I was recently interview by Mathew Schwartz for “Follow the Lead: Zoominfo’s B2B Sales and Marketing Blog” Here’s the interview: BEST ASSET FOR SALES EXECUTIVES DOESN’T COST A THING The terms have seeped into the sales lexicon: Sales 2.0, Sales 1.5, Web 2.0. The terms remind us that Philip K. Dick was probably onto something regarding where the 21st century is headed. But terms such as Sales 1.5 and Sales 2.0 really mean getting from Point A to Point B, and that has a timeless quality. For sales veteran Steve Martin, author of “Heavy Hitters Sales…
Sales
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Heavy Hitter Sales Blog
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Sales Linguistics is Sales 2.0! Steve Martin Interview
23 Oct 2009 | 8:55 am -
Selling to The C-Level Webinar-WATCH IT!!!
9 Oct 2009 | 9:30 amI’d like to invite you to join me as I review key C-level sales strategy concepts from my new book Heavy Hitter Sales Psychology: How to Penetrate the C-Level Executive Suite and Convince Company Leaders to Buy. Based upon more than 500 interviews with C-Level executives, Heavy Hitter Sales Psychology provides psychological strategies and linguistic tactics to secure C-level meetings, expert advice on how to prepare for and conduct C-level sales calls and presentations, and specific instructions on what to say and do during meetings. The book also supplies the psychological models behind… -
2 of the TOP 10 Sales Books
29 Sep 2009 | 1:47 pmI was very excited to learn that my just released book Heavy Hitter Sales Psychology: How to Penetrate the C-Level Executive Suite and Convince Company Leaders to Buy and its prequel, Heavy Hitter Selling: How Successful Salespeople Use Language and Intuition to Persuade Customers to Buy were in Amazon's top 10 sales-related books (2nd and 9th respectively). Heavy Hitter Sales Psychology is for senior salespeople, those who have been in the field for five, ten, and fifteen plus years. The goal of the book is to help them accomplish the most difficult task in all of… -
Great Sales Quotes From C-Level Decision Makers
13 Sep 2009 | 12:41 pmMy new book Heavy Hitter Sales Psychology: How to Penetrate the C-Level Executive Suite and Convince Company Leaders to Buy is based upon Based upon more than 500 interviews with C-Level executives.The book provides psychological strategies and linguistic tactics to secure C-level meetings, expert advice on how to prepare for and conduct C-level sales calls and presentations, and specific instructions on what to say and do during meetings. Throughout the book I have inserted comments from the executives I interviewed. Here are a few of my favorite quotes along the title of the person who said… -
Sales Psychology - REPUBLICANS vs DEMOCRATS
1 Sep 2009 | 7:20 amThere’s a very important lesson for both salespeople and marketeers to learn from the healthcare debate and these charts below are at the center of it. On the left is the Republican chart of healthcare reform and on the right is the Democrat’s. According to the New American, “The GOP chart reflects the complexity of at least 31 new federal programs, agencies, commissions and mandates that accompany the unprecedented government takeover of health care in America. Lesser…
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Understanding the Sales Force
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Key Account Sales - More Than Just Important Accounts
2 Nov 2009 | 12:33 amUnderstanding the Sales Force by Dave KurlanOver the last several months I have engaged in several on line disagreements about the importance of asking questions early in the sales process. More than one sales expert has claimed that asking questions violates trust. More than one marketing expert has claimed that asking questions is offensive. My position is that unless your salespeople are asking lots of good, tough, timely questions, they won't uncover their prospects' compelling reasons to buy and buy from you instead of your competition. In addition, you won't create the… -
Comparison of Sales, Personality and Behavioral Styles Assessments
29 Oct 2009 | 1:01 pmUnderstanding the Sales Force by Dave KurlanThis is my series of articles on Sales Assessments and there are some incredible, demystifying, myth-busting, exposes in the following articles. Enjoy! Personality Assessments for Sales - The Definitive Case Study Exposed - Personality Assessments Disguised as Sales Assessments Sales Assessments vs. Personality Assessments - The PHD's Strike Back Personality Assessments - They Still Don't Get it Sales Assessment Comparision - Objective Management Group vs. Devine It's a Misunderstanding Why Personality Tests Don't Predict Sales… -
Stupid Choices in the Selection of Sales Assessments
29 Oct 2009 | 12:11 pmUnderstanding the Sales Force by Dave KurlanWe had a conversation with someone who was using the CPQ Assessment. The person who was providing it to them claims it is a sales assessment but it's a personality test marketed as a sales assessment. If you're not familiar with my series on this then click here. They were also told that it was predictive, especially with insurance salespeople, and that they could use the same criteria for selecting their salespeople (selling a business consulting package to CEO's) as is used for hiring life insurance salespeople. Yeah,… -
10th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies that are Key to Building a Sales Culture
26 Oct 2009 | 11:54 pmUnderstanding the Sales Force by Dave KurlanThis is the 10th in my series of the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies That Are Key to Building a Sales Culture. #10 THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN OBJECTION There is nothing worse than when salespeople handle objections. Not only does it cause them to rack up reverse progress, they are usually not even handling the real problem. Here are the things you need to know about objection handling that should cause you to stop handling them forever: if you handle one you'll get another one they object when you get too close (to closing time) for… -
9th of the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies That are Key to Building a Sales Culture
26 Oct 2009 | 1:20 amUnderstanding the Sales Force by Dave KurlanThis is the 9th in the series of articles on the 10 Kurlan Sales Competencies That are Key to Building a Sales Culture. #9 - PRACTICE MAKES PERMANENT I was at Dave Pelz' short game (golf) school in February of 2008 when I learned this important competency and wrote two articles about it at the time, without actually mentioning PRACTICE MAKES PERMANENT. This one made me look prophetic. This one had to do with today's lesson. Let's take the last piece first. Permanent. Without question, the biggest challenge for me, my…
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Jill Konrath - Selling to Big Companies
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eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale
3 Nov 2009 | 12:17 pmE-Marketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, the new book by Ardath Albee, offers fresh perspectives and lots of meaty how-to advice on how to:• Catch your prospect’s attention• Amplify your e-messaging• Increase urgency, and • Build a relationship online. I highly recommend this much-needed book! It's totally aligned with my Selling to Big Companies strategies, so I know you'll get a ton out of it. Read 2 chapters right now. Here's what I wrote as the foreward______________If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: Sales is really tough in today’s… -
Got Friends Who are Struggling to Find a Job Right Now?
2 Nov 2009 | 10:07 amLast December my brother lost his job. Two other friends were laid off about the same time. All struggled to find a new position - a tough challenge with so many people out of work. That's when I decided to write a book on how to get back to work faster. You see, job hunting is really about selling yourself. No self-respecting seller would ever send out a 1000 brochures and hope for prospects to call. Yet that's exactly what job hunters do with resumes and job boards. They wait and wait for employers to call, but it doesn't happen. It's time for job seekers to stop playing the… -
It's Time to Get Close to Your Pipeline - And Stay Close!
22 Oct 2009 | 8:17 amToday's article is by Jonathan Farrington is Chairman of The Sales Corporation based in London and Paris. We are already well into the final “selling phase” of 2009 and, as all my clients will confirm at this time of year, I always urge a total focus on “closable opportunities” for a really big finish.It takes courage, and a real sense of realism to focus in on what is probable – not just possible! This is not a time to be optimistic. We need realistic.The ability to leverage your probability for converting potential business in your pipeline is a vital part of the sales process… -
The Right Sales Questions Will Get the Right Answers
19 Oct 2009 | 7:57 amToday's blog post was written by Andrew Rudin, Managing Principal of Outside Technologies, Inc., specializing in sales strategy for technology companies.What happens when we make assumptions? The movie, The Return of the Pink Panther, provides a great lesson. Peter Sellers, playing the immortal character, Inspector Clouseau, sees a hotel clerk holding a dog on a leash and asks, "Does your dog bite?"The clerk responds "no," and Clouseau reaches to pet the dog, which immediately bites his hand."I thought you said your dog did not bite!" he exclaims. To which,… -
Why is a 90% Sales Failure Rate Okay?
15 Oct 2009 | 6:11 amToday's blog post was written by Sharon Drew Morgen, author of the excellent new sales book, Dirty Little Secrets. She's also the author of the New York Times bestseller, Selling With Integrity. What a waste - not only for sellers, but for buyers.This doesn’t need to happen. Sales is just an incomplete model that we’ve accepted as the way to place our products. It works only at the product decision end of the equation (vs. Buying Facilitation, my model that manages the buying decision end of the equation), with no ability to guide buyers through their tangle of stuff’ that needs…
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Ad Sales Blog
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Join me for a FREE digital magazine webinar tomorrow
2 Nov 2009 | 6:06 amOn November 3rd I will again be talking about the next generation of digital magazines on a webinar entitled , "Digital Magazines - Strategies for Today & Tomorrow" run by BtoB and BtoB's Media Business magazines. Needless to say, I'll be in charge of the "tomorrow" part. Show time is at 2 PM EST. I'll be presenting along with Brigitte Johnson, Executive Editor, Tree Farmer Magazine. Registerr for free Special thanks to the webinar sponsor, Nxtbook Media who is also a sponsor for the Digital Magazine Ad Engagement Project -
See my Folio show digital magazine presentation on demand
28 Oct 2009 | 2:39 pmYou can see my Folio Conference presentation featuring preliminary research from the Digital Magazine Ad Engagement Project. It takes a little work but it is free: first go to this link and egister: http://www.folioshow.com/virtual/registration. Next, continue with free registration. It will tell you thanks for registering. Close the window and you should get an e-mail in your inbox. 2. Open the e-mail. Make sure you are able to view pictures in your -email viewer. If you use Outlook and it blocks graphics, right click on any graphic and click “download pictures” 3. You will see a… -
How Chris Brogan walks the walk
24 Oct 2009 | 5:44 pmSocial media guru and uberblogger Chris Broganwas coming to town. I was going to see him and Tweeted about it. Having never met Brogan I was surprised and delighted to receive a funny Tweet back (on left). I got a laugh but insight as well.In Chris' response was reinforced many social media best practices. First, as with implementing any social media program, Chris listened before he acted. He must have been monitoring social media networks, including Twitter, and noticed my Tweet about his upcoming appearance. Second, as with any social media program, his response had a… -
Oct 27th: The day publishers learn to sell ads in digital magazines
18 Oct 2009 | 4:04 amAfter months of research, I will be sharing initial findings from the study I have been managing, The Digital Magazine Ad Engagement Project. On October 27th I will present at two venues. First, a live address in New York at the DPAC4 conference along with crusty publishing legend Bob Sacks who will be keeping me on my toes. Click on the banner and go the DPAC4 site for details: Here is my session description: 2:15pm: Can Digital Magazines Become a Widely Accepted Advertising Platform? Josh Gordon thinks so. As director of the Digital Magazine Ad Engagement Project he has… -
UK follows Denmark as second country where Internet ad revenue overtakes TV
17 Oct 2009 | 3:28 pmIn the US where television advertising still commands the largest share of ad dollars what has happened in the UK is unthinkable; Internet advertising revenue has surpassed TV ad revenue for the first time. From a recent report in the The Guardian newspaper: The UK has become the first major economy where advertisers spend more on internet advertising than on television advertising, with a record £1.75bn online spend in the first six months of the year. UK advertisers spent £1.75bn on internet advertising in the six months to the end of June, a 4.6% year-on-year increase, according…
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B2B Lead Generation Blog
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A multi-modal approach to lead nurturing
3 Nov 2009 | 10:03 amTo be successful at lead nurturing marketers can't rely on one specific channel but rather they need to leverage a multi-modal portfolio of channels especially when you have a complex sale. Why? The goal of lead nurturing is to maintain a relevant and consistent dialog with viable future customers - regardless of their timing to buy. In short, it’s about relationships. To help illustrate, I created a mind map of what multi-modal lead nurturing looks like (click image to enlarge). Are there any lead nurturing channels/modalities that I'm missing? Download Multi-Modal_Lead_Nurturing If… -
Seven prospecting rules that produce leads webinar
29 Oct 2009 | 7:22 amThe phone is still a powerful and effective lead generation tool. It is inarguably the human touch of a lead nurturing program. That’s why every opportunity - including cold calling - should be treated with great respect. Each time you pick up the phone, whether it’s the first or third call, it's important you create value in that touch. Your goal with each call should be to give your prospects something useful in a digestible, bite-size chunk. That being said, the phone must be used as a part of a holistic lead generation strategy. Whether you create a specialized sales… -
Effective Lead Management Executive Summary and Webinar
28 Oct 2009 | 8:07 amWe had a great turn out for our recent B2B Lead Generation Rountable Webinar “Effective Lead Management: Learn How to Convert Marketing Leads into Sales Pipeline.” In case you missed the live presentation, there are still two ways you can review it: Watch the Presentation Read the Webinar Executive Summary During the webinar, I discussed steps for overcoming one of the biggest challenges organizations face today: converting leads to pipeline revenue. For most organizations, these problems stem from perception and communication issues between Marketing and Sales and a lack of… -
Lead generation metrics should emphasize opportunities not just leads
27 Oct 2009 | 8:30 amI was asked to write a response to this question, "In what ways have metrics evolved with the increase in digital B2B marketing? Suggest one ROI metric that you have found to be very effective." Read ClickInsights: What ROI metric should B2B marketers use in this digital marketing era? Here's my response.... The use of the Internet, mobile and other interactive channels has certainly increased the number of leads marketers receive today. Many organizations spend thousands of dollars each month on search marketing to take advantage of this increase. This increase, however, causes… -
Podcast: Why sellers don’t have the right tools to help buyers buy
15 Oct 2009 | 6:00 amA recent lead generation poll showed that converting leads to pipeline revenue (accelerating sales) was the biggest challenge for marketers. What are we doing as sellers that keeps us from closing sales? It’s a tough question, and it’s one that gets a lot of feathers ruffled. However, this is one question that Sharon Drew Morgen isn’t afraid to tackle. I spoke with Morgen recently to ask her about her take on the question and her new book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. I wanted to speak with Morgen because I was…
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C-Level, Relationship Selling Blog
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C-Level Selling Tip 9 - Overcoming Executive Intimidation
30 Oct 2009 | 4:17 pmPowerful people make everyone nervous, but if we don’t deal with it as sales people, we’ll be stuck with subordinates that stall our progress and mislead us on what it will take to win the sale, project or contract. -
Five Tips for Creating C-Level Selling Confidence
28 Oct 2009 | 4:32 pmOne of the most powerful tools for C-Level Selling, selling to doctors or any influential people is confidence. So here a 5 tips to help you build your confidence. -
C-Level Selling Tip 8, Getting Past Gatekeepers and Handling Blockers
26 Oct 2009 | 1:00 pmGatekeepers and blockers are one of the biggest obstacles to C-Level Selling. This article and the free e-book and videos available from the links provide will never make getting to the Leaders a problem for you again. -
C-Level Selling: 5 Elements to Create Large Accounts
19 Oct 2009 | 2:25 pmLearn how to move from vendor to preferred supplier in a heart beat. Here’s the path to C-level executive suites. Once relationships are established there, sales come easily and continuously. -
C-level Selling Tip 7 – Leveraging Your Golden Network
15 Oct 2009 | 4:53 pmLeverage your golden network - those that like you, work with you and those who have bought and benefited from you - to find a wealth of high quality leads and beat out competition.
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CASKEY Sales Training
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Rewire The Sales Mind - Lesson 3 -”Fear”
24 Oct 2009 | 11:27 amNo one ever admits they’re afraid. Yet, sales people seem to live in fear. Fear of the sale going bad. Fear that this is the last prospect on the planet. Fear of push-back and resistance. Fear my manager won’t see my potential. The list goes on forever. Fear Affects You. Q: But did you ever wonder how that fear affects you on a daily basis. And is it possible that the fear paralyzes you–or makes you less effective than you could be? A: Yes. Look at this list and see if you can relate. These are some of the things fear causes you to do–(and the result). fail to dream… -
Rewire The Sales Mind - Lesson 2
24 Oct 2009 | 7:55 amWhat are you listening for when speaking with a prospect? Are you listening for buying signals like you’ve taught since the 70’s? If so, that’s wrong. So Why Do People Buy? Our philosophy is really quite simple–people buy when they are either a) in pain with their current situation– or b) have a vision that will be accomplished easier with you in their life. The “rewiring” here is for all professional sales people to understand what they’re listening for–so that when they hear it they’ll know they’re close. How do you know when… -
Is It Uncool To Have A Vision?
23 Oct 2009 | 5:52 pmI would love it if once–just once–when I asked a person what their vision was, they had some answer. Even a lame answer would be better than the blank look I get when I ask the question. In the last few weeks, I’ve had a chance to ask a few people that question–and I’m convinced that there’s something deep down inside us that says it’s uncool to have a dream. We were told early in life ‘not to dream.’ We talked about dreaming as if it was cool–but when any of us did it, we got crapped on. Here’s What I’d Like You To Tell… -
“Wipe That Smile Off Your Face! I’ve Got A Problem.”
21 Oct 2009 | 2:54 pmWhy do we sales people feel like we have to smile when we’re in front of a prospect? Answer? We shouldn’t. I was called on last week by a guy who seemed like an OK chap. But he never stopped smiling. It was some kind of a “put on” smile. Pretty obvious. He seemed overly enthusiastic–and you know what I think about fake enthusiasm (I hate it!). So, when it came to him asking me some questions about what I was looking for–and any problems I was experiencing with my current vendor–I thought he’d hide the smile. But No! Similar to the “tell… -
Rewire The Sales Mind - Lesson 1
19 Oct 2009 | 6:20 pmWell, with our big seminar/workshop coming up on November 4 (in Indianapolis), we thought it useful to review what we mean by “rewire the sales mind.” Today’s Lesson: How We Think Determines How We Act (And Achieve) This is step # 1 in rewiring the sales mind–to understand that if you want to make quantum changes in your results–you must not just change your actions—you must change your thinking (which is the entire essence of “rewire the sales mind.”) “How you think about what”, you are asking? How you think about yourself and the…
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The Growth Guy
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Anniversary Obama's Election; Record Sales; Master of Persuasion
3 Nov 2009 | 12:07 pm"...keeping you great" HEADLINES: (Nov 17, Dr. Robert Cialdini, father of PersuasionRecord Number for Jim Collins Webcast -- as we expected, an audience rivaling the size of our live audience watched the Jim Collins' and David Allen's webcasts LIVE from our Growth Summit. Executives are finding this an effective way to "keep great" and garner the kind of first class executive education that keeps ideas flowing (our number one job as a leader) and keeps them ahead of the competition. Record Turnout for Elections -- today marks the one-year anniversary of President… -
Jim Collins Top Ten Books; Jim Collins Key Disciplines; Jim Collins Interview; Power of PICS
30 Oct 2009 | 11:39 am"...keeping you great" HEADLINES: (Growth Summit Highlights Day 1, 2 minute interviews)Best News from Jim Collins -- THE question that got the attention of a lot of entrepreneurs and their teams in the room last week was when Jim was asked whether founders were able to actually build a company beyond start-up i.e. would they be able to go from telling time to being clock-builders. And the answer is yes!! In the great companies it was NOT the case that the entrepreneur had to be replaced with professional management. Whew! This was reinforced with Hermann Simon's research… -
China's Top 10 Companies; Buffett's Investment in China; John DiJulius's Summit Nov 5-6
22 Oct 2009 | 12:52 pm"...keeping you great" HEADLINES: (Focus on China for a few minutes this week)China is Coming with Quality -- Hermann Simon, author of Hidden Champions of the 21st Century, just returned from a visit to China last week before speaking at our Growth Summit yesterday. He brought news that Chinese firms are focused on building competing quality products that will challenge even Germany's lead in many export areas -- and that they are building factories in Germany and the U.S. and other parts of the world. They want to get "in our backyards" before we get in theirs! With… -
Obama's Nobel Prize; Book of Failures; Torres Black Book; Seth Godin's Tactics
15 Oct 2009 | 10:50 am"...keeping you great" HEADLINES:Book of Failures -- Fortune Small Business is looking for stories for their Owner's Manual section in the magazine. This is a story where an entrepreneur describes a business mistake s/he made and then goes on to describe how s/he learned from the mistake and went on to prosper. Email adriana_gardella@timeinc.com Book of Failures, part 2 -- during my call with Jim Collins, in preparation for his presentation next week at the Growth Summit, he reflected on how rare it is that we study failures vs. successes which is how his latest bestseller, How… -
Embezzled Cash; Killer Cash; Cashing In
8 Oct 2009 | 10:39 am"...keeping you great" HEADLINES: Cash From Patents -- FORTUNE Small Business Magazine is looking for a U.S. business owner or entrepreneur who has a patent or patents in their name. If so, they want to know whether that patent has been of any value to you and/or your business. Have you ever had to defend your patent in court and were you successful? Have you ever reaped any financial reward from owning a patent? Do you think the cost of filing for your patent(s) was worth it? Whether the answer is yes or no, they would like to hear from you, so if you think you fit the bill, or…
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Garth's World
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Persistence
3 Nov 2009 | 5:32 pmA couple of weeks ago Steve Martin invited me to speak to his two classes that he teaches about sales at Haas School of Business (Berkeley). On the drive over I realized that I was actually quite nervous. Since the students have regular access to all sorts of big name CEOs and smarty pants entrepreneurs, I was thinking that I might come off like some snarky sales joker who “stepped in it” with Jigsaw. Plus, I haven’t been anywhere that resembles an academic environment for almost 20 years- my vocabulary has been reduced to hackneyed business expressions, “you knows,” and… -
From Whiteboard Stickmen to One Million Members
22 Oct 2009 | 11:23 amOn May 17th, 2004, Jim Fowler called all the Jigsaw employees (8 people) into our flea infested conference room to show us the result of 4 months of feverish effort. He typed in www.jigsaw.com and up came our home page in 3 shades of “pansy blue”, complete with our Cartoon Network inspired logo, a basic search box , and an Excel -looking list showing 20 of the 50,000 contacts we had acquired to lure new members in to share with us. After executing a couple searches, Fowler grabbed the sales team (me and three guys I got off Craig’s List) and showed another application that… -
No Reprieve for the Infirm
8 Oct 2009 | 5:43 pmIs there anything that blows more than being sick as an adult? On the home front, there are endless meals to be prepared and cleaned up, things to be fixed, stories to be read, fights to be broken up, the endless social calendar algorithm to be negotiated. I can almost forgive my wife for eyeing me with thinly veiled disdain (and every dad knows verbatim that “no sniffle you have compares to 10 months of being pregnant”). It reminds me of my high school football coach who would blame every loss on the fact that the “walking wounded” didn’t prepare enough in the offseason… -
Hey Thor, try using a Screwdriver!
