Blog

This interview with Laurie Schloff originally appeared on Sales Management Services website and was written by Suzanne Pailing More Listening Tips and the Importance of Communication Skills in Selling To succeed in a sales position of any type, you must be a proficient listener. This comes more easily to some reps than others. To help salespeople continue to develop this ability, sales leaders should run listening exercises during staff meetings, recommend books and articles on the

1. Fear, and often fear of speaking, ignites an immediate flight or freeze response in your body. First you need to calm down both your nervous system and body response in order to think clearly. Here’s a focused deep breathing exer cise that is extremely helpful. Research has shown it instantly moves the brain’s reaction to calmness even in highly stressful situations. This creates the space you need to make decisions and take proper actions. It

This article by Laurie Schloff originally appeared on SpeakerHub   What will happen if you go blank on stage? Knowing the answer will help overcome fear of speaking. Obviously, you will be struck by a lightning bolt and no one will ever talk to you again. Seriously, even experienced speakers have moments when they look at the audience with a frozen stare and wonder: Who are these people? What am I doing here? And what

An article this week on StatNews.com, a sister site of BostonGlobe.com, reported on a California startup’s plan to broadly market the medication propranolol as a quality-of-life aid, including to reduce nervousness associated with public speaking. Companies looking to innovate and disrupt will continue to explore new solutions to old problems, and vice versa. But this particular idea causes me concern as a speech professional. Author Jeff Turner View all posts

Being persuasive is the topic most often requested by our clients. We train people all over the world – Fortune 500 executives, managers in companies of all sizes, entrepreneurs, politicians, athletes, and educators – who tell us again and again: they want to be more convincing. Author Dennis Becker View all posts

[vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” angled_section=”no” text_align=”left” background_image_as_pattern=”without_pattern” css_animation=””][vc_column][vc_column_text]Is small talk really so small? Chitchat about unimportant matters provides warm-up time for more meaningful interaction. During small talk, shifts in several dimensions of interaction can occur-from discomfort to comfort, mistrust to trust, im­personal topics to personal ones. Then talkers turn to their real business. Jay, an intense engineer who wanted to meet his soulmate, refused to make small talk. He insisted, “I like to walk up

In my experience, there are 5 hurdles that stand to prevent you from being successful. I’ve delved into each below. Fear ISSUE: Fear of failure, of not living up to expectations – your own and those of others, the fear of not being good enough, the fear of being ridiculed or singled out in your community, having to go the way alone, the fear of failing, of losing everything, and there are so many more. Fear

Have you ever lost your voice at a tradeshow? We’ve all been there. It’s day 3 of the show, your staff is complaining of aching feet and backs, overall body energy is down, yet there are still 2 more days left to go in the show. Their voices are starting to crack, coughing more often, clearing thoughts, or worse – voices become horse! How do you keep your staff from getting that trade show voice?

Most of us instinctively do a good job of setting our volume so that it takes into account the distance between ourselves and listeners, the amount of background noise, and the degree to which we want to broadcast our message. One client who was known as “The Megaphone” in his office, didn’t do so well at this. Ernie came to see me when he realized that col­leagues were requesting the cubicle farthest from his. One