I recently switched financial advisors for both my business and personal finances. In order to make an informed decision, I interviewed three different advisors before choosing. The approaches taken by each of them both before and during the meetings were wildly different and greatly influenced my overall choice.
This RAIN Group article was originally published on the LinkedIn Sales Blog.
It makes sense they think this way given recent Harvard Business Review articles with titles like "Motivating Sales People: What Really Works" that focus 100% on compensation.
This article was originally published on the Sales Enablement Society.
Sellers often complain that it's impossible to get through to buyers. Gatekeepers are tough. Buyers are busy. Calls go to voicemail. Email goes to junk. The list goes on.
While getting through certainly isn't easy, sellers who work at it do get through. In fact, 82% of buyers say they accept meetings at least sometimes with sellers who reach out to them.
"Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime."
This is a popular axiom in the coaching world.
"Myth 8: Professional coaches tell their clients what to do and give them advice.
Fact: Bad or inexperienced coaches tell their clients what to do and are constantly giving advice. Good coaches do not…Instead, coaches help their clients explore and come up with the best choices for them based on where they are and the client's vision for their future. Coaches are experts at the process of changing behavior, which is much more valuable than giving instructions."
There are common competencies every organization needs to build a truly successful sales organization.
At RAIN Group, we organize these competencies around the Sales Competency WheelSM.
These leaders are turning to coaching because coaching is an increasingly popular—and increasingly proven—method of improving performance.
In the spirit of giving this time of year, we've made a charitable donation on behalf of our clients to Upper Ojai Relief.
Last month, as multiple wildfires wreaked havoc across California, local organizations like Upper Ojai Relief provided much-needed support to victims without bureaucracy or red tape. Upper Ojai Relief has been particularly active at Seminole Springs, where 101 homes in one community were destroyed. They've provided both financial support and manpower to help victims sift through the ash to find family heirlooms, wedding rings, military medals, and more.
As Upper Ojai Relief has given so much to the victims of these tragic fires, we're pleased to give back to them this holiday season, and hope that you'll consider giving to a cause close to your heart.
Wishing you Happy Holidays and a joyful New Year from all of us at RAIN Group.
Each year, our goal for the RAIN Group Sales Blog is to provide you with research, ideas, and insight to help you unleash sales potential.
From blog posts to new white papers, ebooks, infographics, webinars, and research, we've published a treasure trove of content in 2018 to help sellers, sales managers, and sales leaders reach top performance.
Below we've rounded up our most popular content from the year that will guide you on your path towards sales success.
Following are 21 open-ended sales questions you can use that will help you complete the picture of your clients' needs.
This piece originally appeared in the August 2018 edition of Independent Agent magazine and is reprinted here with permission.
Word of mouth, repeat business and referrals used to be enough to maintain a thriving sales organization. But today, buyers have more options than ever before, they're more educated, and the phone doesn't ring like it used to.
To find and win business consistently, your sellers need to have the right mix of sales skills across the sales process, from filling the front-end of the pipeline to growing accounts. Too many sales teams have significant skill deficits preventing them from turning their potential for sales growth into reality.
In The Top-Performing Sales Organization research initiative, we looked at the differences between Top Performers and The Rest across sales skills and knowledge needed to drive sales performance. The gaps in skills are eye-opening.
Technology sellers lament how impossible it is to get their buyers on the phone more than any other industry.
Phone is one of the top ways sellers say they connect with buyers, yet sellers in the technology industry report extreme difficulty using it to reach their buyers.
In our study on Top Performance in Sales Prospecting, we studied 488 buyers responsible for $4.2 billion of purchases and the prospecting habits of 489 sellers. We looked at results across buyer and seller sets, top performers, and industry. As part of our research, we compared how buyers prefer to be contact by sellers across multiple industries.
In "How to Clear Your Pipeline of Dead Wood," we shared how to make your pipeline real and manageable. Here, you'll find a framework that will allow you and your colleagues to define and focus on the best sales opportunities with clarity and confidence.
Sellers often treat their pipeline opportunities the same. They define need, qualify, propose, present, and wait for a win or loss. Maybe a few bubble up for more focus, but it's not always the right ones.
Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston and writer for the New York Times, told a story of a man who came into the emergency room with a stab wound, "It was a single wound, about an inch in size, in his belly."
The wound didn't appear life threatening, but after about 10 minutes his condition worsened.
When they got him on the table and opened him up, they found the wound was a foot deep (he was a pretty big guy) and cut his aorta. When they asked how the stabbing occurred, he told them it happened at a Halloween party and the other guy had a bayonet.
The doctors reflected and determined that if they knew it was a bayonet, they would have acted differently from the start.
Gawande uses this example—a simple miscommunication with big implications—to illustrate the central case in his book, The Checklist Manifesto. Even after 20 years of practice, doctors miss things. They make mistakes. And it's all due to complexity.
In sales, you have a finite number of hours in a day. Most of those hours are spent on the immediate sales opportunities in your pipeline—those buyers who have a need they are looking address and a timeline to act. These buyers receive the majority of your time and attention, and rightfully so.
But what about the buyer you met at a conference or have had an initial sales call with that was "interesting" and "valuable" but goes nowhere? Or the buyer who downloads something from your website but is just "seeing what's out there?" What do you do with buyers who are a perfect fit for your company, but don't have an immediate need?
This is where lead nurturing comes into play.
There are many possible targeted outcomes of sales training from growing revenue and improving margins to increasing the average size of sale and growing accounts. Make sure whatever sales training initiatives you choose match up with your desired outcomes.
As you think about your own sales training efforts, consider these possible results and how to achieve them.
Reverse auctions (also called e-auctions) are a common negotiation technique used more and more frequently by large organizations. For the most part, sellers don't dislike reverse auctions—they loathe them.
The point of a reverse auction is to drive down supplier prices to their absolute lowest while driving expectations of suppliers to their highest. As the process (typically) removes human interaction from the equation, sellers often feel at a complete loss to do anything but participate in the auction or walk away.
There's a lot more to it. Below you'll find negotiation strategies you can use before and during the reverse auction process to get the best results for you and your buyer.
A proper sales and marketing strategy involves more than just running some ads and cold-calling a list of prospects. Developing the right strategy is a process that requires research to discover who your prime sales prospects are, what motivates their purchasing, and how your firm fits in the marketplace. The data your research provides is what will drive your sales and marketing strategy. With the right plan, growth and profitability are predictable and controllable.
Effective sales and marketing requires talent, expertise, effort, and consistency. If that doesn't exist inside your organization, then it's important that you find an outside resource that can help you develop and implement your strategy.
It's the beginning of the year. It's crunch time for your sales plan. Almost everyone is evaluating what worked and what didn't and building goals and plans for the year ahead. If you're not, it's time to take a long, hard look at your own performance over the last year and find ways to not just hit your goals but to exceed them in the year ahead.
There are many questions you must ask yourself to prepare. What are you going to do differently? What are you going to improve? How, specifically, are you going to drive sales? Are you going to focus on generating new business? On improving your close rate? On growing your existing accounts?
In our Top-Performing Sales Organization research, we studied 75 factors related to the sales organization. We wanted to know what Top Performers do differently than The Rest to achieve superior results.
We've shared what separates the best sales organizations from the rest, but what we haven't shared is what most sales organizations neglect, and the impact it can have on your results. One factor in particular was most apparent: effective sales training.
Most sales are won and lost based on one key factor: You.
You hold the keys to your sales success. Competitors don't win because their offerings are more impressive. They win because they deliver a superior sales experience.
My grandfather Sidney was raised during the great depression. Often hungry growing up, he learned the value of a dollar the hard way. It stuck with him the rest of his life. When I was in college, he never let me call him because he would say it was long-distance.
I told him that the distance was long, but the call didn't cost anything. Still, he could barely stay on the phone for 5 minutes. I could visualize the nickels clinking in his mind, making him uncomfortable with the cost of the call.
It's common advice to minimize emotions in a negotiation. For example, the reading line of the article "Emotion: The 'Enemy' of Negotiation" is "To succeed in negotiation, says one Wharton expert, one must take emotion out of the equation."
We disagree. Emotions are primary drivers of decision making in buying, and primary drivers in negotiation outcomes. Emotions shouldn't be minimized. Instead, they should be guided and managed for both buyer and seller so that the best outcome can be achieved by all.
In our research report, The Value Driving Difference, we studied almost 500 organizations' practices regarding how focused they are on driving value for buyers. Companies that rose to the top as Value-Driving Sales Organizations had higher sales win rates, were more likely to grow revenue, had lower undesired sales staff turnover, and much more highly motivated sellers. They were also two times more likely to agree that they capture maximum prices in line with their value.
There's no question: If you want to succeed in sales, you should focus on driving value.
Alison Brooks and Maurice Schweitzer, two researchers at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, conducted an experiment to induce varying levels of anxiety among negotiators.
One group was subjected to the not-so-melodious screeching strings from Psycho. The other group was treated to calming Water Music by Handel. After listening for a while, the groups were sent off to conduct simulated negotiations.
It's an all too familiar story. A seller's pipeline looks full! Bursting. Exciting. It stays like that for 2 months, 5 months, 10 months… more keeps going in. Nothing comes out.