1 Oct 2009 | 6:59 pmIf you have been following this blog recently, you may have noticed that my attempts to spin together descriptions of daily business adventures, Jigsaw corporate branding and useful insights for sales people might becoming somewhat forced. The Jigsaw angle is obviously the red headed stepchild of the three. But this week I am happy to report that the bond is lock tight and, just like the superglue that I accidentally squirted across my brand new hardwood floor, will be obvious for all to see. This morning my furious networking efforts landed me at a meeting of volunteers for the Professional… -
Tone what down?
24 Sep 2009 | 1:34 pmNow that I am relatively settled in Charlotte(meaning that I know where to buy food, where to work out, I have an office, I’m barred from the nearest pub and I only get lost once a day), I have turned my attention to building my local network. Charlotte is somewhat late to the social networking thing, and is located in the South, so I’ve dusted off my sport coats (so poorly named) and have set out to connect the old fashioned way- in person. Much to wife’s chagrin, I have been accepting every invitation I can muster to meet Linked In friends-of- friends, Jigsaw members, local business…
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Gavin Ingham
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Sales training tips for handling cold calling objections, part II
21 Oct 2009 | 1:58 pmHere is part II of my short article on sales training tips for handling cold calling objections… “I use someone else!” This is a very common objection and one which salespeople and business owners can get very upset about. What they often hear in their heads is, “So I have no need for you!” Try replacing that self-talk with, “Yes, and?” Obviously, you’re not going to say that out loud but that’s what you need to think to yourself! Clients change suppliers all of the time. Clients moan about their suppliers all of the time. Clients have problems and challenges with their… -
Sales Survey 2009, The State of Sales in the UK
20 Oct 2009 | 3:46 pmI recently partnered Aaron Wallis sales recruitment in producing The State of Sales in the UK, a sales survey, the largest of it’s kind in the UK. Over a period of 6 weeks nearly 800 sales professionals competed the survey and the answers made interesting reading. I am going to be talking about some of the finding and what they mean for you in future blog posts but for now here are the headline findings… An impressive 31% of sales professionals are currently over target (28% of respondents were non-targeted) and despite what the media states only 4 in 10 sales professionals are… -
Sales training & business tips from Better Business Focus…
13 Oct 2009 | 4:04 pmOne of my sales training articles has again been picked up by Better Business Focus magazine, this time in the October issue. Better Business Focus concentrates on how succesful businesses in the UK compete and manage their organizations. This month’s sales training article from me is my No Fear Cold Calling sales training tips and is feature alongside… Survival of the Fittest by Steve Smith Stop Chasing Your Tail & Get Real Results by Lorraine Pirrihi No Fear Cold Calling by Gavin Ingham Bestseller Business Books Hairdresser Gives Free Hair Cuts in Pub, What Are You Doing? By… -
How to get that great sales job…
5 Oct 2009 | 4:04 pmI get asked a lot of questions as a sales speaker and sales training consultant and this week I was asked a question by several salespeople and a magazine about how to position yourself to get that sales job in today’s market so I thought that I would jot down my thoughts… 2009 has been a tough year. For many, a very tough year. I have written several sales training articles and reports about what salespeople, entrepreneurs and business owners need to do in today’s economy to succeed but what about salespeople looking for new sales roles? What can they do? How can they help… -
Sales training tips for handling cold calling objections, part I
1 Oct 2009 | 3:16 pmOne of the biggest challenges facing many salespeople is cold calling for new business meetings and winning new sales on the telephone. In many industries cold calling is the most cost effective way of uncovering new business opportunities. It is also an activity which strikes fear into the hearts of even some of the most proactive and confident of salespeople. Not surprisingly, therefore, it is one of the most commonly sought skills for sales training and sales development sessions. One of the reasons for this is the amount of rejection that a cold calling session can attract. Even the best…
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Getting the Biz
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Jazz Up Your Sales with Novelty, Surprise & Celebrity
16 Oct 2009 | 11:41 amI just lost my child in a weather balloon and he's flying over Colorado! A woman just delivered 8 babies! Someone just interrupted Taylor Swift receiving her VMA Award!I've been reading an advanced copy of Own the Room: Business Presentations That Persuade, Engage and Get Results where I read that "our brains are hardwired to pay attention to novelty and surprise." I'd like to add that we pay attention to "celebrity" also.What do you do in your business to surprise (and delight) your customers? Do you respond quickly? Provide free shipping? Call to check up on them? CareNow, the medical… -
Tips for an Un-Terrifying Sales Presentation
17 Sep 2009 | 10:38 amIn my attempt to be an uber-cool Mom, I rode the Tower of Terror ride at Disneyland with my daughter a few weeks ago. You may have heard of it? It's a haunted elevator ride that takes you to the top floor and free falls at random intervals down a dark elevator shaft several times. I don't like scary rides - AT ALL. The anticipation of the ride led us to talk to others in line who had already ridden the Tower of Terror. We heard stories like, "it's not bad - just make sure you haven't eaten recently," and "it's not scary, it's fun."Needless to say, once the ride got going I lost all sense of… -
Sales Tricks People Hate
15 Aug 2009 | 8:08 amToday I went shopping with a coupon I'd cut from the newspaper to a new store in town. The goal of the coupon was to get me in the store. Mission accomplished! Expecting to save 30% on my purchase, I was pretty excited.At check out I was told I could NOT save 30% on my purchase. The sales clerk turned the coupon over to show me the teeny-tiny print listing all of the items that were excluded from this offer. It was a long list and excluded most of my items. Talk about having the wind taken out of my sails! I had been tricked.Use the following practices so your customers won't feel… -
Lessons from the Donut Shop
20 Jul 2009 | 6:46 amI love the donut shop near my house. (I know it's technically spelled "doughnut"). We've been going there since my girls were little. I remember thinking, "Who eats donuts? They are not healthy. And with the Atkins diet craze I bet no one goes there." But the place is always crowded. The same owners have been there for over 10 years and start preparing my order when they see me coming in the front door. They know what I'm going to order. On weekends I see little kids still in their pajamas eating at the small kid-sized tables. There are photos on the wall of customers enjoying their breakfast… -
Be Human to Jazz Up Your Sales
11 Jul 2009 | 3:57 pmA few weeks ago I blogged about words being powerful. And this week I read an article on Yahoo called 10 Boilerplate Phrases that Kill Resumes. It says that adding a human voice to your resume will help you stand out and is better than the stodgy boilerplate phrases seen on every resume. The same notion holds true for marketing your business.The business world seems to be more human to me today. Companies align themselves with causes and charities to be socially responsible and also to boost sales. Business language has taken on a more casual tone as email has replaced the formal business…
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The SalesRoundup Podcast
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Be careful what you ask for as a manager you just might get it!
2 Nov 2009 | 10:48 amEstablishing A False sense of reality… Be careful what you ask for as a manager you just might get it Are you being bombarded with requests from your managers? In tough times insecure management will lash out by requesting detail information about everything you are doing! This is not productive and often times will have an opposite effect. This week Mike and Joe discuss or shall we say “commiserate” on what to do when management asks for too much information! Listen to this weeks Sales Podcast MP3 Stream Download MP3 This week Guest Interview… Mike Schmidtmann… -
Prospecting 2.0 Burn the Ships!
26 Oct 2009 | 1:32 pmBurn the Ships! Are you seeing a decline in your prospecting results? Maybe its because you’re not keeping up with the times. Across the board traditional forms of prospecting are loosing their effectiveness. It might be time to abandon the old methods and move on to new ones. When Spanish Conquistador Hernando Cortez landed in Mexico, one of his first orders to his men was to burn the ships. In this episode of the SalesRoudup Joe and Mike talk about new ways to prospect and encourage you to “burn the ships” when it comes to doing the same old thing. Listen to this… -
Dealing with “Seemores” in a Complex Sale
19 Oct 2009 | 2:53 amDealing with “Seemores” Did you ever have a prospect that seemed really interested in your product/service, always eager to learn more, hear more “SEE more” but yet never getting to the stage of actually buying anything? These people are commonly referred to as “seemores” and they can waste a lot of your time if you don’t know how to conteract them. In this episode of the SaelsRoudup Joe and Mike give pointers and how to identify and overcome the “seemores” of the world so you make more sales and earn more money. Listen to this weeks Sales… -
Let’s Make a Deal The Principles of Negotiating Part 2
12 Oct 2009 | 9:28 amThe Principles of Negotiating Part 1 Even though it has one of the most direct and substantial impacts on a sales person’s compensation a lot of sales people underestimate the importance of negotiation during the sales process. If you’re like most sales people your annual income depends on the total dollar amount you sell. If you’re constantly reducing your price to get deals done instead of using a sound negotiating strategy you’re acting very effectively. In part two this two part series on negotiating Joe and Mike give you one of 4 negotiating patterns, a couple of… -
Let’s Make a Deal The Principles of Negotiating Part 1
4 Oct 2009 | 9:05 amThe Principles of Negotiating Part 1 Even though it has one of the most direct and substantial impacts on a sales person’s compensation a lot of sales people underestimate the importance of negotiation during the sales process. If you’re like most sales people your annual income depends on the total dollar amount you sell. If you’re constantly reducing your price to get deals done instead of using a sound negotiating strategy you’re acting very effectively. In part one of this two part series on negotiating Joe and Mike give you a couple of tips to help you prepare for…
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Sales and Sales Management Blog
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Learn How to Make the Internet Work for You
3 Nov 2009 | 7:17 amMy friend Frank Rumbauskas has just released his latest book–The Never Cold Call Again Online Playbook–revealing in detail how he has learned to use the internet as a prime sales tool—and he shows you how you can do the same. From building a website that converts visitors to sales to building your email list to creating brand recognition and using social media to create name recognition and drive sales, Frank shows you exactly he has done it and how you can use his hard earned knowledge to build your online presence and business. If you purchase the book now, Frank has arranged… -
Guest Article: “Ten Secrets of Persuasion,” by Nido Qubein
30 Oct 2009 | 8:14 amTen Secrets of Persuasion by Nido Qubein Do you want to boost your selling power? Then, add power to your persuasion. But how can you add power to our persuasion? How can you become more effective at persuading your customers to buy? Let’s look at the way the skilled professionals put power into their ability to persuade. Let me share with you ten secrets I’ve learned from some of the most persuasive salespeople in America — ten ways to add power to your persuasion. I call them the 10 P’s of persuasion. (1) Be positive. One of the most successful insurance… -
Interview of Sharon Drew Morgen on Buying Facilitation
28 Oct 2009 | 7:42 amI interview my friend, New York Times best-selling author and creator of Buying Facilitation®, Sharon Drew Morgen. She discusses what Buying Facilitation is and her new book, Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it: Sharon Drew Morgen Interview I encourage you to visit Sharon Drew’s website and grab a copy of her new book Dirty Little Secrets at either Amazon or the book’s website. -
Guest Article: “Position Yourself as a Value Provider,” by Ardath Albee
26 Oct 2009 | 6:54 amThis is cool, I get to promote two friends at once today: The following article by Ardath Albee was first published on Jill Konrath’s 2009 Sales shebang conference website. Position Yourself as a Value Provider By Ardath Albee When a salesperson jumps into the lead relationship after marketing has nurtured them, it’s essential to do so in a context that matches the lead’s expectations. Depending on the amount of information the salesperson has available at the point of transition, the message they send can have a huge impact on how well they position themselves as a value… -
Book Review: RFPs Suck:How to Master the RFP System Once and for All to Win Big Business
22 Oct 2009 | 7:40 amIf you’ve had to respond to RFPs—even just one—you know that RFPs do, in fact, suck. Lots of books have titles that don’t work well, are misleading, or weak, but RFPs Suck is a title that speaks to the soul of anyone who has fought—and probably lost far more often than won—the RFP system. RFP’s Suck: How to Master the RFP System Once and for All to Win Big Business by Tom Searcy (Channel V Books: 2009) is designed specifically for small to mid-size companies seeking to compete with their large competitors in the game of responding to the Request for Proposal or Request for…
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Featured Blog Posts - EVERYTHING IS SELLING...
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Down With the “Chick Shake”
Either shake hands properly or don’t do it at all As a female in business, I have shaken a lot of hands. I’ve used a handshake greet someone new, to say goodbye after a long meeting, to congratulate someone on a job well done and to tell someone to ‘piss-off’ in a polite way. At any rate, a handshake means business. What I have noticed is that many men do not know how to shake a woman’s hand properly or perhaps feel weird doing it. They do instead what I refer to as the “Chick Shake”. The Chick Shake is horrible. Instead of taking your right hand palm to palm with the other… -
Guy Kawasaki's AllTop Sales
Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way http://www.guykawasaki.com/ One of Guys new ventures is Alltop. Alltop is an “online magazine rack” of the web. It is a collection of subscriptions to thousands of information feeds organized by topics… -
Time to Start Planning for 2010
This is a post from late 2008 but I think you will agree that it is at least equally relevant today as it was back then. PLANNING FOR 2009 As I write this on the eve of the 2008 Presidential Election, I must consider the possibility that the economy will take time to recover. Nobody suddenly wakes up fat one morning. And our economy WILL recover, but it didn't fall to poor health overnight and it will not recover in a day. Some of our customers may go out of business. Some will change their business drastically. That's the brutal facts. These are things outside of our control. We can plan for… -
Human Behavior - Why type As implode, go nuts and do stupid things! by Kay Cannon
Lexington, KY - “All I can ask is that you trust me with this decision and know that it is no more politics as usual.” - Sarah Palin, former vice presidential nominee, abruptly resigning as governor of Alaska. For thousands of people — myself included — their first reaction to Palin’s announcement was a shocked and bewildered, “What just happened?” It’s a natural response when an otherwise accomplished individual does something that, at best, seems to make no sense and, at worst, sends their career — and oftentimes their company — into a catastrophic spiral. The landscape… -
The Importance of Being Likable
Likability matters. In your career, most of the opportunities will come through other people, and people give opportunities to the people they like. In relationships, someone has to like you before they can love you. Anywhere in life, if people like you, they are more willing to help. Unfortunately, likability has picked up a bad reputation. I read advice that says: make people either love you or hate you, popularity is an unhealthy vanity, the best minds were criticized by everyone around them. Ayn Rand glorified a dislikable character with Howard Roark, the hero of The Fountainhead. People…
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Inside Sales Experts Blog
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B2B Friday: Pipeline, Opportunity & The Smurfs
23 Oct 2009 | 12:27 amOn this day in 1958, The Smurfs appeared for the 1st time. But not until the 1980s did Hanna-Barbera Productions bring them to the US audience.Now onto our B2B Friday thoughts! ---------------------------- B2B Thought #1: Opportunity is the goal, not pipeline Your company's pipeline is probably scrutinized daily. So why are close dates getting pushed out, deals getting stuck along the way and some never hitting the "commit" list? Mike Damphousse provides an insight into why this may be occurring in Introductory Appointments: Your Goal is Meeting Number Two. He begins by giving two… -
SaaS and the Hunter Farmer Debate
20 Oct 2009 | 5:11 amWe recently wrote a post called SaaS and the Evolution of Inside Sales. We got great feedback in the form of comments, but what I found most interesting was that so much of the dialogue focused on the challenge that arises from SaaS and that challenge centers on the hunter v. farmer model. Here are some select comments: Having been a VP of Sales for 5 years with a SaaS company and now a Founder of SaaS company I have found that two things to be true: 1) People still buy from people and want to know who they are working with 2) The line between inside sales and account… -
Building Inside Sales: A Roadmap
14 Oct 2009 | 12:12 amWe recently released our ebook Building Inside Sales: Your Roadmap to a Best Practice Group. I thought I would share a brief slideshare overview below. I wrote the ebook to address some of the most critical questions around starting an Inside Sales team. Such as: Why Inside Sales? Which model is right for me? Fundamentals of successful hiring Ramping new hires Much more... Building Inside Sales So, who should read this ebook? Well, everyone of course! If you are considering Inside Sales, this will give you some of the basics to consider. If you have Inside Sales, well you… -
Voicemails: Why You? Why You Now?
7 Oct 2009 | 1:32 amThe question of whether or not to leave a voicemail in prospecting efforts is a very hot topic right now. There was an excellent discussion at Focus on Does anyone leave voicemails anymore? which I recommend you take a look at. Now, I've already shared a little rant on what not to do when leaving voicemails: Do Your Team's Voicemails Sell the Conversation? But more importantly, if probably less buzz-worthy, I wanted to share a recent example of someone who did it right. I receive a fair amount of cold calls and almost never pick up my phone for an unfamiliar / blocked number. I do,… -
B2B Friday: Is it a Lead or Is it Not?
2 Oct 2009 | 4:36 amWelcome to the 4th Quarter. Or as IDC's Lee Levitt put it "the most important quarter of the decade." Now onto today's B2B thought.B2B Thought: Addressing the Definition of a "Lead" I participated in a conversation over at Robert Lesser's blog on An Identity Crisis for the Sales Lead. Here is Robert's premise: Do you find it startling that many sales and marketing teams still cannot agree on the definition of a sales lead? The irony of course, is that the deliverable for sales is crystal clear - the sale. The contract is signed and the PO received. The heavy lifting from…
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Follow The Lead
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Revisiting the ‘Seven Prospecting Rules that Produce Leads’
3 Nov 2009 | 1:26 pmBrian Carroll, one of our favorite guest bloggers, will present a free webinar tomorrow, Nov. 3, 2 p.m. ET, on the “Seven Prospecting Rules that Produce Leads.” https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register -
Virtual sales training shouldn’t be fleeting
3 Nov 2009 | 11:05 amSure, the concept of team selling has been burned into the brain of most every salesperson. But in the trenches, when closing a sale is on the cusp of becoming a reality, it’s still to a large degree about individual success and sole reward. Not so at the management level – and certainly not in a digital age – where success is often defined by the success of subordinates. “The biggest challenge when companies try to promote sales pros to sales managers is that sales pros are used to operating independently,” said Norman Behar, CEO of Sales Readiness Group, which provides sales… -
Constantly thinking about sales quotas? Come on, be honest
2 Nov 2009 | 1:22 pmA fresh perspective on what percentage of salespeople should achieve their sales goals, via Sales & Marketing Management. -
Building relationships, brick by brick
30 Oct 2009 | 7:37 amOn Thursday we attended Kennedy Information’s Executive Search Summit in New York and found some striking similarities between the challenges faced by executive search firms and those faced by sales pros. “Great relationships are built on great conversations, not one person trying to show the other person how smart they are,” said Andrew Sobel, president of Andrew Sobel Advisors and Executive Director of the Client Leadership Forum. “I know it sounds very simple, but if you improve the quality of your conversations with clients you’ll really improve your relationships.” The… -
What is that thing in the CRM punchbowl?
