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“Creating Successful Leaders”

November 18, 2011 Congrats to My St. Catherine University Sales Students

I am so proud of my sales students for their stellar performance at this year’s “Can’t Beat the Experience” national team sales competition at Indiana University:
From the Center for Sales Innovation: National Sales Competition Offered Real-Life Lessons

Four Healthcare Sales seniors competed as a team at a recent national team sales competition at Indiana University. Left to right are Ali Marson, Haley Kelliher, Amanda Braun, Kelsey Kromminga, who say that the competition’s case was similar to cases presented in St. Kate’s business classes.

A team of Healthcare Sales seniors placed in the top 10 out of 21 participating universities in the recent “Can’t Beat the Experience” National Team Sales Competition. Hosted by Indiana University, the event showcased presentations made in support of a private-label, organic popcorn sold into a fictional store. The students were judged based on their product packaging, sampling and social media solutions.”We had a morning appointment with one of the buyers/managers of this fictitious store to ask questions and dig for problems so that we could present solutions,” according to Kelsey Kromminga. “This allowed us to apply our classroom learning — role-playing around questioning, asking open-ended questions and building rapport — and ideas from the bookBeyond Selling Value.”

Alison Marson said that learning to take critical feedback is an important take-away from this competition. She said, “The judging processes helped us to understand the meaning of ‘no’ from a customer. Sometimes you need to dig deeper and ask more questions to gain information to solve the customer’s problem. That’s where our classroom skills in overcoming objections came into play as we centered around a solution fit for the customer.”

“Prepare, prepare, prepare,” said Haley Kelliher, who thinks that everyone should have the opportunity to compete like this during their college experience. “It provides the best learning and real-life experience.”

All students expressed that they had overthought some of their ideas and, looking back, wished they had stuck with their intuition because some of the original ideas offered better benefits. They also learned the importance of time management and working as a team.

Thanks for all of your hard work, SCU Sales students!

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November 14, 2011 Get a Life

By Margaret Smith
Speaker | Career Coach | Certified Insights Discovery Practitioner

Making your voice heard, being noticed, overcoming your inner saboteur, improving interactions with others: These are many of the topics I discuss with my coaching clients. These are also many of the topics that the writer Julie Morgenstern addresses in her article, “Five Ways to Get a Life” published in O Magazine. Read on for a bunch of useful and fun advice about taking back your life!

Morgenstern’s Advice:

  1. Shorten your work day by 30 minutes: This may seem counter-intuitive, but I promise that you’ll get more work done because committing to leave earlier gives you a deadline and forces you to eliminate the little time wasters (silly interruptions, procrastination, perfectionism) that typically eat up your day.
  2. Avoid multi-tasking: Recent studies show that it can take the brain twice as long to process each task when you switch back and forth between activities. By learning to focus your full attention on one project at a time, you can regain the extra hour or two you crave.
  3. Break the habit of total self-reliance: Insisting on doing everything yourself burdens you and prevents others from feeling valuable and needed. Delegate more at home and free up your time for things you love and excel at doing.
  4. Capture all your to do’s in one place: People who haphazardly write lists on stray notepads, post-it notes, and backs of envelopes waste time wondering what to do next and worrying that they’re forgetting something. Choose only one tool to track everything you need to do and prioritize from the top down.
  5. Schedule one purely joyful activity each week: Think of an activity (dancing, reading, playing an instrument) that you haven’t done for a long time that brings you instant happiness. Put it in your datebook as nonnegotiable and watch the quality of your life improve.

Also try to start each morning with the most important item, not the many small and easy tasks. Remember that you can always squeeze the little things into the gaps.

Your Challenge: Give one of these life-improving ideas a try, and let me know how it transforms your day!

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November 7, 2011 The Benefits of Being a Better Listener

By Margaret Smith, Speaker, Career Coach, and Certified Insights Discovery Practitioner
You may feel like you’re already a pretty great listener. Or perhaps you’re ready to admit that your listening skills could use a little improvement. Either way, everyone will benefit from a little refresher on the necessity of being a good listener, with a few helpful tips for staying focused on the person across from you, on the other end of the line, etc.

If your listening skills improve, you’ll also see improvements at work, at home, while socializing, and everywhere in between.

Has there ever been a time in your life when you’ve lost sight of what a conversation was really about? Have you ever been “sucked in” to a toxic conversation or argument that’s become completely unproductive? Of course you have—we all have!

I’ve found that the best way to avoid conversational distractions that become argumentative is to remember this one simple fact: Listening is about gaining knowledge. In a conversation, it’s important that I remain a dedicated listener because otherwise, I may as well have a conversation with myself in the mirror.

By focusing on the messages of others at work, you not only improve productivity, you also strengthen your relationships with the people in your life because you avoid misunderstandings and make others feel heard and understood.

An awesome benefit of being a better listener is the positive impression you leave with those you listen to. Being a better listener actually makes you seem more respectful, composed, and interesting to other people. It may seem counter-intuitive, but displaying genuine interest in what someone else is saying actually makes you a more interesting person to them.

Your Challenge:

Improve your listening skills starting now. Think about your plans for the rest of the day and choose an interaction that you’ll practice improving your listening skills during. This interaction may be with your children when you or they walk in the door, with a supervisor this afternoon, or even with the next person with whom you share a phone conversation.

Share your story: Have you ever interacted with someone who was a really good listener? How did this make you feel? How did it affect your image of, and relationship with, this person?

Interested in learning more about listening or working one-on-one with a professional career coach to gain a competitive edge? Contact Margaret Today to learn about career coaching and UXL’s public workshops!

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