It looked great, but it wasn't great. Not even good. Too many sellers have lots of opportunities in their pipelines that shouldn't be there. Neither managers nor sellers want mirage pipelines with visions of promised lands that simply aren't there.
Executives are always on a mission to prove Kirkpatrick Level 4 measurement of training: Results. Specifically, they want to know to what degree targeted outcomes occur as a result of the training event and subsequent reinforcement.
There is relatively little data on how sales training correlates to business performance and results.
Attracting and retaining top sales talent is a huge challenge for many companies.
If you want to take your sales results to the next level, your organization must have the right people in the right roles, performing at a high level day in and day out. You also need the right management team with an effective process in place to ensure this all happens.
When it comes to sales motivation, companies commonly focus on compensation, bonuses, and incentives to get top performance out of their sales team. While compensation is important, it certainly is not the only, or even the main factor that drives sales motivation.
Ridiculous Upside is the name of a well-known blog that covers up-and-coming basketball players that could make the NBA, but need further development to reach their potential. Too bad that the basketball bloggers took the name, because ridiculous upside is a great way to describe the untapped potential hiding in most every company's existing accounts.
Why are some companies able to consistently grow their strategic accounts and maximize value while others struggle? This is a question that confounds many a sales leader.
Some think it is largely related to the strength of product and service offerings. The companies that grow their accounts the most must have superior offerings that keep customers coming back for more, right?
Ask someone in the presence of other people if their organization drives value for their customers, and they'll say yes.
Ask them confidentially in a research study, and you'll get a wholly different answer.
Everyone says value makes a difference in sales and business results. Indeed, the most successful sellers and sales organizations focus on value.
Leaders at nearly every company we speak to agree that there is significant opportunity to grow their accounts, and they are looking for ways to capitalize on this opportunity.
In fact, growing your accounts is one of the fastest and most profitable ways to grow sales. The first and most basic step to growing accounts is reaching out to them to proactively create new sales opportunities.
Ask leaders at companies how much more they believe they could be selling to their strategic accounts and you don't hear 5%, 10%, or 20%.
It's usually more like, "We should be selling 2 times…3 times…even more."
Ask what's in their way and you'll often get this answer, "Our strategic account managers just aren't doing what they need to do to penetrate the account, cross-sell, and keep the competition out so we can truly grow our accounts to their potential."
The more sophisticated and advanced sellers become, the more they make selling about conversations and collaboration, not presentations and pitching. Even their presentations become interactive collaborations when done right.
Throughout each year, we make it our goal for the RAIN Group Sales Blog to provide you with quality content pieces to help you unleash your sales potential.
With four new white papers on the books, and brand new research published on Top-Performing Sales Organizations and Strategic Account Management, we've released valuable insight on what you as a seller can do to set yourself apart from the rest.
In case you missed some of our new sales content this year, we've put together a list of our top 10 most popular content pieces from 2016 that will guide you towards sales success.
All of us at RAIN Group wish you Happy Holidays and good cheer in the New Year.
In the spirit of the holiday season, we have made a donation to the Ethan M. Lindberg Foundation, and hope that you will consider giving to a cause close to your heart.
Everyone needs motivation to tackle different types of tasks/challenges. Whether it's hitting your personal sales goals or achieving your weight loss goals, people can't do it without some type of driving motivation.
With 2017 right around the corner, most organizations are building strategies to increase revenue, win more sales, and beat their targets in the year ahead.
But with increased competition and product/service commoditization, those same organizations either risk trying "the new, shiny trend" or same-old sales training that just doesn't cut it.
Here's the situation: You get an introductory conversation with a great buyer—someone who fits your target profile to a T.
Not long into the conversation, however, the buyer says, "We already work with one of your competitors to do this."
Everybody's brain has two different processing centers: emotional and rational. The emotional brain is old. It developed millions of years ago, first with raw instincts—like fight or flight—that all animals have, and then into more complex emotions for us humans like anger, aggression, desire, fear, hatred, passion, love, disgust, sympathy, and so on.
The word "no" can be a tough pill to swallow.
In selling, when you're trying to meet a quota, squeeze in an extra deal before the end of the quarter, or get your bonus, the word "no" is too often interpreted as a sign to run for the hills when, in fact, it should be the exact opposite.
Sales enablement is one of the eight categories of the Sales Performance WheelSM that we study when analyzing what drives sales performance. This category focuses on the different ways in which supporting sellers to be most effective allows them to reach their full potential, thus improving the organization's sales performance.
The number one priority of sales leaders for the upcoming year is to increase business with existing accounts.
Since 2012, there has been a marked increase in growth potential within existing accounts.
When watching sellers negotiate, perhaps the easiest things to see are the mistakes. Having now spent two decades studying sales negotiation, observing negotiations, and coaching and training sellers to negotiate, we've distilled the common areas that the best sales negotiators consistently get right.
The classic selling model has taught sellers to uncover needs and craft compelling solutions. It goes something like this: the buyer needs something and asks for it. You provide it. It's straightforward, but buyers are operating in their comfort zone.
LinkedIn can be a powerful sales tool for connecting and building relationships with buyers, but many sellers don't know where to start when it comes to using LinkedIn for sales. To help you optimize your LinkedIn profile, and get started using it as a sales tool, we offer these 31 tips.
In our Top-Performing Sales Organization research, the RAIN Group Center for Sales Research assessed what the Top Performers—those with the best sales results—do differently than the Rest. We analyzed data from 472 sellers and executives representing companies with sales forces between 10 and 5,000-plus sellers.
While quite a bit of research has been published on what sellers need to do to achieve top sales performance, there's relatively little on what separates top-performing sales organizations from the rest. To find out, the RAIN Group Center for Sales Research gathered data from 472 respondents representing companies with sales forces ranging in size from 10 sellers to 5,000 plus and published the results in the Top-Performing Sales Organization Benchmark Report.
In our Top-Performing Sales Organization research, our goal was to assess what the Top Performers do differently than The Rest to achieve the best results. Top Performers have higher win rates, meet their annual sales goals, are more likely to set challenging sales goals, and are more likely achieve maximum prices in line with the value they provide.
We analyzed data from 472 sellers and executives representing companies with sales forces between 10 and 5,000+ sellers. Top Performers represent the top 20% of our database. The Rest—the bottom 80%.
To succeed in sales, you need to have the right skills. You have to be able to lead masterful sales conversations, manage opportunities, uncover needs, negotiate the best deals, fill the pipeline, develop relationships, manage sellers, and the list goes on.
With the laundry list of sales skills needed, which are most important?
In our recent Top-Performing Sales Organization study, the RAIN Group Center for Sales Research asked 472 sales executives and sellers representing companies with sales forces ranging from 10 sellers to 5,000+ if sellers have the skills they need to find and win business consistently and at a high level.
We then looked at the correlation between sales skills and whether or not a sales organization met its sales goal or quota.
As they say, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. If you want to drive sales performance at a company, you can focus on all sorts of tactical areas—from people and training to enablement and operations—but none of these address the fundamental questions: Where are we going? What are we doing to achieve our goals? Who will lead us there?
This is one of the challenging-yet-great things about sales. It's measurable. At some point, you have to bring in the wins or you fail. Which begs the question, "What brings in the wins?" A few years ago we studied this from the buyer perspective and published the results in our book Insight Selling.
It's a complicated question. It's not easy to decide what to tackle, when to tackle it, what results the organization should be targeting, where you can get the biggest bang for your buck, and what it really takes to get those results without further analysis.
Sales performance analysis is typically quite involved and complex. It's no easy task to figure out how to improve, change, or build a sales strategy. But for those sales leaders who are taking a longer-term view and looking into sales performance optimization, a performance analysis is a necessary precursor.
Average Sales Win Rates: How Do You Compare?
Most sellers and sales leaders are often asking themselves: "Is my win rate any good?"
Win rate is one of the most basic measures of your sales success, so it's only natural to want to benchmark your performance against the average to see how you stack up.
At some point or another, you've probably heard of the ABCs of selling: Always Be Closing. The mantra was popularized by Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross (warning: strong language).
Now is the perfect time for sales leaders to analyze their results from the past year and plan priorities for the year ahead.
In our RAIN Group Center for Sales Research study, we asked 472 sales executives and sellers about what they considered to be their top priorities.
In the mid-1990s, a fairly common sales strategy was to give a seller a desk, a phone, a business directory, and say, "Go."
Fast forward to today, and selling has become significantly more complex. Companies report ever-increasing challenges regarding product and service commoditization, proliferation of competition, and more informed and sophisticated buyers.
Wishing you Happy Holidays and good cheer in the New Year.
This holiday season, we're pleased to make a charitable donation on behalf of our clients to the Ethan M. Lindberg Foundation. The Foundation supports families with children facing congenital heart disease by providing grants and long-term housing, by working with hospitals to improve doctor/patient communication and patient care, and through music therapy.
It's the perfect time of year to give thanks and show appreciation for the people in your life who help you succeed—friends, family, colleagues, and clients. When it comes to the relationships you have with your clients, thanksgiving isn't the only time of year you should work on appreciating and building them. You should always be looking for ways to strengthen your business relationships.
You know you need to differentiate yourself from your competition. And having a strong value proposition can help you do so. But sometimes buyers might consider your services to be the same as those from other providers. What do you do in that situation? It actually comes down to the relationship-whether the buyer likes you-says RAIN Group President Mike Schultz.
