by George Pastidis

We always know what customers buy. But do we really know how they buy? Do we understand how they make their buying decisions? What is their decision making process like? read more…

by George Pastidis

Last week, I was having lunch with my family in a brasserie downtown Paris. There was a young couple sitting next to me and they were about to leave when the young man bumped in an American that seemed to be a senior business acquaintance. The American, although obviously busy, played polite and dropped the typical question “how is it going?”; a question that you often ask without really caring for the answer. The young Frenchman would like to talk for hours and say thousands of things but before he got his mind together and started getting going, the American was vanished. read more…

by George Pastidis

 “Facilitating is any activity that makes tasks for others easy, or tasks that are assisted” Wikipedia

In training, the goal is nothing but making others to learn. Different trainers have, and should have, different style, depending on their own culture. Different audience requires different treatment.  Different industries have different codes of learning. Therefore, although it is very difficult to talk about success recipes, there are some basic principles that do facilitate and support the learning process; they do make things easier for learners. read more…

by George Pastidis

Is your sales pitch good? You address the right key players? Are you convincing enough? Although there are many things that can go wrong, there are also many things you can do right in order to deliver a solid sales pitch with high, or higher, chances to succeed. read more…

by George Pastidis

Although the negotiations between Greece and its European partners are still on – a process that will not end any time soon, we can take a snapshot and have some initial assessment of the recent results. read more…

An interesting analysis by the French economist Jacques Sapir read more…

by George Pastidis

Consultative Selling, Insights Selling and Selling Consultatively – Trends, Perceptions & Fallacies

Given that each company invests lots of money on sales training for developing an efficient and effective sales team, is important to get some things straight and move toward the right and suitable direction. It is significant to go shopping understanding what is what and avoid easy trendy purchases. read more…

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,800 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 30 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

by George Pastidis

I just got back from a Negotiation Skills Train-The-Trainer program. It was the eleventh TTT I would attend and once again I was stressing in the beginning. It was a busy period in general, lots of things to prepare on for the specific training and of course it is the delivery and assessment elements that always raise the level of stress. Although most of the times I had good trainers to deal with, this time our trainer was quite different, distinct and unique. It was the very first time that I left the training room eager to teach the program; eager to share my learnings. read more…

by Rebecca Knight Harvard Business Review

Speaking in front of a group — no matter how big or small — can be stressful. Preparation is key, of course, whether it’s your first or your hundredth time. read more…