November 30th, 2009
I had the pleasure of doing a business speaker engagement recently in Toronto, Canada.
I get to go there on occasion and I always enjoy it. It is an interesting mix of metropolitan bustle and Canadian laid-backness. I tell people it reminds me of a mix of New York, Chicago and London…just a lot more mellow. Since I like New York, Chicago, London and mellow, you can imagine I like Toronto, too.
I enjoy the business climate there, too. People are very focused on running their businesses and creating more deals. You can tell that people here take care of business, because even though there are clearly a lot of people who are not wealthy, I cannot find any signs of poverty. One can also easily find the wealthy parts of own, and there are lots of them.
One of the ways I measure a city is to visit one of the local Whole Foods grocery stores. You can tell what sort of a market you are in by the size of the Whole Foods store and the array of products. Downtown Toronto has one of the biggest and most interesting Whole Foods I have ever been in.
My keynote speech seemed to go well. I had a lot of nice compliments from people and I felt good with the interaction. I hope it leads to more interesting opportunities.
I also got to meet one of my self storage marketing heroes. I met Allan, the owner of Jiffy Self Storage in Toronto. He has been in the self storage business for over 20 years and has probably forgotten more about marketing self storage than most people have ever learned about it. Just search the key phrase “Self storage Toronto” on Google or Yahoo and see how strong his results are.
Tags: canada, chicago, foods market, london, new york, self storage, toronto
Posted in Travel, marketing, people | 2 Comments »
November 20th, 2009
Change one thing: change everything
Every CEO has concerns about his or her organization. They know something needs to change. Every CEO has important initiatives both large and small that need to be well executed. Business progress normally requires a change in practice or a change in behavior. How can so many things change all at the same time? Sometimes you can help lots of things change at once. Sometimes it is best to change one thing and then allow the new alignment to cause the rest of the changes to happen all by themselves.
Tron Jordheim’s active and engaging sessions will help you decide how to effect the change you need and how to find the one thing that will change everything.
- identify what needs to change
- separate these changes into paths of change
- consider the impacts of that change and the corresponding new alignment
- select the one change that will change everything
- focus on creating unstoppable momentum for this change
- set about making the change
- how to be sure things are changing as intended
Tron Jordheim’s unique viewpoints and experiences along with his fun attitude will make this session one you will want to attend over and over again, to find more inspiration to change one more thing that could change everything in your business.
Learning to find the right thing to change and being in control of that change will help decrease the time and money wasted in sloppy and clunky execution and will get new initiatives paying for themselves faster.
Participants will go home with a solid understanding of how to devote resources and energy into effecting the one change that will start a chain reaction of successful changes leading to cleaner and more profitable execution of strategies and tactics.
Tron Jordheim is a member of the National Speakers Association and a public speaker at both conferences and company functions.
Tags: CEO, change, executive coaching, initiatives, training sessions
Posted in Management, marketing, personal growth, sales | 2 Comments »
November 20th, 2009
Last year, I had the pleasure of leading an all day training class for the UK Self Storage Association in Brighton, England. The next week, I had the pleasure of presenting to the Self Storage Association of Spain in Valencia, Spain. Sometimes, being a public speaker brings you to some interesting and lovely places. I was reminded how important some of the fundamentals of selling really are to the self storage business. I like to talk about how our customers speak a different language than we do. We know all about storage and they usually do not. That causes us to make assumptions or to talk to people as if they already know what we know.
I had a funny experience my first night in Spain that proves the point. I was staying in a no smoking room on a no smoking floor. Someone in a nearby room was obviously smoking and it was drifting into my room. So I called downstairs to the desk to complain in my very basic Spanish to see if the hotel staff could do something about it. Somehow I was not quite understood, because within a few minutes a bellman showed up at my door to offer me an ash tray.
So be careful to understand what your customers are really thinking and what they are really asking. It is not always exactly what they say. When a new prospects call you on the phone and ask how much a storage unit costs, this is not really what they want to know. They want to know why they should store with you and not someone else.
Tags: language, pubilc speaker, spain, UK
Posted in Management, Travel, marketing, personal growth | 2 Comments »
November 20th, 2009
You Can’t Sell Anybody Anything
So that is like saying the first rule of football is …you can’t hang on to the ball; or the first rule of baseball is …you can’t score by swinging the bat. Maybe those are true, too. But I do know that you cannot sell anybody anything. You can, however, help people talk themselves into buying just about anything. Your job as a sales person is to help people talk themselves into good reasons to buy your offering. Your job as a sales manager is to help your sales people develop good qualifying questions that will help your prospects think through the purchase. Your job as the product developer is to create something people can see value in.