I was in a meeting last week, and we started talking about the evolution of professional services firms and the roles individuals play when it comes to their business development responsibilities. As many of you may have surmised and probably experienced, economic realities and changes within firms have altered who must be involved.
Here's the situation: it's the first, maybe second, serious conversation with a prospect. You're asking questions, you're building great rapport, you're uncovering a slew of needs, and you're already seeing how you can help this prospect in 10 different ways. The conversation is going great. That is until the prospect says, "Wow, this all sounds good. So, what's something like this going to cost?"
Brrrr... I've just been cold calling and boy could I use some hot chicken soup!
Just those two words together—cold calling—puts many people far away from warm and happy. Given that it's so much fun for so many people, and that I have heard a number of times recently that the last nail has been banged into the cold calling coffin, why is cold calling still even on our radar screens?
We all love repeat business, referrals, and inbound warm leads. The problem is you can't scale warm leads. When these run out, so does your ability to grow your revenue, unless, of course, you prospect and drive new leads in the pipeline yourself.
Do You Make These 3 Proposal Mistakes?
Me: How has your selling effort been going?
Client: Unbelievable. I sent out four proposals last week and three more this week.
Me: That's great. How many new deals have you closed?
Challenges abound when it comes to generating leads for professional services firms: selecting the right tactics to generate quality leads, implementing lead generation activities consistently, breaking through the noise and getting the attention of busy decision makers, measuring and tracking what's working for you, and the list goes on.
Do You Make These 10 Lead Generation Mistakes?
Leads, leads, leads. Once the referrals and the circle of family and friends aren't enough to keep your firm growing, it's all about the leads. Yet, when it comes to generating leads, consulting firms get it all wrong in 10 very common ways.
Last year, we asked you to share your selling services challenges. You flooded us with your challenges and concerns, which included communicating the value of your services, client relationship management, and qualifying leads. In this blog series we identify 12 of the major selling obstacles you are struggling with the most and offer advice and suggestions for overcoming them.
Many people want to beleive that cold calling doesn't work because they don't want to have to do cold calling. Indeed, there are many ways to do it wrong and fail. There are many cold callers out there using deceptive tactics to get through, which leaves a bad taste in buyers' mouths.
The 4th of July has always signaled the beginning of summer to me. Fireworks, parades, barbecues, picnics, and baseball games-what better ways to celebrate the kickoff of the short-lived, New England heat?
The holiday also brings back memories of my childhood. I grew up in a small tourist town in southern Maine where my parents owned and managed a motel. Growing up living at a motel made for a pretty interesting childhood where I got to meet new people every day and make friends all over the world.
In my Twitter activities I came across an excellent post about price objections on Tom Searcy's Hunting Big Sales blog, Price is No Object.
In this post Tom writes, "A lot of the time, however, price is not the only issue and it's merely being used as a smoke screen."
I couldn't agree more. Price often is not the heart of the issue but an indicator that something else is going on. Clients will use the price objection because it's a convenient excuse.
In his article, Tom provides 4 excellent thoughts to help you get control of the price discussion. Check them out here.
If you've spent any time in complex sales, you know there's been a significant shift in how you win sales opportunities and grow accounts.
Ever think you were going to win a big sale...and then you lost? Lost to the competition when you really should have won? Lost to no decision because the buyer didn't see the value or the urgency?
Sellers who win consistently plan to win from the start. They're methodical. They carefully match their sales process to the buyer's, set goals for every meeting, and do an exceptional job of communicating value.
Top sellers build strategies to drive sales opportunities, and use planners to help guide them through to the win.
Imagine it's the end of a long, important sales process. Your buyer has given you the verbal 'yes' to buy, but he has to deliver a summary of the value proposition case—why he's made the decision to move forward with you—to his peers and the board of directors. And no, you can't attend the meeting and speak alongside him. He must make the argument himself, and it has to be good.
Just because a buyer is in a position of authority—and has the financial ability to buy—doesn't mean they will, in fact, buy. They have to be in the right mindset.
We call the right mindsets "buying modes." The wrong mindsets, "non-buying modes." When you understand which mode someone is in, you'll know whether they're inclined to make a purchase or not.
Sellers aren't proactive. They fail to drive their most important sales opportunities forward with determination and rigor.
Even when sellers are proactive, they don't follow a consistent process to put themselves in the best position to win the sale.
While companies spend billions of dollars on sales training each year, 90% of sales training fails to have an impact after 120 days.
It's time for an entirely new way of approaching sales education; an approach that drives real behavior change and results.
Sellers that win big sales go over-and-above to win them. When the impact for you is potentially huge, you want to do everything possible to get the win. Anything less and you essentially serve up the win to your competition.
When you need to win and win big, you need a Big Play.
We all know that client loyalty can make or break a company. We know that client loyalty is tied to satisfaction with what buyers buy from you, and to the buyers' experience buying from you.
In studying, researching, and practicing in the field of strategic account management, we've found 6 areas can almost universally be improved.
Today's sales winners harness the power of ideas. Our latest book, Insight Selling, outlines exactly what sellers need to do to transform into insight sellers, and start inspiring buyers with valuable new perspectives.
Client loyalty is tough to earn.
Fred Reichheld, author of The Loyalty Effect and creator of the Net Promoter System, found that most corporations lose 50% of their customers every 5 years, 50% of employees in 4 years, and 50% of investors in less than one year.
I worked with a company recently whose sellers had to drive their own demand. In one case, a seller engaged a buyer in a discussion about an opportunity, and the buyer was interested. They had a few meetings, but then the sale fizzled out.
When the seller asked why, the buyer told him that they simply weren't going to pursue it further.
The seller said to me later, "The business impact story here was tremendous; more than a 10 times return on investment was easy to see. That this sale didn't move forward...I can't believe they just didn't see it."
We then talked to the buyer as a part of our analysis of the lost sale. When we mentioned the ROI case to the buyer and asked him about it, he said, "Oh, I saw the ROI case. I got it. I would have loved to achieve it. I just didn't believe it would come true."
The buyer saw the ROI; he just didn't believe it. There was too much risk.
Ask most people about the strength of their core client relationships and they'll say, "Great. Rock solid."
Yet these comments usually refer to how much rapport or trust sellers feel they have with the client. They don't answer the question through the lens of business value the client receives from them.
Editor's note: We recently asked 5 sales experts, "What is the one piece of advice you would give a seller to help them exceed their sales targets this year?" The following is Mike Schultz's response.
I've seen more people intend to crush their goals than I have seen people actually crush their goals. They talk about how they're going to make it to the top. They read books and attend seminars. They talk a good game.
We've written a lot about our What Sales Winners Do Differently research, in which we studied more than 700 B2B sales purchases by buyers representing $3.1 billion in annual purchasing power. We've shared with you how sales winners don't only sell differently, they sell radically differently from second-place finishers.
Your sales team isn't hitting quota.
You have aggressive growth goals but keep falling short.
You want more of your sales team to transition from average to top performers.
Email prospecting is a hot topic these days—and it should be because it works. Or at least, it works when it's done right.
In 5 Sales Prospecting Myths Debunked, we found that email is the #1 way buyers prefer to be contacted by sellers.
"It was like a phantom swooped in in the eleventh hour and killed the sale."
Retaining current customers costs 6-7x less than acquiring news ones,1 and improving customer retention rates by a mere 5% can increase profit per customer by 25%-95%.2 So it makes sense that top companies focus on building relationships, increasing loyalty, and selling more to current customers as a growth strategy.
Likability in Sales – Does it Matter?
Years ago, I was working for a company that had just made the decision to go public. After a lengthy deliberation, the company chose a particular big-five firm (at the time there were five) to handle the preparations for our public offering. Curious, I asked the chief financial officer how he made the decision.
Consider the challenges your company faces in strategic account management. For each factor indicate how challenging it is to your company's SAM efforts.
Companies take lots of actions to grow accounts. Some work better than others.
However, none of them work very well if you don't take care of one important action up front.
How many of your accounts take advantage of your full suite of products and services?
How much more could you be selling to your existing accounts?
There's one question I wish I got asked more when working with leaders looking to invest in B2B sales training. That question is, "What will it really take to get the best results?"
This is one of the most cited statistics in the sales world these days—as if it's some kind of big news.
Wait...so you mean buyers do research and talk internally before they bring in outsiders? No way, dude! That's, like, revolutionary!
At RAIN Group it's our mission to help you unleash your sales potential. Through the RAIN Selling blog we strive to bring you the freshest sales research, tips, and strategies that will help you make breakthroughs in your sales results. In 2014 we did just that and we did it with gusto.
This is Ari. If it weren't for the innovative research and doctors at Boston Children's Hospital, he wouldn't be here.
That's why, this year, on behalf of our clients and business partners, RAIN Group is pleased to make a financial contribution to the Heart Center at Boston Children's Hospital.
It's that time of year again. The leaves have fallen from the trees, the temperature has dropped, and the calendar is filling up with holiday parties, ski trips, and family gatherings. Thanksgiving marks the start of the holiday season, the time of year when we reflect on the relationships we have with family, friends, customers, and co-workers. Thanksgiving in particular is a time to give thanks and show your appreciation.
