One of the most important elements in any business growth coaching program is setting a vision for the company in the near future.

This vision should reflect the ambition together with the needs of the owners and directors, and it will be eventually refined into a working blueprint of the perfect business. It gives the directors a chance to anticipate problems ahead of the event and to develop powerful solutions. It also enables the management to optimise and automate workflows and build robust corporate structures before pressure and stresses create the operational fog that hinders rational thought and decision making.

The vision must go beyond the commercial demands of the business. It must address the personal needs of all parties involved and it will undoubtedly provide a desirable work-life balance, as well as satisfy the commercial needs of turnover, profits and liquidity. A good quality of life is essential as a powerful motivational force to achieve your ambition, and the better your quality of life the stronger the motivation.

So important are the personal aspects of the vision it is the focus of the first questions I ask. What do you want? How much money do you want to earn? How many weeks holiday do you want?

There is of course an advantage to demanding a lot. A company that can satisfy ambitious needs requires a good structure, is efficient in its processes and tends to be very resilient. These are very valuable attributes.

Why not like to find out how growth coaching can enable you to achieve your ambitions not just by growing your profits but also in improving your quality of life. I offer a free consultation with to anyone who is interested. It just takes an email or a phone call to arrange.

One of my biggest surprises in four years of coaching has been discovering how little we use persuasive techniques in our negations to help us sell our products, and influence people to make them want to do business with us.

It is surprising because of the abundance of convincing research that indicates not only is a decision to buy frequently made at the very early, often opening, stages of negotiations, but that we are also predisposed as human beings to want to do business with people we like.

Despite this, all too frequently we focus our sales pitch to be logical and rational with little regard to the personal and emotional issues of the people we want to negotiate with. All too often our arguments appear to be unheard and unnoticed and we are surprised and disappointed by the failure of our efforts.

My experience of helping my clients improve their negotiating skills leaves me with no doubt that putting the same effort into building rapport as you would constructing a convincing cost benefit analysis dramatically increases the success rate of any negotiations. In the context of sales this means achieving a significantly greater conversion rate, higher prices and better compliance. All this is possible as a consequence of listening, showing empathy and carefully choosing your words.

Whenever I have helped my clients develop persuasive arguments the response has been fantastic, so much so that I now explain the techniques in my coaching sessions as a matter of course. To help develop their skills even further I have organised some workshops to give them a thorough grounding in the techniques.

If any LinkedIn member would like to know more there is more information at http://pjbeard.co.uk/influence-and-persuasion-one-day-workshop/

When you prepare a quote for the supply of your services or products do you ever put yourself into the mind of your potential customer. Have you ever imagined what it must be like to understand and decide on a supply contract for whatever your company produces?
We are all experts in what we do. We know our product or service inside out, and fully understand how it works and the value it represents; but do we understand the significance of it to our customer? Do we, from the perspective of our customer, understand the risks it presents to their business. What if the installation and implementation doesn’t go smoothly, even worse, what if it doesn’t work? What impact will failure have on the buyer?
In his enlightening book ‘The Organised Mind’ Daniel Levitin explains that the human mind hasn’t evolved to be particularly good at rational decision making. As humans we have a limited attentional capacity to deal with large amounts of information and as a consequence rely on decision making strategies, many of which depend on assessing probabilities.
Some probabilities are objective, in other words if we had all the data and the capability to calculate it we would understand the likelihood of success. Other probabilities are subjective, they are not calculable or countable, and so they are at best a guess. In the real world the probability of projects, especially big complex projects, succeeding is nearly impossible to calculate with a 100% confidence of the outcome.
And this is when the other strategy, the hard to touch and define strategy, of trust comes into play. It is not a rational strategy, it is not based on big data and precise calculations, instead it is based on how the human decision-maker subconsciously perceives you, the human suppliers. Trust in the supplier is the key element that mitigates the risk or lack of confidence in the probability of success.
Fortunately you can help your customers build trust in you. The first step is to demonstrate that you have listened to them and understand their needs. You can do this easily by asking them questions and listening to their answers; let them do the talking. Once that has been accomplished show them you understand by describing what they want in their words. The second step is to build empathy and rapport with them; not just their company but the people in it with whom you are negotiating. There are some very successful techniques for doing this, such as mirroring, but they all depend on listening and observing them as people, human-beings like you.
Remember, the more complex your customers find the decision to buy the more likely they are to decide on the basis of trust.
To find out more about Influence and Persuasion visit http://pjbeard.co.uk/influence-and-persuasion-one-day-workshop/.