Developing and understanding how your attitude relates to your career is a very important first step to increasing your sales success. Once you have an attitude understanding, you can better develop a personal value statement. A personal value statement is absolutely critical to communicating the value you provide to a client.

Here are some things to consider when assessing the value you bring to the table from your friends at Dale Carnegie Training of Central Indiana:

What is Your Value Offer? — It is critical you convey the value you offer when communicating with clients. Here are a few questions you must ask yourself to determine your value offer: How do you help others? What problems do you solve? What profit opportunity do you offer a customer?

Expert Status — Part of personal branding is establishing yourself as an expert. You don’t want to just be one of a million in your professional field. You need to stand out in the highly competitive world of sales. Find one or two areas in which you believe you are an expert. If you are having trouble determining your area of expertise, ask your manager, a colleague, or a friend.

Developing Your Value Statement — After you have determined the value you offer and the areas in which you are an expert, you can begin to build your value statement. Building a value statement is very simple. Your statement should answer two questions: Why would someone want to know me? What is unique about me? By answering these two questions, you will be able to create a very powerful statement that can be used with clients and prospects. This statement should be a guiding light that can focus your sales presentations, conversations, and introductions. A strong value statement that sets you apart should be the foundation of all of your sales efforts.

For more information on developing critical sales techniques join us for our program, “Sales Advantage,” being held on September 30 in Carmel, IN.

This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of Central Indiana, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in Indiana. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.

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Most business owners try every trick and tactic to close new business. And while this is perfectly natural and normal, it can sometimes cause a business to overlook a huge asset to growing their business—existing customers.

Your database of customers is an excellent way to increase your sales by cross-selling other products and services to them and then getting them to recommend your business to someone they know. To strengthen your sales, your friends at Dale Carnegie Training of Central Indiana offer the following three quick tips your business can benefit by:

1. Provide constant communication — Consistent communication through marketing can be accomplished through a series of educational e-mail tips, monthly letters, postcards and newsletters. It builds trust, credibility and brand recognition. Remember, you cannot sell all the time or your audience will not read your marketing campaigns. Ultimately, you want your business to be your client’s companion, providing supportive and useful information on a regular basis.

2. Don’t neglect customer service — Great customer service means going the distance for your customers. By putting them first, you will find that they will be far more likely to recommend you to someone they know.

3. Understand your customer’s wants and needs — You can build your business’ customer loyalty by putting time and energy into learning their wants, wishes, values and priorities. This research can go a long way to helping make your customer’s experience with your organization feel truly unique and something they won’t forget.

When it comes to sales and marketing, it is easy to focus solely on your database of prospects. And while the value of a new customer coming on board is immeasurable, your existing customer base should never be overlooked. By heeding the tips listed above, you will not only create stronger customer loyalty, but also a new stream of revenue to your business.

This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of Central Indiana, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in Indiana. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.

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We have all seen what attitude can do in a business and organizational environment. Entering a business where everyone walking in is greeted with a big smile just makes the difference in our own focus that day. And we all remember the last time we walked into a dreary and almost dire environment that ruined the rest of the day. Attitude is everything. In businesses across Indiana, the best attitudes win. Attitude wins profits, loyal fans and clients, and increased opportunity.

It is and continues to be the leader’s responsibility to make sure everyone is on the same page; the client comes first and it the only reason the business exists. Teams grow with the right direction. Both leaders and managers must help employees improve performance, and in turn, the company achieves even more success. Coaching is also a key ingredient in making things happen. Dale Carnegie, here in Central Indiana, offers an array of guide books that align very nicely with our classes and sessions. These publications provide leadership with useful tips to be even more effective in the workplace and business environment. Visit our page to get yours from the selection that is offered.

In relation to this post, today’s leader needs to develop skills that motivate teams to excel – and key among these skills is coaching. Learn the seven steps of effective coaching discussed in the Performance Coaching Process Guidebook, which was developed from Dale Carnegie Training’s Leadership Training for Managers:

1. Identify The Opportunity
2. Picture The Desired Outcome
3. Establish The Right Attitude
4. Provide The Resources
5. Practice And Skill Development
6. Reinforce Progress
7. Reward

http://indy.dalecarnegie.com/leadership_coaching_guide/

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This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of Central Indiana, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in Indiana. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.

