Seminars are a powerful business building strategy when done right. They are a great way to strengthen relationships with existing clients and showcase your expertise to new ones.

If done well you can also create an environment where existing happy customers “sell” your services to prospective customers naturally and unobtrusively.

Recently I was privileged to attend such an event run by one of my clients, a large accountancy firm. I had been helping one of the partners put together [...]

The secrets of successful seminars is a post from: Inter-Activ Presenting and Influencing

Recently I was having a conversation with a fellow sales trainer about why some people find selling such a challenge. One reason we agreed on was that the words “sales” and “selling” have a ton of unhelpful mental baggage associated with them.

Just test this out for yourself right now. Grab a piece of paper and a pen and write down or draw all the associations that spring to mind when you think of the words sales or selling.

Do we need a new sales vocabulary? is a post from: Inter-Activ Presenting and Influencing

It’s my experience, from networking with hundreds of businesses here in Hampshire, that most people rely on telephone and 1:1 face to face selling to close new business.

Now that’s fine and dandy but 1:1 selling can be expensive, specially in terms of time. You have the time to get to the client, then you have the meeting time, then the travel time back and then the time to write a proposal.

Imagine the benefits of being able to reduce all these [...]

If you are in sales or run your own business you need to read this article is a post from: Inter-Activ Presenting and Influencing

In my book, presentation skills and selling skills go hand and hand.   The principles of effective selling will help you to produce powerful persuasive presentation and the principles of great presenting will help you sell much better face to face.

Almost every type of presentation is about persuasion.   You want your audience to do something as a result of your presentation.  So to do this you need to consider the same sort of things you do when planning a sales call.

If you want to be good at sales, you need to learn how to present is a post from: Inter-Activ Presenting and Influencing

Selling isn’t telling – Video tip 2 is a post from: Inter-Activ Presenting and Influencing

Selling isn’t telling – Video tip 2 is a post from: Inter-Activ Presenting and Influencing

I spent some time in George Best International airport in Belfast recently coming back from a fundraising workshop with the charity Concern Worldwide UK

When I entered the airport departure lounge I saw the usual television screens with departure and arrival information but I also saw something I had never seen before…

Normally, when your flight has not been called, the screens show the message “Please wait in lounge”  but in Belfast airport thy had a different message!   Somebody had clearly thought [...]

Influencing secrets – Tell your audience what you want them to do! is a post from: Inter-Activ Presenting and Influencing

Today I was phoned by a guy who I have met on a couple of occasions at local networking events.  he works for a company called the disc directory, a local on-line business directory covering Portsmouth and Southampton.

Now I’m pretty hard on tele-sales people but his approach was so refreshing that I just had to post on it.   He called me up, started by saying something like ” Remember the good looking guy who’s been bumping into  you around [...]

A cheeky sales approach that worked is a post from: Inter-Activ Presenting and Influencing

I was running an influencing skills workshop earlier this week and part of the course involved a presentation by me on Prof Robert Cialdini’s six principles of influence.  (NB: If you haven’t read professor Cialdini’s book on Influence, you really should!)

One of the principles is called consensus and it embodies the idea that we are more likely to take an action if we hear, see or read about other people like us doing the recommended action.    During the Q& A one of [...]

Influencing Cultural Change in Organisations is a post from: Inter-Activ Presenting and Influencing

Whether you are speaking one to one woth a prospective customer or one to many in the form of a group sales presentation you need to learn how to change their state…

By state I mean the the combination of thinking, emotion and physiology that characterises how we are at any given moment of time.  States are often given labels like fearful, sceptical, curious, excited etc.  Every good presenter and influencer, consciously or unconsciously takes their audience on a journey from [...]

Getting your prospects in the right state to buy is a post from: Inter-Activ Presenting and Influencing

Last week I was listening to the radio and I happened to hear an interview with a Dave Alred, a coach who specialises in helping people perform well under pressure. He has studied a wide range of people in many different contexts including world class athletes, rugby players, army personnel and business executives and has coached the England Rugby Squad.  

One of the attributes of the top performers was the ability to cultivate an attitude of inevitability and he illustrated this by talking [...]

Developing An Attitude Of Inevitablility is a post from: Inter-Activ Presenting and Influencing