There is much more to being responsive than just being fast to respond. Responsiveness in sales is about how you structure and execute your sales process to build trust and credibility, ask the right the questions to define the prospect’s requirements, and...
“Well, the buyers were just liars.” I was riding Amtrak from NYC to Boston when a cell-phone toting sales person sitting in the row of seats behind me uttered this deathless couplet. It was the last day of the sales month and my fellow passenger, who I will call Jon,...
Are you blinded by your sales biases? What are your sales biases? Are you even aware that you have sales biases? And how they are hurting your productivity? One of the primary reasons that salespeople stop improving, and start struggling, is that they begin to believe...
“When you win a lot, sometimes you don’t continue to emphasize those very things that created the success to start with.” Nick Saban, Head Football Coach, University of Alabama You’ve no doubt heard the expression that “familiarity breeds...
Are you caught in the trap of the Sunk Cost Effect? Here’s a common sales situation. John is working on a big, complex deal. The prospect is well qualified. He’s had to invest substantial sales time to move the deal forward (as well as wrangle countless hours of...
In yesterday’s article, Never Swing At The First Pitch, I stressed the need for patience in the sales hiring process. And, I identified three unproductive personas that hiring managers adopt when interviewing sales candidates that lead to bad hiring decisions....
Use a Little Patience At The Plate To Improve Your Sales Hiring Think back to your Little League days in softball or baseball. Among all the tactical wisdom you received from the various baseball dads who coached your team was this important nugget: Never swing at the...
As a manager or executive with responsibility for sales, it’s easy to get distracted by the multiple demands on your time. You’ve got meetings to attend, reports to write and forecasts to file. It’s easier to do those things than get your hands dirty...
Aside from the absolute necessities of honesty and integrity, there are very few absolutes in sales. Instead, there are questions. Lots of questions. One of the most important questions for you is the following: Do you have the answers you need to improve your sales...
Do whatever is necessary to take your prospect’s breath away. As a salesperson, you don’t have control over many of the most crucial elements of your selling. This includes several of the key aspects that are central to developing the prospect’s perception of you,...
Which sales training mistakes are you repeating? I read an article about CEOs’ mistrust of sales training that caught my eye. This particular commentator cited a survey that claimed that most CEOs believed that sales training was a waste of time and money. That...
Prospects have no use for persistence without value. In my previous post, I described the questions that you need to answer in order to give yourself permission to enroll a potential prospect in a Value-Based Persistence (VBP) campaign. Persistence is a great...