Like anything, insight selling comes with its own potential pitfalls. To help you avoid them, we have outlined the most common insight selling mistakes. Some points are tactical, and others strategic.
Download: Your Guide to Insight Selling Success.
Buyers buy from sellers who are sources of ideas.
Negotiation is a craft that can be learned by just about anyone, as I discussed in my recent podcast with RainToday.
Sales negotiation can be a nerve-wracking process. Without the right knowledge or tools at your disposal, getting to the best agreement can be elusive.
In this podcast, RAIN Group's President Mike Schultz discusses how to overcome your fears, gain confidence, and leave behind some common misconceptions about sales negotiation.
Last month we released a complimentary white paper, 5 Common Sales Negotiation Mistakes.
Curious How to Win More Sales?
One of the major findings of our research on What Sales Winners Do Differently is that today's sales winners don't just sell the value of their products and services, they are the value. They are knowledgeable experts who bring ideas and new perspectives to the table. Essentially, they harness the power of ideas when selling, and it gives them the winning edge.
Can You Identify the 16 Common Sales Negotiation Techniques Used By Buyers?
Last week we shared our infographic on 16 Tactics Buyers Use in Sales Negotiations. The infographic highlights the most common sales negotiation techniques that buyers use, what they look like, and how you can prepare for and respond to each so you can successfully negotiate with buyers on their terms.
Good negotiators have the ability to recognize the negotiation style of the other party.
When a buyer comes to the negotiation in partner mode, it allows you to work collaboratively to create possibilities that expand the pie and result in the best possible agreement for both sides.
But what about when your buyer takes a different approach? What if your buyer is just trying to get the price reduced, get more from you for less, or something else altogether?
Negotiation is everywhere: in selling, setting salaries, getting the labor union back to the table, figuring out where to go out to dinner... even getting your kids to go to bed.
A long time ago, I was fly fishing with a grizzled, old, big company leadership consultant. I asked him what he thought differentiated good consultants from great consultants—those at the pinnacle of the game.
He said, "Let me think."
You've been working on a sale for 4 months and everything's going great. Your potential customer, the decision maker, is talking as if the deal is done. But before final sign off, you must meet with the CFO.
You get to the meeting.
Should Buyers Take You Seriously?
What do James Franco, Daniel Craig, and Mo'Nique all have in common? They're described as actors who bring gravitas to their roles on the big and small screens.* Another is Sir Patrick Stewart, who embodied gravitas as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Picard had power and authority. He commanded respect. When he spoke, the Enterprise—and everyone else in the universe—listened.
Is Your Need for Approval Holding You Back from Sales Success?
How many times have you left a sales meeting and thought, "I should have said that..."?
Or, during a meeting, as you listened to what a prospect was saying, you thought, "That's not right; he will be making a big mistake if he goes down that path," but you never voiced your opinion?
Do You Have What It Takes to Become an Insight Seller?
There's a revolution underway in sales. What used to work, even just a few years ago, is no longer enough to win major sales today.
As a result, a new breed of seller, who's beating out the competition and winning the sale, has emerged: the insight seller.
Insight sellers share new ideas and perspectives with their buyers, and they collaborate with buyers to develop the best solutions. They don't just sell the value of their products and services, they become the value.
Imagine for a minute that you're a master carpenter. You've been building houses your whole life, trying your best to hone your craft and deliver the highest quality work every day that you possibly could.
A couple of years ago, I was involved in a major rebranding effort for a Fortune 100 financial services firm. Based on extensive research, their chief marketing officer decided their new brand positioning should be focused on "easier."
Easier to do business with. Easier to conduct banking transactions. Easier to get a mortgage, car loan, or business investment from.
In the latter half of the 1700s, German astrologist and physician Franz Anton Mesmer treated his patients by looking deeply into their eyes and waving magnets in front of their faces. Mesmer believed barriers in our bodies disrupted the natural flow of the processes that gave us life and health. He further believed his penetrating eye gazing and object waving restored natural order inside his patients and relieved all sorts of maladies.
Lots of things have changed in the world of sales, but some things have not. Building trust was important 50 years ago, and it's just as important today.
When buyers trust sellers, they depend on them, listen to them, give them access, and spend time with them.
Since articles like "The End of Solution Sales" and "Selling is Not About Relationships" were published in the Harvard Business Review, there's been a lot of disagreement in the sales world about what's working and what's not. The arguments behind these articles were steeped in data. The arguments against these articles seemed more based on experience and belief. Which were true? We didn't care one way or the other, but we certainly wanted to know.
So we decided it was time to collect and analyze fresh data to find out what's really going on in sales.
After studying over 700 B2B purchases, sifting through hundreds of pages of data, talking to tens of thousands of sellers and sales leaders, and more than a year in the writing process, we are thrilled that our new book, Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently is finally here.
Think about someone you seek out when you're working through a challenge.
They help you think things through, see what's important. They ask the right questions. They listen. They don't just give you answers—they help you come up with them.
In Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently, we reveal the results of our extensive analysis of over 700 B2B purchases from the buyer's perspective.
In our research, we found that sales winners consistently exhibit behaviors on three levels: they connect, convince, and collaborate.
The sales landscape has shifted in the last few years.
Buyers are more informed than ever, competition is stiffer, and products and services are increasingly seen as replaceable, leaving most sellers at a loss for the best way to add value and differentiate.
In The Benchmark Report on High Performance in Strategic Account Management, we analyzed data from over 370 companies that engage in formal strategic account management. We asked about the top challenges that limit account growth and found the number one difference between high performers and the rest is: having an effective strategic account planning tool.
Only 19% of high performers reported having an effective account planning tool as challenging compared to 53% of everyone else (see graph below).
The challenge of having an effective tool does not, however, exist in a vacuum.
In this quick video, RAIN Group President Mike Schultz discusses the difference between being unique versus being distinct from the buyer's perspective.
Someone reaches out to you. They're enthusiastic. Ask for information. Want to talk to you on the phone. Ask for a proposal. Tell you they're "genuinely interested" in what you're offering. And "need something concrete to discuss in a meeting that's coming up."
The sale doesn't move forward. No decision is made. No further action from your side required. And "they'll be back in touch when they know more."
Here's the thing: sometimes the people we start talking to are not the people we should be talking to.
Bringing in new customers is expensive. According to research by Fred Reichheld of Bain & Company, it costs 6 to 7x more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing customer.
In our own work, we regularly find companies have significant, untapped opportunities for growing existing accounts.
Yet cross-selling, up-selling, and growing accounts is a major challenge for many companies.
I recently returned from an industry conference. The speakers were excellent and it was great to get away from my desk, connect with the attendees, and have the opportunity to step back and think big picture about what I need to be doing to drive success in my position. I returned with all sorts of notes, to-dos, and grand visions for change.
Fortunately, the reasons sales training fails are both predictable and fixable. By avoiding common mistakes, you set yourself up for successful training initiatives that lead to increased sales performance and long-term revenue growth.
In the Benchmark Report on High Performance in Strategic Account Management, we studied more than 370 companies that engage in formal strategic account management. We looked at what sets High Performers apart from the rest, and what you need to do to become a high-performing organization.
According to recent data from the Social Media and Sales Quota report from Social Centered Selling, 78.6% of sellers using social selling outperformed those who didn't. And social sellers were 23% more successful in terms of meeting and exceeding quota.
The question isn't if social selling works. It's how.
Top Sales World has announced the finalists for its annual Top Sales & Marketing Awards and we're pleased to share that RAIN Group has been nominated in three categories.
This live event has passed. Click here to view the recording.
In our What Sales Winners Do Differently research, we found that the number one factor separating sales winners from second-place finishers is this: Sellers educated buyers with new ideas or perspectives.
In other words, the seller became known as a source of insight.
Negotiations are everywhere. From negotiating important sales opportunities to negotiating with our kids at bedtime, we're constantly working to reach agreement with others. In this game of give and take, it's too easy to get stuck, make mistakes, and lose big.
Insight selling is an old concept that has recaptured the fancy of the sales world, and rightly so, because it's about adding value. Specifically, it's about the seller adding value over-and-above the product or service.
Too many folks, however, think insight selling is about educating buyers through presentations. They're about half right, but without the other half, they're missing out on the full impact of insight selling.
In this short video, RAIN Group President Mike Schultz talks about how emotion plays a role in business sales.
More than ever, sales teams are struggling with unqualified leads, missed sales goals, and lost opportunities. Increasingly, company and sales leaders are turning to coaching as a solution.
Shouldn't the same be expected from sales coaching?
"Don't want to be a pest."
"I am not sure what to do to keep in touch."
"I feel like a stalker."
Obviously, doing great work is the first step in keeping in the best graces of your clients. But client loyalty can be fleeting and is not something you should take for granted.
Sales coaching has become a hot topic in business as more and more companies see a significant return on investment. However, where executive coaching and personal-effectiveness coaching yield positive results, sales coaching lags behind. Whether it's a lack of time, inconsistent coaching conversations, unavailability of tools and resources to succeed, or weak coaching skills, sales managers and leaders simply aren't producing strong results.
Sales coaching—working one-on-one or in small groups with firms and individuals in a highly focused manner to help them increase effectiveness, revenues, and sales—is a large part of what I do on a day-to-day basis.
