by building trust and facilitating relations, and strengthen others by increasing self-determination and developing competence.
  • When people aren’t performing well, your job as a leader isn’t to criticize berate or blame them-it is to encourage, coach and uplift them.
  • Leadership is never easy. It’s easy to read about leadership. It’s easy to attend a leadership training program. It’s not easy to actually apply what you learn.
  • The Leadership Challenge is not intellectual; it’s far deeper and more personal.

The book concludes with a thought provoking story differentiating between deciding and doing as follows:
There’s a popular riddle about 12 frogs. It goes like this: if there are 12 frogs sitting on a log, at the edge of a pond and five of these 12 frogs decide to jump into the water, how many frogs remain on the log? What’s your answer? Seven? Zero? 12? Five?
The correct answer is 12. Twelve frogs remain on the log. Why? Because there is very big difference between deciding to do something and actually doing it.

The book calls for getting off the log and into the water to excel as a better leader.


What is the Recommendation?

The book outlines five practices of exemplary leadership with real world examples. It is a well researched book highlighting leadership behaviors with practical applications to lead from the front. It contains case studies and inspiring stories of successful companies and leaders. It helps ordinary leaders grow as extraordinary leaders. The leadership ideas and insights are well-punched hitting the bull’s eye.  Although the book is written from the perspective of Australia and New Zealand, the basic leadership principles and philosophies remain the same, and can be applied in other countries as well. Precisely, leadership is applicable for both local and global. It is a must read for leaders and CEOs to improve their leadership behavior and achieve leadership excellence and effectiveness.  This book is useful for leadership scholars and practitioners and leaders at levels including CEOs. You can gift this book to your friends to inspire them to grow as leaders. Enjoy reading this book!


“The exemplary leaders that are liberally featured in this book provide compelling evidence of the power of this framework as it has been applied to a wide range of organisations within Australia and New Zealand. This book should become a compulsory mainstay of the leadership libraries of both emerging and established leaders from all sectors of the economy.” —Professor Brad Jackson, Head of School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

References
Extraordinary Leadership in Australia and New Zealand: The Five Practices that Create Great Workplaces by James Kouzes, Barry Posner and Michael Bunting (Wiley; 1 edition, February 16, 2015)

If you like this article, Like and share Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Professor-MSRao/451516514937414




Life is great!

Professor M.S.Rao, India
Founder of MSR Leadership Consultants India
Listed in Marquis Who's Who in the World in 2013
21 Success Sutras for Leaders: Top 10 Leadership Books of the Year (San Diego University) Amazon URL: http://www.amazon.com/21-Success-Sutras-Leaders-ebook/dp/B00AK98ELI


Thanks for reading!

Kindly share your thoughts and comments below, I’m sure someone out there will find your story useful.



Copyright©2015 MSR Leadership Consultants India. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

This is an educational blog for free sharing of knowledge, not for commercial use. Please don't cut articles from my blog and redistribute by email or post to the web. The use of this material is free provided copyright is acknowledged and reference or link is made to the Blog http://professormsraoguru.blogspot.com    This material may not be sold, or published in any form, or used in the provision of business services to a third party without permission.