egyii blog

Today, connecting is a difficult proposition. It is even tougher when you prospect.

There is no doubt that people are overly busy with their day to day personal and business tasks- and even worse, they are being “contacted” in more ways than ever: email, SMS, social media, and by phone (by “pesky” telemarketers to say the least).

It is a virtual flood out there.

How to prospect today? Differentiate in your approach

Even with all the technology and distractions today, people appreciate a real person and voice behind the attempts to connect. It just has to be done right. When was the last time you got a call from a bank with an un-targeted, sloppy approach? I got one the other day.

“Sir we can arrange a loan for you.”

“I don’t need a loan. And how can you make a promise like that- I might not even qualify?”

I challenged the caller with those questions- she had no response. Yes, I know it is her job. She is not to blame- it is management. She is following orders.

This is a  great example as to why people are being “bothered” by prospectors today, as this is an untargeted, “spray and pray” technique. There were also a lot of assumptions in this approach.

What really works? In order for the conversation to be successful, it needs to:

Achieve a goal

Satisfy a need

Solve a problem

What tools/skills does one need? The caller needs to:

Use the right opening statements, vocal techniques and rapport building skills to create interest and capture attention

Utilise conversational bridging statements to keep the customer engaged during the call

Ask effective questions in a logical order to discover the customers current situation, their stated needs and their hidden needs

Listen actively and accurately to capture relevant information first time and recognise the input and contributions received from the customer

Pick up on and respond to customer buying signals and clues that indicate the interest level of customer

Explain and link  the benefits of a product or service to meet customer needs, create interest and secure commitment versus relying on product features

Handle common customer objections by using the APART approach to keep the customer involved in the conversation and focused on the value the product will bring

Use a conversational close to ask for permission to proceed

Professionally close the call to leave a positive, lasting impression in both successful call outcome situations and when the customer declines to proceed

Yes prospecting is difficult…but it can be done. It is all about the approach.

For more, see Connect Through High Impact Sales Conversations

Andrew Sidwell, Team Egyii, Singapore

So many objections, so many solutions

Why are we always confronted with so many objections that stall the sale? And when we are, they become very difficult to resolve. There are many ways to confront objections and everyone often has their own “manipulative” techniques to counter….

“If I can do that price do we have deal?”

“Is that the only thing holding back?”

“What do I need to do to earn your business?”

“If I can offer a solution would you be willing to buy today?”

How well do these objection handlers really work?

Very often objections are based around price. When you reach a price objection, here is a tip:

“Is it a budget issue?” (can you afford it?)

or

“Do you see value in the solution?” (to discover if they are objecting on value not on price)

From there you have an idea where you stand. This advice is valuable in its time and place, but why reach this position in the first place? If you had done your work earlier, chances are this won’t happen.

The value of transparency in dealing with sales objections

As part of your build-up to the sale, prior to any objections (and as a tool during your objections) , if you are completely open you probably won’t encounter these objections in the first place and will be able to resolve them when they arise.

Buying is based on emotion. After the initial assessment of you and your products (which is a very rational approach) people tend to buy on emotion (non-rational) from people that they trust.

One way to build trust is through transparency. Transparency throughout. Before. During. After.

dictionary.com defines transparency as “a state of being transparent” and transparent is defined as:

Having the property of transmitting rays of light through its substance so that bodies situated beyond or behind can be distinctly seen

Easily seen through, recognised or detected

Manifest; obvious: example is “a story with a transparent plot”

Open; frank; candid: example is “the man’s transparent earnestness”

If you are not transparent in your actions, the buyer starts questioning your motives. Once the buyer questions your motives, she starts to fear you and what you are doing. And when fear sets in, what happens? Objections.

How do we conduct transparency?

Easy. Sharing. Sharing information with the buyer lowers suspicion because it encourages collaboration and openness, and this will bring out any objections earlier in the sale. Yes it appears to be risky, and risk causes you fear. Take that risk and get over the fear, because it certainly is easier to control your fear than the buyer’s.

Taking the initial risk is tough, but worth it. It will lead you into a more powerful, trusting relationship and may even help you get that sale…. and more.

(for a great article on handling price objections, see Meeting Price Objections from Trust by Charles H. Green, Trusted Advisor Associates)

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

The following is an article from the Singapore Business Times, January 13, 2010, written by the Managing Director and Head of Private Banking Southeast Asia and Australasia for Credit Suisse, Dr. Francois Monnett.

