Persuading Powerful People (PPP)
‘The Sales Conversation’
Helping you conduct sales conversations which lead to profitable business.
Intensive training and one-to-one coaching for business professionals who sell £10k to £10 million contracts.
Take time with us plan, rehearse and conduct conversations which will inspire and persuade influential people to conduct profitable business with you.
We make it EASY for you to persuade influential people to say "yes" and difficult to say "no".
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Click here for a 7 minute video which highlights why and how just 3 little words, which we all have used, often fail to persuade powerful people. "Don't you think..."
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Hello this is Simon Bozeat,
If you take a minute or two to consider some of the most successful and influential business people you know either personally and/or through their public profile you will notice that each has the ability to persuade others to want what he or she wants.
Click here for the origin of PPP
This fact became the inspiration behind a 20+ year and 10,000+ hour research project. It uncovered 24 distinct and linked strategies, tactics and behaviours adopted habitually by people who excel in Persuading Powerful People (PPP).
Test yourself! - Download the brochure and assess yourself against the 24 strategies, tactics and behaviours known to Persuade Powerful People.
PPP was first developed in Rolls-Royce Aerospace in the late 1990s to help both internal change specialists persuade their colleagues to embrace new working practices and enable top class business development professionals to sell multi-million contracts to Rolls-Royce clients.
We used PPP to help people secure commitment from powerful people in one-to-one conversations, in meetings, presentations and via the written word. Now we have extended the portfolio to train people how to be persuasive when making outbound and receiving inbound telephone calls.
We know that it worked as the legacy is still apparent. For example one Rolls Royce Director who moved on to Capital One continues to teach his own team the exact same strategies, tactics and behaviours over a decade later!
Watch a short video of Simon Bozeat introducing PPP here
So why PPP and what’s in it for you?
Quite simple really. If you work in sales and/or require the commitment of the people around you to get things done then Impact, influence and persuasion is a CRITICAL competence you MUST excel in.
Much of what you do to secure the buy in from others will be intuitive. What we do is rapidly highlight what you do that brings success and maybe the habits which let you down. The trouble is you might know what you are doing which is having the opposite effect of what you want. We will teach you to find this out for yourself so you can make the decision to change your approach.
We will then train you using the exact same skills that the most persuasive people on the planet use. These include Barak Obama, Simon Cowell, Tony Blair, Halle Berry, Stephen Fry and many others both well known and others equally persuasive but less in the public eye.
You now have the opportunity to access this work to help you close profitable business.
Download the PPP 'The Sales Conversation' brochure here
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PPP is ideal for you if you are;
a business development professional involved in high value, long cycle selling to multiple stakeholders
a manager or executive who wishes to develop a multi-dimensional approach to bring the best out of your people
a business professionals whose success depends on your ability to secure the active commitment of your peers and bosses
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PPP makes it easy for you persuade influential people to say yes and difficult to say no...
... in meetings
... in one-to-one conversations
... during a pitch or a business presentation
... via the written word in e-correspondence, business letters and reports
... on the phone to new prospects, existing clients and colleagues
Click here to book yourself and your colleagues onto our next open programme
e-mail here to invite us to train and coach your sales and business development executives
"Last night I attended another great event in Liverpool. The organisers had arranged an amazing speaker. I had the good fortune to join Simon Bozeat and share his expertise in introducing Persuading Powerful People. Along with me, the audience were enthralled with Simon’s passion for this critical skill that everyone in a leadership and/or business development role must continually nurture.
Simon laced his talk with recent, real-world stories and local examples on how accomplished professionals, including Simon himself, have persuaded and influenced other powerful people to TAKE ACTION.
I went home with 24 strategies, tactics and behaviours – to do and not to do – and fire in my gut to take that action. Today I have started to apply these strategies to build Linkage Hotels and Apartments.
Persuading Powerful People is definitely something that everyone will derive huge value from.
Thank you Simon for sharing these Business Diamonds with me".
Agnes G. Fitzgerald
Linkage Hotels and Apartments
t : +44 (0)845 6448 039
m : +44 (0)7944 785 409
e : info@linkagehotels.co.uk
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Download the brochure here and let us help your people to rapidly become more influential.
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"If you mix a 'diamond polisher' and a 'door opener' with truly gifted 'connector', then add 20 years experience in a broad range of industries you end up with the unique Simon Bozeat.
Simon managed the unenviable task of cramming a 120 minute key note into a 30 minute presentation for our Liverpool Connections event. Laced with knowledge, insight and humour, Simon held our audience captive and we would all have stayed much longer but the hotel staff had to go home. I look forward to having him back in Liverpool soon".
Eric Hearn - Regional Director : Business Scene
e : eric.hearn@business-scene.com
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The origin of PERSUADING POWERFUL PEOPLE
What exactly is Persuading Powerful People?, why is it important, where did it originate, how does it work and what will it mean to you and your business?
Lets start with the most important question. Why is PPP important? The answer is reasonably straightforward especially if you are ambitious and want to succeed in whatever profession you choose to pursue. Anyone who gets to the top as a politician, sales executive, account manager, business leader, entrepreneur, public sector leader or even an adventurer will only get to the top if they have mastered the art of persuading people to want what they want.
Many people learn how to persuade through trial and error and for some it is wonderfully intuitive. However like most things in life we can all learn from the greats.
Just for a second consider just exactly how Sir Bob Geldof inspired a nation to take an interest in the plight of millions of the poorest people on the planet, how Tony Blair transformed his party and became the most successful Labour Prime Minister ever, how Barak Obama persuaded the people in the most powerful nation on earth to elect him to the highest office. How Simon Cowell has transformed society through his massively successful TV shows and how Tony Robbins, arguably the best and most successful personal development expert on the planet, inspires millions.
You will no doubt have people in your mind that you would consider to be exceptionally persuasive. Irrespective of whether you love them, dislike them or are genuinely indifferent all have achieved phenomenal success. We know that success leaves clues. Each possesses exceptional talent, drive and an unbounded ability to influence and other persuade powerful people to enrol on a course of action which they believe to be the right thing to do.
They possess the three talents which all persuasive people have mastered. We call them the 3 E’s Firstly they engage people, this means capturing their attention and generating curiosity and interest; secondly get them excited; they inspire people to change their minds and want to do something new and different. Finally they enrol them on a course of action – this could be making a purchase, placing their cross on a ballot paper, donate their time and money to a worthy cause or any other tangible actions. In other words they persuade people to start doing something, stop doing things or modify and change their behaviour.
So what does this mean to you? Whether you are selling products or services, seeking public office, wishing to race up the corporate ladder, bringing about a change in your organisation, region or community then the ability to persuade others; one person, a small group, a department, division, an entire organisation or indeed the world it is essential that you master the art and skill of persuasion and influence.
In my business career I have had the great fortune to work with many successful business leaders across the world in some of the most prestigious organisations. I am also a keen observer of successful people in the public eye. PPP is the results of 10,000 hours practical observation and research over 20+ years. In this time I have mastered two disciplines; Behaviour Analysis (BA for short) and the more practical elements of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).
BA is the study of specific behaviours and measuring their impact in a variety of business related situations e.g. meetings, sales conversations, pitches or business presentations, appraisals, coaching conversations and many more. NLP is the science of success and widely acknowledged as a valuable body of work that permits people to make extraordinary, positive and permanent shifts in their mindset and behaviour.
Consequently my talent is listening and watching what top performers do, crystallising their habits into teachable models, trying them out to see if they can work for anyone then training my clients to embrace them so they can achieve the same levels of success. Here are three questions to ponder over.
Did you know that, unbeknownst to the UK public, Tony Blair in some of his speeches commanded people to like him using just 6 words and he did this so subtly no one noticed?
Did you know that all successful persuasive people have mastered one specific behaviour that ALL top sales professionals possess?
Do you know the one way of thinking that is unique to Abraham Lincoln and Barak Obama and arguably two of the most successful US presidents ever?
I have noticed three things that differentiate successful from average people.
Firstly successful people are very open minded to new thinking and they have a genuine thirst for new ideas.
Secondly they know that nothing is truly learned until they have direct experience of it so they try out lots of ways to achieve things.
Lastly they love success and the rewards that the application of great skills and hard work brings.
So we know that for any ambitious, talented and time-poor professional having the ability to persuade and influence powerful people is essential.
If you are a student of competencies you will know that in any of the competency dictionaries, persuasion, influence and impact figures very highly for the majority of professions – management, customer service, sales, account management and being an entrepreneur.
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So what is PPP, where did it originate and how does it work?
Quite simply PPP is the distillation of over 10,000 hours practical observation of what persuasive people actually do and how they think.
PPP comes from observing and listening to thousands of participants on training programmes, in the workplace and simply having a healthy curiosity for the subject.
Five of the most common frustrations and challenges I hear from the people we work with are:
• Why don’t they buy this? it’s so obvious what they should do
• I can’t get their attention and put this high enough onto their agenda
• They are genuinely interested but I cannot persuade them to commit
• I’ve got a few advocates but the budget holder isn’t convinced
• We are consistently losing out to the competition even though our proposition on paper is stronger
Whilst it is not possible to persuade everyone all the time no matter how compelling the reasons, just ask FIFA why they wont give us the World Cup! there are many proven ways to persuade powerful people to want what you want.
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PPP has been broken down into 6 stages.
The first 3 are to do with you, your character and your personal brand and 3 to do with your practical approach and your behaviour.
We begin with highlighting and developing the characteristics of successful and persuasive people – they each have unshakable self belief, irresistible courage, enormous drive and above all persistence. Once they have an idea there is no stopping them.
Secondly we invite you to consider, through the eyes of the people around you, how credible and genuinely authentic you are. Persuasive people live a life congruent with a set of laudable values. For example we know that Sir Richard Branson, Anthony Robbins and countless other successful business leaders place huge value on people and customer service.
Thirdly we open your creative mind to accept the notion of modelling excellence. We know that creativity is great but plagiarism is so much faster! We will share the strategies, tactics and behaviours adopted by the best of the best . Everything we cover is proven and ultimately just makes sense.
Once the mind is ready to absorb all these great tools we move into stage 4 and begin to develop your persuasion strategy based on the specific situations you are facing right now.
It could be that you are selling high value goods and services to multiple influencers and decision makers and you need to navigate quickly to the person who controls the purse strings.
Or you have a great idea and need the commitment of your peers and superiors to make it happen.
Or you wish to develop a multi-strand approach to inspiring your employees to take on board a new way of working.
Whatever it is we will invite you to consider your strategy and develop a compelling reason why the people the people you wish to persuade would want to follow your lead. One key element of your strategy is how well you harness and deploy your own sources of power. For example how well are you persuading and positioning people who are more powerful than you to do your selling and persuading for you?
Stage five is to consider your tactics. Not unlike a chess game you will think through what moves you are going to make. PPP is applied most commonly in the following situations; one-to-ones, meetings, presentations to groups and audiences, via the written word in e-mails, reports and proposals and finally via the phone. At this step you will create your stakeholder map of the people you need to engage, inspire and enrol and then consider the moves you wish to make.
Finally and crucially we look at your behaviour and in this programme we provide you with 20 specific persuasion techniques which you can, with practice, easily arm yourself with to help you with any situation. The tools we equip you with include:
A way to structure a persuasive message modelled on one of the best teachers who has ever lived.
How to influence people without them knowing why they are being persuaded
How to predict, surface and address potential objections before they have arisen
How to construct a compelling reason to follow you which appeals to both the heart (emotion) and the mind (logic)
Why repetition is essential
How to construct bite size headline grabbers which inspire curiosity to want to know more
How to build the pain of not taking action and the gain for doing what you propose
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So how do you get involved in PPP?
One example of how this has been applied is the Midlands Leadership Experience where in the last 3 years I have invited over 30 of the region's top business leaders to speak at our events.
The resulting five training programmes (*) focus on the where professionals have the opportunity to persuade others either one-to-one or in groups.
- Write to the Top!: persuading people via the written word
- Outstanding Meetings: persuading people when leading and participating in meetings
- Persuasive Presentations: delivering a persuasive presentation to an audience
- Persuading Powerful People 'The Sales Conversation' : persuading people face-to-face and one-to-one
- Making Outbound Calls: making telephone calls to people you have never met before
Contact me to explore how these programmes can rapidly deliver business results for you and your organisation and/or book yourself onto one of our open programmes.
I look forward to helping you Persuade Powerful People!
Every success
Simon Bozeat
(*) Bespoke coaching programmes for are created and delivered for individuals and small groups untilising material from each of the training programmes to rapidly transform you into an influential business professional.