Done right, it's one of the most powerful, impactful ways to increase revenue and boost individual or group performance.
In our Benchmark Report on High Performance in Strategic Account Management research study, we learned that high performers—those companies that had much greater revenue and profit growth in their strategic accounts than the rest—were 2.8 times more likely to have an effective process for planning ways to add value to accounts.
In this short video, RAIN Group President Mike Schultz why making the ROI case in sales is no longer enough.
I spend a good percentage of my time selling. I also spend a lot of time coaching and training sales teams. One question that comes up time after time is, "How do I shorten the sales cycle?"
My quick response is usually, "Have more in each stage of your pipeline at all times, so the sales cycle just seems shorter."
Of course, that rarely makes anyone feel better. So based on RAIN Group's research and experience, here are the first five of ten commandments that will help make your sales process move more quickly.
You've worked on building rapport with your prospect and you've uncovered their aspirations and afflictions. The question then becomes, "So what?"
If your afflictions don't get solved, so what? What won't happen? Will they get worse? How will they affect the bottom line of your company, division, or department? How will they affect your life?
If your aspirations don't become reality, so what? Will your competition get ahead of you if you don't innovate? Will you lose market share if you aren't aggressive in your strategy? Will you never be able to grow your business to a point where you can sell it and reach your personal financial goals? Will the promotion you desire continue to elude you?
Your ability to quantify the impact and paint the "so what" picture is the foundation for how important it is for the decision maker to buy from you. If you don't answer the "so what" question, the initiative will fall to the bottom of the priority list.
In this short video, RAIN Group President Mike Schultz talks about how price isn't necessarily the greatest differentiator in sales—it's the seller.
Most of my clients want to have better meetings with senior executives. Meetings that feel like conversations, not pitches. Meetings that build deeper relationships. Meetings that uncover more ways in which they can help their customers.
Behind closed doors, when I ask what's holding them back, many will tell me things like, "I don't feel comfortable," "I have nothing to offer to them,"" or "I'm not at their level."
Selling to the C-suite can be difficult, and getting a first meeting can be a real challenge. But, in my experience, the most difficult part is not getting the first meeting. It's getting the second one. Or the third one.
It's keeping the relationship going.
Talking about the differences between men and women is a tricky thing. But we need to deal with tricky things if we want to be good sales managers.
The recently published book, Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, has a nugget of knowledge every sales manager should know. As the title suggests, it's about the science behind why some people win and others struggle.
Yet two things are true. 1) This is how it happens. And, 2) how to lead sales conversations, influence your prospects to want to buy, buy from you, buy a robust solution, and pay full price for it confounds many people.
For our What Sales Winners Do Differently research, we studied over 700 major purchases from buyers who represented $3.1 billion dollars in annual purchasing power.
Guess what: it's the seller and how they sell that most separates sales winners from the rest.
The following list reveals what buyers say are the top 10 areas where sellers who win outperform those who come in second place.
The five seller profiles, as defined by the authors of The Challenger Sale in "Selling Is Not About Relationships," a Harvard Business Review blog post, are as follows. We list them in order by what they found in their study to be least to most likely to be a top performer in sales.
Most people think of prospecting as reaching out to people they don't know, with an over-the-top approach, to interest them in buying something they're not thinking about. This isn't the only way to generate more leads.
Prospecting isn't just a cold activity, and you don't need a sledgehammer approach to make it work.
Take this approach in most sales situations, however, and you'll lose more than your share of sales that you should have won. Interestingly, whether you have a two-thousand- or two-million-dollar price point, to increase your odds of winning new customers, you still need to do the same basic planning and know the same essential information before your sales calls.
Ask 100 sellers at 100 companies why their customers buy from them, and you're likely to hear 100 answers with the same underlying theme: the value we provide.
Sellers describe their value to us in a number of ways: we get results. Our relationships are very close. They get from us what they've always wanted (but never gotten) from other companies. We bring innovative solutions to the table. And so on.
Pretty obvious, right? To win sales you have to maximize value.
Want to make more sales? Start by having better conversations.
Think about it. You spent months chasing a senior decision maker or prospect, making calls, and sending e-mails, and they finally agreed to sit down with you. You invested significant amounts of time, effort, energy and—sometimes considerable—resources to win them over.
And now you find yourself in a room with a senior executive. Now what?
See an article about differentiation and it's likely to be about marketing. Differentiation often starts with marketing, but it's in the selling process that it truly comes alive.
Here at RAIN Group, we recently analyzed just over 700 business-to-business sales made to buyers who represent $3.1 billion in annual purchases from industries with complex sales.
The purpose of the research was to find out what sales winners do differently in the selling process compared to the sellers that didn't win, but who came in second place.
All the strategies. All the meetings. All the planning.
All the effort you put in to maximizing your sales to existing accounts will be for naught if you don't first talk about, and then do something about, this hidden killer of account growth.
Imagine for a minute you sold everything you should be selling across all of your firm's capabilities to your existing clients. If all the buying centers bought all of the capabilities they should be buying, how much would your key account sales increase?
When people spend time analyzing this carefully, they find the potential to expand sales to existing clients is huge.
Given the great potential for growth, many companies give proactive key account sales quite the effort, but few achieve the results they should. The problem is they can't, or for some reason simply don't, create their own opportunities.
What is the #1 challenge or issue you face when it comes to growing sales for your business?
When I recently reached out to my network and asked that same question, 75% mentioned sales prospecting as their #1 challenge.
The problem isn't that people don't know what to do; it's that what they've always done no longer works. Want proof? Think about the last time you met an actual decision maker at a networking event, and that conversation led to a sale. How about from a cold call? Trade show? Advertisement?
The simple truth is this: if you do what everybody else is doing, you'll get the same results everybody else is getting.
In this short video, RAIN Group President Mike Schultz shares some insights from our Benchmark Report on High Performance in Strategic Account Management, including the consequences of neglecting compensation alignment and accountability, and gives you a few ideas for what you can do about them.
Sometimes it's just easy. You meet a person and connect. Conversation flows. You find common areas professionally and personally. Ideas bounce back and forth, and you start talking about how you can work on something together. Before you know it, work is under way, and the collaboration is the definition of one plus one equals three.
Sometimes it ain't easy. You meet a person, and they're all business. Getting them to engage with you in any sense is slow. Painful. You open up and share, provide great ideas, and work hard to get the other person to see the value in working with you. It should be plain to see, but it's not. You're met with aloofness and suspicion.
You try to engage on a personal level and ask, "How was your weekend?" His reply, "Fine." Then dead air.
"It's impossible to get serious face time with senior executives."
I hear things like this all the time from professionals, sellers, and other business leaders who want to get more time with decision makers, but haven't yet cracked the code.
In our white paper Why Strategic Account Management Fails, we noted that high performers in strategic account management were significantly less likely to face 16 of 19 common challenges in Strategic Account Management. We didn't, however, have space to go into much detail in this specific area. Since publishing the white paper, we've been asked quite a bit for more detail on the specific challenges faced by companies that engage in formal strategic account management, and the differences between high performers and average / below-average performers.
Though access to the full Benchmark Report on High Performance in Strategic Account Management is reserved for one-on-one interactions and for our work with clients, we are happy to share this more in-depth look at some of the challenges that stood out to us.
"So tell me, what do you do?"
The leaders at the account need to know about the value we can bring them besides what we're doing for them right now.
We need to penetrate different divisions of the accounts.
Our relationships need to be deeper if we want to keep competitors out.
We need to work directly with decision makers at the enterprise level.
Nice list, but not unique to strategic account management.
Rule #1: Play to Win-Win.
Win-win is a common negotiating philosophy. The idea is to find solutions that satisfy the interests of both parties, and maximize value on both sides. Since repeat business and referrals are so important in complex sales, employing win-win as part of your selling technique and philosophy should be a foregone conclusion.
If your firm is like most, you've been using CRM software for years now. Name after name, title after title, data point upon data point, you've likely stockpiled a huge amount of prospecting information through various lead generation activities. You've created countless records and guided each one through your sales pipeline.
What do you do with those records once you can no longer push them forward? Again, if your firm is like most, you probably leave them languishing in your database, perhaps with a sad "lost – chose competitor" or "dead – no budget" tag attached.
But these are more than just dead data. You probably have years of information on individuals that ran into budget issues, delayed decisions, or even hired a competitor. Now, months or even years later, departments may have allocated bigger budgets, industry dynamics may have changed, and competitors may not have lived up to expectations.
At RAIN Group, our advice to organizations looking to create a culture of sustained, serious selling: Make sure the bucket doesn't have any holes or it won't hold water.
Time and again we see organizations doing a certain percent of what they need to do to help their teams achieve more sales success and increase sales performance (our favorite, "Can you come in and give a 90-minute speech that will charge up the team for the next 12 months?"), but rarely do they put forth 100% effort. If you're only doing 70% of what you need to do to increase sales performance, you don't get 70% results; you get much less. Like patching a leak in the bottom of a boat, if you don't patch it 100%, it still takes on water.
Failure is popular these days.
I've been reading (and recommend) The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. In The Lean Startup, Ries covers a number of concepts to help entrepreneurs and their new ventures to succeed. One such concept is 'Validated Learning'.
