Blogs & Articles

The ability to ask powerful, relevant and incisive questions is one of the most beneficial tools of the trade for any leader, sales or business manager or salesperson. In conjunction with effective listening, using the correct questioning techniques can grab attention and engage the respondent, tease out vital information and even subtly persuade them to agree with your point of view.

Assertiveness is a useful trait in many areas of life, but for managers, leaders and salespeople, it is a vital skill. Many people confuse assertiveness, which is a strong and positive communication technique, with aggressiveness which is negative and undesirable.

Change is an inevitability of modern business; in order to remain competitive, companies must adapt to accommodate evolving customer requirements, market conditions, technological advances, new legislation and many other aspects which may have a bearing on long-term survival and profitability.

As a manager, it's vital to ensure that your staff are sufficiently motivated to perform their tasks competently and in a timely fashion. Once upon a time, it was thought that financial incentives were the key to employee motivation, but studies have shown that pay raises and bonuses are merely short-term motivators.

Psychology plays a surprisingly important role in the sales and negotiation process, and the smart salesperson will use psychological ploys and tactics to their advantage in order to gain the upper hand and enhance their chances of closing the deal.

In any sales scenario, a customer can make one of three choices: to buy from you, to buy from your competitor or, having evaluated the vendors, solutions and prices offered, not to buy at all. As the salesperson, it is your job to ensure that the customer makes the first of those choices, and there are several effective ways in which the salesperson can influence that purchasing decision to close the sale. Here, leading sales training provider Maguire Training shares five keys to successfully closing a sale.

Business revolves around successful communication, be it non-verbal, verbal, written, analogue or digital. Managers, leaders and salespeople all need to be skilled communicators in order to perform their roles effectively.

Everybody assumes that it is the candidate and not the interviewer who is likely to be nervous before the interview. In reality, for managers with little or no prior experience in staff recruitment, conducting an interview can be an equally nerve-wracking prospect. Business skills training specialists Maguire Training provides a range of informative and valuable courses which examine all aspects of the staff recruitment process. Business leaders or managers who lack recruitment experience will benefit from attending our Recruitment Skills course.

If you've ever heard it said of a successful salesperson that they have 'the gift of the gab', you'll understand the importance of using powerful and appropriate language as a persuasive sales tool.

In hindsight, that title isn't strictly accurate. If you've recently made the transition from worker to manager, you're clearly no dummy. You'll quickly find, however, that as a new manager, you're required to make decisions of varying degrees of importance every day.

The term 'commercial awareness' has become a bit of a business buzzphrase and, for employees seeking a move into a management career, is an attribute that is increasingly sought by recruiters and interviewers.