27 Oct 2009 | 9:25 amGuest Blog | Ben Bradley A prospect recently asked us to review his sales and lead generation programs because lead flow had dropped significantly. This concerned him because he had just finished a significant new product launch with a well-known interactive marketing agency. We agreed to sniff around. Every reptilian instinct in my body wanted to find a way to bad mouth the agency’s work. But the creative, positioning and execution was brilliant. We couldn’t find fault in the agency’s work. We dug deeper and asked to look at the company’s new CRM – the foundation of the entire…
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Selling Financial Products by Michael Roby
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A Not-So-New Idea: Dinner Seminars
4 Nov 2009 | 7:40 pmRestaurant business is down due to the economy; people do not go out as often. In the November 2, 2009 issue of Nation’s Restaurant News, trainer and professional speaker Jim Sullivan wrote, “Not that we’re out of the woods by any measure. Grocery prices are falling and restaurant prices rising. Technomic recently reported that in the past three years 21,425 units have closed in the United States, and 84 percent of those were full-service operations. That reflects the worst three-year contraction in foodservice history.” What does this possibly mean to financial advisors? -
Bloom – or Die – Where You Are Planted
3 Nov 2009 | 8:39 amThe November 2009 issue of Fortune Small Business magazine features a story titled, “Best Places to Launch:FSB presents the 50 top towns in America to grow your business.” (The top ten towns mentioned are included in a list at the end of this post.) Do you live and work in one of these towns, and if not should you move? This article addresses the question of where to launch a business, and also where to grow a business. So what’s the answer for you if you have an established business? If you are not happy where you live, by all means consider moving. However, if like… -
Life Lessons
19 Oct 2009 | 8:54 amThanks to Alan VanDelinder of Minot, ND for this. Written By Regina Brett, 90 years old, of The Plain Dealer, Cleveland , Ohio “To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most-requested column I’ve ever written. My odometer rolled over to 90 in August, so here is the column once more:” 1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good. 2. When in doubt, just take the next small step. 3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. 4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in… -
From A Sales Master; Bud Kulusic
12 Oct 2009 | 7:21 amOn my way home one day,I stopped towatch a Little League base ball game that was beingplayed in apark near my home. As I sat down behind the bench onthe first-base line, I asked one of the boys what the scorewas.“We’re behind 14 tonothing,” he answeredwith a smile.“Really,” I said. “I have to sayyoudon’t look very discouraged.”“Discouraged?”, the boy asked with apuzzled look on his face.“Why should we be discouraged? We haven’tbeen up to bat yet.” Never quit. Never give up. -
Quick Start for Q4 Success
12 Oct 2009 | 5:35 amReady to make Q4 a success? Want to ramp-up sales activity to make 2010 the best ever? Click here to read an article to give you template for sales success.
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Engaging Ideas By Colleen Francis
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Get deals done now!
2 Nov 2009 | 5:33 pmSeeing as this is the end of another calendar quarter, I suspect many of you may be feeling what I like to call the “end-of-quarter blues.” On the one side, you’ve got pressure from your manager to close deals NOW! On the other, you’re getting the brush off from clients who want to call you back next month or next quarter instead. Stuck right in the middle? Yup, you guessed it – its lucky old you! The end of a period is a time when your prospects have other fires burning bright. Often, they use those other priorities as an excuse to put buying decisions on hold… -
Avoid the End-of-Quarter Blues!
30 Oct 2009 | 7:02 amI woke up on Tuesday morning to 6 cm of snow in Canmore, Alberta. Beautiful in the mountains – where it belongs! Winter is here and that can only mean one thing. The Fourth Quarter push! If not handled correctly relationships can be strained in Q4 as you try to get the “deal done” before the end of your commission year. Why? Because clients are tempted to hold back, see how things are shaping up for their own end of year and not want to rush a purchase. You often have opposite goals. Most companies will lower your prices and offer incentives to “buy now” –… -
Make Your Voice Heard!
29 Oct 2009 | 2:02 pmParticipate in Our Poll! Participate in the poll and see what other sales professionals are saying. Last newsletter we asked: What do you use as a creative yet appropriate email sign-offs for prospective customers? Here are the results: Regards: 28% Sincerely: 8% Thanks: 32% Cheers: 8% Others…: 24% This week, I have a request from a client this week that I thought I would put out to you: How often do you use client testimonials when selling? Vote and see how you compare to the rest of the Engage community… Register Your Vote & See the Results! -
Are you Repelling customers?
27 Oct 2009 | 4:53 amYesterday at the airport I listened in on a sales call. Nope….I was not wiretapping eavesdropping or anything else sinister. In fact I could not help but listen because the rep was beside me and speaking on her speaker phone. This is unacceptable sales behaviour. Ignoring the obvious privacy violations, the lack of call quality its self is enough to drive the prospect into the arms of a competitor. A month ago, a sales rep was cutting his finger nails next to me on the plane Last week I was listening to sales calls and could hear the reps eating lunch on the phone as they spoke to… -
Salesforce.com Announcement: New Option for Micro-Entrepreneurs
22 Oct 2009 | 5:00 amThanks to Lori Richardson at www.scoremoresales.com for announcing that Salesforce.com has just released a “kinder gentler” version of their best in class CRM specifically for entrepreneurs with just 1-2 seats needed. In fact just the other day a micro business asked me to recommend a small scale CRM and I excluded Salesforce because I didn’t know about this option! OOPS – better stay on top of things this fall… The new edition, called “Contact Manager” is only $9 per user per month. The limit is two seats, and you can upgrade as your business grows. This…
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Modern B2B Marketing | Marketo Blog
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Marketing Features in Salesforce.com Winter 10
3 Nov 2009 | 11:59 pmOnce again Salesforce.com has delivered a great set of new features for Marketers in the Winter 10 release. You will see that you are using the new release because your system will have a new image at the top left of your home page of a snowman with the number 10 in his hands. If you are still catching up from the last release check out this post on Marketing features from Salesforce.com Summer 09. New Campaign Features:Campaign Scoreboard is a new feature that provides two benefits- Campaign Summaries and Dynamic Campaign Viewing. The first, Campaign Summaries, allows users to… -
25 Must-Read B2B Marketing Blog Posts
2 Nov 2009 | 6:49 amInstead of scouring the web in search of the latest insight on B2B marketing tactics and trends, consult our list of 25 must-read B2B marketing posts. Find out what these influential marketing bloggers have to say about B2B social media, landing page optimization, search marketing, marketing ROI, and other B2B marketing techniques. Tips on Using Twitter to Boost Your Marketing Efforts - Anything Goes Marketing blogger Chad Horenfeldt shares unique tips in this marketing post on how B2B marketers can take their Twitter efforts to the next level. Ideas revolve around perfecting the use of hash… -
Sales 2.0 and Social Media: Thought Leadership with Anneke Seley
21 Oct 2009 | 11:45 pmWhat can Sales 2.0 do to improve your sales success? Anneke Seley, Author and CEO, shares some of her thoughts about using social media in our newest B2B Marketing thought leader interview. Anneke was the twelfth employee at Oracle and the designer of OracleDirect, the company’s revolutionary inside sales operation. She is currently the CEO and founder of Phone Works, a sales strategy and implementation consultancy that has helped over 350 large and small businesses across industries increase sales productivity and results. Anneke is also the coauthor of a new book, Sales 2.0:… -
2010 Blueprint for B2B Demand Generation Success: Free Webinar with SiriusDecisions and the American Marketing Association
19 Oct 2009 | 11:31 amOver a thousand B2B marketers registered to attend an October 13th webinar created to help marketers plan for 2010. This webinar, hosted by the American Marketing Association, featured Tony Jaros, VP of Research at SiriusDecisions, and Jon Miller, VP of Marketing at Marketo who together discussed five key planning assumptions in two key areas- reputation and demand generation. Specifically, the spoke about: Five key planning assumptions across two macro functions – reputation and demand creation – that should drive b-to-b marketing planning for 2010 How budgets have changed over the… -
A book’s worth of Search Marketing education in one half day event: The Current State of Search Advertising
18 Oct 2009 | 11:48 pmA few weeks ago at the Marketo User Summit I had the privilege of hearing from Andrew Spoeth, Marketo customer and Director of Marketing at the world’s leading B2B Search Marketing firm, Enquiro about an upcoming seminar on October 28th that is sure to be a must-attend event for marketing managers, directors, and VPs in the San Francisco Bay area. Kicking off this half day event will be a keynote from Graham Mudd, Vice President of comScore Marketing Solutions about “The Current State of Search Advertising” along with insights from Search Marketing superstar and author of the new…
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Sale News
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LeoVince Changes Distribution Channel
4 Nov 2009 | 3:55 pmLeoVince USA is expanding dealer-direct sales while Tucker Rocky becomes its sole third-party distributor. -
Muller Martini names new National Sales Director
4 Nov 2009 | 11:46 amMuller Martini has announced the appointment of Carrington Herbert to the position of National Sales Director for print finishing products. -
The Cisco squeeze
4 Nov 2009 | 4:07 amCisco Systems has long had a unique competitive position in the enterprise market. -
Oco Launches Customer & Sales Management Analytics Solution to Help Companies Drive Profitability
3 Nov 2009 | 7:57 pmOco, Inc., a leading Software-as-a-Service ) provider of business intelligence and analytics solutions, announced today the Oco Customer & Sales Management Analytics solution, an innovative business analytics solution that provides companies with a 360-degree view of their customers. -
Manufacturers' Corner: Can Telemarketing Be Used For Industrial Sales?
3 Nov 2009 | 3:39 pmBy Mike Collins Most people connect the idea of telemarketing to those folks who call you during your dinner to sell carpet cleaning.
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Sales Force One
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I Love LA
22 Oct 2009 | 4:42 amIn LA this week on business and needed some gas for my rental car so into the first station I came to...where I was expecting to pay at the pump...only to find out while this station had pay at the pump it was not located on the pump (where it always is located) and that they don't take credit cards...only debit cards. Not finding this convenient, I drove away and bought gas at another station. How convenient do you make it for people to do business with you? Unless your relationship with a client is 100% safe, you should be asking your clients that question...before it is too late...and… -
You Gonna Pay For That?
6 Oct 2009 | 4:38 amSo here is the scene - my 6 year old daughter Madison is selling coupon books as a fund raiser and she shows the book her grandmother after dinner. Grandma (who will certainly eventually buy) is going through the book page by page and wondering how many of the coupons she will use as she doesn't get out all that much. After a few minutes, Madison simply asks "are you gonna pay for this or not?" Classic. It was a humorous reminder that every sales call must end with a clear call to action. You need to put something out there that the prospect could say "no" in… -
Happy Ears = Unhappy Days for Salespeople
30 Sep 2009 | 10:13 amCheck out this article by Dave Kurlan: http://www.omghub.com/salesdevelopmentblog/tabid/5809/bid/10627/5-Steps-to-Coaching-Your-Salespeople-Beyond-Happy-Ears.aspx Do you have salespeople with happy ears? Do you have happy ears? That is defined as a tendency for salespeople to hear what they want to hear from prospects instead of understanding what the prospect is really saying. For example, when the prospect says "we are always open to new ways of doing business" the salesperson thinks they hear "change is no problem." -
Free Webinar for Sales Managers
23 Sep 2009 | 1:45 pmLet's face it; it's a different selling environment today and it's going to continue to be difficult. The effects of the downswing will be lingering in terms of client and prospect conservatism and cynicism. So your salespeople will need to inspire comfort and confidence to encourage prospects to invest and move forward. Do your salespeople have the skills to sell in this environment? If you're not sure or you think they need to develop a new or different selling approach, you should join Mark Trinkle, Sales Trainer with Anthony Cole Training Group, from… -
Great Expectations
16 Sep 2009 | 6:52 amNo, I am not talking about the literary classic by Charles Dickens (and no, I am not referring to the Cliff Notes version either). I am referring to the NFL Sunday Ticket that I ordered for the first time this season on DirecTV that allows me to watch all of the NFL games in HD. It includes a mix channel where I can watch 8 games at the same time and a Red Zone Channel that constantly cuts to live games when a team enters the red zone. What does this have to do with selling and managing clients? Your competition is any company of anything who raises your clients expectations. If you are…
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Sales Java™ Blog
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Sales Presentation – The Secrets of Steve Jobs
13 Oct 2009 | 12:47 amSales presentations are a critical step in the sales process. No matter what sales system (SPIN, Wedge, Strategic Selling, Baseline or the Effective Selling System), you will eventually be at a point where you present a solution to someone that will either tell you "yes", "no", or that they "need to think it over". Are there secrets to effective presenting? According Carmine Gallo, "those that follow the art of presentation according to Steve Jobs of Apple computer the answer is yes". And as I review the material presented that supports this claim, I now hold the… -
Getting to First Base - IN SALES
9 Oct 2009 | 7:51 amLike many sales training and development companies that focus on selling and sales management, we had our way of describing the sales process but nothing seemed to stick. A couple of years ago, Dave Kurlan wrote a book called Baseline Selling. It is a description of the sales process that Dave had been using a for a couple of years, and as a distributor for the Objective Management Group, of which Dave is president, I was familiar with his approach. So, I sought permission to use the diamond and here we are today. Our clients now describe where they are in a sales… -
Sales & Service - It's The Service That Sells Them Again
7 Oct 2009 | 1:08 pmCCHMC - Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center is a study in extra-ordinary sales and service. But it is the service that sells us again. Our son, Anthony, will require on-going care for the rest of his life; that will keep us going to hospitals. But it is the service at CCHMC that will keep us going there for as long as they will let Anthony receive medical care there. Can your clients say the same thing about you?Anthony has a pump in his side that puts medicine into his spinal column. The medicine helps reduce the muscle spasticity he has as a result of the anoxic brain injury he… -
Old Dogs and New Sales Tricks
29 Sep 2009 | 1:25 amOld Dogs - I may or may not be talking directly to you if you don't consider yourself an 'old dog'. I am talking to you if you've adopted the perspective of 'I've been doing this a long time' and you no longer feel the need to learn new 'sales tricks'. Sales Tricks - this really isn't about sales tricks. It is about learning why what you do works or it is about remembering why what you do works. Case in point - do this exercise - connect the nine dots using four lines. Rules - you can't back track on a line, the lines must be straight and you cannot lift your writing… -
Off-Site Sales Training Benefits
24 Sep 2009 | 12:45 pmThe benefits of off-site sales training are clear. 1. You don't get distracted. It never fails; if you go to a training session that is held in the same building where you work, you will get distracted. Either as a sales person or a sales manager, you won't be able to help yourself. During the break, you will go to your office and see the phone light blinking, and just like Pavlov's dogs, you've been trained to check the message. Inevitably, it will be someone leaving you an urgent and important message that you just MUST attend to now. Even when you…
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Sales Lead Insights: A Blog About B2B Lead Generation, Marketing and Sales
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B2B Email Marketing: Interview with Stephanie Miller
3 Nov 2009 | 7:32 amThis is one of a series of occasional interviews with top practitioners on topics of interest to B2B lead generation, marketing and new business development professionals. My guest today is Stephanie Miller, email expert and co-author of Sign me up! A Marketer’s Guide To Email Newsletters That Build Relationships and Boost Sales. Stephanie describes herself as a customer advocate who, through her work with email performance company Return Path, helps marketers reach the inbox and connect with prospects and customers via email and social marketing. Recent research sponsored by Google and… -
Who are the 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management?
26 Oct 2009 | 1:10 pmHere is your chance to vote for up to five of the fifty most influential people in sales lead management. The Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) announced today that it has opened the voting to determine the 50 most influential people in the field of sales lead management for 2009. Both members and non-members can vote for up to five nominees each. Use this link to vote. Or visit www.salesleadmgmtassn.com/top50_vote.htm The results will be published on November 16, 2009. -Mac P.S. I’m honored to be included in the list of nominees and sure would appreciate your vote! If you'd like… -
An Interview With Mike Damphousse About B-to-B Appointment Setting
28 Sep 2009 | 7:01 amThis is the first in a series of occasional interviews with top practitioners in the field of B-to-B demand generation. Today’s guest is Michael Damphousse, CEO/CMO of Green Leads, LLC, a firm that specializes in using the phone to get qualified appointments for its clients’ salespeople on a pay-per-performance basis. Mike is an experienced marketer, having served as CMO of two software companies before starting Green Leads. His blog, Smashmouth Marketing, has developed a wide following among B-to-B marketing professionals. Mike, I’m hearing a lot of buzz about appointment… -
Free, on-demand webinar on A/B and multivariate testing *specifically for B2B marketers*.
17 Sep 2009 | 9:15 pmIf you are responsible for business-to-business lead generation, you will want to attend this free, on-demand webinar about testing. I presented this webinar live on September 24, 2009, with Anne Holland. You probably already know Anne. She founded MarketingSherpa. The webinar is full of ideas you can put to work right away to improve your B2B lead generation results. In 46 minutes you’ll get: Case Studies of A/B tests run by B2B marketers to improve lead generation; Proven tactics for increasing the quantity and quality of leads you generate via online forms; Ideas on… -
Industrial Marketers: Is this News Good or Bad?
2 Sep 2009 | 9:48 amAccording to a recent survey of engineering, technical, manufacturing and industrial professionals: Although the majority expects their companies’ spending to remain flat or down, more than a third (36%) said they expect spending during the second half of 2009 will increase compared to the first half of year. You can get the free white paper with complete survey results and analysis here. So is this good news or bad news? I believe it is good news that more than a third of companies in the industrial sector are expected to increase spending during this second half of 2009. Some…
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Sales Lead Management Association Blog
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Voting is Strong for the 50 Most Influential People In Sales Lead Management
1 Nov 2009 | 4:17 pmVoting for the "50 Most influential People in Sales Lead Management" has reached nearly 1,000 voters who have cast an average of 3 votes (you can vote for up to five people). In the first week of voting, 964 people voted on the SLMA site. Voting is open until the end of business on November 13th. Membership in the SLMA has exceeded 1805 plus 1034 in the SLMA Linkedin Group. To vote click here. Three new articles were posted this week in the Social Media/Networking part of the Resources Section. Why Social Media is Just Like Sex - by Jamie Turner, The 60 Second Marketer The Top 13… -
Sales Lead Management Association Voting is Open for the 50 Most Influential List In Sales Lead Management
26 Oct 2009 | 9:39 amLos Angeles, CA - - Oct 26, 2009--James W. Obermayer, executive director of the Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA), announced today that the association has opened the virtual voting booth to determine the 50 most influential people in the field of sales lead management for 2009. SLMA co-founder Susan Campanale said "Members and non-members may vote for nominees listed on the SLMA site on October 26th. The results will be published on November 16, 2009. Voters may cast votes for up to five nominees; duplicates are not allowed. Mark Friedman, EVP of the SLMA said, "We consider all of… -
Sales Lead Management Association Extends Nominations Until October 23rd!
19 Oct 2009 | 8:38 amThe SLMA announced that it will extend the process for nominating people to the 50 Most Influential List for sales lead management for 2009 to Friday, October 23rd. Voting will begin on Monday, October 26th. Susan Campanale, VP of Marketing said, "It gives members more time to nominate worthy individuals. Members must login to the SLMA site and from the home page go to the nomination form. We are surprised that more individuals on the client site and agency people are not as well represented so far." ... -
Maximizing the Value of Your Lead Generation Dollars
13 Oct 2009 | 5:37 amPressures are mounting on companies to maximize marketing ROI. In other words, the money spent on lead generation should show a strong return related to sales revenue. This money should be evaluated so it is continually applied to the highest yielding program(s). To do this, marketers must gain visibility into individual programs to determine the number and quality of leads they generate, and how many ultimately transform into closed sales.But the issue doesn’t stop there. Increasing the value of lead generation dollars also means ensuring the leads being handed to costly sales resources… -
Nominations Closing October 17th for the 50 Most Influential List in Sales Lead Management
11 Oct 2009 | 9:49 amAs a member of the SLMA, you and only you, can nominate a deserving person for consideration as one of the 50 most influential people in sales lead management in 2009. Go to the SLMA site, sign in with your membership, and nominate a worthy individual. The list of nominees will be published and voting will begin on October 19th. The Top 50 list will be published in mid-December. Regards, James ObermayerExecutive Director ...
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Sales Machine
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Is Intel Only Guilty of Outselling AMD?
4 Nov 2009 | 11:30 amWhy Intel probably isn't guilty of anything other than selling too hard. -
When in Doubt, Do the Opposite
4 Nov 2009 | 5:30 amA counter-intuitive sales tip, and a funny video to point the way. -
Memo to Ford Sales: Quit While You're Ahead
3 Nov 2009 | 11:30 amWhy commissioned reps for auto sales have become obsolete. -
World's Most Dangerous Sales Myths
3 Nov 2009 | 5:30 amFive mistaken beliefs about selling which create failure rather than success. -
How to Easily Avoid a Price War
2 Nov 2009 | 11:03 amA five step program to sell "economic value" rather than price.
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Sales Podcast and Social Media Training Blog by Shane Gibson - Canada - USA - South Africa
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The 10 Personality traits of a Guerrilla Social Media Marketer
30 Oct 2009 | 9:34 amJay Levinson and I put our heads together and came up with “The 10 Personality traits of a Guerrilla Social Media Marketer” they will be part of a program we’re developing together. I thought I would give you a sneak peek into these traits and the Guerrilla way: Immune to hype: There is a lot of hype [...] -
Tips de Social Media, Pensamientos y Modas en menos de 140 caracteres.
28 Oct 2009 | 7:11 amCada cierto tiempo, me dedico a hacer una colección de mis tweets mas populares de Social Media (Twitter updates via @shanegibsones) y los archivo en mi blog para que las personas que se los perdieron o para los que aun no se encuentran en Twitter. Aquí hay una colección de 25 Tips, pensamientos y modas [...] -
Two Leadership Seminars to Help You Compete and Prosper
22 Oct 2009 | 4:25 pmI have two seminars coming up in Vancouver in the next 60 days. If you’re a manager, executive or entrepreneur these two sessions are designed with you in mind. Today we need solid relationship development and leadership skills that are honed for today’s hyper-connected stakeholders and team member. These are not old strategies dusted off, [...] -
How fast are social media and social networks growing?
