time 4 change - the home of Christina Griffiths

Every wondered how best to communicate information?

Do you ever find yourself wondering how to present your information in an interesting and engaging manner?  Or do you find yourself in stuck in a Bar Chart rut or think that Mind Maps are mind blowing? (If you don’t know what they are take a look at the element Mi) Then take a look at what the guys and girls at the Visual Literacy Organisation have created.   Not only do they give us a fantastic example of how complex information can be represented, they also give us a reminder of all the main methods of doing so in the form of a periodic table.  http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html

I love the element ‘Lm’, the learning map!  What do you think?

Steven Coveys’ Day Planner

When we find ourselves busy but not acheiving our aims a day planner can help us to prioritise our tasks.  Steven Covey’s day planner can help us to do this.  Even if you only do it once, start by listing out your current tasks and you will see where you spend your time and what you are achieving and for who!

I use this day planner a lot myself and recommend it to most of my clients at some point as it really helps when the pressure is building and you need to get a great deal of work done. Continue reading…

Communicating problems virtually

Wherever we have clients or prospects there are bound to be issues to resolve and problems to solve. Doing this often requires communication between one or more departments, both internal and external to our organisation.

How we communicate an issue or a problem to another will determin the quality of the response we get back. There is a strong relationship between how we communicate an issue to another and the quality of their response to get the issue or problem resolved. Whether we are communicating via a CRM system or via email, clarity in describing what the key issues are, along with the action you want are key.

This document provides quick straightforward guidelines for cleaning up communication and keeping it focused on the task in hand.

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Building Rapport quick reference

Rapport is a skill that has become essential to the success of your business.  The greater the level of rapport that exists between you and another the greater influence you have on each other.  Rapport allows you to connect with others by making it easy for others to be with you.  By building rapport you build trust and understanding.

This worksheet covers some of the basic ideas behind rapport and is used as a quick reference alongside sessions with my clients.  I hope you find it useful!

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FAB – Features, Advantages & Benefits

As sales people we can find ourselves becoming focused on the detail of what we do or what we offer our prospects or clients.  However, when we are in the buying seat actually we start to think about what the product or service will do for us.    These details are often connected to the function of the product or service and answer the questions around “how does it work”. These are known as features.

What these features do for the client or prospect are known as advantages and benefits are what the client gains from using your product or service. As a sales person our job is to primarily focus on what the product or service will do for our prospect or client rather than get lost in the detail of how it will do it.

• FEATURE: A positive fact that sets your product/service apart from others’.
• ADVANTAGE: A specific example that supports your fact.
• BENEFIT: What your fact or example gains the prospect.

The PDF download below helps you work through some examples and will give you some ideas for developing FAB for your own products.

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