by George Pastidis

Last Saturday, I was struggling to finish a challenging 22km run in the rain. I was desperately looking for something to focus on, so I can stop thinking to give it up. I remembered that a friend had asked me to write about the eternal dilemma: Talent vs Skills. My mind travelled 30 years back in 1987, when the National Basketball team of Greece won the Eurobasket Cup which must be the biggest sports achievement of my country. Perhaps because it is the very first one in team sports read more…

By George Pastidis

It was a couple of days ago when I ran into the interesting site of MCE, talking about leadership and the business skills needed today: ”… it is important that you focus on three key areas of leadership – Leading Self, Leading Others and Leading Business.  You need to start by understanding yourself and your personal strengths. You need to ensure that you have all the necessary skills to work and communicate with your peers and colleagues throughout the world. Then, you need to gain the skills and knowledge to engage and motivate your teams towards common business goals. This also includes formulating a vision, setting the strategy and communicating it. Finally, you need to make sure you have the business skills for your specialized area in Finance, Marketing, Sales, Human Resources etc.” read more…

by George Pastidis

After working many years in sales, sales training and sales learning & development, I have been exposed to a bunch of great different ways and models for proposing to customer.  I guess, we all have, one or another way. We all have heard of terms such as features, benefits, advantages, unique selling points, differentiators, insights etc. I do not mean to underestimate these concepts that significant training companies have come up with and they are usually based on serious research. They help us have a common understanding, speak the same sales language and get more effective. However, us that we do not sell “sales training” but we only want to make use of for getting the job done, we must have a clear picture and be able to put things in the right order in terms of sales effectiveness read more…

by George Pastidis

Two days ago, I was in facebook when I came across the famous triple filter test of Socrates. The story is about a guy that approaches Socrates for telling him something that Diogenes did. Socrates applies his triple filter test for separating meaningful information from meaningless gossip and asks three key questions: read more…

by George Pastidis

The price issue pops up usually either in the beginning or in the very end of the buying cycle, when final negotiations take place. An experienced seller can – and should – easily overcome the first obstacle, avoiding talking price too early. But how can we avoid having a price impasse shock right before the closing stage? read more…

by George Pastidis

We are few days only before the year end. Fingers crossed, we are about to enjoy the harvest of our investment in time and hard work. What comes next is relaxing time with family and good friends for charging up our batteries. And then 2017. Next year that we need to start thinking of and planning. Of course planning starts with assessing our current status; understanding the existing situation; our strengths, weaknesses and hinders. Before this critical milestone, I thought I should share with you all, the thoughts of my friend Petros Kavazis, a fine young professional read more…

by George Pastidis

Last evening, I had the luck to attend a dinner where keynote speaker was the Greek-French prominent academic and Byzantinologist Dr Helene Glykatzi Arweiler who was the first woman Principal of the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Later she was named Dean of the Academy of Paris and Chancellor of the Universities of Paris. An amazing woman. An amazing woman that despite her 90 years, she stays sharp, inspiring, fascinating and eager to share her remarkable lifetime experiences read more…

by George Pastidis

November is such a tricky month. We are between the last turn and the finish line on our racetrack. We are on the “last stretch”. Then we can have holidays in peace and start working on our smart new year resolutions. Unfortunately, David Copperfield is not our colleague. So, neither rabbits nor pigeons can come out of our black high hats. If we want to bring our numbers, we need to work effective and efficient read more…

by George Pastidis

Last weekend, I visited with family, beautiful Bruges. When we arrived in, I went straight to the reception saying: “Good morning. George Pastidis. Checking in”. The receptionist remained seated and said getting on a defensive mode for no reason: “It is 11 o’clock. The room cannot be available before 15:00”. No “good morning”, no “welcome”, no “smile”. Two days later, when I was checking out to another receptionist, I complained about the room’s  bad odor coming from the drains. The receptionist said: ”OK I’ll let them know” read more…

by George Pastidis

I don’t want to talk politics. I want to talk negotiations. I want to talk about and have a close look at Donald Trump’s negotiation skills. Last weekend, I had the luck to read the brilliant analysis https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/donald-trumps-negotiating-profile-its-consequences-us-dimarakis?trk=prof-post of Yannis Dimarakis, a professional trainer that specializes on Negotiation Skills and I shared his gem with some friends and colleagues that I knew they would see value in this. There I had the luxury to get the feedback of Jack Williams, another excellent negotiations professional trainer and consultant. Two different angles, two different perspectives that I would not dare to criticize. I will only try to put together and give you the chance to see two different views, equally powerful read more…