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A burned out employee can lead to huge productively problems. Signs of burnout include anxiousness, noticeable tiredness, inability to focus and a short temper. Obviously, none of these are conducive to a positive, strong work environment. So, to help you avoid becoming burned out, here are six tips for employees and employers alike from your friends at Dale Carnegie Training of Central Indiana:

For Employers:

Allow Regular Breaks — Mental health is becoming increasingly important in the workplace, and more and more employers are recognizing the need for their employees to take frequent breaks to keep their minds sharp. Allow your employees a 15-minute break in the morning, a 30-60 minute lunch break (that we recommend they take outside of the office) and an additional 15-minute break before the end of the day. You’ll find your employees to be better rested and more focused on their responsibilities.

Provide a Unique Break Room — Conventional break rooms tend to be pretty drab with the usual coffee machine, water cooler, and the occasional microwave. Some companies have started to stray from this, however, and transformed break rooms into brief escapes from work. Some ideas include setting up televisions, game tables and video game systems in their break rooms. Creating an environment for employees to briefly escape to for a reasonable amount of time will go a long way to combating stress and preventing job burnout.

For Employees:

Set Aside Personal Time Outside Of Work — Being a dedicated employee is admirable, but being indentured to your business will wear you down over time. When work is your life, your life is work, and burnout becomes inevitable. Know when to walk away from work. Schedule regular time away from work each week, preferably dedicated to a personal passion or hobby that clears your mind of any lingering business distractions. Fishing, gym workouts, and yard maintenance are just a few of the ways people center themselves outside of work.

Don’t Overwork Yourself — Many people find it difficult to say “no” in the workplace. This typically leads to the accumulation of more and more workload each time they agree to lend a hand here or there, or take on a side project or something similar. Being a team player is important in the business world, but if you aren’t careful other employees will take advantage of your generous, helping nature and all you’ll get in return is stress from being overworked.

Develop a Life/Work Balance — Work cannot be the all-encompassing focus of your life, especially if you hope to maintain a happy home life. Whether you live by yourself, with a significant other, or with a whole family—kids and all—you need to manage your time between work and home effectively. When it’s time to leave the job, leave it! Go home to your family. Go to the movies with your partner or friends. Give your personal life just as much time and attention as you do your work life. If you don’t, you’ll start to see problems and frustrations develop outside of work that will affect your work life and cause you to feel burned out.

Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle — The importance of a healthy lifestyle can’t be overstated. The benefits of diet, exercise, and proper sleep drastically affect our behavior both in and out of work. All it takes is setting aside 30-40 minutes just three days a week to exercise and make a greater effort to manage your diet. Doing so will benefit you directly in ways innumerable, and a positive lifestyle will lead to a more positive work experience.

Job burnout is a critical issue in today’s fast-paced, demanding, work-intensive business world. Preventative measures like the ones outlined above will help minimize the threat.

This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of Central Indiana, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in Indiana. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.

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Every leader here in Indiana knows that it just never is easy. Although the economic climate is improving, the American public is still in in savings mode. How leaders move organizations based on economics and mood is critical as we continue to improve Indianapolis and the surrounding areas in Central Indiana. Every manager and leader need a menu that they can adhere to improve the collective success of the business regardless of any outside factors. Success comes principally from within the company first.

Dale Carnegie Training focuses on the success of the individual which translates to opportunities for every employee in the organization.

Are you utilizing the following eight leadership ingredients?

• Outstanding listening skills: The message is everything. Consider every interaction a transaction.
• Patience and commitment: Nothing is ever easy as we suggested earlier. Time is much less important that empathy. Take the minute to see the other perspective.
• Responsibility: The buck does stop at the leader’s desk. Every aspect of success must channel from both leadership and management.
• Positive attitude: Great attitudes create great people. No matter the situation, smiling does work.
• Goal focused: Every day there is an array of new definitions for what needs to be done. Objectives create solutions and growth.
• Motivation: Consistency of effort by management is watched very carefully by each and every employee. Motivation indeed is a team sport. 
• Servitude: Servant leadership just makes sense in the economy. Facilitating decisions are often better than making decisions.
• Expert in products and services: Know your stuff. You cannot lead or manage anything without knowledge. 

Moving forward every day as a true team made of many unified components will move Indiana in the directions you want to grow with and prosper. Success always come from more than one!

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This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of Michigan, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in Michigan. We would love to connect with you on Facebook and Twitter @MICarnegie.

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We all need to remind ourselves that we are not pulled to high levels of success. Rather, we are lifted there by those working beside and below us.

Achieving high-level success requires the support and the cooperation of others. And gaining this support and cooperation of others requires leadership ability. Success and the ability to lead others—that is, getting them to do things they wouldn’t do if they were not led—go hand-in-hand.

The success-producing principles of leadership are valuable equipment in helping you develop your leadership capacity. Thus, it is important that we master four special leadership rules or principles that can cause others to do things for us, whether it be in the executive suite, in business, in social clubs, in the home, or anywhere we find people.

These four leadership rules or principles are:

Trade minds with the people you want to influence — Put yourself in the other person’s shoes and ask yourself, “If I were in his situation, how would I react to this?”

Think: What is the human way to handle this? — Praise your subordinates personally at every opportunity. Praise them for their cooperation. Praise them for every extra effort they put forth. Praise is the greatest single incentive you can give people, and it costs you nothing.

Think progress, believe in progress, push for progress — Promotions in all fields go to individuals who believe in—and push for—progress. Status-quoers far outnumber real leaders. Join the leadership elite and develop a forward look.

Take time out to confer with yourself — The successful person in any field takes time out to confer with himself or herself. Leaders use solitude to put the pieces of a problem together, to work out solutions, to plan, and to do their super-thinking.

This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of Central Indiana, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in Indiana. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.

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Jerry Hampton knows something about employee engagement. In fact, many would consider him an expert, as he has singlehandedly trained over 2000 men and women to sell -and excel- in the competitive industry of food service.

As the Director of Training for SYSCO, a global leader in the selling, marketing, and distributing of food products, Jerry is charged with creating a high performance sales culture. His team of 138 men and women pound the pavement daily in an extremely competitive environment as they work to grow their customer base. The job is intense, fast-paced and demanding, and rejection is a natural part of the selling process.

I recently had an opportunity to talk with Jerry about his 34 year career with SYSCO, and glean some insights as to how SYSCO creates a culture of performance and engagement among its team members.

The first discovery I made was that SYSCO truly BELIEVES in their people, and they put their money where their mouth is. Each sales representative undergoes an extensive training program to help them understand not only the company and suite of products, but more importantly the value proposition their product line offers. Anyone can be trained to memorize product features and benefits; however it takes a skilled professional to demonstrate the VALUE that SYSCO products will bring to a customers’ bottom line. That’s the ability to understand and apply both the art and the science of selling.

To accomplish this, the company conducts regular and ongoing training, on-site, led by Jerry and his team. Their training room is top notch, offering comfort and new technologies to enhance the learning experience. It is impossible to “mail it in” during one of Jerry’s training classes – his coaching style is personal and deliberate, requiring active interaction and involvement by all participants. Through this process of focused coaching, they create a branded sales process, and a consistent appeal in the marketplace.

SYSCO also sends select sales personnel to outside training. It started 1996 when Jerry sent a few people to the Dale Carnegie® Course to overcome a fear of speaking.  The results for these individuals were astonishing. After recommending that so many people to take the class, a colleague challenged him by saying “Have YOU ever taken the course Jerry?” to which he was had to reply no. “Then how do you know it’s any good?” Touché, he agreed and signed up for the next class. As a graduate of the program he became more convinced of its value to the individual, both at work and at home.

Since that time, SYSCO has become a key global partner with Dale Carnegie. “This is a great program and it’s a serious investment,” stated Hampton. “After graduating from the course, our people are able to truly see the perspectives of others; they gain the ability to give sincere appreciation, to manage stress better, and to find new ways of doing business. In short, they get ‘out of the box’ and develop the enthusiasm to move new ideas forward.”

Craig Tomalak is one example. Craig started his Dale Carnegie Course in early 2013. After 10 weeks of working on his human relations and communication skills, Craig commented “This class forces you to view situations from various different perspectives – something we are all capable of but very rarely do.  I think we are all guilty of forming habits in terms of the way we handle situations.” The Dale Carnegie course gave him the opportunity to look inward and find those areas of growth and others. That new way of operating has helped him strengthen his relationships with customers and improve his results in the marketplace.

Food service is a demanding and competitive industry and salespeople run the risk of burnout and frustration. Pat Hoffman, a Detroit-area participant reported that the concept of “day tight compartments” was particularly helpful to him. Exercising greater patience, keeping things in perspective, and finding greater joy in the days work changed his outlook, and his results. This ability to manage stress more effectively is consistently reported back to SYSCO as a benefit of the Dale Carnegie experience.

Investing in PEOPLE is a cornerstone of running the SYSCO business. Just as they use only the highest quality ingredients in their food – they place only the highest quality training in their people. This investment in PEOPLE helps create a dynamic and engaged workforce that’s motivated and better equipped to delight their customers. And to Jerry Hampton, that’s what it’s all about.

Margaret Thatcher passed away at age 87 just the other day. As British Prime Minister, she had her bouts with controversy; but she will be long remembered for her leadership and her commitment to change. Regardless of topic or situation, The Iron Lady believed in both purpose and servitude.