22 Oct 2009 | 6:34 amI found this counter through @cindyking on Twitter. It was developed by Gary Hayes, and really gives you a good idea of the minute by minute growth of social media and social networks. User generated content is now your brand, are you engaging these content creators and social networkers? Click here to Tweet this Sales [...] -
Why You Need to Be a Nomadic Social Media Tribalist
12 Oct 2009 | 10:30 amToday’s podcast is more about questions than answers, this is somewhat of a roughly formed thought at this point. Tribes by Seth Godin really resonated with me when I first read it a year ago. Jay Conrad Levinson’s concept of Nano-casting to small unique groups (often only parts of a tribe) has always intrigued me. [...]
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Selling to Consumers | Sales Training Blog by Skip Anderson
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Furniture Sales Training: It's Dining Table Season
4 Nov 2009 | 3:59 amNovember is the beginning of dining table season. Dining table customers will be visiting furniture stores to select a new table and chairs. As families' plans solidify for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day (and other holidays, too), some start dreaming of a brand new dining set. That's good news for furniture sales representatives.As these customers enter your store, what can you do to maximize your selling opportunity with them? Here are five sales tips to help you give your customers happier holidays this year:1. The recession is over, remember?The economic gurus… -
The Value of the Extreme
3 Nov 2009 | 5:12 amWe notice and remember:.The young woman with hair down to her tail bone;.The guy with the super cool glasses;.When we're greeted by someone wearing a tux;.Ferraris, Lamborghini's, and Rolls Royces; Smart cars, too.In sales and in business, it is sometimes (often) helpful to get noticed and get remembered. What have you done to get noticed and remembered? What has your retail store or company done to do likewise?.Any retail store can set out a platter of cookies for shoppers. But what about little cups of bread pudding? Or mini tartlets? Or your own brand of chocolates? .There is… -
What Your Employees Want
30 Oct 2009 | 7:12 amYour employees want to be listened to. They want to be heard. They want to be engaged. As badly as they want to be listened to, heard, and engaged, they also want a manager who is decisive and quick (but not too quick) to act. Decisive managers get team members to interact, to talk through situations, to hash things out, and to identify weaknesses and develop solutions.Sometimes the wildly successful manager moves forward with an initiative even if the team members aren't on board with it. And sometimes changes need to be made. Sometimes direction needs to be changed. Employees… -
Why Don't Customers Buy?
29 Oct 2009 | 5:47 amThere's a new Selling To Consumers Podcast episode that explains the number one reason why customers do not buy from you! See the sales podcast page or see all the sales training podcast episodes, or listen using the player below. You can also subscribe in iTunes. Powered by Podbean.com If you like this post (or don't) please click on "comments" below and share your comment. Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers Sales Training. He works with companies and individuals who sell to consumers in B2C, retail, in-home selling, in the financial, real… -
Apples and Oranges: 3 Ways to Get Prospects To See Differences
28 Oct 2009 | 4:47 am"I can get the same thing for only $13,000 and your price is $18,000."Hearing something like that from a prospect stops many salespeople right in their tracks. Having no better way to handle that statement, some settle for spewing sales babble such as "But we're the leading provider of widgets in our city" or "We have the best customer service around, and you should really buy from us."Often, a customer isn't aware of the differences between your product and the other product that is priced much less than yours. When this happens, you need a methodology…
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Keith Rosen: The Executive Sales Coach
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Part Three: Determining When To Coach Your Salespeople, When to Provide Sales Training and When To Give Them The Answer
22 Oct 2009 | 2:44 amAs a recap from Part One, “Do I Coach Them or Train Them?” when coaching someone, The Gap is the space that exists between where the client or coachee is today and where they want or need to be. It’s the void that exists between the person and their goal. As a coach, it’s your [...] -
Part Two: Determining When To Coach Your People, When to Provide Sales Training & When to Give Them The Answer
19 Oct 2009 | 2:41 amAs a recap from Part One, “Do I Coach Them or Train Them?” when coaching someone, The Gap is the space that exists between where the client or coachee is today and where they want or need to be. It’s the void that exists between the person and their goal. As a coach, it’s your [...] -
Do I Coach Them or Train Them? Determining When To Coach Your People & When to Train Them - Part One
15 Oct 2009 | 2:23 amWhen coaching someone, The Gap is the space that exists between where the client or coachee is today and where they want or need to be. It’s the void that exists between the person and their goal. As a coach, it’s your responsibility to identify and fill in this gap. The question is, what exactly [...] -
What Do You Coach? Coach The Gap
12 Oct 2009 | 2:20 amThe most common question I hear from managers just starting to shift from manager to coach is, “How do I recognize where it is they need and could benefit from the coaching most?” Actually, covering the specifics of what you can coach someone on, from a tactical perspective is actually the easy part. It’s uncovering the [...] -
When Your Commitment To Others Sabotages Your Coaching Efforts
8 Oct 2009 | 2:13 amYes, you can actually want too much for your salespeople and your clients, more than they, in fact, may be ready for or even want for themselves. Jake learned this lesson quickly as a new coach. To this day, Jake’s unwavering commitment to every one of the salespeople on his team is to help them make [...]
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Ian Brodie's Selling Professional Services Blog
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Make Business Development a Habit
27 Oct 2009 | 3:54 pmA couple of weeks ago I got a phone call from a friend which got me thinking about this particular topic. The friend in question is David Lomas, who runs M3 Publishing – but more importantly, is the kind of guy who always has a dozen projects on the boil and has a huge network of connections. David called me as he was driving home one Friday evening “just to keep in touch”. We spent the next 20 minutes or so just shooting the breeze, exchanging stories and brainstorming a little about a couple of projects we are working on. Here’s the point: 95% of people – when… -
The Importance of Authenticity
20 Oct 2009 | 4:46 pmA few months ago I had a bit of a heated email argument with a fairly well-known marketing guru whose newsletter I subscribed to. I won’t mention names as the point of this post isn’t about criticising others – it’s about something I believe to be vital to succeed in business development: authenticity. The argument started when I received an email from the guru sent from a hospital waiting room in a few moments he had spare waiting for his wife to give birth. His email said he had to be quick (for obvious reasons) but wanted to make an offer on one of his new products. -
Lead Nurturing – Latest Issue of Outside In Newsletter Published
8 Oct 2009 | 1:40 pmThe latest issue of the Outside In Newsletter for Professional Service Firms focuses on Lead Nurturing: how you progress an initial client relationship over time to a point where you’re actually doing business together. Lead nurturing is critical for professionals: at the point at which we initially meet clients very few of them need our services right now. But almost all of them will need our type of service in the next few years. To be the one they remember and choose at that point, we need to nurture our relationships with those potential clients over time. The article gives a number… -
Is the Free Initial Consultation Dead?
6 Oct 2009 | 5:08 pmYes, in my view. For many years, consultants, coaches, trainers – and even accountants and lawyers – have been offering “free initial consultations” as a way of encouraging clients to engage with them. The logic, of course, is that once they work with them for an hour or so, their fears about whether the professional knew their stuff and whether they’d be able to get on with them would be laid to rest. Some of the more marketing savvy professionals learnt how to focus the initial consultation on identifying the client’s most urgent problems and plotting an… -
Win New Clients with Talks and Seminars
30 Sep 2009 | 5:10 pmThe key to marketing professional services is to demonstrate rather than claim. And if you’re marketing yourself and your skills then one of the strongest ways to do this is through talks and seminars. Clients hire professionals who understand their problems, have the expertise to solve them, and who they feel they could work with productively. Few other marketing approaches give the professional such an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of client problems and their expertise, and give a feel for what they would be like to work with. Talks and seminars are in the top tier…
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Sales Sounding Board
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Following the Sales Playbook
22 Oct 2009 | 4:05 pmWhile many companies adopt specific sales processes, they are often using criteria that are either too complicated or sometimes too simplistic, and often promote the wrong selling behavior. Managers are hired and promoted for showing expertise in leading their teams and driving revenue for the company. However, managers often like to adopt their own spin on the sales process and often your company may end up with too many variations to the playbook. Imagine if on the sidelines of a football game you had each coach carrying out their own version of the game plan. It would be chaos. The same… -
Sales: Gaining Market Share
22 Sep 2009 | 3:07 pmIn the ever changing landscape of business sales the competition is tougher than ever. Companies who want market share typically look outside their own walls to an acquisition or a joint venture where they can take or merge business into their own. The thing is, customers are more sophisticated than that, and demand more. Just buying the business through acquisition does not guarantee that your customers will stay with you. To meet customer needs businesses need to have an organized and systematic approach to winning the deals and keeping the customer happy. Having a systematic approach that… -
How to Stay Relevant in Sales
27 Aug 2009 | 12:30 pmSales management as we know it has changed. The current economic situation has sales people and sales management doing extraordinary things in these challenging times that are often unnatural. It is time to take control of your selling environment before someone else is asked to. Companies are looking for profitability over growth which often means they require fewer sales people to get the same or better result. They are re-evaluating their priorities and forcing sales management to be accountable and do more with less. They are looking to put a structure in place that has the highest… -
Driving More Revenue: It's Never in the Budget
17 Jul 2009 | 2:01 pmYou need more sales -- more revenue to be exact -- but there is “no budget” to spend on marketing. Sound familiar? Maybe, just maybe, more marketing spending is not what you need. Whenever I sit in a meeting about prospects, we discuss the biggest challenges that salespeople face. Number one is always sales or attaining revenue. The funny thing about that however, is there is often an assumption that with more lead generation, more marketing dollars or more advertising, the sales team will be able to sell more. Don’t get me wrong, your prospects still have a need for what you sell and… -
The Benefits of Sales Coaching
30 Jun 2009 | 1:41 pmForward-looking organizations like Lenovo, Corning, Innovex, Motorola are known for being leaders in adopting effective sales processes and technology. Many of these companies are now leveraging new processes and capabilities to empower their sales management teams and to get more out of their sales people through tracking key performance indicators and coaching. Even though you may be a small company in comparison, the key to improving sales in your organization is where you focus. The focus should be on your salespeople and their performance rather than the resulting numbers. One way to…
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The DEW View!
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How to succeed when your life life kicks the @$%*# out of your sales life
28 Oct 2009 | 6:01 amSometimes life throws you a curve ball. Things blow up…. bad. You get beaten up in your personal life and it starts to affect your chances at closing deals. You have opportunities that demand finesse, skill, and talent — and you feel defeated and ready to quit. Winning is more than about a notch on the belt. It pays the bills. Not succeeding is something you don’t want to consider…. So, what do you do? How do you put your life back together while not missing a career beat? Recognize that life dealt you a black eye. There is no use denying the obvious. Try to… -
(Illogically) Help Me Be Your Customer
21 Oct 2009 | 6:03 amThink through the mind of your customer… and ask yourself if you are “illogically” wooing your customer. Are you doing what no one else will do to make them successful? Are you working to guarantee that your customer hits a home run by working with you? It’s not logical. In fact, it doesn’t really make sense from a “nuts-and-bolts” perspective. But like anything, when you swing the opposite direction, you get a better perspective. Instead of being illogically helpful, let’s look at being illogically awful. Let’s look at the bad… -
The language of people
16 Oct 2009 | 6:12 amThere’s a secret language that many of us don’t understand. It’s deliberate but very real. It’s hidden but in plain sight. It’s how we work but rarely what we think about. It’s called “humanity” and it’s the key to making the impossible very real. It’s the difference between the unbelievable happening and almost “getting there.” When you understand people you understand the possibilities. You get to be a part of this language of “humanity“. But it means your mission – your calling in life… -
How GMC Lost My Million Dollar Business
6 Oct 2009 | 6:06 amWhat happened to the art of caring about the success of your customers? What happened to caring in general — about your own success, about what wakes you up in the morning, about a higher calling than your 9-to-5? Is it costing you millions of dollars and you don’t even know about it yet? “Sir, that’s the fee we added recently to anyone returning their vehicle at the end of their lease. It’s helps to offset our recent losses.” That was the response I got from a customer support rep in India answering my frustration over a $800 bill from GMC after… -
Stop Shouting at Me
29 Sep 2009 | 6:17 amSince when did we as business people decide that having conversations was too much work? Instead of discussion with our customers and the community we decided that SHOUTING at the world was the “latest and greatest” in sales-marketry… That being annoying was a great replacement for providing value to the community around us. (If you see the guy who switched the playbook let me know so I can slip him over the border into North Korea.) I want a lifetime ban on boring HTML newsletters. They just suck. At least pretend to know my name. I feel like the other side of a bad…
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SALES MANAGEMENT 2.0
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Infectious Leadership
What kind of infectious agent do you want to be? Infectious like humor or infectious like the plague? For good or ill the senior leadership of every organization is infectious. By this I mean that leaders’ behaviors tend to be transmitted to their direct reports, who pass them on to the next level, and so on down through their organizations. Over time, they permeate the organization from top to bottom, influencing activity at all levels. Eventually they become embodied in the organizational culture, influencing the types of people who get promoted and hired into the organization, creating a… -
Conducting Corporate Diplomacy
The higher you rise in organizations the more you need to be able to practice the corporate equivalent of international diplomacy. Whether you are striving to transform your organization internally or working to shape the rules of the game with government officials externally, the essential challenge is the same: If you want to achieve your objectives, you need to learn how to effectively identify alignment and build alliances in order to get things done. Failure to master this critical skill can lead to trouble: it’s easy for leaders who are used to wielding authority (and making decisions… -
Dispelling The Salesperson Stereotype: The Key To Being More Effective In Today's Economy
As salespeople, we can get very enthusiastic about our business and offerings. As tempered as this enthusiasm may be, we run the risk of being overwhelming, or worse being too “salesy.” This has contributed to the stereotype of the average salesperson as pushy, aggressive, and overly excited. The result is, invariably, a degradation of the sales process. By virtue of this stereotype, internal feelings of pressure and tension are instantly created within prospects and clients alike. The prospect feels he or she would rather be anywhere else other than speaking with you. The reality is that… -
Building Trust through Empathy: A Practical Guide
Trust is the single most important purchasing factor in any sale. Trust is the buyer’s confidence that the seller will do right by them, and becomes more important as the level of vulnerability (risk, significance of the decision) and dependence (technical, knowledge, time) rises. As I am sure you can imagine, the importance of trust is highest in a strategic sale. Buyers will never work with a seller that they don’t trust, and will most likely choose to work with the supplier that they trust the most. The irony with trust is that most buyers don’t trust sellers. Look at mainstream… -
Differentiating the IT Services Menu
It seems every week we talk to just another IT services shop trying to kick-start their marketing and sales process. We sit down with the founder and ask the same question: “so how are you different from all the other firms out there?” When we ask that question, we get the same answer: we have a global delivery model, we are client centric, we put people first, we are domain experts and/or we really understand our clients. Woop do flipping do. Welcome to the club. With those credentials, you are beautiful and unique, just like everyone else. Your competitors have the same answer. They…
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The Sales 2.0 Network
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Sometimes in sales (like golf) you’ve got to lay up
3 Nov 2009 | 10:50 amI was with one of my sales team recently when he was demonstrating Dealmaker to a prospective customer. (Dealmaker is the Sales Performance Automation software platform that we provide to help sales people win more deals.) One of the modules in Dealmaker guides the sales person to select the right competitive strategy to win the sale. Based on the information entered during the demo, Dealmaker recommended a Fragment Strategy. The customer, who was keen golfer, nodded his head, and said “Yep, it’s just like golf - sometimes you’ve got to just lay up.” I thought that… -
5 Facts About How Sales Cycles are Changing
1 Nov 2009 | 4:58 amOver the past few years we observed (in a measurable and analytical sense) tens of thousands of winning sales cycles. Through the Dealmaker platform, we can aggregate anonymous data, to learn about the [evolving] cadence of sales cycle. For each of our customers, Dealmaker allows them to track and measure the actual sales cycle of each deal, and analyze on a macro or micro level. For reasons of privacy and general good business practice, we don’t access individual customer’s data, but for certain accounts where we’ve been given explicit permission, we have been able to… -
Outrageous buyer behavior?
29 Oct 2009 | 7:40 amIf you’ve ever experienced what appears to be extremely unfair behavior from your buyer or his (or her) procurement department, you will laugh out loud at the video below. I got this link from my friend Joe Terry over at Corporate Visions whose organization helps companies create a compelling message to set themselves apart in the market. One thing that they do that I think really has value is that they know how to [help companies to] deliver the right marketing messages at the right place in the sales cycle. This video shows some examples of [bad] corporate buyer behavior, but… -
5 Steps to Bulletproof that Big Sale
26 Oct 2009 | 2:29 amThis is a guest post I did for Geoffrey James over at The Sales Machine. The original words were mine, but Geoffrey’s editing skills made it better. SCENARIO: You’re feeling really good about the deal — the one you’re counting on to make your quota this quarter. Everything seems to be lined up. Your customer contact, Joe, has told you that you should get a verbal order within a few days, and paperwork soon after that. Now, IMAGINE that you just missed a call from Joe, and you’re listening to the voice mail: “Sorry, but we won’t be placing that order with… -
4 Macro Business Trends
25 Oct 2009 | 11:44 amAs you may know, The TAS Group, and others, launched the Dealmaker Partner Network on Sept 29, 2009. Since then I’ve received many inquiries from individuals and companies who’ve expressed both intrigue and interest in what we’re doing. I hadn’t really thought that the DPN would create such interest, and as often happens when ideas evolve, I never called out the core thinking that combined to bring this idea to life. Here it is in brief: My perspective is informed by a number of macro trends that, in my opinion, are today combining to shape the future of the…
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SymVolli
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Don't shoot me I'm only the sales person
28 Oct 2009 | 2:16 amFollowing on from Hugh Stafford-Smith’s article about People and Talent, I believe that the sales person is a very visible target and therefore in the absence of other information he is the first person to come under the microscope when things are not going according to the sales plan. I have two issues with this approach: firstly, that the sales person is the one of the most expensive resources within any organisation and to get rid of him should be done with due care and attention;, and secondly the sales person is the key component in the overall activity of how a company goes to market. -
Business Intelligence With SymVolli 7.5 - Accessibility To Information
20 Oct 2009 | 7:10 amIn the last newsletter we sent out to our subscribers we alluded to a number of announcements on some of the new elements and features that will be shipping with SymVolli 7.5 which will be released in January 2010. In the first announcement of our newest version of SymVolli we decided to focus on 'Business Intelligence' in line with the new Business Intelligence functionality that SymVolli 7.5 has. I havewritten a short article discussing the issues that companies face in using Business Intelligence and how we deal with BI in SymVolli 7.5. Business Intelligence should be affordable and… -
Going4Growth Partners With Nomis Limited and SymVolli
30 Sep 2009 | 2:02 amAs we are tackling the business critical issue of sales performance improvement we need to develop our business partner channel based on people who have the expertise in this field and who are comfortable in dealing with senior management. Graham Whittle is a professional that has the experience both in sales performance improvement and in dealing with senior management. We at Nomis Limited and SymVolli look forward to a long and prosperous partnership with Going4Growth. As a Sales & Marketing Professional, I am always looking for ways in which I can add further value to my clients. said… -
Cameron Consulting - Leaders in Management Consultancy in the Public Sector Take the Next Step with SymVolli
28 Sep 2009 | 5:00 amIn a world of change, it may be forgiven for thinking that public sector and large corporate industry giants are organisations that frequently need catching up with the ever moving world that we live in. As agents of creating new and effective organisations, Cameron Consulting are at the forefront of the movement to introduce critical new ways of thinking to make such organisations better, more efficient, more effective and more importantly - more profitable. Cameron Consulting is a management consultancy firm founded in 2003 by Neil Thody primarily helping public sector and construction… -
GUEST ARTICLE: Are you missing Business Critical data that could bring you the greatest return?
