Performance and Development

Throughout the years, there have been many books written, techniques developed, and debates conducted about the art of “closing the sale.”

I have read those books and attended many conferences and have found most of them useless, repetitive, old, unrealistic, and full of platitudes. Most of these programs don’t resonate with me because I’ve discovered that the fundamentals of successful selling skills I learned nearly 25 years ago in my first job out of college have survived the test of time. They are just as relevant now as they were then. 

In my first job as a sales representative selling for a consumer packaged goods company, I was taught the three fundamentals of successful selling: Learn, Penetrate, Sell. 

These three simple and effective steps were instilled in me from day one and on every sales call with my managers, who had successfully sold using this model throughout their careers. The key objective of Learn, Penetrate, Sell is to help differentiate yourself from your competition by earning the reputation in the eyes of your customers as valued partners and trusted business advisers with skin in the game when it comes to their success. This enables sales teams to be considered more than just another vendor selfishly selling a product or service with no benefit to the valued customer. In addition, Learn, Penetrate, Sell will show your customers the value you bring to the table and will minimize your chance of getting beaten up on price. In other words, you’re selling ideas and value vs. simply selling a commodity. Let’s look at these three simple, yet powerful, steps. 

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I believe that one of the most important topics of this day and age is leadership. What is leadership? What characteristics make a good leader? Who is considered a good leader, and why?

Despite many great books written about leadership there still remains a great deal of outstanding questions yet to be answered. Personally I enjoy reading about great leaders and then come to my conclusions about what made them great - one of my all time favorite leaders is Winston Churchill. I would urge anyone who does not know about Churchill and his accomplishment’s to pick up two outstanding books written about him. The first is called The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone 1932-1940, by William Manchester and the second called Churchill: A Life, written by Martin Gilbert .

In these books you will see the true greatness of Churchill’s leadership style…his ability to communicate, encourage others in the face of great adversity, to be a forward thinker, to be able to learn from history and most importantly his past mistakes…For anyone interested in true leadership I highly recommend reading about Winston Churchill.

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I want to welcome you all to the Steve Gavatorta Group Performance and Development Blog. This blog was created to generate discussion, share ideas, insights and learning’s on the topics of personal and professional performance development.

The  specific topics discussed will be as follows:

• Communication Skills
• Personal & Professional Motivation
• Sales & Selling Skills Effectiveness
• Managerial Effectiveness
• Leadership Development
• Maximizing Team Performance 

There will be additional performance related topics as well. So part of this intro blog is to gather your thoughts on additional topics and/or discussion points that you would find useful…again under the umbrella of Personal and Professional Performance Development. Some examples may also include; change management, conflict resolution, negotiation skills and etc.

With all of that said, I welcome you to participate in this Blog…either by providing your feedback, comments and/or insights on the blogs posted.

In addition, if any of you want to be considered as a guest blogger you are more than welcome. Just send me an email along with your blog and I will post as long as it falls under the topic of Performance and Development.

Lastly, I hope this blog provides each of you with the tools, insights and ideas you need to take you to the next step in your personal and professional development.

I look forward to your participation and hope you enjoy. I look forward to seeing your “blog postings” soon!

Steve