Achieving your goals isn't a slam dunk. Can you do what it takes to meet them?
I recently started going to a personal trainer. At the beginning of our very first session, she asked, "So, what are you trying to accomplish?"
"To get in better shape?", I hesitantly answered.
"Well, without a clear goal, you will not be able to see your progress, you will lose momentum, and we won't be able to see if the training is paying off."
I have been truly obsessed with baseball lately. My beloved Red Sox folded faster than the deck chairs on the Titanic in one of the greatest meltdowns in all of baseball history. And the talk shows are full of Danny from Quincy and Al from Everett suggesting changes that need to happen in the off-season. One fan suggested freshening up the pitching staff by having relievers start games, starters come in to relieve, and closers (generally relegated to the ninth inning) pitch from the seventh on. What a disaster that would be!


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All brands >>> Ferrari >>> Enzo
Summarization of Ferrari Enzo:
Ferrari Enzo have only one modification of doors quantity:2.
Car width is 80.1 mm.
Car height is 45.2 mm.
Car length is 185.1 mm.
Ferrari Enzo was prodused only in 2003.
You can find price for this car for 643330$
Ferrari Enzo was equipped with only one option of the engine with 12 cylinders.
clearance of this car is 0 mm.
Related models:
Ferrari 575M
Ferrari 612 Scaglietti
Ferrari Superamerica
Ferrari 430 Scuderia
Ferrari Enzo information:
Ferrari Enzo- A Limited Production Beauty
This car was not a production model. The Enzo was a limited run model that was brought out to test Ferrari's engineers, to create the most powerful, fastest car they could. They put in all the thought and the tricks they could make this the fastest car they've ever built. This machine does not care how it looks- it is fast, and it is precise, and that is what matters, both to the people who own them and the people who built them.
What makes this car unique?
This car was Ferrari's first car that was built with no limits, no hesitation, no thought to limits or restrictions, and as such has some revolutionary new things built into it. The technical details are covered more in-depth later in the article, so suffice here to say that in comparison to its older cars it represents exactly what Ferrari wanted for it- a step forward.
The interior is much of what one would expect from an F1 inspired Ferrari. Steering wheel mounted controls, tire pressure monitors, advanced screens and precise controls within easy reach, and column-mounted paddle-shifters give this car ease of control in ways you would expect from this sort of car, inspired as it was by racing, by Ferrari's recent run of success on the F1 tracks.
Ferrari is not a company to make you pay more for the features you might want from them, indeed they give you everything in the basic package, and though the cost may reflect that, it means that you know that you're getting everything they could pack into the car within their design limits. So options are generally pretty low, but with that said the base design of the car means that you won't miss the lack of options.
Model-wise the same story goes. Both from Maserati and Ferrari there are cars which were based on the same frame and transmission designs as was the Enzo, however the large amount of differences between those cars and the Enzo that they really can't be considered models of this car. The Millechilli- a codename for an experimental sports car- is supposed to be designed off of the Enzo's frame. The FXX is another experimental car, one that for the foreseeable future Ferrari will use to test their new designs.
Tech Specs- the numbers and the details
The car, as might be expected, is as impressive under the hood as it looks and performs. With 650 horsepower, and 485 foot-pounds of torque, even numerically it's an impressive car. With top speeds over 218 mph, and boasting a dry weight of 2766 lbs, the car, for its speed and power is light, even in comparison to other sports cars even by Ferrari, which can sometimes weigh well over 4000 pounds.
With a 65 degree V12 nestled comfortably over its rear axle, the car sits light on the road. Reports from the test drivers talk about the way the car brakes, the way it stops- indeed, even 200-0 stopping as fast as the car can, she barely squats or leans- you feel it as you push against the harness, but the car doesn't even notice. Carbon-fiber reinforced 14.9 inch brake pads, probably have something to do with that stopping speed. The way the car responds has to do with the independent suspension systems on both the front and rear wheels.
The Enzo is designed the way it is for a reason. It looks sleek, mean, not a line wasted, no excessive curve to be found. The car was built after countless hours of careful design, redesign, and rework. Expect no less than exact precision from this car, and understand that every hole and every angle is there for a reason. Her downward force on the road is almost always less than what the numbers might say, but it's done without loss of traction.
So it has the power- how does it drive?
At any given speed you can see the exact effect of her body on the way she rides, and handles. The car is made by some of the best manufacturers and designers on the planet- no joke, these people understand their business. You won't find yourself losing traction in one of these. That said, don't expect her to handle easy- she has the best money can buy under her hood and in that body, and you can expect no less performance from her.
That said, unlike some other modern cars, she was not designed to cater to every man. Which means the Enzo drives mean, and drives fast- so take care when you're going around town. She handles exactly as well as you'd expect even at high speeds, but it takes a special sort of knowledge to drive a car like that.
What's it going to cost to keep her on the road?
The average fuel economy for a car like this sits at around 15 mpg, but keep this in mind when looking at that number- on the highway, it'll be higher, in the city, it'll be lower. So plan accordingly, and remember that the car is unique, how you drive and how it sits is unique- so it won't always be the same.
Parting thoughts- Ferrari and the Enzo
This car- this article could be two or three times this length and still not go over every small nuance that comes with a car like this. Everything, from the rubber on the road to the leather on the wheel to the engine block behind you, everything in this car has been considered and optimized. Don't expect anything less than impeccable performance and responsiveness.
That said, it's a hard car to find. Only 399 were made, and those were all claimed the moment they were announced. Keep your eyes peeled, and ask around, and with a good amount of luck and a lot of persistence, you might find one someday. Just remember that it's a collectible and a wonderful machine, at that, so do not get to thinking the cost will be cheap. It is, after all, a Ferrari.
Ferrari Enzo Images:
Ferrari Enzo #1
Ferrari Enzo Image #1
Ferrari Enzo #10
Ferrari Enzo Image #10
Ferrari Enzo interior
Ferrari Enzo interior #1
ferrari-enzo-interior.jpg
ferrari-enzo-interior-1.jpg
Ferrari Enzo engine
Ferrari Enzo engine #1
ferrari-enzo-engine.jpg
ferrari-enzo-engine-1.jpg
Ferrari Enzo black
Ferrari Enzo black #1
ferrari-enzo-black.jpg
ferrari-enzo-black-1.jpg
Ferrari Enzo white
Ferrari Enzo white #1
ferrari-enzo-white.jpg
ferrari-enzo-white-1.jpg
Ferrari Enzo red
Ferrari Enzo red #1
ferrari-enzo-red.jpg
ferrari-enzo-red-1.jpg
Ferrari Enzo wheels
Ferrari Enzo wheels #1
ferrari-enzo-wheels.jpg
ferrari-enzo-wheels-1.jpg
Ferrari Enzo modifications:
All Ferrari Enzo years
modification price cylinder wheels doors width x length x height clearance
2dr Coupe (6.0L 12cyl 6AM) (2003)
643,330$ 12 rear wheel drive 2 80.1 x 185.1 x 45.2
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Philosophy and Law
Philosophers Appointed To High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence
. June 18, 2018 at 11:04 am 3
The European Commission (EC), which proposes and administers European Union (EU) law and policy, has created a new High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, the aim of which is to advise on the crafting and implementation of the EU's strategy on artificial intelligence.
Among the 52 experts are several people who work in philosophy. They are:
Mark Coeckelbergh, Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Vienna
Luciano Floridi, Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford
Eric Hilgendorf, Professor of criminal law, criminal procedure and legal philosophy at the University of Würzburg
Thomas Metzinger, Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Aimee van Wynsberghe, Assistant Professor in Ethics and Technology, TU Delft
The tasks of the group, according to the EC, are:
Advise the Commission on next steps addressing AI-related mid to long-term challenges and opportunities through recommendations which will feed into the policy development process, the legislative evaluation process and the development of a next-generation digital strategy.
Propose to the Commission draft AI ethics guidelines, covering issues such as fairness, safety, transparency, the future of work, democracy and more broadly the impact on the application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, including privacy and personal data protection, dignity, consumer protection and non-discrimination
Support the Commission on further engagement and outreach mechanisms to interact with a broader set of stakeholders in the context of the AI Alliance, share information and gather their input on the group's and the Commission's work.
You can read more about the group here.
Bubo the Mechanical Owl
Categories Philosophy and Law
Tags artificial intelligenceethicsEuropean Commissionphilosophersphilosophytechnology
Good initiative and I'm looking forward to see how this group will influence policies. A question: why not include in the list those members of the Expert Group who specialise in ethics? Do they not "work in philosophy"?Report
Reply to Anco
Thanks for this question. I went back over the list and added Aimee van Wynsberghe, who I ought to have included originally—my apologies. I meant to mention anyone with a faculty appointment in a philosophy department, or who is a graduate student in a philosophy department, or whose academic journal publications are mostly in philosophy journals. DN is primarily, as its tagline says, "news for and about the philosophy profession," and while of course I know it is up for debate how to delimit "philosophy profession" and that there will be ambiguous and anomalous cases, the foregoing characterization tends to work pretty well.Report
Reply to Justin Weinberg
Aimee van Wynsberghe was the one who initially made me wonder about the underlying rationale for inclusion. I understand the inherent fuzzy-ness of such delineations in practice, but I think its good to include her in the list. Thanks for the quick reply!Report


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Tag: alzheimers
Alzheimer associations in Asia
February 4, 2019 November 1, 2019 ~ Jo Sun	~ Leave a comment
Many caregivers in Asia can agree, it's super hard to find resources and in some countries, it's hard even to know where to start. When we go online there are so many websites and resources, it's hard to even know where to start. It's hard especially when a lot of information tends to be advertisements for private organisations promoting their services. When this post from Monica Cations post popped up on twitter, it was like, wow, what a great idea!