24 Sep 2009 | 4:08 amIt is with great pleasure that I introduce this guest post from one of our associates Hugh Stafford-Smith a leading management consultant for SABA Consulting based in Guildford. In this post Hugh talks about business critical data which heavily ties in with what we believe in developing our sales performance ideology. For the last ten years we have been obsessed with the benefits of effective process. We have made a mantra of efficiencies of using CRM solutions and “ologies” from our chosen sales process Gurus. In doing so we have created a sales force that delivers by numbers doing…
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Jonathan Farrington's Blog
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Lack Of Rapport & Flexibility
4 Nov 2009 | 12:47 amToday, two more beliefs that can have a tremendous impact on our performance….I have suggested there are six in total, so here are numbers three and four 3. Resistance from another person usually signals a lack of rapport. Rapport is a vital ingredient when developing relationships because it builds trust and allows communication to flow. When that state of rapport is there, communication is a lot easier even if you do not agree with the other person. When we do not feel that rapport or connection, we have a tendency to ‘nit-pick’ or find fault. Customers respond to people they… -
Communication Is Successful, Only If It Achieves Your Desired Result
3 Nov 2009 | 1:07 amContinuing with the six beliefs that can have such a dramatic effect on our performance…. It doesn’t matter if you think you’ve communicated well or if you think you’ve been crystal clear, what matters is that your communication is received and acted upon in the manner you wanted. How many times have you said something to another person who has totally misinterpreted what you meant? Equally, sometimes we are on the receiving end of communication that makes us feel bad. If we can look beyond the communication and try to see a positive intention behind another person’s behaviour,… -
Attitude Underpins Everything That We Are
2 Nov 2009 | 12:01 amI talk a lot about the success formula we use here at JFC….but here is a reminder: Attitude + Skills + Process + Knowledge = Success It looks like this. Notice what underpins everything else – it is of course attitude. This week, I am going to be discussing attitude, motivation and beliefs – in particular six beliefs that do have an impact on you, either positively or negatively…here we go. 1. Every Individual is unique and their perceptions are true to them. Because we each absorb 2 million bits of information unconsciously and can only process around seven chunks consciously we… -
Integrity: When You Do What You Say You’re Going to Do
1 Nov 2009 | 2:34 amThe JF Guest Author Spot Nancy Solomon Last week my good chum, fellow Top Sales Experts Executive Board Member, and quite extraordinary person, Nancy D Solomon, became an author, and this extract describes the experience Integrity: When You Do What You Say You’re Going to Do There are few days as celebratory as when I adopted both of my children. Yesterday wasn’t in that category but it was a close runner up in the special department. My first book, Impact! What Every Woman Needs to Know to Go From Invisible to Invincible! was born. As in, delivered. To Microsoft: A spectacular beginning… -
New Strategies to Get in the Door
31 Oct 2009 | 2:47 amThe JF Guest Author Spot Kendra Lee Cold calling. Just the phrase sends shivers up many sellers’ spines. Prospects don’t respond. Gatekeepers padlock their gates shut. Sellers shut down. It doesn’t have to be that hard. This year has changed the face of prospecting and opened up a whole new set of tactics to help you grab the attention of your contacts. As I’ve tested them myself I’ve discovered that cold calling is now actually FUN! I know you’re doubting me. I see that look on your face across the wire, but really, with a few tweaks to your technique, you can have fun too. …
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The Sizzle
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how to make change happen
19 Oct 2009 | 2:45 pmIf you are frustrated trying to make change happen in your organisation, or for that matter, your life, take a moment to think about the overall process and what it takes to start. A useful framework is the "Transtheoretical Model" for understanding and affecting behavioural change in a social marketing context. Here action is preceded by pre-contemplation (where the change is not yet considered i.e. ignorance is bliss), then contemplation (where people sit on the fence with ambivalence), then preparation (where people begin to test the waters). To help move their change along… -
thinking backwards
28 Sep 2009 | 1:09 pmMany processes and activities seem to begin in a logical place: with what you have. In document automation, systems will typically pull material from data and content stores and manipulate them into a coherent flow and relevant context. This is how contract or bid building systems usually work - selecting paragraphs from libraries of copy and stringing them together for editing and combining with entered words. The issue this can create, however, is chunky or blocky content that risks losing editorial consistency at best and risks looking ugly and inaccessible at worst. Since… -
collaboration - the hero sum game
24 Aug 2009 | 4:11 pmCollaboration has always been a part of business models in one form or another, but today more than ever organisations are working together to achieve a common end where they may not otherwise connect. Communications technologies have certainly helped but recent trends in social networking, portal and web-based process automation technologies have combined to define a new era for collaboration. Enterprise 2.0 is unlikely to ever resemble a ubiquitous, open Lotus Notes but there are huge opportunities for real-time efficiency gains where like-minded entities can share business requirements in… -
the wisdom of institutions
11 Aug 2009 | 8:38 pmMany enterprises favour permanent employment over consulting or contracting engagement under the mistaken belief that they will better retain intellectual property. The reality is that the difference between employees and contractors is simply terms of engagement; and with respect to intellectual property, while the issues for employers are actually similar, access to knowledge and skills vested in individuals is more likely to be permanently lost once they leave an employment arrangement. I believe what enterprises really intend and need is to ensure their collective endeavors preserve… -
the beauty of brevity
21 Jul 2009 | 4:20 pm(To make this post short - 140 characters no less) "Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in few words"Apocrypha, Ecclesiastics 32:8 (To make it a little longer) short is becoming more sweet in communications. While good communications is exactly as long as it needs to be in order to convey a message, I suggest that this length is reducing. As the cost of generating and transmitting information falls, people are increasingly overloaded with information. They have less time to digest individual messages and less patience to apply. This is no less so than in a business (see an engaging…
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TeleSmart Communications
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My weekend with MJ
2 Nov 2009 | 8:19 pmI went to see the Michael Jackson, with my sister last night. Before it started we agreed to walk out if it was going to be more exhausting footage of his life or another tribute speech about The King of Pop. It was the 8:30pm show and when we realized it was going to be over 2 hours, and it was daylight savings, we already started negotiating how much time we should be seated before we bolted out. What can I say- I sat in the same position with my mouth open for over 2 hours. It was the most inspiring and stunning display of raw talent I have ever seen. The entertainment quality was superb… -
5 Reasons why Inside Sales is Dialing More but Connecting Less
28 Oct 2009 | 10:49 amJust got off the call with the brilliant Peter Ostrow, Senior VP of the Aberdeen Group. Peter is a prolific writer and researches some innovative sales and marketing best practices. He noticed and asked “why isn’t anyone writing about inside sales?” so he decided to put together a very important study which benchmarks inside sales. Aberdeen is sponsoring this highly popular Inside Sales Enablement Benchmark Study and this morning, Peter shared some of the early findings with the vendor community. The final report will be released in early January so there is still… -
One bookstore at a time
22 Oct 2009 | 3:09 pmMy book is being groomed as a backlist book - that means in the first year, we must see a steady stream of sales so I can officially become the queen of Smart Selling on the Phone and Online (that’s unless all my fingers fall out and my brain dies before this happens). I’m a bit late on this realization but I’ve got to check out the bookstore circuit big time and get my book out there to the real world- not the virtual one. (that means I can wear make-up and my new jacket that I bought last week) So I started some power dialing into bookstores and giving them my pitch-… -
Do you have a temporary or permanent personality
19 Oct 2009 | 4:19 pmEver notice when someone starts as a contractor- they are on their best behavior. Great attitude, works overtime, and genuinely is so happy to be there. Then they become permanent or badged and suddenly, you can find them out in the parking lot bad mouthing every department manager. Or have you ever fallen in love a few days before you are ready to return home? Why is temporary status so liberating and permanent status so tied into responsibility? It’s the big C word- commitment. Temporary frees us of any commitment and permanent imposes a commitment. Although strive for security and… -
You earned your stripes in doing No-Po bootcamp
16 Oct 2009 | 10:41 amThis entire year- all 10 months of this year, you have hung on to false promises, rescheduled meetings, and listened to every excuse in the universe to convince you that your No-Po is a No-Go when it comes to getting something done for you. You are convinced they are completely worthless and will never pull the trigger on a deal. Finally, you see the light and yes, you are right and now feel pretty stupid you wasted all this time. Wait- your No-Po time was well spent if you look at it as bootcamp time. It prepared you for getting to the Power Buyer -you learned so much about their…
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SalesBlogcast
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33 Outrageous Things Managers Say About Employees!
4 Nov 2009 | 5:27 pmI received this list in my email the other day and busted out laughing with each comment I read. I guess it’s funny as long as my manager isn’t saying these things about me. I knew immediately that I had to share it with all of my readers! Surely these comments didn’t really come from actual performance reviews… at least you would hope not. What outrageous comments have you heard managers say about employees? [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
5 Tips for Winning with Online Buyers
1 Nov 2009 | 4:43 pmPeople are always asking me for ways to promote their product on SalesBlogcast. A few weeks ago, I finally found a tool that makes it easy for readers to get their ads up and running on my site! I just launched the premium Wordpress plugin, OIO Publisher (**more on this plugin below), and have tested it with two advertisers so far. It works perfectly! I’ve set my introductory pricing at an extremely affordable rate. I’m nearly giving it away, and the longer your campaign, the better the rate! The doors are finally open to all who want to use the tool. [[ This is a content summary only. -
Competitive Warfare
28 Oct 2009 | 5:44 pmReader Q & A: Are you speaking poorly about your competition? Is your competition bashing you? I’ve known people who believe in creating doubt in the prospect's mind by pointing out a competitor’s weaknesses. On the other end of the spectrum, I’ve known people who believe the exact opposite. They choose not to say anything negative about the competition... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
Hot Leads Getting Colder by the Minute
25 Oct 2009 | 7:07 pmA couple of weeks ago, I posted a reader Q & A regarding lead conversion and engaging prospects who are “just looking.” Special kudos go out to those of you who offered some really good ideas! In addition to highlighting reader comments, I also promised everyone that I would share my own ideas if I found anything missing. There’s just one tip I would like to add. It’s very simple, but critically important... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] -
Stop Selling Like You’re Walking Egg Shells!
21 Oct 2009 | 6:32 pmDo you want to know why some sales people are struggling? Because they are believing all the whiners, sales snipers, and so called gurus who like to “talk” sales instead of “make” sales. These “big talkers” are filling everybody’s head with junk! I’ve had enough of hearing people talk about how “prospects like to buy, they don’t want to be sold”. I’m tired of hearing that sales is “all about building relationships”. I’m sick of hearing that “cold calling is dead,” intrusive, and whatever else! [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full…
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Jeb's Blog
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International MBA Sales Competition – Advancing Sales As a Profession
31 Oct 2009 | 1:59 pmThis weekend I was a judge at the International MBA Sales Competition on the campus of MIT in Cambridge, MA. Students from top business schools including Harvard, MIT, Wharton, Tuck, Kellogg, Stanford and even London Business School competed for top prizes sponsored by Google, Gallup, SAP and SalesGravy.com. Acting as a buyer I spent the day listening to and judging the sales skills of individuals and teams who, working through complex sales cases, sold me on their solutions. Just like the real world of sales competitors were forced to deal with difficult questions, unpredictable outcomes,… -
10 Keys To Hiring Top Salespeople
10 Oct 2009 | 4:43 amby Jeb Blount Listen to the audio version of this article We received this email from, Jen, a small business owner, “I am a freelance web designer and have been considering working with someone who can take over the sales duties so that I can concentrate on designing. What resources should I utilize to find someone to work with and what questions should I ask to make sure I find the best match for my type of work? Thanks in advance and love the show!” Jen, I know this is not what you want to hear but I have to tell you the truth, recruiting, hiring, training, managing, and retaining a… -
Do You Take Your Customers’ Breath Away?
23 Aug 2009 | 1:37 pmby Jeb Blount Listen To This Article Free on iTunes What happens when your customers become DEVOTED customers vs. loyal or happy customers? This question is answered in a new book by Chip R. Bell and John Patterson. These two guys know something about customer relationships. Between the two of them they have written a whopping 18 books. If you are in sales their new book Take Their Breath Away: How Imaginative Service Creates Devoted Customers should be on your reading list. The book takes a fresh approach to interacting with customers and is designed to… -
Salespeople, Take A Stand On Healthcare Reform
12 Aug 2009 | 7:12 pmOur mission at SalesGravy.com is advancing sales as a profession. We focus on providing resources that help sales professionals increase sales and improve their careers as well as resources for sales managers and leaders. Today SalesGravy.com reaches more Sales Professionals and Sales Leaders than any other website on the internet. We’ve built our audience by staying steadfastly focused on our mission. However, for the first time in our history we are taking on another issue – Healthcare reform in the United States. In our opinion the pending healthcare bill being debated in the… -
Are Your Sales Job Ads Choking Your Recruiting Efforts?
21 Jul 2009 | 8:55 amby Jeb Blount I often speak to recruiters and employers who are frustrated that they are not getting enough hits and/or applications from their sales job posts. I understand their frustration. It is dissapointing to go to the effort of posting a sales job advertisment and not get the results you were expecting. So this week I have a few tips that will help you improve your response rates on www.SalesGravy.com: 1) City, State, Zip Code: Many recruiters post jobs and either leave the city and zip code empty or put words like “any” or “nationwide” or…
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Sales Loudmouth
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Redefining Failure
27 Oct 2009 | 6:32 pm"As long as a person accomplishes some of their goals along the way I'm willing to give them an unlimited number of failures without labeling them a failure" I explained. -
Establish "Finish Lines"
26 Oct 2009 | 2:17 pmJust as its appropriate to create deadlines for prospects and clients where natural deadlines may not exist, it is also appropriate and effective to create finish lines for sellers. -
Human Behavior Responds to Deadlines
14 Oct 2009 | 7:14 pmDick often used a question as a way to get into a topic. The correct answer was always a polite 'no' because then he could launch into a monologue. His monologue would include a story and an example and then a call to action. Lesson absorbed, I would head out to conquer the world of radio advertising sales. -
Imperfect and Forgiven
25 Sep 2009 | 11:59 amAlthough I should have been listening to the message in the readings, I was obsessed with the noise and the absurdity of trying to worship in such a setting. "No wonder," I thought, "that people aren't excited about what is going on with the Catholic church." -
The Myth of Experience and other shorts
15 Sep 2009 | 6:24 pmThink about this: Until you've done something, you've never done it before. If the qualification for getting a chance to do it is to have done it. . . well, the circularity of it all is obvious.
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EyesOnSales.com
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Sounding More Natural on the Phone- Tips That Will Lead To Sales
3 Nov 2009 | 10:09 amIf what you sell means you have to pick up the phone – either to set appointments, call prospects back, or return calls to clients, then you have to learn how to sound natural and how to avoid putting your prospects, gatekeepers, assistants, etc., on notice that you’re trying to sell something. -
Winning in a Value-Driven Economy
3 Nov 2009 | 7:37 amSelling in today's value-driven economy is hard. You have already done what you can to cut expenses, focused on establishing the needs of your current customers, and identified new markets. What else can you do? The answer is focusing on making sure your prospects "get" your value. -
Free Webinar: How to Use Technology to Build a World Class Field Sales Organization
2 Nov 2009 | 11:51 amJoin us for a free Webinar sponsored by Landslide Technologies.Wednesday, November 4th, 2009, 1pm - 2pm ETRegister Now! - CLICK HERE TO REGISTERA recent SellingPower whitepaper (From Sales 1.0 to Sales 2.0) lists some dire statistics for field sales organizations. Among other things, the whitepaper points out a recent Cahners survey in which 58 percent of buyers report that sales reps are unable to answer their questions effectively. And 40 percent of sales professionals’ time is spent trying to find the information and knowledge required to do their jobs. On top of that,… -
Call Me Back Next Month! Putting an End to the End-of-Quarter Blues
30 Oct 2009 | 10:47 amPreventing stalls and objections is the single most powerful - and least used - sales technique I know. Start implementing these useful strategies to anticipate stalls and turn them into sales today. -
Sell More with Two Powerful Words
28 Oct 2009 | 10:20 amCould two simple words really help you to sell more? These two words are not ones that you can ever say to a prospect, but they are guaranteed to drive your revenue and income. Enough mystery, the two most powerful sales words are synergy and priority. Why these two words? Read on for the details!
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As Was Marketing Hall Of Fame
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Dove and Walmart Remind You You're Ugly
29 Oct 2009 | 7:47 amDo you get these commercials where you live? A bunch of women are signing a song to the tune of "Do Your Ears Hang Low" (not sure what that's really the tune of), and they are going through a litany of physical characteristics that women traditionally may not like about themselves?The words to this car wreck seem to be:Do your eyes sit wide Does your nose turn to the side Do your elbows kind of crinkle Do your knees sort of wrinkle Does your chest tend to freckle Do you have a crooked smile Do your eyes sit wide Do your ears sort of wiggle Does your hair make you giggle Does… -
I'm Moving Back to Tucson
26 Oct 2009 | 5:00 amYeah, I'm moving back to Tucson. Say what? What's with Deb moving around so much? Well, first of all, I can. I own my businesses, I work for me, I work from home, and I'm single with a dog and cat. The cat is really cool about the car, and the dog knows, "New house." That means no kids to pull out of school or away from friends. So I can live wherever I like, whenever I like, and why not. Do it while you can, I say.All my phone numbers will still work... no matter what area code and number you're dialing, it'll ring at my desk.In March 2005, I finally escaped… -
How Your Wish Your Staff Operated
25 Oct 2009 | 7:50 amI went into a local Greek place last week to order lunch to take home. It was after the lunch rush. Two tables had patrons, there was nobody behind the counter, and I didn't see a waitress.I walked up to the counter, and a girl offered to take my order. I gave her my order. She got a guy out from the back, and had him put the order in. I then noticed she didn't have an apron or anything, and asked if she really worked there. She said yes, but her shift just ended.So she could have let me wait. Or she could have asked somebody to come deal with me. But she took my order. I found out… -
Do NOT Bank with Citizens RSB Bank
15 Oct 2009 | 11:09 amI have never had such a horrible experience, and want to make sure everybody knows what horrible fraud and ineptitude goes on at Citizens Bank.I moved away from where Citizens has branches, and have been trying to close my account. I called in mid-Sept asking them to close my account. They said they couldn't until I brought the balance to zero. That turned out to not be true (as in not the only way to close my account), but that's what I was told. I told them to please close the account and cancel my debit card so that if I bring things down to zero, no vendor who might have my card… -
When a Customer Goes From Awkward to Abusive
4 Oct 2009 | 4:38 pmWhen you sign onto inkFrog, you get some automatic emails during your trial. You get a welcome message from me. You get "your trial is going to expire" and "your trial expired" which still come from the CEO. But if you hit reply to any of these emails, they right now go to me. I help everybody I can. I don't have all the answers, but I do my best. I got an email last week from a guy who was throwing around swear words, and complaining that nobody is responding to his emails. Well, I haven't seen an email from this guy, and now he's asking for the…
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Sales Training - SalesPractice.com
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Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
11 Oct 2010 | 8:51 amFree Digital Download PDF eBook Edition - This electronic eBook edition is a reproduction of the complete 1937 version, originally published by The Ralston Society and is now in the Public Domain. Attached Files Think-And-Grow-Rich.pdf (1.24 MB) -
Hello All, Newbie Here
4 Nov 2009 | 7:33 pmGreetings Everyone. I'm new to professional sales. I recently accepted my first professional sales position selling home improvement products direct to consumers for a national company. I accepted the position with the understanding that there would be extensive sales training. Well, having completed the initial sales training I realized I needed something more. Since I'm used to teaching thi -
Understanding Personality Types - Does it matter?
4 Nov 2009 | 6:49 amHow would an understanding of different personality types help you close more sales? -
How do you differentiate between a Want and a Need?
4 Nov 2009 | 6:42 amHow do you differentiate between a Want and a Need and how does knowing the difference affect your sales and/or marketing efforts? -
Food for thought
4 Nov 2009 | 6:36 amIs it possible for somebody to be hungry but not know what they want to eat?
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The Accidental Negotiator
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5 Ways The Great Sales Negotiators Build Super Bargaining Power
2 Nov 2009 | 9:01 pmImage Credit How You Dress Can Impact Your Bargaining Power... Having some bargaining power when you are involved in a sales negotiation is a good thing. Have super bargaining power is much, much better. Most of us do a few things to prepare for a negotiating session, but are we doing enough? The answer in most cases is no. Let me tell you what you can do to fix this… The following tips for how to gain more power for your side of the table during a negotiation come from the professional negotiators who do this for a full time living and who have been doing it for many years. Read on and… -
How To Play (& Win) When There’s Only One Game In Town
26 Oct 2009 | 10:01 pmImage CreditSole-Source Suppliers Pose A Special Problem For Negotiators Having a single supplier for something that you want is the best thing in the world. “What?” you say, they’ve got me over a barrel , they can dictate any price or any conditions on a deal that they want because I have no other alternative. Well, ok, that’s one way to look at it if you want to be all negative and such. However, there’s a different way to see things and when you look at the situation this way you’ll see that it’s you who has them over a barrel. Let me explain. -
How To Win A Race When You’re Not The Fastest Runner
19 Oct 2009 | 10:01 pmPhoto CreditYou Can Still Win The Race Even When There Are Other Runners... Sales negotiators are often our own worst enemies. So much of what it takes to have a successful negotiation depends on your mental state going into the negotiation that if you don’t believe that you can close this deal, then I’ve got some bad news for you – you probably won’t. One situation that my students seem to struggle with over and over again is the case where it’s them and a whole bunch of other companies all trying to get the same deal. The other companies appear to be prettier,… -
Why Win-Win Sales Negotiating Never Works And What To Do About It
12 Oct 2009 | 10:01 pmWin-Win Negotiating Is The Wrong Way To Go Quick: what’s the first thing that you think about when you picture your next negotiation in your mind? Unless you are Mother Teresa’s brother / sister I’ll bet that you saw yourself walking away from the bargaining table with the best deal in the world , you had gotten everything that you had wanted and more. Umm, what about the other side? That’s why win-win negotiating never works. How Win-Win Negotiating Is Supposed To Work Too many people have created in their minds a magical world where win-win negotiating (where lions… -
Negotiators Know That Persistence (& Risk Taking) Pay Off
5 Oct 2009 | 11:01 pmPersistence And Risk Taking In Negotiations Can Pay Off In this world there are two types of negotiators: the good ones and everyone else. The goal of any negotiator is to become a member of the group of good negotiators. The challenge is that the path to becoming a good negotiator is not always clear. However, there are two basic skills that lay on this path: persistence and the ability to take the right risks. Persistence Pays Off For Negotiators Persistence is another one of those skills that we all think should be obvious to ever negotiator; however, it’s very easy to not have it.
