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The ability to influence others is a highly desirable skill in the world of business. Effective influencing is one of the major keys to success in sales negotiation and for business leaders and managers. The ability to influence how their teams think and behave can be crucial to implementing business change and overcoming obstacles and challenges. Influence, persuasion and assertiveness are closely related business skills and all are valuable to leaders, business managers and sales managers.

Meeting with a potential customer face-to-face is more or less the only guaranteed route to successfully pitching, negotiating and successfully closing a sale. Of course, such a meeting requires making an appointment, and this in itself is one of the most challenging aspects of any salesperson's role.

A happy team is a productive team, and for business leaders and managers, the tasks of maintaining morale, building team relationships and encouraging collaborative working play a huge part in the continued smooth running and success of a business.

Whilst some people are more comfortable presenting to an audience than others, the ability to create and deliver great business presentations is something that can be acquired by anyone, given appropriate training.

Satisfied customers mean greater success for your business. Dissatisfied customers mean greater success for your competitors. Few equations are as simple to understand as this, yet even in the twenty-first century, so many companies fail to provide a level of service that is entirely acceptable to their customers. At Maguire Training we offer invaluable sales training which enables managers, salespeople and anyone else who is in direct contact with customers to achieve customer service excellence.

Sooner or later it happens to the best of us; we experience a sudden attack of apathy, loss of energy and the desire to stare out of the window, chat to a colleague or head off to find our seventh coffee of the day. Motivation is a precious gift, and the ability of business leaders and managers to motivate their employees is a highly desirable trait.

The art of giving persuasive presentations, a desirable gift for any business leader or manager, rests not just on the content itself but how that content is presented. Tasked with giving a presentation, you'll inevitably know the subject to be talked about, the desired outcome and the potential target audience.

7 Tips to Improve your Business Forecasting

Brainstorming is an extremely useful technique which leaders and managers can employ to help find creative solutions to problems and enhance productivity.

The concept of 'consultative selling' originated in 1970; the brainchild of respected American salesman Mack Hanan. As its name suggests 'consultative selling' involves the salesperson acting as a consultant to the potential customer.

If there's one aspect of their role that no successful sales manager or salesperson can afford to get wrong, it is the conducting of effective sales negotiation. In an age where competition between businesses is fierce and information is more readily available to the customer than ever before, it is vital that salespeople have the skills and knowledge necessary to negotiate and close every sale.

At its best, a business meeting is a constructive forum at which new ideas can be proposed and brainstormed, progress discussed, plans laid and problems solved. A meeting's effectiveness, or lack of, is entirely attributable to the way in which it has been planned, is conducted and is followed up.