He gets it, but do they really “walk the talk?”

Retaining clients, rebuilding trust

The sustainability of the private banking business model comes under scrutiny in the wake of the massive industry shake-up. In the aftermath of the massive industry shake-up which has taken place over the last 18 months, we are confronted with a very different operating landscape in private banking. Together with a significant loss of trust and confidence in the markets and industry, clients are also expecting higher standards of service and advice, as well as greater transparency and disclosure over products and services. There is also a shift towards safer, simpler and more liquid investment solutions.

One major implication is the critical question of the sustainability of the private banking business model. During the boom period, many institutions built their private banking model primarily based on the assumption of continued growth and perhaps a certain belief in its immunity to economic cyclicality. The infrastructure that many private banks have put in place to deliver value to clients and the fact that much growth has been built through expensive acquisition of bankers have also resulted in a costly model.

Revenue generation in private banking, particularly in the Asia-Pacific, has been very much volume-driven with a heavy reliance on a sales culture. With slowing revenue generation and increasing cost-income ratios in the past 18 months, the sustainability of this business model has been seriously tested. Much of the pressure is also coming from outside, namely from regulators and clients, that will propel the industry towards more radical and dramatic changes to the business model.

In the rapidly changing regulatory environment, investment suitability is here to stay and investor protection will become an even more important dimension in this business. There is also a lot of discussion on offshore banking, capital requirement and bankers’ compensation.

But the most important driver for change is the disillusioned clients. There has been a significant loss of investors’ trust and confidence in the markets, in regulators, in the financial institutions as well as their advisers. We have also observed among clients a flight to safety and quality, a shift from risk aversion to loss aversion, and a back-to-basic type of appeal for more direct and liquid investment vehicles.

Very importantly, there is a much greater need for transparency and disclosure. This is not just about the products, but also the service levels that clients pay for, fee structures, performance of their investments, as well as transparency regarding business partners and counterparty risk.

Client segmentation

For private banks to reclaim and reaffirm their critical status as trusted advisers, we need to enhance our value proposition on a few levels. First and foremost, we need to focus on client segmentation and differentiation to significantly lift service levels.

To put the client at the centre of a segmentation strategy is the only way to avoid the ‘one size fits all’ approach, which doesn’t work to lift service levels. This requires a disciplined, systematic and structured approach to defining client segmentation that goes well beyond assets under management. It has to consider the source of the client’s wealth – is it inherited or built? It has to consider the investor’s behaviour – is he or she a delegator, a participator or self-directed?

We also need to understand better the investor’s knowledge, experience, sophistication as well as domicile. Once these dimensions are clearly mapped out, the resulting value proposition has to deliver a tiered service offering in a disciplined and consistent way that will define different access to product specialist or management as well as the depth and breadth of the service offering.

Eventually, we will be measured as well in terms of the level of transparency and interaction we achieve with our clients. Risk management has to be an integral part of the advisory process and an investment suitability framework is the ultimate transparent guide to portfolio construction.

This involves the profiling of clients – the detailed and structured assessment of their knowledge and experience vis-Ã -vis the complexity of the portfolio solution, and their risk and loss tolerance. This profile is used to build a portfolio which is simulated in terms of asset allocation and is fully disclosed to the client.

Consistent client experience

The private banking business is all about execution. We need to deliver on the promise of being a trusted adviser in a consistent way. A major pre-requisite for a consistent client experience lies in the bank’s IT-based processes. From the relationship manager (RM) accessing an open architecture platform with thousands of solutions for the client, implementing a common advisory process, to utilising portfolio construction tools that build asset allocation against the client’s profile and analyses of risk scenarios – this level of consistency can only be achieved through a control process.

The re-engineering of processes is critical not so much for productivity gains, but has enormous impact on how much time the RM is able to spend with clients and the quality of the client experience. A recent study shows that RMs spend as much of their time marketing services to new clients as solving and dealing with administrative matters. If we are not able to free RMs from the loss in valuable client-interacting time, we will not live up to the promise of being a trusted adviser.

From a client perspective, there is also a constant request for better, more consolidated and comprehensive client reporting. They also want more direct access to almost real time data through client portals.