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Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog
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How do I get my PO in faster?
1 Nov 2009 | 5:15 pmIn addition to writing my weekly blog posts on telesales training topics, I monitor a few other blogs in which sales questions arise. A few weeks ago, the following question popped up about getting POs in faster. We're closing in on year-end now, so I think it's topical to repeat the question in today's post, as well as my answer. Have a look: Question: What methods do you use to put a time limit on a quote without exposing yourself to pressure? Let's say it is two weeks before the end of the quarter. You want to get a sale before the end of the quarter. What methods do you find… -
Price Negotiation and sticker shock: why sometimes even the experts fail
25 Oct 2009 | 6:20 pmI don't care how smart or seasoned a sales exec --- or sales trainer --- is, sometimes he or she will fail to bring in a big deal. Today, it's true confession time. I'm going to tell you about a deal I lost this year, then tell you a question I could have asked that might have saved it for me. I don't want you to lose the deal like I did, so listen up! First, a little background. My sales training company has had another great year this year. We're unique, totally customized, and my customers will tell you I'm the hardest working classroom trainer in the biz. We don't have trouble convincing… -
Job interview ripoff: Here’s how you can get free consulting by making your candidates work for nothing!
18 Oct 2009 | 6:30 pmGot your attention? If you're a telesales rep or manager, and you're looking for work, I want to expose a couple of scams that have the end result of putting you to work making a profit for the company that's interviewing you, while you get paid nothing. Today's blog post is the result of an email I got from Alan, a very good rep that took one of my telesales courses a while back. Alan wrote: I have a question for you. I received an e-mail from an old colleague who is looking for a job and got an odd request from a company he is applying to. In summary, here is the e-mail, "The interview… -
Inheriting a Sales team: Now what do I do?
11 Oct 2009 | 6:33 pmToday's post comes from Bangkok, where I'm doing some sales consulting for Frank, who's just inherited a sales team that in the past has been effective, but now the numbers are dropping and the company is concerned. Frank was brought in to run Operations, and has a sales team where two reps are over-quota performers and the rest are functioning below par. There are other important issues Frank needs to address, some of which are in the area of team communication. The team has never been formally trained, and there is no current training budget. The top performing rep refuses to share the… -
Taking the Ethical High Road: Sometimes it means “taking one for the team”
4 Oct 2009 | 6:13 pmYou know that I like to occasionally pontificate on ethical issues, like treating people the way you'd like to be treated, or doing the best thing to make our clients' lives better. But sometimes, in doing so, it takes money out of our pockets. I call that "taking one for the team." And that's what today's post is all about. Sometimes it costs us to do the right thing. I was fortunate enough to work for some really ethical companies. One of them, Atron, a company that sold hardware-based testing tools, allowed me as a salesperson to authorize the return of any equipment I'd sold that didn't…
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Construction Sales Blog
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The Competitive Advantage Newsletter: Help Communicating with Specifiers
19 Oct 2009 | 11:04 amFrom this month's Competitive Advantage newsletter: Please talk to me Mr Specifier In the last few weeks I've spoken at a couple of events focused on marketing to specifiers and it has reinforced how very hard it is to communicate with this important group of customers. At "Marketing to Architects" we heard two architects and a sustainability consultant tell us just how busy they were and explain that when selecting products they tend to use what's worked before. They also said that in D&B the Contractor's role is increasing, with the Architect becoming more of a collaborator. -
The Competitive Advantage Newsletter: Grasping the Opportunity
16 Sep 2009 | 10:37 amFrom this month's Competitive Advantage newsletter: Some signs of hope have come through during the month, with a report that the commercial real estate market has bottomed out and the CIPS survey stating the rate of decline is slowing. There have also been further releases of funding into the public residential sector (see below). To help you get a fix on where the market is, the government has published its latest edition of construction statistics, covering 2008. Finally I have listed some development events to help ensure your teams marketing and sales skill are sharpened. In This Issue… -
The Competitive Advantage Newsletter: Start Planning for the Autumn
7 Aug 2009 | 3:17 amFrom this month's Competitive Advantage newsletter: Development Events Here are a series of full day, half day and evening events which can ensure you and your colleagues are up to date with latest industry developments. Construction industry overview http://www.cadvantage.co.uk/Overview.htmCompetitive Advantage in collaboration with the Building Centre9th September 2009 Full day at The Building Centre, LondonThe inter-relationships and drivers that make up the construction industry are extremely complex. This course is designed for those new to the construction industry. Providing an… -
The Competitive Advantage Newsletter: Some Market Opportunities
20 Jul 2009 | 9:23 amFrom this month's Competitive Advantage newsletter: How are you finding the market? Feedback from Competitive Advantage's clients suggests that the situation is now stabilising, and this in turn is allowing companies' planning to become a little more medium to long term. I'm pleased to say that our level of enquiries have increased with companies committing to training and market research projects for the last half of 2009. If you have a requirement please contact us, we can suggest a number of approaches to help keep costs to a minimum. Some sectors of the construction market may have also… -
The Competitive Advantage newsletter: Business Opportunities
18 Jun 2009 | 10:47 amFrom this month's Competitive Advantage newsletter: Sports Events mean Business Opportunities Here in Britain, particularly in the South East, we have seen great opportunities created by the 2012 Olympics construction programme. There is a tendency to see this is as a one-off opportunity, but there are similar sports events being organised all over the world - Asian Games, Commonwealth Games, Football World Cup, Cricket World Cup and Winter Olympics to name a few. Even at the bid preparation stage countries are spending millions on improvements to their infrastructure. UK Trade &…
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The LEADSExplorer Blog: Lead generation - Website visitors - CRM - B2B
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Don’t despair if The Stig in Sales is your Competitor
4 Nov 2009 | 3:40 pmYou’d better not encounter The Stig in Sales. The Stig is the best salesman in your business. However as he is only interested in large deals bringing him a big commission, he will pay less attention on the smaller and even medium sized deals. He has to manage his time too you know. Only the biggest deals bring enough return on investment! He will drop or pay little attention to the smaller and medium sized deals as his return on investment on these deals is less. The Stig wants to maximize his earnings so why should he waste his precious time? This leaves the opportunity for the… -
Point break customers
30 Oct 2009 | 4:30 pmThe more waves a customer generates, the more breaks there are at the point: inside sales or salesman. Your sales people are just riding those waves. Customers that make the most noise get the most attention. On the one hand there are the ones that make a lot of noise, but once your resolve their issues, they become your most loyal allies, recommending others to your products or services. Then there are the ones that continuously communicate with you or complain or just attract attention all the time. They are never fully satisfied with anything and probably never will be (for some people… -
Prepare your salesmen for the market shifts!
28 Oct 2009 | 2:44 pmSalesmen work hard by concentrating on their products and customers. They mainly see the next lead, the next potential customer, the next deal. They are digging up new leads, pushing aside objections and convincing buyers in order to reach their targets. Things need to get done, actions taken, emails replied to, calls answered – all in function of getting deals closed and bringing in revenue, all in the here and now. The sales hurdles During their sales journey they will encounter hurdles and dead ends that make them stop dead in their sales cycle. A possible problem is they often… -
Should you sell if there’s no fit?
25 Oct 2009 | 12:06 pmEven if the customer asks for a certain product or service, qualify the customer and then decide if you should sell or not. If there is no fit – no good qualification – it is probably the best not to sell and explain clearly to the customer eager to buy the reasons why. Be honest and stay positive. Someone sold her the dress - bad! The reasons not to sell are in order to avoid: - Bad word of mouth - Bad press – bad blog posts – bad tweets on Twitter - Unsatisfied clients that will never buy anything else from you - Missing selling to their peers or relations - Wasting time of both… -
Death of the Salesman as BtoB Sales goes online?
22 Oct 2009 | 12:33 pmE-commerce: consumer Consumer goods have been available on the Internet since the early beginnings of the Internet: e-Commerce was all the hype during the Internet Bubble. The website were and are about consumer goods and consumer web services (in many cases related to the action of buying consumer goods). Online selling Internet BtoB services Since a few years during the Web 2.0 era a new breed of e-Commerce sites have emerged: web services for businesses. Previously all business to business services required a physical presence of a sales rep. or even a sales team in order to sell. As the…
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The Sales Edge
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Here's An Idea To Help You Make Your First Quarter Budget
2 Nov 2009 | 11:53 pmTags: Management | Planning -
Want To Have a Good January?
28 Oct 2009 | 2:11 amTags: Management | Planning -
How the recession has impacted consumer thinking in two key categories
27 Oct 2009 | 3:01 amTags: Consumer DNA | Industry Trends | News You Can Use -
It's a Win/Win/Win/Win story!
26 Oct 2009 | 10:20 amTags: Motivation | Success Stories -
A little feedback goes a long way!
22 Oct 2009 | 2:11 amTags: Management | Talent
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Good Selling
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How Sales Professionals Are Like Shrinks
30 Oct 2009 | 6:27 amBy Dave Mattson, Sandler Training We don’t ordinarily think of sales as one of the “helping professions,” but maybe we should. People tell their problems to psychologists and clergymen. They pour out their hearts to their neighborhood bartender. The characteristic all of these examples have in common is that the focus is on the person speaking. But they also tell their troubles to sales professionals, too, so we should develop our “helping profession” skills. I have often noticed, when a sales pitch is going well, how the conversation resembles what I… -
Believe in Sales Training?
24 Oct 2009 | 6:19 pmBelieve in sales training? You should. Today’s business environment has completely stripped the ‘easy’ sales that have come to you and your team. You are now facing a new world, a new marketplace that requires you have a fundamentally sound sales process. What is your current sales process? Is it successful? Are you seeking better results than you have today? These questions are vital to your success as well as the answers. As a question, this will allow you to assess where you stand today with a fresh look. If you and your team have been getting by with your good looks… -
Shift to the Web
17 Mar 2009 | 5:54 amIf you haven’t done so already, it is time to shift to the web. Your current situation requires that you simply place as much effort into your web site as possible. Your site continues to be the most cost effective way to market your business. What is your current web strategy? How important have you made it in your daily business operations? If your answers lead to “I need to do much more than I’m doing”, then it may be time to seek outside help. If your current internal team is swamped with other duties or simply don’t have the interest or skills to contribute,… -
Waypoints to success: Personal Goals
29 Dec 2008 | 1:45 pmIn these uncertain times, having a personal plan for success is more important than ever. Coming across some extra time with slow retail activity? Consider honing in on your personal goals for the future. Writing your goals down is a powerful thing. Before you do this - where are you now compared to where you want to be? What do you need to do to get there? When is the last time you took time to create a plan? These questions may take some time to review and access. When you are ready, start writing - first a draft and then some tangible goals that you feel strongly about reaching. One of… -
Boat show planning will pay dividends
29 Dec 2008 | 10:38 amBoat shows are an exciting time for consumers and present a variety of opportunities for dealers. This is an especially important year for boat shows because of the recent lull in retail sales over the past six months. Preparing now for your boat shows will pay big dividends. Even though the economy is slumping and retail activity seems to be stifled, there is likely some pent up demand out there. Not everyone has been affected by the credit crunch and there are bound to be folks out there who are waiting for the shows to buy a new boat. The demand may come in the form of “What’s…
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Sales Training Tips and Advice
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The Secret of a Sales Manager By Brian Tracy
28 Oct 2009 | 1:56 pmA friend of mine is a very successful sales manager. After he had carefully interviewed and then selected a new salesman, he would take the salesman to a Cadillac dealership and insist that he trade in his old car for a new Cadillac. The salesman would usually balk at the idea. He would be frightened of the cost of the car and huge monthly payments involved. But the sales manager would insist that he buy the Cadillac as a condition of employment. At first, the salesman would feel guilt for buying the car, but within a few days, he would begin to see himself as the kind of person who drove a… -
How To Sell A Pencil -- And Your Product Or Service By Mike Brooks
5 Oct 2009 | 5:20 amIf I gave you a pencil and asked you to sell it, how would you go about it?This is one of the most basic of interview questions for sales reps, and the answer reveals so much about your previous training, your understanding of the sales process, and ultimately about what kind of sales rep you are.So, what is the most effective way to sell a pencil? Well, first let’s look at how most sales reps go about doing it. When I’m interviewing sales reps I love using this technique. After letting a rep tell me how good of a closer they are, I pull out a pencil, hand it to them, and tell them to… -
How To Successfully Handle Objections By Mike Brooks
2 Oct 2009 | 7:26 pmIf you're like most sales reps, you hate to get objections. Your stomach aches, your palms start to sweat, and you can literally see your commissions fly out the window.And, if you're like most sales reps, when you begin dealing with objections one of two things happen:1) After you answer them, your prospect gives you another, then another objection and you go on the defensive...or2) In answering the objection you tend to talk past the close, and you actually introduce more questions or objections! Now that's a sick feeling, isn't it?Want an easier way to deal with the objections you get over… -
How To Stay Firm On Price By Mike Brooks
2 Oct 2009 | 6:51 pmIn today's economy, everyone wants a lower price. I'm getting emails and calls every week from sales reps around the country who want to know what they can do to deal with prospects and clients alike who are looking for discounts and even threatening to take their business elsewhere."I can't go any lower," they tell me, "And certain clients just keep low balling me and working me for more discounts. What should I do?"If you are dealing with this sort of thing as well, then I've got some specific advice that will not only work for you, but will make you more confident and successful as well. -
Why Customer Service Destroys Salespeople By Mark Hunter
7 Sep 2009 | 8:09 amOne position that has not been impacted by the economy is sales. Ask any CEO and you will hear that one of their biggest issues is finding and retaining good salespeople. Something happened on the way to a sour economy: Too many companies learned the hard way that their salespeople didn't know how to sell. Instead, their salespeople were good at taking orders and providing customer service. There is nothing wrong with this approach, as long as the marketplace is always going to serve up new customers and keep current customers in business. Does that kind of marketplace always exist?
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Score More Sales
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Keeping Your Focus in Growing Revenues
4 Nov 2009 | 7:56 amIt is a challenge to stay clear – and focused – especially as an entrepreneur or a salesperson in your territory. How to do it? My quick take: Write your goals down. You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Let others know what you are working on – they will help you get there. Make time to reflect – it is the only way you can get out of what you are working on for new perspective. Check in with yourself on Monday – go through your week, and on Friday, have a little sit-down with yourself and review what you accomplished, and whether you stayed on… -
The Best E-Book on Sales Is Free.. By Top Sales Experts
29 Oct 2009 | 1:33 pmI’m thrilled to be in the Top Sales Experts community, and as a contributor, I can say that this is a top notch, credible, smart group of thought leaders who have very focused and clear advice for you to grow your sales. Every quarter, an amazing e-book is created. Don’t wait for the movie,….. download your copy of the Fall TSE e-book today. You will be asked to register for the FREE site, but that is a bonus because there is tons of great content in it. What are you waiting for? Go here. Print it and read it in chunks. That’s what I do – and I learn stuff every… -
5 Audio Calls on 2010 Audacious Goals
26 Oct 2009 | 9:46 amLet's get brilliant with our goals, together! It’s true – 2010 is RIGHT around the corner. How will you make it THE best year for revenues and other goals you may be thinking about? Join me for the series of calls. “5 Brilliant Steps to Attain Your Sales* Goals in 2010” (*or personal goal, or to help your mighty cause) calls will be audio archived for your convenience – October 26 3PM -4PM Pacfic “The Power of Asset-Based Thinking” November 2 3PM-4PM Pacific “Accomplishing what is Important, not Urgent” November… -
Importance of Follow Up
25 Oct 2009 | 4:25 pmI write about it all the time, and continue to roll my eyes when a client ends up losing a customer because of their lack of follow through. It’s a topic that has come up with three different clients this past week, so I am posting a few no-brainer tips, yet they seem to be needed as some of us are forgetting that our customers always have a choice. 1. Keep on your customer’s radar screen. Even when they seem happy with you – call them and see if there is anything else you can do for them. Sometimes people won’t say by email but if they see you are going the extra mile… -
Do You Reply to Your eMails?
22 Oct 2009 | 6:37 amI created a post at AllBusiness about the problem with e-mail these days – now more than ever, people are reading your e-mails, but often are not responding. Don’t take it personally, just adjust your thinking and you can learn ways to work around it. Read the post.
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The Sales Blog
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Twenty-Eight Articles for Sales: 9 – Have a game plan.
4 Nov 2009 | 3:54 amHave a game plan. The final preparation task is to develop a game plan: a mental picture of how you see the operation developing. You will be tempted to try to do this too early. But wait: as your knowledge improves, you will get a better idea of what needs to be done, and of your own limitations. Like any plan, this plan will change once you sit down with the prospect or customer, and may need to be scrapped if the situation requires something different to advance the sale. But you still need a plan, and the process of planning will give you a simple robust idea of what to achieve, what will… -
Twenty-Eight Articles for Sales: 8 – Rank is nothing: talent is everything.
3 Nov 2009 | 4:15 amRank is nothing: talent is everything. Not everyone is good at sales. Many people don’t understand the concepts, and many more who do can’t execute it. It is difficult, and in a conventional company only a few people will master sales. Anyone can learn the basics and should be taught, but a few “naturals” do exist. Learn how to spot these people and put them in positions where they can make a difference. Even if they are not in sales, make sure they are client-facing positions where their skills can make a difference. Rank matters far less than talent–a few good… -
Twenty-Eight Articles for Sales: 7 – Train the squad leaders – then trust them
2 Nov 2009 | 3:58 amTrain the squad leaders – then trust them. Sales is a sales manager’s war, and often a single salespersons war. Battles are won or lost in moments; Whoever can bring power to bear in seconds, will win. The sales person in the prospect or client’s office controls the fight. You must train your salespeople to act intelligently and independently without orders. You cannot get away with average sales managers or average salespeople. Training should focus on basic skills: prospecting, effective questioning, creating value for prospects and customers, and obtaining commitments. -
Twenty-Eight Articles for Sales: 6 – Find a political/cultural adviser
31 Oct 2009 | 7:40 amFind a political/cultural adviser. In a force optimized for sales and for creating value for your clients, you will need to be able to speak language and navigate the intricacies of company politics. Politics are at play in both your client’s company and your own, and you will need an adviser in both. Don’t try to be your own cultural adviser; you must be fully aware of the political and cultural dimension, but this is a different task. The adviser’s task isn’t to help you understand the political or cultural environment, but rather to help you shape the it. This means… -
Twenty-Eight Articles for Sales: 5 – Travel light and harden your CSS
31 Oct 2009 | 7:29 amTravel light and harden your CSS. Unless you ruthlessly lighten your load and enforce a culture of speed and mobility, your competition will consistently out-run and out-maneuver you. In sales this means off-loading those aspects of your work that aren’t directly related to sales. But in lightening your load, make sure you can always “reach back” to call for firepower or heavy support if needed. Hardening your CSS means ensuring that your operations, sales support, and all aspects of your company that works to deliver value to your clients are trained in sales. They are an…
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Drew Stevens Consulting
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Sales Tip of the Day
4 Nov 2009 | 12:58 pmQuote of the Day Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. ~ Lao-tzu Quotes from Tao te Ching Thought for the Day During times of recession the first item cut from any organization’s budget is training and development. Moreover during this recession, I have seen a complete shift even from individuals forgoing training. However, I still get emails, view the social groups of individuals stressing because they are not making budget, not and making their commissions. My belief stop making so many damned… -
Dr. Drew’s Ultimate Business Success Tip for Tuesday
3 Nov 2009 | 4:16 amQuote of the Day “Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” WALT DISNEY Thought for the Day During a conversation with a dear friend we discussed how the level of customer service seems to have decreased in many organizations. For me that is a huge issue since every business is in business to acquire and retain customers. Rudeness, disrespect and professional lack have no place in business otherwise there will be no business. If you truly desire to outgain and outpace your competition ensure you and your employees provide lasting customer… -
Dr. Drew’s Muscle Up Monday
2 Nov 2009 | 3:06 pmQuote of the Day “Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.” Emily Post Thought for the Day It is amazing in the age of electronic media and social networking how antisocial some individuals can be. In the last several weeks I have received more robo cold calls then postal mail. In addition the amount of email solicitation has increased. I find it amazing how sales professionals will find so many alternatives to “hide” behind veils rather than pick up a… -
Fitness Friday with Dr. Drew
30 Oct 2009 | 5:52 amQuote of the Week Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure. ~Don Wilder and Bill Rechin Thought of the Week Recent inquiries to new clients about training and coaching their sales staff has led to a wide range of excuses for not doing something. When there is no learning there is no growth. Moreover when there is no learning for the organizations greatest asset, the selling professional there is no growth. The time has come to invest and grow, we are in a pre boom economy not one that is contracting. Best Practice of the Week When you don’t have the money, at least spend the… -
Issues in Management – Accountability
30 Oct 2009 | 5:39 amAn article in this morning’s paper reported the inflammation of the airline pilots union over the FAA’s decision to revoke the licenses of two pilots that decided to roam North America during a heated dispute. The problem with present day management union or otherwise is the sheer lack of accountability. In the age of terrorism and commuter safety the union believes the FAA moved too quickly in light of voluntary disclosure programs. The time has come to move from CYA to OUT. The foppish excuses need to end, the time has come to return to individual accountability. ©2009. Drew Stevens…
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The Sales Blog
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Twenty-Eight Articles for Sales: 9 – Have a game plan.
