Why didn’t we do it sooner? 36 people joined our initiatives’s first online event. Yes, that’s right – 36! Even Colleen Reichrath-Smith was able to join a meeting despite her move to Limburg. These tricky times are teaching us all a new way of living, of working, of being and of networking and learning. I think I speak for all of us when I declare the event was a resounding success.
Who knew that the Zoom platform would allow us to raise our hands, to go into break-out ‘rooms’ and watch PowerPoint presentations as if we were in the room? Okay, it wasn’t quite the same as a live meeting. For one, Dymphna had control of the mute button whereas normally she has a harder time making us all keep quiet. For another, we could only ask a question by typing QUESTION: in the Chat box.
Member Showcase
We still had our Member Showcase, albeit shorter now owing the shorter attention span of online participants. Our speaker was Anna Molnar of Blossom Empowering Events, who introduced a new way of discovering our values. I had no idea that the books and films we favour could reveal so much about our state of mind. Ask someone to pick a favourite quote and chances are it will change depending on their mood. Anna is a life coach and Italianist who loves and is inspired by literature and language. Working with books allows for “intrapersonal and interpersonal experiences,” Anna explained. “Finding sentences is good because sentences have words and words are what we use to express our thoughts and emotions.” It was an intriguing five minutes.
Speaker
Victoria (Vicky) Hampson of Victorious Consulting, was up next with her presentation on What Makes a Winning Salesperson?
“Why is sales such a dirty word?” she began, continuing, “It’s something we should all embrace.”
By the end of her powerful and articulate presentation we were all convinced that sales was something we could do and do well, even in times of crisis. We learned how important it is that we develop the attributes we need to gain a broader perspective on what sales actually is and that we ensure integrity along the way. Believing in our own product or service is not enough. Of course, we all know the value of being a good listener but what we also need is to be able to convince our potential purchasers, to build services based on what they need and to deliver those collaboratively. We need to bring our network to the table and to have the vision and insight to ‘connect the dots’ and think creatively.
When Vicky shared a list of the top ten reasons people buy we were shocked to see that a personal connection and the value of our service/product were at the bottom the list, while bringing something new to the table was at number one.
Vicky taught us the value of being customer-centric and shared that women make great sales people because we are natural connectors and collaborators and agents of influence.
To create a value case for our offer we need to ask ourselves four questions:
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Why act?
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Why now?
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Why us?
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Why trust?
Finally, we turned to the sticky subject of how we should adapt what we sell in times of crisis such as the current period of Coronavirus. Is it okay to sell things in times of hardship and austerity? Vicky believes that we should very much adapt our offering and that if we offer something born out of integrity then yes, that has value and should be charged for. Who knows, the creative ways we find to make money right now might give us fabulous new ideas for the future? We may end up changing our business model forever and for the better.
As the session came to a close we were randomly divided into break out rooms where we could have a more intimate private discussion with others. My group continued the discussion about the creation of new products at this difficult time and how we were all embracing the change.
Thank you WBII. More Zoom meetings please!
Jo Parfitt