Then you can set about not-selling. Not-selling is a way to sell according to the first rule of selling. You do not tell people why they should buy; you ask people how they would use your offering. You don’t show people why the offering is good for them; you ask people to show you how it might be good for them. You don’t talk about the features and benefits; you ask about the benefits people find in the features. When the person has finished talking himself or herself into buying you ask for the order and finish the purchase.
Posted in Management, marketing, sales | No Comments »
November 9th, 2009
I doesn’t seem that long ago that the Berlin Wall came down. I remember visiting East Germany as a kid. My mother was born and grew up in the town of Gotha in Thuringen, which became the Eastern Zone after World War Two. In 1970 I accompanied her on a trip back to the old home town. I remember how gray and dusty everything was. Coal was the main means of power generation and there was coal dust on everything. The cities and towns were run down and in disrepair. Many of the buildings damaged by the allied bombing 25 or 30 years earlier stood in ruins still, unchanged since the bombing. The Cold War was still on and there were Russian troops and Russian tanks everywhere. It was a weird experience. The people we met were all very kind and very hospitable. They were happy to have outsiders visiting and they were glad to share the little they had.
It was clear to me after seeing the place, staying with the people and hearing some of the conversation, that the communist regime could not last for ever. The people were tired of living under duress…first under the Nazis, then under the Communists. The people knew what was going on in the West. They could get West German TV stations. They could hear West German radio.
We took two or three trips to Germany during those years and I got to know the Western zone pretty well, too.
I went to the Wall several times. I visited viewing spots in several locations and made the crossing from West Berlin into East Berlin at the famous Checkpoint Charlie. Of course on our trips to the East Zone and to Berlin, we had to cross through the Wall and go through the careful passport control process on both sides.
As a public speaker, I am always looking for material and inspiration for my talks and sessions. Courage and conviction are sometimes qualities that are discussed at seminars and consulting jobs. Imagine the courage and conviction of the freedom protesters in Leipzig and other East German towns who walked the streets calling for freedom in spite the fact that the authorities could have them killed or dissapeared in the bat of an eye. Imagine the courage and conviction of the riot Police and the secret Police who decided not to stop the protestors.
One day everyone in East Germany woke up from their sleep, had a boiled egg for breakfast and decided to no longer cooperate with the Communists. And just like that, the whole thing began to unravel.
What walls do we face today that need to come down?
What are the rules we could simply refuse to follow to allow a whole other level of oppression to unravel?
There are places in the world, even in our own country, where walls are coming up instead of coming down.
How should we feel about that?
Tags: Berlin Wall, Germany
Posted in Travel, history, people, politics, war and peace | 2 Comments »
November 8th, 2009
I have been talking to a few people about health care and health insurance issues recently. I heard one business owner tell of a new plan he is putting in place. It will not have co-pays. I will be a simple plan that kicks in with coverage after an employee spends $1,500 out of pocket for an individual or $3,000 for the family for the year. The company will also set up a health spending account to allow people to pay this amount with pretax dollars. The plan will cost the same as their former plan that had co-pays and prescription drug discounts. At first blush his makes sense. It seems simplified and sensible. But if you do the math, those people who do not use much health care in a normal year will not only be paying the same level of premium as last year, but will also have to come up with another $1,000 or $2,000 to pay out of pocket. For most working people who live paycheck to paycheck and who spend 101% of income anyway, this will be difficult. Maybe it is the best structure to keep unnecessary usage of health services at a minimum, but it may also cause people to stop spending on normal check-ups and preventative care, hoping to use the insurance only for a big event. It is hard to say how it would eventually take shape. If I had an executive coaching client who brought me in to give guidance on choosing a new health care plan, it could get complicated. No matter which way you go with it, there will be some pain of adjustment and some additional cost. I think if I were designing a health care plan, it would involve involve a weekly message for everyone and a daily nap. Maybe you can help me put it together? Maybe a public speaking campaign extolling the virtues of massages and naps is in the works. In any case, I can assure you that whatever new health care plans come about in the near future, we will all only be partially happy.
Tags: health plans, massage
Posted in health care debate, personal growth, politics | 4 Comments »
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