Let's have one for countries in Asia. The list is below is one for Asia, and if you wish to view the full list of organisations, you can visit https://www.alz.co.uk/associations
Bangladesh * www.alzheimerbd.com
Brunei ** demensia.brunei@gmail.com
China www.adc.org.cn
Hong Kong SAR www.hkada.org.hk
Indonesia www.alzi.or.id
Japan www.alzheimer.or.jp
Macau SAR www.mada.org.mo
Malaysia www.adfm.org.my
Philippines www.alzphilippines.com
Republic of Korea www.silverweb.or.kr
Singapore www.alz.org.sg
Sri Lanka www.alzlanka.org
TADA Chinese Taipei www.tada2002.org.tw
Thailand www.azthai.org
8 Residents in a care home and it costs no more than a regular care home in Switzerland
November 16, 2018 November 1, 2019 ~ Jo Sun
8 Residents in a care home and it costs no more than a regular care home in Switzerland. Watch the videos to find out more. Please note that in the first video the language does not adhere to dementia language guidelines.
You're the voice: the evolution of the PainChek app
April 2018| Australia – You're the voice: the evolution of the PainChek app
How can someone tell you they're experiencing pain or discomfort that isn't overtly visible, if they can't communicate through speech? Professor Jeff Hughes from Curtin's School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences has created an app that gives a voice to people who are living with conditions that impact upon their ability to verbally communicate with others.
One of these conditions is dementia, a neurodegenerative condition that affects the brain's cognitive ability. It's currently the second leading cause of death in Australia, and with the number of people living with dementia set to reach more than 536,000 by 2025, the demand for tools that help treat and manage the condition is sure to increase.
Professor Hughes' brainchild was the world's first smartphone app for pain assessment and monitoring, developed under the banner of Curtin start-up company ePAT (electronic Pain Assessment and Technologies Ltd) from 2014. The start-up was acquired by PainChek Ltd in 2016, and the app is now being further developed and marketed by the company as 'PainChek'.
The app provides an accurate and reliable means for healthcare professionals and family members providing care at home to assess pain, and ultimately help to improve quality of life for those they care for.
"A significant issue among people with advanced dementia is that they no longer have the communication skills to express the level of pain they are suffering," Hughes explains.
"The seriousness of their pain can often go unrecognised. But PainChek, a smart-device app, which utilises automation and artificial intelligence, allows for the detection and quantification of pain, based in part on a patient's facial expressions.
PainChek uses facial recognition and a 42-point pain scale to help healthcare professionals and family members decipher the level of pain being experienced by their patient or family member, allowing them to respond accordingly. A level between zero to six represents no pain, seven to 11 mild pain, 12 to 15 moderate pain and anything above 15 means severe pain.
The tailored pain scale was developed by Hughes and his team through a tireless review of existing literature and tools, including the well-known Abbey Pain Scale, an observational pain assessment tool used nationally in the assessment of pain in people with dementia.
PainChek automates pain assessment, allowing for the continual evaluation of pain, and providing the user with access to a personalised pain chart of their patient or family member, which has been mapped over an extended timeframe. The chart is designed to be used in conjunction with other information recorded on the app, which correlates with or affects pain levels, such as medication types and dosages, activity levels and behaviour. All recorded data is backed up when the device is connected to the internet.
Since its inception in 2013, Hughes and his team have been working hard to assess and monitor the performance of the app. They've conducted validation studies with a range of Perth-based aged care providers, including Mercy Care, Juniper, Bethanie and Brightwater, comparing each generation of the app with the Abbey Pain Scale. Data from these trials was used to support the registration of the app as a Class 1 medical device in Australia (Therapeutics Goods Administration registration) and Europe (CE Mark) by PainChek Ltd.
Trials in aged care facilities were successful, validating the functionality and purpose of PainChek. One of the residents living with dementia was previously cared for at home by her husband. He says the app has been an invaluable tool for assessing his wife's constant lower back pain.
"When we tested the app on my wife, we got a score of four out of 10. It was so quick and accurate. She's in pain constantly with her lower back, and has trouble sitting down. The pain scale changes daily, and it makes me feel really comfortable that I can administer the necessary pain killers at any given time."
In addition, the research has led to the development of a partnership with Dementia Support Australia, which comprises the two entities Dementia Behaviour Management Advisory Service and Severe Behaviour Response Teams.
"Dementia Support Australia sends consultants out to assist in the care of people living with dementia who have significant behavioural problems," Professor Hughes says.
"What they had found from their own observations was that somewhere between 35 to 60 per cent of the people had undetected or undertreated pain, and they wanted the means to improve the assessment and documenting of that pain, and better demonstrate the effectiveness of their service.
"PainChek Ltd are effectively doing an implementation trial with them, starting here in Western Australia and then in South Australia. As part of the trial, we provide training and, after each roll out, we also offer clinical and technical support. In 2018, we'll roll out the app to all 150 of their consultants Australia-wide."
The development of the app hasn't stopped there, with PainChek Ltd working on adaptations that can cater for other groups unable to communicate verbally: infants and pre-verbal children.
"Twenty per cent of children have chronic pain, with common causes being headaches and gastrointestinal or musculoskeletal conditions. And that pain can produce a whole range of issues, such as behavioural problems, poor interaction with others and avoiding school. Most people think that little kids don't feel pain the way adults do, but we're learning this isn't the case," Hughes reveals.
The intended impact of the children's app is three-fold. One, to provide parents with surety about whether they're taking the appropriate action. Two, to assist healthcare professionals in deciding what level of pain a child might be in and which medication to administer if applicable, and three, to encourage the investigation of the root cause of the pain to then seek the appropriate treatment.
Much like the adult app, the children's app contains a number of items to help assess pain, however, the facial recognition element is far more in-depth due to the fact that children typically use more pain-associated facial expressions than adults. As a result, Hughes' team has been capturing videos of children who are in pain, primarily during the immunisation process, with each video contributing to a database of coded images. With a preliminary algorithm already built, PainChek Ltd plans to have the first prototype available for trialling in 2018.
More information about the app can be found on the PainChek website.
'It's Not a Disgrace, It's Dementia'
July 25, 2018 July 20, 2018 ~ Jo Sun	~ Leave a comment
Another great resource from Dementia Australia!
June 2018 | Australia – 'It's Not a Disgrace, It's Dementia' film released
Source: Dementia Australia
A new short film has been released for the Hindi-speaking community, designed to encourage acceptance of dementia as a medical condition, and not a normal part of ageing.
This is the latest in an award-winning series of films aimed at a number of non-English speaking communities in Australia to help de-stigmatise and promote awareness of the condition. The film was developed to help dispel myths and educate the community about the condition.
The film provides up-to-date information on dementia through interviews with Hindi-Australian doctors, carers, counsellors and the stories of the friends, families and carers of people diagnosed with dementia.
Dementia Australia counsellor Vandita Nijhawan said in the Indian community there can be shame when talking about things that happen within the house to outsiders, particularly when it affects the brain.
"Dementia is nothing to be ashamed of. I encourage people to use the free services available through Dementia Australia, which include translations of information about dementia," Ms Nijhawan said.
The video reassures friends and families of those diagnosed with dementia that feelings of shame or embarrassment can be alleviated by understanding that dementia is a common disease, such as heart disease or high blood-pressure.
The documentary-style film, titled 'It's Not a Disgrace, It's Dementia', is available online at youtube.com/watch?v=KYrD7R-5egk(link is external)
The 'It's Not a Disgrace It's Dementia' series of films are short and family-friendly, running at around 15 minutes in length. They are available in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Arabic, Serbian, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Assyrian, Croatian and Ukrainian, each with English subtitles.
This latest film has been produced by Dementia Australia in partnership with Why Documentaries and the Multicultural Communities Council of the Illawarra. Dementia Australia would also like to thank Sri Om Care and the Australian-Indian Aged Care Support Holistic Association (AASHA) for their participation in the filming.
For more dementia resources in Hindi visit dementia.org.au/resources/hindi
Neglect common in English care homes
March 23, 2018 March 23, 2018 ~ Jo Sun	~ Leave a comment
March 21, 2018 | London – Neglect common in English care homes
The largest-ever survey of care home staff in England, led by UCL researchers, has found that neglectful behaviours are widespread.
For the study, published today in PLOS ONE, care home staff were asked anonymously about positive and negative behaviours they had done or had witnessed colleagues doing.
Dr Claudia Cooper (UCL Psychiatry), the study's lead author, said: "We found low rates of verbal and physical abuse; the abusive behaviours reported were largely matters of neglect.
"These behaviours were most common in care homes that also had high rates of staff burnout, which suggests it's a consequence of staff who are under pressure and unable to provide the level of care they would like to offer."