As private banking continues to grow in the Asia-Pacific, automation, IT systems and the re-engineering of processes will increasingly become the backbone of the business. How good a bank’s infrastructure is will be the cornerstone in delivering quality client experience. It will optimise relationship management time with clients and ensure a culture of consistency throughout the firm.

Re-skilling of RMs

If we want to differentiate ourselves in terms of providing an advice-centric operating model to clients, we will also have to consider the extent to which we need to re-skill our RMs. The permanent education of RMs is of paramount importance. Particularly in Asia-Pacific where the industry is still young and fast-growing, there is an immediate need to make sure that the culture of a firm is being consistently instilled into the new joiners that all bankers interact with their clients through a consistent and structured advisory process.

Eventually, as front organisations continue to expand, we also need to enable RMs to grow in their roles over time, from a junior level adviser, to an expert RM or a manager and leader. This requires a long-term, modular and state-of-the-art training curriculum and development model that captures the career cycle of each RM. It is also important to align reward systems with the clients’ satisfaction. When we measure performance, we need to focus not only on ‘What financial performance did you achieve?’ but also the ‘How did you achieve it?’ metric. This softer side of performance measurement has to be benchmarked against the values of the bank and how it wants its RMs to run the business, and against the client’s satisfaction. This will involve tracking the degree of adherence to the sales and advisory process, risk management tools and control standards, as well as client satisfaction surveys.

This greater alignment is a condition for regaining and earning more trust with our clients in the new landscape, acknowledging the new landscape, refining and sharpening the value position and eventually delivering on a bank’s brand promise.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

No longer can global or major accounts programmes rely on decisions being made in mother countries. Decisions now need to be made on a local, Asia Pacific level, whether it is in Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Shanghai or Tokyo.

And no longer can account teams rely on relationships alone. They must also add value.

Adding value means understanding what is on the mind of the client and giving them the tools to meet their personal and business goals. It’s not all about bits and bytes, bandwidth or speed or bells and whistles. To meet the goals, it’s all about understanding their problems and where they are in the decision making cycle…and being sensitive to that.

Neil Rackham, of Huthwaite and SPIN, was not a salesperson, but a behavioural psychologist. He studied how buyers bought and did not focus on how sellers should sell. He built a simple yet powerful tool to understand the buying cycle, or decision making process. He added sensitivity to the buying cycle.

In the buying cycle, there are multiple stages..changes over time, recognition of needs, evaluation of options, resolution of concerns, decision, implementation. No matter where you enter the buying cycle, you need to work (by continually adding value) with your client until he enters the “recognition of needs” area. This is the crucial time to be side by side, collaborating with your client to build the solution. (Rackham  also recognises that all of this takes time, so focus on medium-long term, not short term).

Once you are at the recognition of needs phase, you should understand how the client makes the decision.

What motivates him to buy?

The client (or buyer) typically has four levels of questions when it comes to the question of motivation when buying:

1) The product and its characteristics/features

2) A solution to the problem

3) A good business partner

4) Someone we can trust

Buyers state that they want want the first or second and ocassionally the third. Most sales programmes/processes focus on levels two and three- focusing on identifying the buyers’ needs through consultative selling.

Levels one through three are rational and impersonal. The fourth level, a person we can trust, is far more powerful.

If you understand the buying cycle and ultimately what motivates your client when buying, you are one step ahead of your competitors.

There is a lot more to it than that for global/major accounts selling but understanding the crucial aspects of buying are vital.

*Derived from Trust-based Selling by Charles H. Green.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

(The author ran the Anixter Asia Pacific Global Accounts programme in the earlier part of this century. There are certainly a few things he did well but there are a lot of things he could have done better. He wishes he had known all of this then.)

How do front-line sales professionals (Relationship Managers, face to face sales, client managers, Etc) effectively connect through high impact conversations?

Challenges to achieveing great sales conversations

There is no doubt that achieving sales targets, regardless of how they are achieved, has become the principle means of measuring success in many companies around the globe, regardless of what they all say they do for their customers.

That then becomes the root of the problem.

From that, we have observed that many conversations with customers are often driven by the sales person’s self interests on the basis of a product promotion, the profitability of a product, the amount of commission or incentive the sales person will receive or urgency to hit a specific target, a business need to increase market share etc. regardless of whether or not that is the right solution for the customer. 

Essentially there is rarely anybody taking a look at the overall picture for the customer, or even conversational guidelines to ensure that sales staff work together in the customer’s best interests.

