Welcome to the LDL Blog

  Spring has arrived, and with the appraisal meetings and performance ratings which often occur at this time of the year, it is a great moment to reflect on your organisation’s approach to performance management. In particular, what can neuroscience teach us about this vital aspect of leadership? We asked LDL consultant and PhD neuroscientist Read More

  Perhaps over the course of the festive season you had time to indulge yourself in a few trips to the cinema. If so, then you might have seen Disney’s latest addition to the Star Wars saga, Star Wars: Rogue One.   The new film is designed as an immediate prequel to the original classic, Read More

  No one ever sets out to fail or to do a bad job, and yet inevitably factors can conspire to turn even the best-laid plans awry. How do you and your organisation handle failures when they occur? The answer is more important than you might think.   In his recent book, Black Box Thinking, Read More

  In today’s high-tech age, many entrepreneurs and start-ups do not think sales skills are particularly important. The idea is that a product or service should be good enough to sell itself, and if it isn’t – if you need to invest in ‘sales skills’ – then you should probably go back to the drawing board Read More

  At the National Sales Conference last week, Will Greenwood spoke about the England Rugby World Cup winning team of 2003. As you may already know, England’s team at the 2003 Rugby World Cup was one of the best sporting teams that the country has ever produced. Martin Johnson, Lawrence Dallaglio, Jonny Wilkinson – it Read More

You have a lead. How do you get through to the decision maker or key influencer and make the appointment? No matter how you sourced the lead, it pays to plan the call, not just to have a stab at it.

You may or may not be a social media aficionado but to be an effective salesperson or modern manager you must know how to write a good LinkedIn profile. 238 million professionals are members and it was only founded in 2003!

  Social media is hard to ignore – it’s everywhere. People use it to communicate, to share, to speak with their friends, to build their networks, to seek recommendations, to follow and make decisions around brands. It doesn’t look set to go anywhere soon – the number of reported social media users was up 10% last year.   Read More

  According to many of the world’s most pre-eminent cognitive scientists, an appetite for storytelling is hard-wired into the human brain. From ancient legends and heroic folk tales to modern-day TV boxsets, we humans have been telling each other stories for thousands of years. And as new research has shown, we don’t do it simply Read More

  Perhaps the greatest sporting icon of the twentieth century, Muhammad Ali deserves to be remembered around the world for his flying fists and indomitable persona. “Muhammad Ali was the greatest” wrote Barack Obama in one of the more significant tributes to the late superstar athlete: “He shook up the world, and the world is Read More

With previous claims to fame relating largely to an association with Walkers Crisps and to the unexpected discovery of the remains of King Richard III, Leicester City – an East Midlands city which lies on the River Soar – has suddenly been inundated by top journalists from all over the world.

David Bowie has appeared all over the press in recent weeks. Every newspaper and media outlet in the country seems to have been celebrating the life of the late singer-songwriter who inspired so many millions of people over the course of his career.

Inspirational Leadership gets results. It’s about recognising that your most precious possession is the people who work for you, and having the skill to draw out the very best in their performance.

When Disney paid $4 billion for Lucasfilm three years ago, it was surely only a matter of time before Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill would be donning leathers and lightsabres again, due to return to a long time ago in a galaxy far far away…

Starring Robert de Niro and Anne Hathaway, comedy drama The Intern was released in cinemas across the UK in October. ‘The intern’ of the film, Ben Whittaker (de Niro) is a 70-year-old widower growing restless in retirement who decides to apply as a senior intern at an online fashion site founded and run by thirty-something entrepreneur Jules Osten (Hathaway).

Since it was first published, millions of people worldwide have read The Energy Bus. Overall, it is a good read: well-written and light-hearted, The Energy Bus introduces the importance of positivity to anyone wishing to get more out of their life and work.

We each have two voices in our head – one says you’re great, you’re having a good day. The other says you’re going through a weak patch, you’re not at your best. Which is the stronger? The one you feed.

Your ability to get going rubs off on other people and boosts their performance. No question. The more energised, joyful and alive you feel, the more energised, joyful and alive those around you will feel – just as a result of working with you.

You’re involved in a major sales pitch. After months of work you’re told, with regret, that you have not won the business.

In sport, the performing arts and business, focus is essential, but what exactly is focus? Focus is a quick form of mental preparation. To use it, simply lock your mind on to the picture of the outcome you want.

Imagine you sell telecommunications solutions and you are making your final presentation to the board of a call centre provider.

New research in psychology and neuroscience has confirmed a hard link between mindset and success. Positivity in the workplace produces measureable results.

What do you bring to the table? The more you specialise in an industry, the better sense you will have of the problems and opportunities that can be uncovered.

So you have identified a potential customer, built rapport with them and used your sales skills to get them to want to buy from you. But once they have decided to buy, they turn their attention to getting the best deal, the best price, the best terms. They start to negotiate.

One person tells you something kind and respectful, another person says something critical and negative. Which will you remember longest?

Since time immemorial, converting features into benefits has been ground zero for sales skills. But it’s no longer enough. Your customers have heard it all before and they’ve stopped listening.

Are you a safe supplier? Buying is a risky business. If you want to persuade customers to buy your solution, you must first convince them that the risk of doing so is low.

When you cut away the layers selling against competition, comes down to one core concept – Sell The Difference.

Do you perform better when you receive encouragement? So does everyone. Part of your job as a leader is to encourage those around you.

Resilient people in leadership and sales roles cope well with high levels of pressure and bounce back quickly from setbacks. Resilient people cope well when the going gets tough.