From 92 care homes across England, 1,544 care home staff responded to the survey. The staff were asked whether they had, in the past three months, witnessed a range of positive and negative behaviours. Their responses were linked to data from each care home describing a measure of burnout in care home staff.
Some negative behaviours were categorised as 'abusive', using a standard definition,* and based on the behaviour reported, rather than the intention of the care home staff. The most common abusive behaviours were: making a resident wait for care (26% of staff reported that happening); avoiding a resident with challenging behaviour (25%); giving residents insufficient time for food (19%); and taking insufficient care when moving residents (11%). Verbal abuse was reported by 5% of respondents, and physical abuse by 1.1%.
At least some abuse was identified in 91 of the 92 care homes.
Positive behaviours were reported to be much more common than abusive behaviours, however some positive but time-consuming behaviours were notably infrequent. For instance, more than one in three care home staff were rarely aware of a resident being taken outside of the home for their enjoyment, and 15% said activities were almost never planned around a resident's interests.
"Most care homes, and their staff, strive to provide person-centred care, meaning that care is designed around a person's needs, which requires getting to know the resident and their desires and values. But due to resources and organisational realities, care can often become more task-focused, despite intentions and aspirations to deliver person-centred care," said co-author Dr Penny Rapaport (UCL Psychiatry).
"Carers can't just be told that care should be person-centred – they need to be given the support and training that will enable them to deliver it," she said.
The study is part of the UCL MARQUE cohort study, which is also looking into cost-effective interventions to improve the quality of care for people with dementia, and will be using this anonymous reporting as a measure of how well training interventions are working.
More than two thirds of care homes residents have dementia. Agitated behaviours such as pacing, shouting or lashing out are more common in dementia, and can make provision of person-centred care very challenging for care staff to deliver, often with minimal training and limited resources.
"With the right training, care home staff may be able to deliver more effective care that doesn't need to be more expensive or time-consuming. If they understand and know how to respond to behaviour, they may be able to do more without greater resources," said the study's senior author, Professor Gill Livingston (UCL Psychiatry).
Dr Doug Brown, Chief Policy and Research Officer at Alzheimer's Society, commented: "70% of people living in care homes have dementia, and it's clear from these findings that they're bearing the brunt of a chronically underfunded social care system.
"It's upsetting but unsurprising that abusive behaviours were more common in homes with higher staff burnout. We've heard through our helpline of people with dementia not being fed, or not getting the drugs they need, because a carer isn't properly trained, or a care home is too short-staffed.
"By 2021, a million people in the UK will have dementia. The government must act now, with meaningful investment and reform, or we risk the system collapsing completely and people with dementia continuing to suffer needlessly."
The study was conducted by researchers at UCL and the Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust, and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the National Institute for Health Research.
Research paper in PLOS ONE
Dr Claudia Cooper's academic profile
Professor Gill Livingston's academic profile
Dr Penny Rapaport's academic profile
UCL Psychiatry
UCL Brain Sciences
Email: chris.lane [at] ucl.ac.uk
If you develop Alzheimer's, will your children get it too?
January 30, 2018 January 30, 2018 ~ Jo Sun	~ Leave a comment
Rebecca Sims, Cardiff University
The most common question I get asked is "Will my child get Alzheimer's disease?" In my experience, this concern is one of the biggest worries for sufferers, and given the devastating effects of the disease, it is not hard to see why it is a difficult thought to contemplate.
For those people with a familial form of Alzheimer's disease, the answer is quite straightforward. This type of disease is caused by one or more mutation(s) in one of three genes: the amyloid precursor protein (APP), Presenilin 1 (PSEN1) and Presenilin 2 (PSEN2). All of these genes are involved in the production of the amyloid protein. This protein accumulates to form sticky buildups known as plaques, which are found between the cells of the Alzheimer brain and are characteristic of disease.
Those of us who are concerned that they may be at risk from familial Alzheimer's disease can get a definitive answer through one of the many genetic tests available. A single copy of the mutated gene inherited from an affected parent will ultimately cause disease, with symptoms likely to be noticed before the age of 65 and typically between 30 and 60 years of age. Anyone concerned that they may suffer from this form of Alzheimer's should seek a referral to a genetic counsellor.
Fortunately, families with a familial form of disease represent less than 1% of all families afflicted by this debilitating disease. For the remaining Alzheimer's disease families, the answer as to the inheritance of disease is much less clear, and disease onset is certainly not inevitable.
Influencing disease
A combination of both genetic and environmental factors, such as age and gender, contribute to non-familial (also known as sporadic) disease risk, but how these risk factors interact and how many risk factors are required to cause disease is still unknown.
The genetics of non-familial Alzheimer's is complex: we know that nearly thirty genes, common in the general population, influence disease risk, with potentially hundreds more involved. Additionally, two genes of low frequency have consistently been identified, with an imminent publication by the International Genomics of Alzheimer's Project, showing another two rare genes have a relatively large effect on disease risk.
Perhaps most excitingly for researchers, genetics scientists have shown that four biological processes in Alzheimer's disease – that were not previously thought to play a casual role in disease onset – are actually involved. The first process is the immune response, in particular the actions of immune cells and how these potentially dysfunction, attacking the brain, which results in brain cell death.
The second is the transport of molecules into the cell, suggesting that there is a mechanism for the movement of damaging proteins into the brain. The third process that has a role in the onset of Alzheimer's is the synthesis and breakdown of fatty molecules. And the fourth is the processing of proteins that alters protein breakdown, movement, activity and interactions – all of which are essential for normal protein function.
Lifestyle risk
Age is the greatest risk factor for disease, with the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's roughly doubling every five years over the age of 65. Women also have more chance of developing the disease than men, potentially due to a reduction in female hormones after menopause.
Medical conditions that increase risk for dementia include cardiovascular factors (type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and obesity), and depression. While lifestyle factors such as physical inactivity, a diet that increases cholesterol, smoking and excessive alcohol intake, have all been shown to influence disease risk.
Even for those with a high number of genetic, environmental and lifestyle risk factors, Alzheimer's disease is not inevitable. Likewise, individuals with a low number of risk factors for disease are not precluded from developing Alzheimer's.
Given this lack of certainty and the lack of effective treatments for Alzheimer's, most experts don't recommend genetic testing for non-familial disease. This thinking may well evolve in the future, however, when research identifies new risk genes and improves our understanding of the dysfunctional processes in Alzheimer's disease.
Answering the burning question, whether you will pass Alzheimer's disease on to your children, is therefore still a near impossibility. But, as early diagnostic techniques improve, and with the prospect of a number of vaccines and therapeutics currently in clinical trials, risk prediction for Alzheimer's disease may become mainstream and part of a developing precision medicine culture.
Rebecca Sims, Research Fellow, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, Cardiff University
Plant compound found in spices and herbs in your kitchen can increase brain connections
December 15, 2015 December 16, 2015 ~ Jo Sun	~ Leave a comment
Researchers from The D'Or Institute for Research and Education discovered that a compound found in your everyday parsley, thyme, chamomile and red pepper can increase brain connections.
Read more about the article by clicking the link below.
Brazilian researchers from D'Or Institute for Research and Education, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Federal University of Bahia have demonstrated in laboratory that apigenin, a substance found in parsley, thyme, chamomile and red pepper, improves neuron formation and strengthens the connections between brain cells.
Source: Plant compound found in spices and herbs increases brain connections | EurekAlert! Science News


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On leaving Fort Myers we had an appointment with 3 Australians whom we were supposed to meet in Marathon for dinner. Well the Aussies did not make it. The famous trio have purchased a 72 foot wooden power boat from 1954. The age and the sheer size of the boat have brought countless problems on Paul, Robert and Natalie. After purchasing the boat, they thought they would be able to leave within a few days. They were stuck in Blinky Bills for almost three months and as Paul says, the famous Fort Myers triangle will catch you. "You can check out any time you like but you can never leave". The Aussie trio have also had countless run-ins with the long arm of law and in the States there is a plethora of those arms. It is very hard to avoid an encounter with the various law enforcement agents. No wonder the US boasts the highest number of prisoners per capita. The fact that these lovely people were not American citizens and cared not for that country shown by their willingness to leave its shores at the next most opportune moment did not seem to deter these law enforcers from boarding their boats and checking them every time they left port. They were even stopped in their dinghy and were told to put it on land. As if the Australians wanted to migrate to the US. Perhaps this antagonism has its roots to the embarrassing episode committed by none other than The Decider who at an OPEC conference thanked the miserable Mr Howard for sending his Austrian troops to Iraq. Maybe the Americans feel so ashamed of their president's folly that they have to be unjustifiably rude to Australians (not that many of its people would be able to point out Down Under in a map) so as not to lose face.


Should there be any rental restrictions on strata units in B.C.?
At the current moment, B.C. strata corporations formed before 2010 may have a low cap on the number of rentals allowed in their building because of a bylaw that some housing advocates have argued causes units to sit empty as they cannot be rented out.
The NDP government's Rental Housing Task Force last week issued 23 recommendations for amending the Residential Tenancy Act. Its ninth recommendation was to "increase the availability of currently empty strata units by eliminating a strata corporation's ability to ban owners from renting their own strata units" – no matter how old the building.