So how do we  connect effectively and maxmise performance?

There are many well established approaches to selling; relationship selling, customer value selling, needs based selling etc. to suit different business needs and the current economic environment. Terms may change, tough times come and go, but the best practices of having a quality conversation that focuses on the clients best interests versus the sellers to maximize sales performance is still regarded as critical to success.

This would apply to anyone who manages a portfolio of customers on a relationship basis rather than a transactional one and seeks to enhance their ability, knowledge and behaviour to deliver a meaningful sales conversation that engages the client and deepens relationships with both new and existing prospects.

What will make this work?

In order to make programme that changes the focus from “us” to “them” successful, frontline sales professionals people need to be able to:

Assess their own communication strengths and weaknesses and the impact they have on others

Adapt and respond to the communication style, drivers of emotional needs and life stage of their clients

Develop compelling value positioning statements for opening conversations with prospects and existing clients over the telephone and in person

Ask for and gather information using bridging statements and reflective listening techniques to identify opportunities to create value for clients

Summarise and align solutions to the customers’ true needs to establish greater rapport with the client

Keep the client engaged in the conversation when handling client uncertainty or resistance to opportunity

Demonstrate conversational closing statements to confidently ask for the business

For related materials please see:

Maximising sales performance and skills.

Building and rebuilding trust.

Andrew Sidwell, Team Egyii, Singapore

“We need to constantly be adding value to our client base,”  a comment said recently by a business leader in the South Asia territory for a major US medical company.

Yes I agree wholeheartedly. But how do salespeople and support teams add value?

Value add can be defined in numerous ways, for example…

Offering the best solutions to a clients’ problems

Support throughout the whole sales cycle- pre, implementation, post.

Overall by positioning the product, the comapny and the salesperson himself

…and more

Value add as defined  by Tom Reilly, who wrote the book Value Added Selling ….”the only differentiation that may exist in this competitive comparison could rest with the salesperson.  Two Fortune-100 companies surveyed their customers to determine how much value their salespeople contributed to the sale; they discovered that 35-37% of the value that customers receive comes from the salespeople with whom they deal. Value added salespeople don’t make sales calls; they go on job interviews with customers. They ask customers to hire them to be their personal representative with the supplier’s company.”

So Tom’s definition of value add  is the salesperson as the company differentiator. I agree.

But, building trust through trustworthiness is also a value add. How? By putting the client first.

When you put the client first, the client sees that you care about him and his interests and not just about pushing a product or service.

And, as Charlie Green says in Trust-based Selling “It is possible for selling to be a genuinely value adding, beneficial process for the buyer AND seller alike.”

You just have to align trust properly. And if you align trust properly, it will be your value add and the differentiator.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

Because salespeople are too “seller focused’ and not “client focused.”

When was the last time you spoke to someone in a social situation and all that person did was talk about himself? I,I, I…me,me, me..Etc. How boring- and self-centred was that encounter? Now transpose that situation into a business scenario- a conversation with a typical salesperson or business person. Features, features, features, our company can do this and that….so many “programmed” questions because the sales process requires it…Etc.

Salespeople (and business people) still tend to act very transactional, focusing on the task at hand, the numbers, the advance, Etc.  Business people tend not to listen or really care. This is  all about “me” and not about the client.

Focus on the client and not “me” or “us.” You will see a difference.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

Some of Today’s Sales Challenges

Your company has researched, designed and built competitive, innovative and compelling products.

Money and effort has also been spent on marketing and communicating the product benefits…only to soon discover that it is difficult to sell because your competitor releases a similar product shortly thereafter.

The last thing you want to do is do anything out of complete desperation or that is overly drastic…such as dropping the price or losing the sale.

This is just an example but these and other similar challenges confront your front line sales organization daily.

What to do in these and other scenarios? How to differentiate and stay ahead of the pack?

Differentiation through Your People and  Communications Delivery Methods

Your biggest differentiator is your people and how they interact with their clients.

If your people are not prepared to face these tough scenarios and work through them with your clients, then you will have difficulty growing your business and holding onto your key sales drivers, the salespeople (who will end up quitting).

How to work through this? Some examples:

Front line telephone sales need specific skills that outsell  the competition

Salespeople need to create customer value by cross-selling and up-selling

Sales needs to have high impact sales conversations with the customers

They need to present the value proposition in the right manner

How do you ensure that the skills are applied and properly utilised?

