For any company or organisation to succeed financially, it must have a desirable product. This product must be of need to a large proportion of the general public. Advertising, using all available media outlets, should get the message across. But the most important link after the manufacturing and advertising (marketing) is the salesperson/sales representative – The person who actually sells the product to the consumer. Without him, the financial/corporate world would come to a halt!

This course will take you from developing a strong personality (confidence and knowledge) through to communication, marketing, dealing with upper management, getting to know your product, the A B C of selling, the opening and closing or a sale, stress management, how to increase your company’s profits, etc.

There are 9 lessons:

• Developing Sales Concepts
  • Goods & Services, Ways of Managing Sales, Developing a Sales Concept, and more!
• Developing Sales Relationships
  • Sales Methods, Presentation & the Selling Personality (personality traits of a salesperson), Communication skills and conversational selling
• Sales Ethics
  • The Law and Ethics, Social Problems, Pricing, Deceit, High Pressure Sales, and more!
• Building Product Knowledge
  • Good & Bad Features (eg. Make/trade name; Model; Purpose or use; How & where it is manufactured; Materials used; and more!

  Developing a Customer Strategy

  • Types of Buyers, Buyer Motivation, Difficult Buyers, Key Rules for Every Salesperson
• Presentation Strategy Options
  • Displays (eg. Locating Your Displays For Best Results), Shop Layout, Trade Displays etc.
• Closing a Sale
  • Difficulties with closing a sale & solutions, importance of the personal approach.
• Managing Yourself
  • Time management, Territory management, Record Management, and more!
• Managing a Sales Team
  • Building quality partnerships.

What does Cui Bono? Mean?

The Latin phrase cui bono? can be loosely translated into English idiom as “who’s getting paid?”. The phrase has been central to critical thinking for thousands of years. The first recorded example of it is in one of the court cases of Cicero, a Roman lawyer who lived in the first century BCE, but even Cicero was quoting someone else saying it. Today the phrase remains one of the cornerstones of critical thinking, and it’s becoming increasingly important in our modern money-oriented world.

The idea behind cui bono? is that before we believe anything we are told, we need to know who profits from the idea. It does not matter if what we are being told is true or false, it only matters who profits. Sometimes the answer is obvious: If we are told that the new Pepsi drink has no sugar, this is to persuade us to buy Pepsi, for the profit of the Pepsi company shareholders. If we are told that the local pet shelter has no room left, this is to persuade us to adopt for the benefit of the local pet shelter (and of course the pets themselves). Both of these facts are true (Pepsi Zero Sugar does not contain sugar, and your local pet shelter probably is full) but someone benefits from us hearing those facts, and if we repeat those facts we are benefiting that person as well.

When should we ask Cui Bono?

We are used to being suspicious of corporations and charities, but we should also be applying the concept of Cui bono? to other accounts as well. For example, news stories about migration were used in 2016 to encourage people to vote for Donald Trump in the USA and to vote for Brexit in the United Kingdom. If a new academic book is said to represent a “quantum leap in understanding”, this is to encourage us to buy a book (bringing profit to the publishing company and prestige to the author).

Of course, just because someone profits from telling us something does not mean that what they are saying is not important or interesting. Often when people tell us things, it is in their best interest for those things to be reliable, otherwise, we will lose trust in them. For example, if an academic lied about something in a book, and we found out, then no-one would buy their book any-more. It is against the author’s interests to lie, so an academic book is usually reliable. However, the concept of Cui bono? is that we should always ask “who’s getting paid?” and “how does the author benefit?” when we hear something new. We have to remember that someone profits whenever we hear or repeat anything.

If you found this blog post useful and want to learn more of the principles of Critical Thinking, you might enjoy taking the University Preparation Writing Package here at the Academy for Distance Learning. But then, we would say that, wouldn’t we!

5 Things a Life Coach does for their Client

Life Coaching is not the same as counselling, mentoring or

similar helping roles. At its core, Life Coaching aims to get the client come up with their own goals and together plan a way to reach those goals. These goals can be personal, they can be about relationships, then can even be professional goals.

Talk

Firstly, a Life Coach will start a conversation with their client. It’s through this that the Life Coach can help the client start to unravel what it is they want from their life, why they’re being held back, concerns they may have, struggle areas and so on. A Life Coach can start getting an idea of what their client’s needs are from conversation. Conversations can happen face to face, on the phone, via skype or other online platform.

Set Goals

Once a client and Life Coach have had the chance to talk, a Life Coach helps the client set goals. These will be personal goals that the client really wants to fulfil, not expectations that a client might be holding from parents or spouse, but their own personal goals and aims.

Make Plans to Achieve those Goals

Now that reachable goals have been set, the Life Coach helps the client create an action plan of how they will achieve those goals. Does the client want to stop smoking or improve their work output? A Life Coach comes armed with ways to help those things come to pass.

Overcome obstacles

To every goal we want to achieve, there will be a myriad number of reasons why we don’t achieve them. A Life Coach comes along-side a client and helps overcome these obstacles. Maybe it’s time management for someone who wants to improve a hobby they love. Set backs are also something a Life Coach helps a client overcome.

Provide motivation

Once a client is on their journey to realise their goals, a Life Coach will provide motivation and accountability to the client to keep them on track to achieving their dreams.

If you’ve always been great at listening to your friends, to your colleagues or even random strangers on the bus, perhaps consider a career as a Life Coach.

So, how to start up as a life coach? While no qualifications are required to start up in the industry, clients tend to prefer Life Coaches with some qualifications or at least membership to organisations such as the Association for Coaching or the European Mentoring and Coaching Council. Having some understanding of counselling, or how Life Coaching works is also beneficial.

Check out our course on Life Coaching if this is something !that interests you!