DataDome Blog

Are you ready for gift-giving Dominance?
Got someone on your list you want to Influence?
Do you possess the Steadiness of a seasoned holiday shopper?
Is Conscientiousness the key to picking the perfect gift?

Give the gift that can really make a difference!

We are pleased to announce the return of the Data Dome Development Bookstore – a selection of suggested readings targeted to specific development and self-improvement goals.

Got a friend with low energy? We can suggest a book for that!

Is your sibling too assertive? The right reading may be just the ticket!

Are you trying to find the perfect gift for someone low on optimism, high on the need to be liked, or maybe lacking in self-reliance? Wouldn’t you like to know the books a good coach would recommend for each of these situations?

And don’t forget about your own New Year’s resolutions… Some smart reading could put you on a productive path to reaching your goals!

We have recommendations in forty targeted categories of development: Learn the right books to help tackle the “too highs” and the “too lows”.

For books for everything from building assertiveness to learning patience, visit Recommended Reading for Coaching and Personal Development and give the gift that shows you care.

And don’t forget the sales pros on your list! Visit Reading for Sales Professionals and browse our recommendations for strategic and behavioral development made specifically with the salesperson in mind.

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Your blood pressure is up and profits are down. Don’t your managers and salespeople get it? Are you the only one who sees the big picture?

The problem might be that you need to better understand your top performers so that you can use your entire team more effectively.

“You don’t compete with products alone anymore, but how well you use your people”, a manager tells Daniel Goleman in Working with Emotional Intelligence. Higher profits and higher revenues will depend on a new kind and level of productivity.

How important is it to understand what top performers have that average and low performers don’t?

For front line jobs, those in the top 1 percent produced three times more output than those in the bottom 1 percent.

For jobs such as professional salespeople, account managers, and executives, those in the top 1 percent produced 127 percent more than the average performer.

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They can talk…but can they sell?

Many more can talk than can sell. Did you ever hire someone because they sounded so great – presented so well – you thought they could do anything? But six months later, you’re tired of hearing how great they sound, you just want some results?

Why? What went wrong? To answer completely, there are two areas that need to be addressed:

• Behavioral Style
• Knowledge of Selling

Behavioral style refers to the behavioral elements of selling a particular product for a particular company to a particular client base. These elements include:

• aggressiveness
• cold-call reluctance
• extroversion
• multi-tasking
• rules compliance
• natural enthusiasm
• self starting tendencies
• servicing
• paperwork
• tendency to detail
• product information
• customer relations
• consistency
• follow-up and follow-through
• tendency to listen.

It takes a very different style to sell computer parts directly to computer engineers than it does to sell computers to the general public. Similarly, to close the sale to a low-key, easy-going, family-oriented type
buyer requires considerably different style than closing the same merchandise to a fast-talking, hurried, bottom-line oriented buyer.

By analyzing what you’re selling, who you are selling for, and who you are selling to, a company today can articulate the customized behaviors optimum for their situation. Salespeople can then be hired whose natural behaviors are ideally what you are looking for. Those salespeople who are not exactly ‘natural’ in these behaviors will nevertheless benefit tremendously from understanding just what behaviors are best to role-play, or emulate, to excel for your company.

Knowledge of Selling is totally different than one’s behavioral selling style. You may have the right personality style – the right mix of extroversion, aggressiveness, empathy, etc. – but do you know what to do and say in the selling cycle: when to ask for the close, when to remain silent, what strategy to use, and when to use it.

Most sales training programs, in effect, give technical training, but very little in the art of selling. Likewise, the tools for measuring these Sales Skills are different. What are the best things to do and when?

These elements include how to:

• Prospect
• Qualify
• Probe
• Impress
• Demonstrate
• Influence
• Close

Make Adjustments: To communicate more effectively with a customer, you may be required to adjust your natural behavioral style. These adjustments may cause stress or require additional energy. “Pumping up” to get more motivated and enthusiastic than one normally feels requires focus and energy.

On the other hand, stress occurs when the results-driven aggressive salesperson has to slow down, listen more and show patience to slower-reacting people. That is why sales knowledge – knowing exactly what to do – is extremely helpful to minimize the extra stress or energy required to adjust behavioral style. Advantages include shortening the sales cycle, reducing stress and closing sales more often!

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