The team needs to be motivated and management needs to be aligned. Reinforcement also needs to be applied.

Motivation and Management Alignment Programmes

Examples. To enhance the sales team climate you need:

Interpersonal and team communication

Management needs to motivate the sales team, lead change and build the right team

Management needs to run effective performance appraisals and provide motivational feedback

Leadership needs to be developed through sales performance coaching, coaching the disengaged sales staff, and leading the sales team to success.

Reinforcement Methodologies

Without reinforcement, you lose the skills you have learned quickly. You need to treat learning and development with a five stage process to ensure business results always follow initiatives. Result: each initiative translates to measurable execution by learners which produces concrete business results. As follows:

Align the learning  to desired business outcomes and target behaviours

Involve all in the design of a holistic learning experience

Deliver using the right tools and practicing 80% of the time using realistic scenarios

Embed through active support  and reinforcement through direct managers

Form learning groups to act on barriers that impede performance

Lead with your people and ensure the skills they learn are embedded and utilised.

Andrew Sidwell, Team Egyii, Singapore

I met up with an Account Executive from one of my former employers the other day and she asked me, as we were parting, “Can you give me some tips on how to be successful in sales in my current position?”

I love these kind of questions where I am asked for advice.

I answered “Relationships and value.”

“The relationships with your internal support mechanism (your colleagues) and the relationships with your clients are the most important. Without either of them, you will not survive.”

Simple enough. But…

“Relationships are very important but you must also add value. Always be adding value.”

“With your colleagues, always understand what drives and motivates them. Know their “business.” Instead of asking for their help, ask how you can help them. You would be amazed how they change their perspective.”

“With your clients, always be adding value- know their business and environment, anticipate their problems and offer solutions. Become a trusted advisor.”

This would be my simple answer to anyone who asked me about success in sales.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

Trust.

It remains a hot issue and will for a while.

With that, we at Egyii will be doing a series of interviews and Podcasts with the leaders in Trust, in anticipation of our August announcement on our new programme on Trust.

The second of the series is Charles H. Green, one of the founding fathers of the “trust movement ” and founder/CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates. He is the author of Trust Based Selling and co-author of The Trusted Advisor. His expertise is in trusted relationships in business. For more on Charlie, click here.

Here is Part 2 (a continuation of Part 1).

The following is transcribed from a recorded session.

Trip Allen: Moving on to 2006, the theme of your second book called “Trust Based Selling,” encompasses two words: sales and trust.

These terms together have a bad reputation and don’t mix well with the business world, a little like oil and water.  Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

Charlie Green:  Well, you are exactly right and I was completely conscious of that when I wrote it that way. In fact one major firm told me if you write a book with “sales” in the title we are not buying it.  The phenomena you just mentioned is that strong, and I wrote that way any way because I wanted to play off the tension.

I think the word sales or selling is a four letter word.  We all have these negative feelings about it, and the whole sales function in many ways has gotten a bad name, too.

What fascinated me about is that sales is where the person and the business come together. When a company buys from one and sells to another, with the exception of reverse online auctions, there are people doing “the deal,” and that is where institutions come together, where they connect. That is what fascinated me – how do people behave when there is serious money at stake and they are doing business? That is the essence of commercial relationship; commerce, in the old sense of the word.

I am happy with the choice I made, because I think it intrigues people. They say “how can you put those two together?” Well, you examine why they don’t fit, and it turns out to be a very interesting way of looking at it.

In a nutshell, there is nothing that sells better than being trusted – period. That’s the power of trust in the commercial relationship. I just find it fascinating.

Trip Allen:  Charlie, what’s the biggest thing you see wrong with selling today? You just mentioned that the reputation of a salesperson is bad, but what else do you see out there? What’s happening?

Charlie Green:  Well, it’s a great question because 10 to 15 years ago the biggest problem was salespeople selling and really not understanding the customer very well.  I think we have come to have a different problem and that is, let me call it the “mechanisation” of selling or the overdoing of “process reengineering” and the overuse of sales management systems.