4 Nov 2009 | 3:54 amHave a game plan. The final preparation task is to develop a game plan: a mental picture of how you see the operation developing. You will be tempted to try to do this too early. But wait: as your knowledge improves, you will get a better idea of what needs to be done, and of your own limitations. Like any plan, this plan will change once you sit down with the prospect or customer, and may need to be scrapped if the situation requires something different to advance the sale. But you still need a plan, and the process of planning will give you a simple robust idea of what to achieve, what will… -
Twenty-Eight Articles for Sales: 8 – Rank is nothing: talent is everything.
3 Nov 2009 | 4:15 amRank is nothing: talent is everything. Not everyone is good at sales. Many people don’t understand the concepts, and many more who do can’t execute it. It is difficult, and in a conventional company only a few people will master sales. Anyone can learn the basics and should be taught, but a few “naturals” do exist. Learn how to spot these people and put them in positions where they can make a difference. Even if they are not in sales, make sure they are client-facing positions where their skills can make a difference. Rank matters far less than talent–a few good… -
Twenty-Eight Articles for Sales: 7 – Train the squad leaders – then trust them
2 Nov 2009 | 3:58 amTrain the squad leaders – then trust them. Sales is a sales manager’s war, and often a single salespersons war. Battles are won or lost in moments; Whoever can bring power to bear in seconds, will win. The sales person in the prospect or client’s office controls the fight. You must train your salespeople to act intelligently and independently without orders. You cannot get away with average sales managers or average salespeople. Training should focus on basic skills: prospecting, effective questioning, creating value for prospects and customers, and obtaining commitments. -
Twenty-Eight Articles for Sales: 6 – Find a political/cultural adviser
31 Oct 2009 | 7:40 amFind a political/cultural adviser. In a force optimized for sales and for creating value for your clients, you will need to be able to speak language and navigate the intricacies of company politics. Politics are at play in both your client’s company and your own, and you will need an adviser in both. Don’t try to be your own cultural adviser; you must be fully aware of the political and cultural dimension, but this is a different task. The adviser’s task isn’t to help you understand the political or cultural environment, but rather to help you shape the it. This means… -
Twenty-Eight Articles for Sales: 5 – Travel light and harden your CSS
31 Oct 2009 | 7:29 amTravel light and harden your CSS. Unless you ruthlessly lighten your load and enforce a culture of speed and mobility, your competition will consistently out-run and out-maneuver you. In sales this means off-loading those aspects of your work that aren’t directly related to sales. But in lightening your load, make sure you can always “reach back” to call for firepower or heavy support if needed. Hardening your CSS means ensuring that your operations, sales support, and all aspects of your company that works to deliver value to your clients are trained in sales. They are an…
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Cindy King
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12 Reasons Why International Selling Is Harder
3 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pmInternational Sales Professions Before I started my own consulting business I worked for a variety of industries, mainly related to communication and new technologies. I had daily contact with clients in a sales capacity, sometimes with more marketing responsibilities than others. But I always dealt with international clients. Clients from different cultures to the company I represented. I negotiated sales, facilitated sales and over the years I worked in all of the functions within the international sales process. International Selling Was The Only World I Knew International selling was easy… -
3 Different Communication Challenges Of An International Blog
2 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pmHow To Create An International Business Blog Can you promote your services to international audiences with a blog ? Yes, this is what I do with my blog and it works very well because of my particular situation. But different businesses are in different situations. And, in these different situations, is a blog still a good option to connect with an international audience? You need to dig deeper to find out. Your International Audience When defining your international audience and establishing the right communication to engage with this audience, you can look at this audience from different… -
My International Blog Promotion Secret
1 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pmHow To Create An International Business Blog Is there an ideal international blog promotion formula? Well, I have been hunting for a good for a while and I’m now finally happy with what I have come up with for my own international business. I’d like to share it with you. With my background as a cross-cultural marketer I know how to reach international audiences. That was not my challenge. The missing ingredient for a strong international blog promotion strategy was elsewhere. You see, although it is easy to understand what you need to do to promote your blog online, it is not… -
Twitter Interview With Charmayne Paul
1 Nov 2009 | 11:00 amTwitter Interviews – #CKinterview Today’s Cross-Cultural Interview is with Charmayne (Char) Paul. Char is the person behind the Twitter handle @psitutor. And Char is one of the people on Twitter I enjoy being around the most. Although she has not travelled she has a wealth of cultural skills the most experienced of us can appreciate. Her business is dealing with people from different cultures. You can tell that she experiences all of the challenges of cross-cultural communication on a regular basis and has a healthy approach to dealing with these differences. Char is an Online… -
Cross-Culture Tweets – Week 43 of 2009
25 Oct 2009 | 5:00 amCulture Tips & International Links Here is my weekly review of social media marketing activities and a list of last weeks tweets with useful links, tips and resources… and some fun videos too. Social Media Platforms When I first started social media, I blogged. Once I felt comfortable with blogging I started microblogging on Twitter. Of course, I have a Facebook and LinkedIn profile as well as several profiles on other social media platforms. But I concentrated on learning how to connect with people on one platform at a time. And I have created content creation processes…
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Paul Castain's Sales Playbook
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What To Do When It Gets "Weird"
27 Oct 2009 | 4:24 pmImagine, if you will, a meeting with a potential client. Everything is going well. You are well prepared, your questions are on point and then it happens without warning. The prospect throws a left hook at you in the form of an uncomfortable question and things get mighty weird.It could be a question about something your company once went through that needed to be fixed, perhaps they ask you why -
Your Greatest Comeback Ever!
22 Oct 2009 | 8:44 pmOnce upon a time there was a wise old man who lived in a small, remote village. Like most wise old men, he had some not so wise folks that wanted to prove him wrong. In fact, there was a young man who devised a scheme to publicly put the wise old man to shame. He captured a small bird from a nearby tree and quickly approached the old man. Holding the bird behind his back he challenged the old man -
What's In Your "5"?
13 Oct 2009 | 5:29 pmMark Victor Hanson was interviewed in Success Magazine a few months back and shared some great advice he field tested after writing Chicken Soup For The Soul.Mark and co author Jack Canfield had published the book (no easy task since it had been rejected by 144 publishers) but they had a much bigger dream for the book and that was the best seller list. Once again, they knew this would be no easy -
Confessions Of A Referral Generating Mo Fo!
7 Oct 2009 | 7:13 pmFirst things first. Let's get the confession part of today's post out of the way:Confession #1: I'm not the referral generating Mo Fo nor is this based on some referral generating Mo Fo. I just really dug the title and bada bing, bada bang it just sort of happened!Confession #2: That picture has nothing to do with today's topic but has has everything to do with something I will share with you if -
The 30 Day Social Media Diet!
5 Oct 2009 | 4:56 pmDay 1: Read this classic FastCompany Magazine article from Jedi Master Tom Peters it will get you thinking about something that must be at the center of your online activities; your brand! http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/10/brandyou.html Day 2: Give some serious thought to what you want your personal brand to represent by asking yourself “What do I want people to say about me behind my back?”
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Jim Logan's B2B Rainmaker
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Cash Flow
2 Nov 2009 | 9:28 amCash flow is the life-blood of a business. If you can’t timely receive money into your business and smartly spend it each month, you won’t have a business for long. The best idea can’t survive without the consistent and predictable flow of money in and out of a business. I don’t know the number to quote, but cash flow crisis is undeniably a leading cause of business failure. There two basic elements of cash flow — money in and money out Money in is how a business timely receives money for the products, services, and solutions they offer. This includes… -
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should: A content marketing lesson
31 Oct 2009 | 7:44 amThere are a figurative ton of things you can do as a marketer. But that’s never the point. Just because you can do something — exercise a marketing tactic or strategy — doesn’t mean you should. What you should be doing is what works best — reaching your target audience with a compelling message and call to action that creates sales and revenue opportunities. Why is this important to remind us all? It’s important to recall this simple fact as a reminder because it’s the first thing we ought to consider when thinking about our web presence. … -
Match what you offer to the person you’re offering it to
26 Oct 2009 | 9:42 amSeveral years ago I worked with a client who self described their business as offering the lowest cost, highest quality product in their market. Their sales were lagging. They had a fair level of interest in their offer, but couldn’t attract the volume of interest they needed to sustain operations. Despite their best efforts, they were no longer confident their business could survive. That was about four ago. They exist today and are doing well. Here’s the root of their problem, surfaced with a couple related questions: Are you offering the least cost of ownership of all… -
The power of worldviews — there’s one that matters most
24 Oct 2009 | 5:19 pmThere’s a lot of marketing effort given to how the vendor thinks — the vendor’s view of the world, vision of the future, story, way of making the world better, etc. And for good reason: Who wants to do business with a backward thinking vendor with no direction or future plans? But the vendor’s view of the world is secondary. There’s one worldview that matters most when it comes to lead generation, sales, and selling — the prospective customer’s. You have to understand your prospect’s worldview Your prospect’s view of the world is the… -
Sneak peek
21 Oct 2009 | 12:16 pmI haven’t post new content on this site the past couple weeks as often as I normally do. The reason is I’ve been taking what spare time I have and putting it to work on JS Logan — my business. I’m nearly done with changes resulting from plans I’ve had for some time. Here’s a sneak peek, if you’re interested. It remains a work in progress. More to follow soon. Related posts:B2B Rainmaker Revenue System – sneak peekB2B Revenue Now! – Sneak peek and discount opportunity
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Selling Journal
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Trusted Facilitation
28 Oct 2009 | 3:29 pmEarlier this week I was asked to answer the question, “If personal selling could be summed up in one or two words what would those two words be?” and the phrase, “Trusted Facilitation” immediately came to mind. I realize that the phrase “Trusted Facilitation” is not commonly referred to and/or used in the profession of selling so I thought I had better elaborate. By “Trusted” I meant that the prospective buyer trusts the salesperson enough to allow him/her into his/her mental space effectively creating a “We [...] -
Dirty Little Secrets by Sharon Drew Morgen
14 Oct 2009 | 7:25 amDirty Little Secrets - why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it. “This book is disturbing. It pulls back the veil: we’ll never be able to go back to the old way of just selling a solution. This book teaches us what has been missing from the industry for so long - how buyers decide. The ideas in this book are too big to push under the rug: it’s sophisticated, but necessary for any serious sales professional.” - Jeff [...] -
Think and Grow Rich
13 Oct 2009 | 6:47 pmThink and Grow Rich is a motivational personal development and self-help book written by Napoleon Hill and inspired by a suggestion by Scottish-American billionaire Andrew Carnegie. Free Digital Download PDF eBook Edition at http://www.salespractice.com/forums/t-10809.html -
Professional Sales Training
30 Sep 2009 | 4:18 pmSince 1999 SalesPractice.com, the oldest and most respected sales training community on the Internet, has offered FREE sales training resources to sales professionals around the globe. Now through a partnership with world class business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sales training providers SalesPractice.com is offering professional sales training in the United States and Canada. -
What are Trigger Events? How to use them?
29 Sep 2009 | 9:23 pmBy Alen Majer Your mission as a sales person should be to find companies that have immediate wants and needs. This means that something happened or is happening to them - a move, a merger, new investors, etc. You have to look for any event that might create the opportunity for you, or better said you are looking for event that can trigger the sales for you. It could be something internal or inside the company, like a new direction from management, a merger or an acquisition, [...]
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The Science and Art of Selling
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Daily Sales Tip #53:
1 Nov 2009 | 1:46 pmASV - Always Sell Value. The first consideration you’ll want to make will be the value/price comparison of your product. Will the customer feel that they got a good deal for the price they paid? If they do, they’re sure to help create the single most effective form of advertising for you - word of mouth. ———- Subscribe to my daily sales tips and you will receive a free ebook every 30 days, plus extra discounts on my books, CD’s, webinars and seminars. If you would like to stop receiving my tips, you can unsubscribe at any time. Subscribe today by filling the form on… -
So you think you can sell?
28 Oct 2009 | 8:29 pmBefore you begin to sell, you will need to decide who you’re going to sell to. This means finding your Target Market. If you know who you’re selling to, you immediately have the advantage of being focused on a specific market and knowing who and what you need to research. In your search for a Target Market, try to identify those that have a major problem and who are willing to spend money in order to fix it. Straight away, this gives you the advantage of knowing that your customer has the funds to pay for the excellent product or service that you can offer. It’s no use walking in with… -
Daily Sales Tip #173
26 Oct 2009 | 7:42 pmThe most common reasons for losing an account always involve something that the seller or his company has FAILED to do – and this all boils down to a question of service. You can prevent such situations by providing that extra after-sales care. Go the extra mile. It’s actually not that far. Subscribe to my daily sales tips and you will receive a free ebook every 30 days, plus extra discounts on my books, CD’s, webinars and seminars. If you would like to stop receiving my tips, you can unsubscribe at any time. Subscribe today by filling the form on the right-hand side. Thanks! Post from:… -
The Art of Closing - Part Two
25 Oct 2009 | 8:42 pmThe first step of the Closing Stage is getting the prospect to make the right decision. Once Interest and Desire have been secured and Objections eliminated, you need to help the prospect come to the right Decision about buying the product. Always be sure of yourself, without being over-confident. Assure the customer that he is making the right decision by purchasing the product or service. Reinforce that assurance without repeating your sales pitch. If you’ve done well in your presentation then you have successfully brought the prospect to the Closing point. Simply repeating your sales… -
The Top 25 Ranked Blogs on Sales and Selling
21 Oct 2009 | 5:37 pmMy dear colleague Paul McCord has a new post on his blog: The Top 25 Ranked Blogs on Sales and Selling Here is the list of the top 50 sales blogs on the internet as ranked by BlogRank using 20 different criteria. Paul has included the Twitter address for each that he could find: ChangingMinds http://twitter.com/changingminds Cross-Cultural eMarketer And International Sales Specialist Cindy King http://twitter.com/CindyKing Persuasive.net Sales Machine Geoffrey James http://twitter.com/Sales_Machine B2B Lead Generation Blog Brian Carroll http://twitter.com/brianjcarroll…
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The Microfit Small Business Blog
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Ready for a New Website? 3 Things to Keep in Mind!
29 Oct 2009 | 8:42 pmAre you looking to develop or re-develop a website / blog for your company? If so, I have three things I thought would be helpful to share that I usually only share with people who I can be painfully honest with. Usually these types of people are friends or family, sometimes people who were referred to me and place trust because of the recommendation. You can’t always be completely honest with people who don’t “know” you due to the fear of being perceived as arrogant or rude. That said, with those who know you and need honest business advice, you can get to the… -
DIY A/B Split Testing Using PHP and MYSQL
25 Sep 2009 | 12:16 pmI was recently working on a landing page for a client that prompted visitors to fill out a quick survey. The page looked pretty nice and invited visitors to click a button that launched the survey inside of a modal box. That seemed good enough, but the next day, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head to just embed the survey right on the page without the need for another click or the need to scroll inside of the modal box. After consulting with my art director. It was obvious that the modal box method was more aesthetic, but… Which way actually worked better to get the survey… -
Marketing “Experts” Need A Whaaambulance!
23 Sep 2009 | 3:08 pmOver the past month or so I’ve been apart of conversations, social media events, read blogs and/or viewed tweets that are complaining about the flood of “experts” using social media. In the small pond that is social media, there seems to be this anger shown towards the new comers to the social media (and by virtue, marketing) landscape. Some bloggers and smaller marketing firms (usually focusing on digital marketing) are whining at the thought of non marketers helping SMB’s with social media. So, instead of just telling those of you doing so to simply shut it, I wanted to outline… -
5 Ways Social Media Changed The Sales Game (#5)
16 Sep 2009 | 4:25 pmAnd to finish of our series on social media and how it has changed the sales landscape, we’ll cover the idea of Closed Loop Marketing. #5 Closed Loop Marketing If you’ve ever worked in corporate America; either in sales or in marketing, you know each has a long standing distain for the other. The marketing team has it’s objectives, processes and absolute truths; so does the sales team. If you haven’t guessed yet, they are NOT the same. Because there is a separation between the departments, there is a separation of information; each in its own silos. There are a few… -
5 Ways Social Media Changed The Sales Game (#4)
6 Sep 2009 | 4:41 pmIf anything, and I mean anything is a cog in the sales machine, it’s networking. In part four of our series we’ll explore how social media helps the sales professional build their network. #4 Building Relationships (Networking) It’s not to long ago (like yesterday) people built relationships just so they could snake your network. The only purpose in getting to know you, having coffee or attending your “networking group,” was to get into your networks proverbial pants. There are a lot of old school sales people who would ask me, “Why else do you network,…
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Quick Sales Tips
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Sales Managers Quick Tip: Motivating your Sales Staff
25 Oct 2009 | 6:32 pmMotivating and managing key employees can prove to be one of the most difficult tasks required of business owners and managers, and the ultimate success of a company can rely on the ability to understand the most common mistake that sales staff make. It is important to realize that most people consider a job in [...] -
Top Business Social Media Websites for Busy Sales Professionals
17 Oct 2009 | 6:32 amOkay… I know that this topic has been done before. That being said I thought I might bring a different perspective to the mix. As you may or may not know, I own a SEO Company called WebTalent SEO. I often use social media websites to connect with prospects and generate qualified sales leads. I [...] -
Suggestions For Overcoming Sales Comfort Zones
16 Oct 2009 | 6:57 amLearn how to find your sales comfort zone especially when cold calling or selling over the phone. Learn from the Pros and turn your sales calls into your friend, not your enemy. -
We need writers from our sales blog
3 Sep 2009 | 9:08 amQuick Sales Tips gets thousands of readers each month looking for information on sales training or wanting to reads sales blog posts. If you are a talented sales executive and would be interesting in becoming a guest author on the site please contact me at Oliverfeakins@hotmail.com. We would require at least an article every month [...] -
Use Twitter To Increase Sales Leads
15 Jul 2009 | 10:59 amI must say that I love the Twitter technology. Thanks to Iranian elections, it has reached critical mass which means that most of your target clients are not on the network. I routinely use the technology to offer the RedX listing lead service, and know that for a REALTOR, it can be a very large [...]
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YourSalesManagementGuru.com
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Top 40 Sales Management Actions for 2010
3 Nov 2009 | 2:49 pmWe've outlined the steps necessary to build a high-performance sales organization. -
Cleaning the Table: Using Your Resources for New Business
26 Oct 2009 | 3:14 pmThere's one resource for new-business prospecting that you might be overlooking: your existing clients. -
Why Sales Certification Is Important in 2010
19 Oct 2009 | 3:19 pmSales certification is critical to increasing sales value. -
Know Your Competition: 2010 Prep
8 Oct 2009 | 1:20 pmOne component in sales team training is to perform a semiannual competitive assessment. Here's how to do it. -
It's Time To Recruit, Not To Hire
28 Sep 2009 | 1:00 amHire the best, not best available.
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Sales & the City
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How to Win New Business
30 Oct 2009 | 2:00 amI’ve seen many articles lately on prospecting. My guess is that those who have been content to manage accounts have found themselves in the position of now having to acquire accounts. Things are a little different these days. I’ve never been handed a load of accounts to manage, grow or nurture. Those tasks have been part of my job, but ONLY after I acquired them. Somehow, I have always been the leader on my team in number of new customers acquired. I really like the challenge and sense of accomplishment from winning a brand new customer. So, I decided to share how I’ve… -
Planting Pumpkin Seeds
27 Oct 2009 | 11:16 amI’ve always love the formula I read in ProActive Sales Management years ago. It’s Revenue (R) = Frequency (F) X Competency (C). This formula has comforted me and 100% of the time proven true. I’ve seen variations of this formula, most of which complicate such a pure and simple formula. I’m sticking with this one. What does this have to do with pumpkins? Two weeks ago my 4-year old begged me for some pumpkin seeds while we were at a nursery. Of course, it’s not pumpkin planting season and… we don’t have a pumpkin garden, but I love these types of… -
M2W Sales Performance Book Club Discussion Guide – Let’s Get Real
24 Oct 2009 | 6:13 amEach quarter Meeting to Win leads our subscribers through a business book in the Sales Performance Book Club. Each week’s reading assignment and Discussion Guide are included in the weekly sales team meeting agenda newsletter. To subscribe, visit us at our website www.meetingtowin.com. Enter the promo code Q4PUSH and get weekly agendas free for all of Q4 2009. First payment isn’t due until Jan 2010. Learn more here. Grab the following book, read a chapter per week as a team and use the Discussion Guide during weekly sales team meetings. Your team will be motivated and… -
The Q4 Push – Are You In? The Time to Act on 2010 is NOW!
