Graduation Gowns

Graduation Regalia

Graduation Regalia

Most universities use hoods, pasteboard caps, robes and other types of graduation regalia though each has its own rules regarding the regalia. Some schools insist that graduation regalia especially the robe and cap should be worn throughout the entire ceremony. Most schools use black robes. It is recommended or a rule in some schools that dress pants and shoes should be of the same color with the robe. A tassel, graduation regalia is worn on the right side before the awarding of degrees but after they are awarded it is moved to the left. This is not official and is not done in all schools.

Graduation Information On The Internet

Graduation information is available all over the internet. You’ll find multiple links which can assist you in your research. Gordon International offers a lot of information which can be useful to anyone ordering graduation regalia but if you’re looking for specific history please see the link provided below.
The Following Site Offers Great Information About Graduation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_dress wikipedia provides the searcher with a great information source for any type of search. You can go to their search wiki and place an random search in the engine and you’ll come across a few useful sources & articles.

Business executives and sales managers frequently complain about “80/20″ performance on their sales teams, where approximately 80 percent of sales are produced by approximately 20 percent of salespeople. Why do salespeople perform so differently? What is it about top sales performers that enables them to achieve such vastly superior results?

Certainly there are some sales skills that anyone can learn. For example, it is easy to learn how to ask reflective questions. These questions begin with the words “who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, “why” and “how”, and tend to encourage more detailed answers than questions that can be answered with a “yes” or “no”.

You can learn how to ask reflective questions by participating in a simple role play. In this role play, every time you ask me a “yes/no” question, I’ll answer “No”. Getting stonewalled with a bunch of “no’s” will break you of the yes/no questioning habit pretty quickly!

Other sales skills are tougher to learn. A good example is teaching salespeople how to ask questions and “follow the thread” in the answers. To explain this concept, let’s use another role play. If you ask me a reflective question, I’ll respond with answers that contain some “pain points”. If you recognize the pain points and drill down into them by asking additional questions, I’ll eventually agree to engage in a sales cycle.

Do you know what my experience has been with the “follow the thread” role play? Some salespeople learn this skill easily. Others struggle, but they eventually master it. However, some just never get it, no matter how hard they try!

Why can some salespeople learn this critical skill, but others can’t?

Reason #1

In their book, Now, Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton report that great managers and average managers have different expectations for their employees. According to Buckingham and Clifton, average managers assume that “each person can learn to be competent in almost anything”, while great managers assume that “each person’s talents are enduring and unique”.

Most sales books and training programs seem to take the “average manager” point of view. In other words, they seem to assume that anyone can learn how to sell. Their unspoken promise is that all you have to do is invest enough time, effort, and money to learn the skills they teach. If you make the investments, you will learn the skills and succeed in sales.

Unfortunately, there are countless examples of sales books and training courses not producing the desired improvement in sales performance. Think about some salespeople you know personally. How many of them are struggling to make their quotas? Why are they struggling?

• Is it the state of the economy? (If other salespeople on the same sales team are making their numbers, blaming the economy won’t earn much sympathy.)

• Is it because they don’t work hard enough?

• Is it because they don’t have enough product knowledge?

• Do they need to work harder on their selling skills?

• Do they need more coaching from their manager?

What if the “great manager” point of view is correct? What if everyone cannot become proficient in sales? What if success in sales requires a unique set of talents?

Reason #2

Herb Greenberg, Harold Weinstein and Patrick Sweeney report this very conclusion in their book, How to Hire and Develop Your Next Top Performer. After correlating hundreds of thousands of assessments that were performed over several decades with actual sales performance measurements, they reached these startling conclusions:

• “55% of the people earning their living in sales should be doing something else”; and

• “Another 20% to 25% have what it takes to sell, but they should be selling something else”

Wow! Those are some sobering statistics! They indicate that more than half of all salespeople are NEVER going to make it in sales. Another quarter have some chance of accomplishing sales success, but only if they find the right job selling the right kind of product or service.

How can you identify whether salespeople have the talents required to succeed in your company’s sales job? That question will be answered in Part 2 of this article.

Copyright 2005 — Alan Rigg

Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: Why Most Salespeople Don’t Perform and What to Do About It. His company, MySalesTest.com, provides specialized sales assessment tests that help business owners, executives, and managers DOUBLE sales by consistently hiring top sales performers. For more information and a FREE special report, visit http://www.mysalestest.com.

I spent one whole day in the vacuum cleaner business.

And it was long enoughto learn one of the best lessons.

The fellow I was attached to for my training day was a rumpled dumpling. He was the exact opposite of what you’d expect the company’s top salesperson to look like. He wasn’t cleanly shaven, didn’t speak well, and appeared in every single way to be pathetic.

He drove an ancient Chevy sedan with torn seats. If this guy was a moneymaker, a top earner, number one in commissions, then I was Superman, or so went my teenage thinking.

We knocked on doors, until someone answered.

Soon enough, a housewife straight out of Stepford, greeted us. He asked if he could have the privilege of vacuuming her living roomfree of chargesimply to dramatize the amazing Power Nozzle attachment that was exclusive to his machine.

She nodded, looking at me as if to ask, “Where did you get this partner, you poor boy?”

He revved up the one and a half horsepower motor and glided from one corner of the living room to the next, making small talk that no one could hear.

Then, he shut it off and said, “You keep a very tidy house, don’t you?

“I try!” she beamed.

Unlocking the back door of the hot dog shaped appliance, he deftly retrieved a full bag of soot and swiftly plopped it in a pile in the center of her rug.

This demo knocked the wind out of her, she became woozy, overcome by the revelation and humiliation that there was a ton of hidden dirt that her old standby vacuum was leaving behind.

“Oh, my gosh, look at that!” she gasped, reciting her role perfectly in this domestic drama.

Suffice it to say, he sold her this Cadillac of cleaners, and I walked with him to the curb, in a daze of my own.

We drove back to headquarters, and he and the big boss debriefed me. What did I think? Could I do this?

I said I’d think it over, and as we all parted company, I noticed that the frumpy salesman had changed his worn jacket for a snazzy cashmere sweater, and he suddenly looked two feet taller as he put the key into his off-hours car, his real driver: A brand new Cadillac.

His entire sales persona was a masterpiece, carefully calculated to make buyers feel sorry for him.

And it worked beautifully.

Although I didn’t feel I could do his act, I did walk away knowing one thing about selling: it is an art, a performance art, and some of the savviest practitioners don’t let their offstage identities interfere in the least with their onstage personalities.

That’s one powerful lesson.

Dr. Gary S. Goodman © 2006

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of www.Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.

In Elements of Style, E.B. White writes: “A sentence should
contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences,
for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines
and a machine no unnecessary part.” If you agree with the premise of
the early 20th century Ivy League scholar, you’re at the gates of editor
heaven.



The Elements of Style handbook by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B.
White keeps me honest if not erudite. William Strunk was White’s
English professor at Cornel University long before anyone reading this
was born. White went on to author Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little
and numerous essays. Even though the older Strunk created the famous
little book, it was White who first updated and published it. Revised
many times since, the book lives on inside the pockets and on the desks
of seasoned writers and journalists who want to write better.

Life, love and the pursuit of writing are all about style and passion. Zadie
Smith, (White Teeth, On Beauty) is one of today’s brightest best
selling authors. She says she owes her recent success to 19th century
novelist, E.M. Forster (Howard’s End, Wings of The Dove). Here’s
what Zadie says about Forster’s influence. “He gave me a classy old
frame, which I covered with new material as best I could.”

Style and passion never go out of fashion. I try not to be in love with my
own words, or use fancy phraseology. I find windiness boring. It may
stroke the ego, but it sure tires the reader. Unless, like Zadie Smith, you
have an excellent ear for dialect, it too becomes an annoying hindrance.
The latest buzzwords (dude, hottie) make for great commercial copy. But
in literature they soon become yesterday’s newspaper. I haven’t finished
reading all of Charles Dickens, but I’ve yet to find a line, a phrase that
doesn’t ring true today.

Theoretically, a split infinitive is when one or more words separate the
verb and to (to boldly go). Does anyone know where the person who
wrote that copy line went? At this moment, he and the late Gene
Roddenberry, creator of Captain Kirk, are probably lounging by the pool
of their own private solar system, counting their lucky stars. But let’s not
confuse good commercial copy with literature.

I’d like to say a word about dialog. Here are two people talking, from
David Baldacci’s Best Seller, The Camel Club.

“I say you crazy,” she responded testily.

“Perhaps you’re right and I thank you for your concern,” he said politely.

One of the most influential writers of the 20th century, Ernest
Hemingway probably would have said it this way:

“I say you crazy.”

“Perhaps, and I thank you for your concern.”

Of course, in the context of the story we have to know who said what.
Sometimes the writer must include the he-said-she said. But why clutter
the action with unnecessary modifiers when the words
speak for themselves?

Coming Next: The writing world has entered the Web’s information
highway with reckless abandon. But watch out for back roads that lead
to bastardizing the English language, and dead-ends where students
confuse Jabberwocky with gibberish. My next article On Writing will
include how lazy writing for the Web can spill over to the work place,
and how to avoid unscrupulous agents that scam unsuspecting writers.
They’re out there, in profusion.

Susan Scharfman is a former Foreign Service officer and writer/editor at
http://www.susanscharfman.com

Do you remember Steve Martin with his Walk like an Egyptian routine? The main reason it was funny was because of the strange body angles. These angles may have been fine for Egyptian dancers, but hilarious for stand up comics. I do a routine where I do several sick looking Tai Chi moves. The audience can’t help but laugh.

Charlie Chaplain used the duck footed stance with his arms at his sides, but hands turned up. He also waddled along. Although, I am not an advocate of using a mirror in public speaking training, this is one time you can experiment in creating funny looking poses by thinking odd body angles.

You’ll guarantee more laughs with this technique.

Copyright © 1998 – 2005 Advanced Public Speaking Institute

Tom Antion provides entertaining speeches and educational seminars. He is the ultimate entrepreneur, having owned many businesses BEFORE graduating college. Tom is the author of the best selling presentation skills book “Wake ‘em Up Business Presentations” and “Click: The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing.” It is important to Tom that his knowledge be not only absorbed, but enjoyed. This is why he delivers his speeches laced with great humor and hysterical jokes. Tom has addressed more than 87 different industries and is thoroughly committed to his clients’ needs. http://www.antion.com

Advanced Public Speaking Institute
3105 Sergin Ct.
Virginia Beach, VA 23452
(757) 431-1366
Fax (757) 431-2050
Contact: cmckinney@public-speaking.org
http://www.GreatPublicSpeaking.com

Visit our Blog at http://www.GreatPublicSpeaking.BlogSpot.com

If you asked the average writer if it were possible to write 3000 articles in under nine months, they would most likely say; “That is impossible!” And you would find few to argue against that point. In fact in looking at such a goal it does appear impossible, yet for those who believe, they will always be the ones to achieve.

Let us break it down, to write 3000 articles in only nine months you would have to write 333 articles per month or 11.1 articles per day. You would not be able to take any days off if you wanted to finish. You would have to write 165,900 words per month or 5550 words per day. So in looking at the break down you can see it is possible, as anything is possible.

Each year authors get together for the National Novel Writers Month or “NaNoWriMo” contest, which is a sprint to the finish 50,000-word novel from scratch each November. They say novel writing is much easier than article writing once you start. The events organizer says that word counts are matter in this race and those words can be crap. Chris Baty is the Founder of the event and although he says that most of the novels are not very good, several of the authors have received book deals and that is common each year. Now there are 42,000 participants and about 6,000 actually complete their works with the 50,000 words. Many or the top writers of the contest write up to 2,000 words per day.

If an online article writer wrote 50,000 words in one month, they would have written 1,000 articles in nine months, which would be a remarkable accomplishment. And 1000 articles would with a by-line under them with a link to a website, would drive incredible amounts of traffic if you were smart enough to post them on the Premier Online Article Submission Site on the Internet; EzineArticles.com. Your traffic from that site alone would be 250,000 articles views. I know this because today I am just shy of 750,000 articles views, which at the current rate will be hit by the end of next week. Additionally your articles would end up in First Class Ezines and on website through RSS Feed all over the Internet.

You will have to take all your worldly knowledge to write 1,000 articles online and work hard to write each day 3-4 articles each day, every day for nine months. I know you can do this, I did it and I am not even a writer, the expert writers are now calling me “The Accidental Writer” which seems to be the case, but if I can do it, anyone can. Currently I am averaging 285,000 words per month and in October I posted 570 articles, this month I hope to better than to 600 articles. My goal was to reach 3000 articles by January 1, 2006 and I am very happy to report this article makes my three thousandth article and I accomplished this goal a month and a half early. I am smiling right now as I write this and indeed, I am very happy.

I wish to thank my mentor Dina Giolitto for helping me get tough and giving me good advice to better my quality, which I am still working on to this day. I would like to thank Jeff Herring, “The Article Guy” for being a tough competitor with good advice for spicing up my articles and helping me hone my skills. Lastly I would like to thank Chris Knight for allowing me the opportunity to share my knowledge with the World and helping me in my mission to wake people up and make them think. Please believe me, I did not start out as a writer and I am still struggling to work on my skills and I guarantee you if I can do this, then anyone can. Think on this.

“Lance Winslow” – Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

Writing articles for your site and for the use of others, is a simple proven way low cost way to get more traffic.

Articles can be used for all subjects and just like newspapers and magazines, is a recognised way of sharing information.

Articles a low cost way of promotion but they do take time which can pay you back year after year for your efforts.

Most people tend to think that they can’t write well. It’s nothing more than sharing helpful information that you have learned. For example the idea of this article is to help format you thoughts and then the best way to format it best for users. So lets get started.

1. Firstly you need to choose who is your target market. Who is your article for and why would they find it helpful?

Example: “Home business websites who are looking for low cost traffic”

2. Choose the purpose of you article. Why are you writing it? How will you use it? This will help guide the content of it.

Example: “Provide an article for distribution, which other webmasters/ezine owners can use creating links back to my site, and subscribers to my ezine”

Always keep the purpose of the article in mind, which will help you keep on track with your content.

3. Article Subject -What are you going to write about? What subject? Use other articles you have seen or experiences you have had for ideas.

Example: Using articles for low cost online promotion

>From the subject you have chosen you need to create a headline of sorts- some thing that makes people want to read it. Create curiosity and use emotion.

Example: How to turn words into free traffic for your site

4. Format Outline -This is when you decide the format of your article, just like you were taught at school.

1. Introduction – An outline of what you are going to discuss and why.

2. Main body – Points you are going to cover including any references to helpful sites or site involved in what you learnt

3. Conclusion – What resulted and how it worked or it didn’t. What could you do differently next time.

4. Resource box – Normally a link to your site, information about your site, about you. Here is good article on resource boxes: http://digitalawol.com/box

5. Checking – At this stage you should have the outline of an article. You need to get someone else to read it over, spell checking it, making sure the information flows well.

I also recommend leaving it overnight before using it. It gives you a chance to re think it.

6. Online formatting – If you intend to make your article available to ezine owners, then you need to make sure it is formatted correctly and easy for them to use. The standard accepted format is 65 Characters wide- in plain text.

Most people us Microsoft word for word processing so you will need to re-format by using a program such as Note Tab light http://www.notetab.com/ (no cost) which will format your article correctly.

One thing you will also need to do is ensure you only have paragraphs of 4-5 lines otherwise it creates a “mental block” for the reader, and becomes too hard to read online.

So now you have a formatted, helpful article ready for your use. The last thing you need to keep in mind is that you need to provide helpful, well-researched information. A full-page ad for your site will not do you any good and will get deleted quickly.

Try to write from your own experiences and it will come across as real and very readable.

My next article will cover getting the information out there and working for you.

You can get the next article by subscribing to our ezine. It will surprize you find out that there are places you should NOT post your article, as they may not help your business.

About The Author

Need more visitors to your web site and no more BS ?

Paul Easton is the editor of Power Promotion Plus. Learn how to increase traffic on a budget. Signup now and get your 3 gifts:

1.Free Meta Tag Software -

2.Unofficial Pop Up Windows Crash Course -

3.Affiliate Marketing Plan Builder – A step by step guide to a successful affiliate marketing program.

http://www.CreateToolbar.com/

(This article is available for reprint simply by adding the above Bio and no changes are made to the article or its content)

The most important thing you need to know is that exercise is a natural activity that is required in order to stay healthy. The human body was not made for a sedentary lifestyle. Think about this. Most of us, as we age and become absorbed in our careers, simply ignore the physical needs of our bodies.

Research is providing some interesting results with respect to fat loss, muscle mass and general health. For example, did you know that high intensity cardio can burn more calories in the long term than long bouts of low intensity exercise? Do you realize that each pound of muscle you carry burns approximately 50 calories per day whether or not you exercise?

As always, before you start any new exercise program, please check with your doctor first. If you are currently sedentary, overweight or simply out of shape, jumping into a demanding exercise program may not be a good idea. Once you are declared good to go then read on to get started.

New Cardio Ideas

Cardio isn’t just about slogging away on the treadmill, stairmaster or exercise bicycle anymore. While low level cardio can certainly play a role in your exercise routine, it is probably not optimal in terms of achieving your goals in a timely manner. A new style of cardio, called high intensity interval training (HIIT), is king.

HIIT involves performing regular cardio activities at extremely high intensities for short periods of time. HIIT can be performed using activities such as rowing, cycling, sprinting and stair climbing. For example, after warming up on your exercise of choice go as fast as you can for 30 seconds. When 30 seconds have past, then go slow and recover for 2 minutes. Repeat these fast and slow intervals from 5 to 7 times.

Although this sounds easy, you will find this is a very advanced training technique. You may need to work up to this over several weeks by performing standard cardio training with brief intervals of intensity. You will certainly stress your heart and your respiratory system with HIIT training. In fact, this new style of cardio, while short, maximizes your cardiovascular fitness adaptations.

Resistance Training

While a complete encyclopedia of weight lifting exercises is too comprehensive to include here, you should know that resistance training is one of the best ways to gain or retain both muscle mass and bone density. Why is this important? Muscle mass is responsible for most of your resting metabolic activity. It is also what makes you look fit, shapely or sexy.

A common concern for women is that they don’t want to look too bulky. This is generally not something you have to worry about. You will find that even men, if they are not using steroids or other illicit methods, have a hard time putting on an appreciable amount of muscle mass. Another concern for women is that if they put on muscle the scale weight may rise!

It is very important that you learn the difference between total weight and how lean you are. Putting on muscles will almost never make you look bad, but covering your muscles with fat will. What you want to do is lose the fat while retaining the muscle — something which is not easy to do. In general, if you diet to lose weight, you lose both fat and muscle, which reduces your metabolism and makes it increasingly difficult to achieve the body you desire.

Although adding muscles is somewhat easy in the very beginning, it takes a lot of time and effort to build up muscles. However, just remember that for every pound of muscle you put on and maintain, you will be able to safely eat another 50 calories per day without gaining weight. Of course, you will likely want to adhere to appropriate nutritional guidelines.

To summarize, add resistance training to your exercise regimen. It is okay if you use machines, especially at first, but if possible learn to use free weights. Make sure that you know the proper form for the exercises you do and focus on compound movements where possible. For example, squats, chin ups, bench presses, rows and deadlifts are all great exercises that will work multiple large muscle groups at one time. If you follow this advice you will find it easy to put on and maintain reasonable amounts of muscle in a relatively short period of time.

Rest & Recovery

If you are working hard to put on muscle mass, which most men and some women are, then you need to realize that you gain muscle only when you aren’t in the gym. Muscles grow in response to work, but only if you feed them the appropriate nutrients and give them time to recover appropriately. Working out every day or performing long bouts of cardio will probably not help you achieve your goals!

Running on a treadmill is much easier as there is no wind force blowing against you. Treadmills also have a propelling force, which makes the foot come in front of the other. Walking or jogging on treadmills is a boring job. On a road, you have to change according to the surface and this helps in developing many muscles and tendons in the body.

While running on roads, the surface is inclined or sloped and there are potholes, grass, soft mud, hard surface etc. These help in building different muscles. The main beneficial factor while running outdoors is that the oxygen levels in the air is high while indoors it is stuffy. Natural environment is the best to jog and exercise as exercise is meant to be done outdoors. Treadmills can be used as an alternate when the weather is not good enough to jog outdoors. If you don’t have much time and you are in a hurry, then you can workout on a treadmill. Treadmill is an alternative to jogging but jogging outdoors is always the best.

A lot of energy is expended within selling organizations as they try to identify, adopt, and administer a sales process that works for them. The holy grail of selling is to find a foolproof method for creating a customer, the ultimate finished product of the perfect sales process. Prepare to be disappointed.

Webster’s tells us that a process is “a particular method of doing something, generally involving a number of steps or operations.” By performing specific actions in a certain order on allowable inputs, we can produce a finished result that meets a predefined design specification. This works well in manufacturing, and in recurring activities that we find in other areas of our businesses.

We may even have certain processes that we use while we sell. But when we talk about the whole of selling, we need to avoid using the term “sales process” because no such thing exists. That’s because there is nothing we can do to reliably produce a customer as a finished result.

Here’s why: if we try to apply a process to the way any product or service is sold, an important variable in our sales process would have to be the Buyer. Unfortunately, the Buyer is the last thing that we can control, or should want to control. Therefore, we have to rethink the notion of a selling process and consider if a process applies at all.

Yes, There Really IS a Process
The process that the seller needs to pay attention to is the one that the Buyer uses. All Buyers go through a process as they prepare to make a purchase. If we can understand how that process works, we can tune our sales approach to make it easy for the Buyer to make a positive decision that favors us, and do it faster and more frequently than they might otherwise.

We all go through a multi-step process as we prepare to make a purchase. The incremental steps associated with a buying process define distinct Buying Stages. Throughout the buying process, significant psychological shifts occur within a Buyer, causing them to move from one Buying Stage to another.

These shifts in Buying Stages, or Inflection Points, can be influenced by the activities of a salesperson and marketing organization, and the application of tools and tactics that are appropriate to the current Buying Stage. Let’s explore the concept of Buying Stages and how they work.

Buying Stages
Alerted: The first Stage for a Buyer to move to is typically the Alerted Stage. Here, the Buyer is simply aware that our company and offering exists, and may someday satisfy a need. Most advertising and marketing communications efforts are aimed at moving the Buyer to the Alerted Stage.

When you first see a television ad for a new car model, you are now alerted to the fact that the model exists and which company makes it. However, you may have no current need for a car at all, much less that particular product. While that manufacturer has succeeded in moving you to the Alerted Stage, nothing will happen unless and until you decide to engage with the person or company making the offer.

Engaged: When you decide the timing is right to investigate a product and take steps to contact the supplier, you have reached an Inflection Point and have moved to the Engaged Stage. In the Engaged Stage, you have called the 800-number, sent an e-mail, or walked into the showroom and talked with the seller.

You may have been in the Alerted Stage for days, months, or even decades before deciding that the particular product or service is appropriate for a current need. Your timing – not the seller’s – determines when your activity marks an Inflection Point and moves you to the Engaged Stage.

Qualified: Once you engage with the seller, an exchange of information usually takes place where you as the Buyer attempt to get some high-level questions answered. You want to determine whether or not the offering is worth spending even more time later to investigate the specifics of how it will fulfill your need.

You may ask questions like, “How big is it?” or “Exactly what does it do?” and “What is the price range?” If the answers are satisfactory, you’ve reached another Inflection Point and reached the Qualified Stage.

Qualified implies that you have had your high-level questions answered satisfactorily and are willing to invest more time considering a purchase. Likewise, the seller has often asked a few questions of their own, to determine your suitability as a prospective customer. It’s important that both sides believe that a purchase is possible; otherwise no further activities will take place.

Exposed: Assuming both parties choose to move forward, the seller is often invited by the Buyer to present the highlights of the offering and the potential benefits. This could be a brief presentation or demonstration to acquaint the Buyer with the core value proposition and competitive differentiators.

Once the Buyer has seen enough to decide to move forward with their buying process, another Inflection Point is reached and the Buyer moves to the Exposed Stage. At this point, the Buyer may or may not be ready to immediately move forward with pursuing an in-depth investigation, proposal, and so on.

Oftentimes, car purchasers stop into a showroom to look at a new model just to find out how much it is, how it feels to sit in it, and to determine whether the vehicle has potential as a future new car. The Buyer may be months away from being able to do business because of a current lease that will not expire for several months, or other conditions that require delaying the purchase.

The exposed Buyer has enough information to determine whether or not the offering should remain on their list for consideration, either now or in the future.

Selling is All About Buying
A Buyer will continue to pursue their buying process, moving from one Buying Stage to another, at their own pace. As sellers, our job is to help these Buyers wherever we can!

Not all buying processes are the same. The actual Buying Stages associated with a buying process will change based on the category of Buyer and the offering. What won’t change is that each Buyer will continue to move through distinct psychological stages appropriate for their category and the offering until they decide to reach the Closed Stage and become a customer.

By focusing on the buying process instead of the sales process, the attention stays where it needs to be: on the Buyer. By being alert and recognizing where each Buyer is in their buying process, the salesperson can be most responsive to the Buyer’s needs. Now salespeople can readily support the Buyer the way they need to be supported at each Stage to make their buying process move forward smoothly and quickly.

To support the salesperson in their efforts to help the Buyer move past Inflection Points to each successive Buying Stage, we can make sure the salesperson has the proper tool set. Tools may include telesales scripts, needs analysis guides, qualification ranking forms, collateral, and even technology like software.

Additionally, training becomes an important success factor associated with your support of the buying process. Training must go beyond the products; we must make sure that selling skills are appropriate for each Buying Stage, and that the salespeople are properly trained on how to apply each tool to best support the buying process at each Stage.

Sales Communications
Focusing on the buying process is what Sales Communications is all about. While marketing communications speaks to a general population of Buyers, Sales Communications takes it right down to the individual.

Sales Communications makes the organization’s marketing efforts personalized to the specific Buyer, recognizes the unique needs of the Buyer, and equips the salesperson with the complete toolbox to make it easy for the Buyer to come to a positive decision for the benefit of the seller and Buyer.

Sales Communications will allow each salesperson to describe the progress of a selling opportunity in terms of the condition of the Buyer instead of what the seller did. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether we’ve given a demonstration or delivered a proposal. It only matters where the Buyer is in their buying process. Now we can talk about a prospect as Engaged, or Exposed, and everyone in your organization will clearly understand how far along the Buyer is in their buying process.

Identifying the buying process associated with your offering will give you the structure you need to support the Buyer. You’ll be able to apply the proper tools and tactics to help each Buyer move through their buying process toward a positive decision. By teaching your salespeople to recognize Buying Stages and their associated Inflection Points, and apply the proper tools and tactics, you’ll be able to sell the way your Buyer wants to be sold. You’ll be helping them buy the way they like to buy, because they’ll be using their process, not yours.

Sales processes may not work, but buying processes work every time.

© 2002 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

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Paul Johnson of Panache and Systems LLC consults and speaks on business strategy for systematically boosting sales performance using Shortcuts to Yes. Check out more salesforce development tips at http://panache-yes.com/tips.html. Call Paul direct in Atlanta, Georgia, USA at (770) 271-7719.