Because of that we have broken the personal relationship and we have taken that “commercial” personal relationship (that I mentioned) and broken into a thousand mechanistic, metrics based, measurable behaviour based process. We have taken something that is, ought to be and can be very personal and have essentially depersonalised it. We have gotten to a level of detail where too often metrics have taken over from what the metrics were supposed to be measuring. People have therefore long ago “lost the forest for the trees” and have gotten deep in sequentially linked behaviours, so there is no relationship left.

I would actually say that is the biggest problem in selling today. We have lost the long term interpersonal relationship component of it. Every business I can think of out there still has an enormous amount of room for an increase in the level of relationships, and again, nothing is still better than that.

Trip Allen:  Great Charlie. One thing I am going to pull specifically from the book and one of the many activities I use – and I believe is very powerful,  is called “selling by doing and not telling.”

Traditionally salespeople told clients about the products, the features, the benefits etc. Salespeople have pretty much controlled the conversation. Can you elaborate a little bit on “selling by doing not telling?”

Charlie Green: Yes, and thank you for raising that. I agree with you, that is one of the powerful ideas in the book. If you think of it this way, with “selling by doing and not telling,” the more complicated the product, the more intangible the service, the longer relationship,  the more difficult  the whole sales process is, the less it is likely to be about snap decision and product qualities and so forth.

It’s complicated.

What you don’t want if you are buying a jet engine or if you are buying an audit or buying a brand advertising campaign, is to “out the expert the expert.”  That is an endless game that you will never win as a client or a customer.

What you really want to do is to be able to sleep at the night knowing you made the right decision about the person you deal with. And that is not going to come through PowerPoint presentations, Etc.; people are human beings and not persuaded of the trustworthiness of another human being by overused tools such as PowerPoint decks.  We’d like to think they are, and they will tell us they are, but they are not.

We are all human beings and profoundly make trust judgments based on much more of a “gut feel,” emotional feelings through connectivity and emotional feelings of safety. And that’s simply the way it is. I think we sort of rationalize it with all the logic and the data because, after all, we are supposed to be able to justify things.

That’s all true. But “selling by doing” basically says, instead of telling somebody about all the other past clients and all the wonderful things you have done, leave that behind and “just do it.” Deal with the person in front of you and deal with their issues, with their concerns and bring to them all the wonderful things and experiences you can deliver for them.

Just to simplify, I like to say it is like going out on a blind date with somebody. If they were to talk about the last seventeen people they went out with, you would be bored and offended.

But if on the other hand, what if your date is interesting, innovative and engaging and instead they ask you questions about you, we love that. We love it when people make the topic and conversation about us.

We need to take our expertise and apply it in real time to the problem at hand as it affects the person sitting in front of us. They don’t want to hear our resume or our history. They want to hear what our resume means for them.  That’s what “selling by doing and not telling” is all about.

Trip Allen: Great. Thank you for that. The next question has to do a bit with “selling by doing a not selling,” but it is all about collaboration. That is another key point you have in your book “Trust Based Selling.” How does collaboration improves trust and thereby improve the relationship?

Charlie Green: Well collaboration is one of the important elements I outlined in the book and it goes well beyond selling actually, although we will focus on the selling aspect only.

The other three key elements on the list are transparency, focus on the well being of the client (for sake of client and not just for us) and the tendency to look at the medium to long term (rather than just the short term).

Collaboration may be just the most important of the four elements. In any case, what collaboration means is a fundamental mindset. It says “I am not in this for me and dealing with you as an object. We are in this together. We are in for the sake of however long this relationship is going to be, working together for the greater outcome for both of us, but mainly for you, the client.”

So any decision we make has to be good one for both of us. We both have to be involved in it. We can’t keep too many secrets from each other. And if you begin thinking that way, you will begin behaving that way. You’ll start sharing more information with your customer, you’ll start feeling more free to ask them questions. After all, you have to know their answers in order to be collaborative, and frankly it even begins in the selling process. 

In those businesses that have process of using proposals, my “radical” suggestion is to write the next proposal, sitting next to the client in their offices. Instead of saying “great discussion” or “I’ll get back to you with the proposal later this week,” say “let’s book the conference room again and let’s work on this together. I know it is a proposal and, we may not get the job, I understand that. But if we may do this, you will have, at the end of the day, the best proposal possible from the combination of the two of us. By the way I suggest doing that with other potential vendors also. You will learn so much more about working with people if you begin working with them.’

That is an example of the power of collaboration.

End of Part 2. To be continued…

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore