Dianna Booher

This session gives attendees an opportunity to sharpen their listening skills and techniques. With increased awareness and additional tips, they’ll improve job performance and build stronger relationships.

Audiences will learn to—

—Identify attitudes and habits that negatively affect message reception
—Gather information through probing questions
—Verify assumptions and accuracy
—Build rapport through attentive body language
—Interpret feelings that accompany facts
—Identify distortions and mental erasers
—Listen discriminately to persuasive appeals
—Focus on six essential elements of hearing instructions clearly

Supplementary Materials to Reinforce Learning—

Book:
Communicate With Confidence: How to Say It Right the First Time and Every Time, Revised and Expanded Edition (McGraw-Hill)

People who stare at a blank page wondering how to begin an email, memo, or letter and who revise extensively cost money and create frustration for themselves and their bosses. Dianna will overview a five-step process for writing memos, letters, reports, and proposals. Audience members will reduce their writing time by 25-50 percent, improve clarity, write authoritatively and persuasively, organize details with impact, choose an appropriate style, and create an eye-appealing layout that grabs readers’ attention.

Audiences will learn to—

—Consider the audience for the proper angle and details
—Anticipate special reader reactions
—Organize ideas in the MADE Format®
—Draft quickly with idea wheels
—Edit for content, layout, clarity, conciseness, and style

Supplementary Materials to Reinforce Learning—

Books:
—E-Writing: 21PPstPP-Century Tools for Effective Communication (Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books)
—Good Grief, Good Grammar (Facts on File)
—Booher’s Rules of Business Grammar (McGraw-Hill)
—Successful Sales & Marketing Letters (eBook)

It’s only natural to sell your ideas, products or services to others in the style that seems most natural to you—natural, maybe, but ineffective. In this session, Dianna will cover 33 tips that will increase your success in selling to the opposite gender.

Audiences will learn to—

--Identify the most effective methods of prospecting for each gender
--Discover 13 differences in how to move through the actual presentation of your product or service to each gender
--Understand the four primary differences in closing the sale with males and females
--Learn the critical differences in the proper approach to maintaining relationships and building on-going loyalty and referral business from both male and female clients

Supplementary Materials to Reinforce Learning:

Books: Communicate With Confidence! (McGraw-Hill)

Conflict can result from excellent work or poor work, from good intentions or misrepresented intentions, from appropriate or inappropriate behavior. When the inevitable conflict surfaces, you need to know how to identify and deal with it so that it doesn’t drain your energy and sabotage your effectiveness. What positive choices do you have in dealing with conflict? How do you give and accept negative feedback so that it’s useful? How do you say “no” firmly and tactfully? How do you deal with difficult personalities? This session will provide both insights and techniques.

Audiences will learn to—

--Identify four choices they have in dealing with conflict positively
--Apply fifteen guidelines for giving and accepting negative feedback so that it’s usable
--Say “no” firmly, yet tactfully
--Identify most appropriate phrasing of conflict statements
--Deal with difficult personalities
--Apologize in such a way so as to maintain relationships

Supplementary Materials to Reinforce Learning:
Books: Communicate With Confidence! (McGraw-Hill)

How do you respond to someone citing statistics and data with which you're unfamiliar? How do you react when your client changes the course of your presentation and discussion in midstream? Adding “the finishing touches” will help you be yourself in front of a group of clients, no matter its size—whether 2 or 200. You'll learn to think on your feet, handle tough questions and situations, and build rapport with your clients.

Participants will learn to—
--Identify characteristics of executive presence that every sales professional should exhibit when calling on senior decision makers
--Use a four-part model to think on your feet and build credibility during informal sales meetings and formal presentations
--Respond to 10 difficult question types with answers that build rapport, increase authority, and improve retention
--Use gestures, space, and movement for highest impact
--Ensure that nonverbal communication supports rather than sabotages the message

Supplementary Books to Reinforce Learning:
Speak With Confidence! (McGraw-Hill)
The Voice of Authority: 10 Communication Strategies Every Leader Needs to Know (McGraw-Hill)

Feeling like David against Goliath when competing against industry giants? This session will pinpoint nine common proposal mistakes and identify the subtle messages that decision makers “read between the lines” when deciding who wins the work.

Never write a proposal unless the payoff promises to be sure and significant. But how do you do that? This session focuses on strategies to differentiate your product or service, avoid common proposal mistakes, and write executive summaries that sizzle—and avoid those that fizzle.

Audiences will learn to—

--Identify and avoid nine common proposal mistakes
--Write executive summaries that sizzle
--Develop a strategy to differentiate themselves from competitors
--Identify key elements of winning proposals

Supplementary Materials to Reinforce Learning:
Book: From Contact to Contract: 496 Proven Sales Tips to Generate More Leads, Close More Deals, Exceed Your Goals, and Make More Money (Kaplan Publishing)

Are you pedaling as fast as you can to stay up with the ever-increasing workload? Do you feel pulled in several directions? Is stress from work spilling over to your home life? And what about all the nice-to-do’s that you never find time for at all? Dianna will present some practical ideas and pure inspiration for aligning your time with your values.

Audiences will learn to—

--Change the way they think about time
--Align their time and activities with their values
--Assume responsibility for their own time
--Determine the long-term payoff
--Set the pace according to the purpose
--Become more selective about their intake
--Evaluate minutes in monetary standards—and know when to cash in

Supplementary Materials to Reinforce Learning:
Book: Get a Life Without Sacrificing Your Career (McGraw-Hill)

What if we all lived our daily lives in such a way that we would be proud to add our signature to it at the end of the day—just as the artist, novelist, or clothing designer signs a finished piece of work? You are the designer of your life—architect of your work life, writer of your life’s story, the creator of your character.

With all the family, personal, and business responsibilities and opportunities tugging at your sleeve, do you sometimes have difficulty focusing on purpose? If so, you’ll find help as Dianna shares principles for identifying your personal mission and setting a specific plan to reach your potential.

As you work on creating this masterpiece called your life, you’ll want to be able to say you’ve done your personal best so that you can sign your name to what you have lived. Audiences will be challenged to map out a plan for life-long learning and growth.

Audiences will learn to—
--Define success in their own terms
--Identify six ways to verify their calling in their job
--Assess their skills and identify key strengths
--Set specific, positive goals
--Develop discipline to meet these goals
--Align their time and activities with their values
--Set the pace according to the purpose
--Communicate to “present” themselves well
--Take risks that pay off
--Identify what it takes to build relationships that last
as long as the classic novel

Supplementary Materials to Reinforce Learning:
Book: Your Signature Life (Tyndale House)