Across Indiana and even on the front page of the Indianapolis Star, everyone saw the headline. As with Dale Carnegie Training, Margaret Thatcher believed that leadership and management are truly inseparable. Always focused on change, she was a proponent in many ways in the areas of training, commitment, passion, and continuous effort. Her focus on team building in Parliament often drew both cheers and boos, but never did anyone question her internal strength to get things done, even when things were quite unpopular. Her emphasis on the big picture set her apart from many leaders we remember in history. Just as Dale Carnegie, as a single individual, put forth his mission, guiding principles and core values, and created a global success story for every leader, manager, and business; Ms. Thatcher committed to stewardship as well. It takes GUTS to move organizations and countries forward. And it takes a targeted array of decision making and problem solving to do it.

GUTS are at the heart progress and change:

• G: Greatness is the key variable of all leaders. Some may be greater than others, but greatness moves mountains.
• U: Understanding is integral to all phases of both change and growth. Regardless of surety and risk, understanding is the first step in opportunity.
• T: Tasking: Working hard and never looking back combine to move teams forward in directions they have not gone before.
• S: Strength and Solutions: The combination of these two components can make the difference between success and failure. Nothing of value is ever easy.   

Leadership in every Carnegie-focused organization must have the GUTS to get businesses to great every day. Leadership is not a popularity contest. It is passion. It is effort. It is for the greater good. Outstanding leadership is central to the common good and to uncommon success. Leaders like Carnegie and Thatcher do not come along every day. They will always be missed. But the lessons they gave us are forever. And here in Indiana, they are appreciated.

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This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of Central Indiana, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in Indiana. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.

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The first thing to understand is that customer complaints are a part of doing business. And how you deal with customer or client complaints comprises a critical part of delivering exemplary customer service. It is important to remember that customer complaints present an opportunity to provide a memorable interaction where you can provide value to the customer. Here are 5 ways to effectively deal with customer or client complaints from your friends at Dale Carnegie Training of Central Indiana:

1. Get all the facts — Make sure that you listen to the customer and ask questions. It is only after you completely understand the situation that you can provide a solution that is acceptable to both you and the customer or client.

2. Once a decision is reached, act! — One of the most important elements of customer service is follow-through. It is critical that when handling a customer complaint that you deliver the solution and close the loop which can mean calling or emailing the customer or client.

3. Don’t Expect Gratitude — You will never please everyone and sometimes you might go above and beyond the call of duty and receive no recognition. Let it go. You’re not there for the glory; you’re there to service your customer.

4. Create happiness for others — With each customer interaction you have the opportunity to provide memorable value. This opportunity intensifies when there is a customer or client complaint and you take actions to make everything right for them.

5. Put enthusiasm into your work — Attitude is contagious. If you have a good attitude and greet customers and clients with that attitude you can change the dynamic of the exchange instantly. Address each customer complaint with enthusiasm and you will find that most people will be easy to work with!

This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of Central Indiana, providers of professional development and management development courses and information in Indiana. We would love to connect with you on Facebook.

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Businesses here in Indianapolis and around Indiana must learn as a team and grow as an organization.  In fact, learning is something all of us have in common. Our timelines for learning and change begin just minutes after birth. Babies soon realize that simple activities like crying will often draw attention long before we understand the concepts of language. It is a common fact that crying newborns signal hunger and usually will always get fed. The infant, again, has no clue of strategy; yet that baby has quickly learned how to get attention and results.

As we get older our patterns of learning change as well. But now the difference is in the application.

It is safe to say that learning is assimilation of knowledge and what we do with it. In business, it is all about goals, objectives and practice. In fact, how learning is applied and transferred across the organization is central to goals, objectives, strategies and success.

Dale Carnegie Training is designed for organizations and it is aligned with learning and the results of positive learning, knowledge itself.

Learning always starts with the ingredients of change and should always end with positive results. Productivity and performance are true derivatives of this success. It is through the actual business impact that we assess effects on the organization. Just as important is the actual job satisfaction which is a blend of both expectations and leadership support.

Continuous acquisition of information is critical in this still struggling economy. Teams that review all processes and policies for effectiveness and efficiency continue to make every organization that much stronger.

In all of our organizations undergoing continuous change, learning can often be considered important intervention. New learning and motivation help ensure the future for everyone. Training often is the medium that affects climate, focus, culture and core values. Although many variables including budget, number of employees, and stage of development can affect training, it is important in both application and knowledge base.

Dale Carnegie Training can be the foundation for both learning and success. We can help measure impact and we can help create results. We can improve organizations. Call us today.

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