“Strengths Based Selling” Training

By J. Mark DeNicola | Published: July 19, 2011

Last week I conducted my first Strengths Based Selling training session. We reviewed the Prologue and the first two chapters.

Before I write anything else, I would like to say that I rank my sales group and managers as among the best in the nation. Awareness and application of the concepts discussed in this book will aid and become part of each member’s tools to reach their highest potential. 

For me, and apparently for others, one of the best exercises was conducting the self-assessment on how each person’s Top 5 themes relate to their roles at Thermocopy. This is not always very apparent.

Another good exercise was the discussion about how much investment of time and practice we put into honing the skills to do our jobs successfully after our initial training for the job. It was apparent that most everyone felt that we could invest more time into practice.

The Key Points in each segment were as follows:

 

Prologue – Two Myths About Sales

•Anyone can sell.
•There is one “right” way to sell.
 
Chapter 1 – Defining Strengths
•Key Points
–Your talents are unique to you, capitalizing on them improves performance.
– A strength is the ability to consistently produce a positive outcome through near-perfect performance in a specific task.
–Developing your natural talents into strengths takes hard work; when you add skills, knowledge, and practice your natural talents become a multiplier in the strengths equation.
 
Chapter 2 – Strengths & Weaknesses
•Key Points
–Strengths-based selling is the application of individual strengths to achieve sales success.
–A weakness is something that gets in the way of your performance or in the way of the performance of another person. You can’t ignore your weaknesses, but you can use your strengths to manage them.
 
I am encouraged by the feed back I received about the relevance of the topics.
 
We will be reviewing Chapter 3: Prospecting in our next training session on August 10th.
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Thermocopy was featured on a WBIR-TV 10 news segment about green jobs in East Tennessee

By J. Mark DeNicola | Published: July 18, 2011

I was surprised to receive a phone call mid-morning on Thursday from John Henry, a reporter at WBIR TV-10. He asked if I would be available to discuss the latest Brookings Institution story about the growth in “Green Jobs” in East Tennessee and how Thermocopy has helped with and benefited from promoting environmentally friendly business practices in East Tennessee. I jumped at the chance to talk about us!

Evidently the Brookings Institution has ranked Knoxville as the number one city in the nation for annual green jobs growth. They also said that Knoxville averaged a 14.6% green job increase from 2003 to 2010.  According to the report, in 2003, Knoxville had a little more than 6,000 clean economy jobs.  In 2010 that same report said it had more than 16,000.

It evidently took a lot of film to get enough usable material for my piece of the story as we discussed a number of issues, but ended up with the 15 to 20 second segment, LOL. I was pleasantly surprised when I viewed the finished story and saw Thermocopy prominently displayed in a good light. Of course, it would have been even better if my comments about our Printworks program would have made the segment. It is nice to see the news organizations recognizing Thermocopy as a leader in promoting environmentally sound business practices and being a “go to” source for information.

Follow the link below to view the whole story.

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=176194

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We now officially carry the Lexmark product

By J. Mark DeNicola | Published: June 21, 2011

Things are always moving forward at Thermocopy. We have worked on getting the Lexmark brand for our product portfolio for several years and finally obtained their official blessing last week. It took longer than I thought it would as they have been very loyal to their distribution in Knoxville. The timing is good for this year though as we are winding down the initial Covenant equipment installations (over 500 machines) and will have a chance to catch our breath for a couple of weeks before we start training on the Lexmark product.

Lexmark is at the forefront of offering A4 multi-functional devices (print engines that print/copy on paper up to 8.5″ X 14″). Their devices will integrate perfectly into the product mix that we offer through our Printworks+ program (read more about Printworks+ at http://www.thermocopy.com/printworks_managed_print_services.htm). The A4 devices are offered with large touch screens, much like the Ricoh and Canon A3 devices.

We are now working on getting training set in Lexington for our service trainer and I have tentatively scheduled a sales training session for July 13th.

I will blog more about our journey with Lexmark as it progresses. In the mean time, if you would like to find out more about Lexmark and their products visit www.lexmark.com.

Have a great day.

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Interesting Metro Pulse articles

By J. Mark DeNicola | Published: June 13, 2011

I just read the latest issue of the Metro Pulse, Knoxville’s own anti-establishment rag. I would be surprised to read anything other than their weekly “we are smarter and our ideas are/were better than anyone else’s” article in the News and Commentary section of the paper. This week the writer titled his column “The Attractive Destination” and pats himself? some people he says were called “troublemakers”? and others for how successful the down town area is and saving it from the top-down thinkers that presented and supported some big-time “destination attraction” ideas to make Knoxville a destination city.

In my world the process went exactly how it was supposed to. Ideas were presented, debated, positions taken, conclusions drawn, and a path taken. The “destination

Universe Knoxville Poster

 attraction” ideas were not accepted mainly due to funding deficiencies. But who is to say that the Universe Knoxville concept could not have co-existed with a real farmer’s market and a biscuit festival?  Who is to say that the people attending the Destination ImagiNation event would not have enjoyed a trip to Universe Knoxville? I can’t say that and I don’t believe the writer in all honesty could either. In fact, it seems to me that a world class children’s museum would be something that attendees of such an event would love to go see.  

But I am not writing this to disagree with the writer about the “fun place to be” that the Knoxville down town has become. It has evolved into a happening place.

I just don’t like the tone of the article. The writer could have made his point without the un-merited belittling of ideas and the “top-down” thinkers that dared to care enough about the city to put time and effort into the creation of those ideas.

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