11 Oct 2009 | 2:55 pmThis has been a tough year for many. It’s Q4 and salespeople could be feeling tired and ready to “write this one off” and take another shot at it in 2010. Here’s the problem with that. Momentum is a very cool thing and it’s great when it’s working for you and horrible when it’s working against you. So, even if 2009 is a lost cause in terms of goal achievement, there is no better time (well, a month ago would have been better, but…) to get momentum going for 2010. To gain more and more momentum as you close in on 2010, try these… -
Where Sales Managers are Missing an Opportunity
4 Oct 2009 | 2:01 pmOver the past year, I’ve spoken to many Sales VPs and Sales Managers who struggle to get their sales teams to do the right number of sales activities. The reps are consistently missing sales activity goals. They find so many excuses not to do the calls or have the meetings and come up short week after week. There is also the group that is hitting the activity goal, but with low-quality activity simply designed to check the box and keep their manager satisfied for the week. For either group, it’s clear that they are not motivated to do the activity. So, whats the…
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Sales Management 2.0 Podcast
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Randy Illig and “Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play” – Episode 25
21 Oct 2009 | 12:09 pmThis was a great episode for us, as we had the chance to catch up with a true thought leader in the sales profession: Randy Illig. Randy has over 25 years experience in business, ranging from accomplished salesperson and general manager to successful entrepreneur (CEO) and board member. He is currently CEO of ninety five 5 and is a member of the leadership team at The Sales Perfomance Group, a division of FranklinCovey. Randy has received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the Ernst & Young “CEO under 40″ award for innovative management philosophy and… -
Sales and Social Media With Alejandro Reyes (AKA Successfool)-Episode 24
13 Oct 2009 | 1:18 amThis week, we had the chance to catch up with Alejandro Reyes, aka the Successfool. Alejandro is a social media rock star, and he’s been on the scene since 2006 (an eternity in the online world). Alejandro’s drug of choice is people; he gets really excited about helping people follow their passions and making a great living using social media and the internet. Alejandro’s big question for salespeople is simple: how can you use social media and personal branding to differentiate yourself from your competition? Let’s face it: in today’s economy, there… -
Is It Coaching, or Is It Training? – Episode 23 with Terry Lavine
8 Oct 2009 | 11:25 amSo, what’s the difference between coaching and training anyway? That was the topic of our conversation with Master Coach, CEO and entrepreneur Terri Levine, The Guru of Coaching and owner of The Coach Institute. And what was the answer? According to Terry, coaching has the intent of inspiring and improving the recipient, as opposed to training, which in Terry’s mind is an activity that involves teaching and instructing (in other words, telling). And Terry contends that sales coaching can take place in a group environment just as effectively as in a one-on-one setting. When… -
Motivating Sales People in Tough Economic Times with Jim Keenan – Episode 22
27 Aug 2009 | 9:24 amImage by Text 100 via Flickr What motivates sales people? How do great sales managers keep their teams motivated in tough economic times? Those were the topics we discussed with Jim Keenan in this episode. Jim Keenan is the Regional Sales Leader for Emerging Service Providers at Avaya and author of the popular sales blog asalesguy.com. He’s also the former CEO of CreateBuzz, the 2007 runner-up of Mashable’s Open Web Awards for Best Niche Social Network. Jim has been a sales guy from an early age; Jim uses the same people skills today that he used to get out of trouble as a… -
Episode 21 – Scott Anderson, Chris Heggem and the Power of Sales 2.0
5 Aug 2009 | 9:35 amImage via Wikipedia So, you wish you had a magic pill for turning cold calls into warm leads? Well, we just may have found the answer for you. Meet Scott Anderson and Chris Heggem from MyWay Interactive. Scott Anderson is the VP of Business Development at MyWay. He spent 28 years managing commercial channels at Hewlett Packard. Chris Heggem is the Marketing Manager at MyWay. Chris is a public speaking and persuasion trainer, an award-winning debater and a social media marketer for B2B startups. What did these two experts have to say about the power of Sales 2.0 to bridge the gap…
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TradePub: Retail
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NICHE Magazine
1 Nov 2009 | 12:20 amNICHE Magazine provides business tips for retailing to the affluent. Best practices and success stories are included for managing luxury boutiques, jewelry stores, art galleries, fine craft retailers with the finest designer decorative accessories, designer jewelry, art objects and studio furniture all made in the USA and Canada. More than 300 American designers' works are featured in each issue of this quarterly, full color publication.Request Free! -
Web Wholesaler
1 Nov 2009 | 12:20 amWeb Wholesaler offers the latest in new products and merchandise sources, ideas and statistics on what is selling online NOW, as well as up to the minute news and information on industry trends, e-business growth and management strategies, and methods for increasing your revenues.Request Free! -
Candy Industry
19 Oct 2009 | 4:20 pmPublished monthly, its editorial emphasis focuses on large and mid-sized manufacturers as well as news-breaking developments in new products, processing and ingredient technology and critical issues affecting the industry.Request Free! -
Technical Communications as a Profit Center: The Right Content for Your Customers and Your Company
13 Oct 2009 | 1:50 pmCut Source Language CostReduce Support CallsIncrease Product RevenueThose within technical communications have long argued that product documentation provides value in terms of customer satisfaction, support and service. This report provides the impact technical communications makes as well as best practices to drive value from this organization.Request Free! -
The 21st Century Retail Supply Chain: Three Key Imperatives for Retailers
13 Oct 2009 | 1:50 pmImprove Perfect OrdersSpeed Up Execution CyclesCut Inventory Handling CostsToday's supply chains require a new way of thinking about solutions. Retailers have been influential in moving towards outsourced manufacturing and supplier relationships. Though retailers have been outsourcing manufacturing, they have not been diligent in focusing on supply chain.Request Free!
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TradePub: Sales & Marketing
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Are You Delivering the Right Messages?
3 Nov 2009 | 4:50 pmIn today's challenging economy, marketers are being tested like never before. Customers are more informed, more demanding, and less willing to release their cash. The competition is using technology in innovative ways to compete for customers and despite these challenges, senior leaders and stakeholders want results quickly. So when marketers identify a qualified lead, it stands to reason that they should do their level best to maximize profitability. Fortunately, CRM solutions exist to help organizations improve their understanding of customers and markets and realize the full revenue… -
Sales Performance Management: Maximize Profits with Comprehensive Sales Processes
2 Nov 2009 | 2:20 pmSAP CRM empowers your sales force with a clear and detailed view of prospects, customers, and the market - and the ability to turn that insight into action.Request Free! -
Get Closer to Your Best Customers: A Shift in Customer Strategies in Time of Crisis
2 Nov 2009 | 2:20 pmFind out what changes to make to customer strategy; how to align your organization to best support a winning approach; and how to drive excellence in execution to achieve results in today's economy.Request Free! -
Success in the New Economic Reality
2 Nov 2009 | 1:20 pmLearn about the importance of seeing clearly, thinking clearly, and acting clearly. Find out how SAP software and services can help your clear enterprise thrive regardless of the economic climate at any particular time.Request Free! -
Come ottimizzare gli investimenti in vendite e marketing
2 Nov 2009 | 1:20 pmUno dei loro principali obiettivi è di conquistare e mantenere la fiducia dei migliori clienti, garantendo loro servizi sempre più efficienti, che si tratti di vendita, assistenza o marketing. Guarda questa demo e scopri come grazie a SAP CRM la tua azienda possa pianificare e monitorare le campagne marketing, eseguire segmentazioni della clientela, eseguire attentamente l'andamento delle vendite, gestire contratti e coordinare i budget.Request Free!
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Art Sobczak's Telesales Blog
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Have Your Own Prospecting Training Seminar, and Help Special Needs Kids
4 Nov 2009 | 7:43 amFirst, I apologize for not updating here like I should. It has been a whirlwind of travel, doing workshops, and finally finishing my new book. The dust isn’t settled, but the wind has calmed to a mild roar. So the World Series will be over tonight or tomorrow, but I will continue to have baseball on the mind…for special needs kids. I am donating a one-day telephone prospecting seminar for the high bidder, with all of the proceeds to benefit the Miracle League of Arizona, an organization that builds baseball fields for special needs kids. For the winning auction… -
A FUN Group of Sales Reps
15 Oct 2009 | 7:58 pmHere’s a group of sales reps that many would envy: they work for a division of Oriental Trading Company called Fun Express. They sell toys, novelties, and other fun items, like the goofy hat I’m wearing in the middle of the photo. -
Photos of Sales Pros
15 Oct 2009 | 7:50 pmHere is the most recent group of sales pros I worked with from LexisNexis in Dayton, Ohio. LexisNexis is a company that recognizes the upward trend in the economy, is ahead of the game, and has committed to hiring new reps and investing in them so they are poised to seize opportunities in 2010. -
Group Photo of Training Class
9 Oct 2009 | 6:39 amThis week I had the opportunity to deliver training for the skilled outside sales pros at Connexion, an electrical equipment and supply distributor, and also from General Electric, one of their large partners/suppliers. I am seeing signs that the economic environment is really picking up, and the smart companies are getting ahead of the wave by preparing to create and seize their own opportunities while others wait for them. I’ve had a sudden rush of smart companies booking inhouse training workshops, and for their early 2010 sales meetings… -
The Ultimate Sales Tip
2 Oct 2009 | 8:43 amThe longer I’m in sales, the simpler it seems. I’m talking about the things we need to do in order to be successful. There are a number of fundamentals, that when followed, will help us help more people buy. Today, my friend and colleague Jim Meisenheimer shares one of these fundamentals, that when taken to heart and followed every single call, will ensure your success. The Ultimate Sales Tip By Jim Meisenheimer I was sitting in the gate area waiting to board a flight to Chicago, reading a chapter from "127 More Secrets Of Direct Mail." Then it…
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Salesjournal.com
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The Best Questions to Land Your Next Top Performing Sales Rep
4 Nov 2009 | 4:00 amHow Do You Know Who’s Really Behind The Mask? Of course we know there are other predominant characteristics of top performing salespeople which positively contribute to performance not mentioned here. For now, Jim Kasper, President & CEO, Interactive Resource Group is focusing on 3 key characteristics: Enterprising, Sociable, Assertive. -
My Grade 9 Geography Teacher Taught Me How to Succeed in Sales!
3 Nov 2009 | 4:00 amThe other night Randy Whitcroft was doing some work and looking at his oldest son as he was doing some of his homework. He then remembered that when he was that age, he learned a very valuable lesson which to this day he attributes a great deal of his sales success - Doing his homework! When it comes to calling into a new prospect, Randy will take the time to do a search on the person using tools like LinkedIn, Spoke, or even Google. He takes the time to find press releases, awards, or even other connections with the individual or company that can be used to either warm up the… -
Why Customer Service Destroys Salespeople
2 Nov 2009 | 4:00 amMark Hunter believes if you ask any CEO about their “issues,” you will hear that one of their biggest is finding and retaining good salespeople. Something happened on the way to a sour economy: Too many companies learned the hard way that their salespeople didn’t know how to sell. Instead, their salespeople were good at taking orders and providing customer service. There is nothing wrong with this approach, as long as the marketplace is always going to serve up new customers and keep current customers in business. Does that kind of marketplace always exist? -
The Credibility Process
30 Oct 2009 | 6:08 amThis week’s blog is by Michael Lovas, an author, coach and an expert in the psychology of professional credibility. I’ve been researching credibility since 1991. It’s not some mystical quality; it’s the result of a scientific process. In this piece, I’m going to give you the basic steps in that process. But first, why is credibility important? Because it’s the key to referrals. Now, here are the steps to the Credibility Process: Safety: This is where the fight or flight response comes into play, and neither is a good thing. Needless to say, very few people buy from someone… -
Five Strategies to Minimize Risk
29 Oct 2009 | 5:00 amWith most people tightening their belts nowadays, it’s essential that you minimize their perceived risk of purchasing from you. “Prospects want to know that you are capable of delivering the results they want and that you will actually deliver them. No matter how good your product is, if you are perceived as risky, your prospect will not buy from you,” explains sales trainer Tessa Stowe. “Conversely, people will knowingly buy inferior products if they perceive the risk is less and that there is more of a guarantee they will get the outcome they are looking for.”…
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Managing the Salesforce
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More structure in hiring = more successful reps
Cross post from Tech-Sales-Hiring / www.PeakSalesRecruiting.com/blog-hiring on the importance of a structured hiring process. Particularly noteworthy: "If you don’t have the right people in the right jobs, all the training, coaching, tools, technology, and support in the world is not going to result in sustainable sales effectiveness." "You can’t coach, train, ... -
Are Sales Tips Hazardous to Your Wealth?
Interesting take by our friend Dave Stein (who btw writes Commentary on Sales Leadership, a great blog to read if you have a chance ) in Sales and Marketing Management called Hazardous to Your Wealth which discusses the problems caused by inexperienced sales reps relying on sales tips. His first point ... -
Don’t change the color of your face! I’m out of umber.
I grew up with *M*A*S*H* reruns on TV. This just cracks me up and makes me think of all the reps who look to their environment to solve their problems rather then themselves. Post on Deadly Sales Habits coming soon. In the meantime, enjoy. Charles: As I was saying, sir, I ... -
@Peak - 10 Point Checklist for Hitting the Year End Target
Eleven weeks to go until year end. For most it has been a bumpy year and a strong finish will be critical. Hard work creates opportunity and there is still lots of time to find and close net new deals. This is a great time to work hard towards a ... -
When is the Best Time to Reach Prospects
Right now? Actually there are better times than others, according to a new report published by InsideSales.com and MIT (hat tip to HT to Engage Selling for picking up this story). In the study, entitled the Lead Response Management Study, MIT and InsideSales.com looked at 3 years of data across ...
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Sharon Drew Morgen
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Busines Writing: How to Write Like a Pro AND Get the Deal
4 Nov 2009 | 4:08 amNeil Sawyer is re-launching his nifty book How to Write Proposals, Sales Letters, and Reports: Writing for a fast moving world. If you do business writing to help you get business, this is a good book to have handy. Not only does it walk you through every single aspect of every single thing you need to do to be successful, it also gives you definitions, examples, illustrations, summaries, tips, warning, charts, to-do lists – everything that you’ll need to do a good job. For those of you who are already using Buying Facilitation® the book focuses on conventional sales strategies… -
SalesPractice.com Rocks
3 Nov 2009 | 5:46 amJeff Blackwell is an interesting kinda guy. He’s a really successful commercial real estate guy who knows his business and hasn’t had many issues during this housing crisis because of the type of business he’s run. He works, lives, breathes integrity. To that end, he has a passion for sales. And this is where I come in. Jeff runs a site in his spare time. Sales Practice is an ‘everything-sales’ site. He has a very very active and involved community of sales folks who hold passionate discussions about sales. And he keeps an eagle eye on the discussion… -
The Arrogance of Sales
2 Nov 2009 | 3:27 amSales professionals face a lot of failure. You work very hard to discover plausible opportunities, understand needs, respect and care for prospects, and position your products so prospects recognize how your solution manages their need. You are good. You are professional. You are conscientious. Yet you only close a fraction of your sales; you seem to have no idea who to spend time on, who to let go, who will be able to buy, or who will have no ability to buy (even though they act like prospects), regardless of the fit between their need and your solution. You end up wasting a lot… -
Decisions are Never Emotional
30 Oct 2009 | 5:01 amImagine if instead of believing that unexpected decisions are emotional, we assume they have a very specific reason, even if we don’t understand or agree. Then what? Is it just easier to believe the other person to be irrational? Do you remember, back in the day, when docs said that women suffering from PMS were hysterical and they needed to have a hysterectomy (that’s where the word ‘hysterical’ comes from btw)? They didn’t understand the physiology underlying the physical issues, and relegated the problem to emotions. My son has a neurological disease called… -
A New Presentation Model: Facilitate the Decision
29 Oct 2009 | 4:05 amI know that a lot of you love to do presentations. When folks use Buying Facilitation® their presentations are not focused on presenting solution data, but rather helping prospect maneuver through their behind-the-scenes issues they need to manage before being able to choose a solution – and THEN they present whatever matches the buying criteria they all have discovered together. Whenever we stand in front of a room and pitch data, we have no idea how the folks are viewing us or our solution, what the politics in the room are and how the personalities are weighted, how we are being…
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A Sales Guy
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It’s Simple. Make It Easy.
3 Nov 2009 | 8:37 pmPizza Hut has announced it has generated $1,000,000 dollars through it’s new I-Phone App. That doesn’t surprise me. Pizza Hut has made it fun and easy to do business with them. It’s not the technology, it’s the fact that Pizza Hut has given its customers an easy, fun way to buy. Tear down the barriers, be connected to your customers and make it easy to business with you. If you do you’ll sell more stuff. During the past few decades, making it easy to do business with you meant getting a good, easily accessible, location. It was extra staff so no one had to wait… -
Who’s Business Is It Anyway?
2 Nov 2009 | 10:05 pmWe are entering the final 7 full work weeks until the end of the year. How are you going to finish your year? Are you at quota? If not, what are you going to do? Do your sales meeting with your manage sound like this: “What are you going to do to make it?”, “What can you bring in from Q1, to get you over the hump?”, “Can you call in a favor?”, “Can you ask the customer to take the order earlier than they wanted?” Are your questions focused on your needs or your customers? Is the last 7 weeks of the sales year focused on your business or your… -
Does Sales Need to Slow Down?
1 Nov 2009 | 7:03 amFred Wilson had a fantastic post the other day on the pace of capital. It was called “Slow Capital”. The post was inspired by the Slow Movement and this quote by it’s creator Geir Berthelsen: The only thing for certain is that everything changes. The rate of change increases. If you want to hang on you better speed up. That is the message of today. It could however be useful to remind everyone that our basic needs never change. The need to be seen and appreciated! It is the need to belong. The need for nearness and care, and for a little love! This is given only through… -
I’m Getting Undressed For You, But You Need to Undress Your Clients
30 Oct 2009 | 3:53 pmMany of you have developed your opinions on who I am. However, I thought I’d give you a deeper look and open the kimono. Myers-Briggs says I’m and ENTP. That is Extraversion, Intuition, Thinking and Perceiving StrengthFinders says; Command, Futuristic, Activator, Context and Strategic Social Styles says: Driving with Expressive tendencies Insights Learning says: Red and Yellow are my colors. I agree with much what they say about me. “pragmatic, dependable and able to get things done” “lacks attention to detail” “resourceful involving new and… -
Don’t Feed the Trolls
28 Oct 2009 | 5:53 pmThis post by Seth Godin rings true to me. I’ve experienced Trolls in every company I’ve worked. Trolls Lots of things about work are hard. Dealing with trolls is one of them. Trolls are critics who gain perverse pleasure in relentlessly tearing you and your ideas down. Here’s the thing(s): 1. trolls will always be trolling 2. critics rarely create 3. they live in a tiny echo chamber, ignored by everyone except the trolled and the other trolls 4. professionals (that’s you) get paid to ignore them. It’s part of your job. “Can’t please everyone,”…
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THE SALES HUNTER'S SALES MOTIVATION BLOG
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Sales Training Tip #311: Which Sales are the Best?
3 Nov 2009 | 8:28 pmLow-level people make tactical buys. High-level people make strategic buys. Many times salespeople believe they can crack a new customer by contacting a person they already know who happens to work in a mid or lower position in the company. Salespeople do this believing it will be the best way to develop the customer, but in the end, all they’re doing is giving away profit. The real profit in any transaction is made when the strategic value of the decisions is understood. You can best understand that when you’re dealing with senior level people. The lower you go in an organization, the… -
Holiday Selling and Sales Supervisors
2 Nov 2009 | 8:10 amIf you’re a sales supervisor, it’s very important you monitor closely the sales motivation level of each of your salespeople over the next couple of months. Plan now on increasing your level of contact with your people and be more aggressive with your questions, challenging your salespeople as to they’re status with various accounts. The reason you need to keep your level of contact up is it’s very easy for salespeople at the first hint of the holidays to start shutting down and trying to put things off until January. Salespeople do this as a mechanism to protect their level of… -
Sales Motivation: Selling Around the Holidays
29 Oct 2009 | 4:42 amNovember and December are full of holidays, and every company and every employee will have variations to their sales strategy during this time. Take the time now, regardless of your sales role, to lay out your calendar for the next several months. Plan right now what days you’re going to be out, and what events may impede your ability to makes sales calls and follow-up on leads. Next, start getting on to your calendar those activities you know you’re going to need to do to close sales before the end of the year with your current customers and prospects. When you start laying out dates,… -
Sales Training Tip #310: When Do You Start Negotiating
27 Oct 2009 | 9:07 pmNever negotiate until the customer has resisted your offerings 3 times and “X” period of time has elapsed. It’s far too easy to think you’re going to lose the sale unless you start giving away the farm, just because the customer is not accepting your offer. With this said, let me clarify more what I mean by “resisting your offer 3 times.” During the course of your discussion with the customer, it’s important to try and close the sale at key points based on the customer’s comments about a point of pain or need. If the customer doesn’t allow you to close, that’s OK. -
Sales Strategy: Price Discounting in the 4th Quarter?
26 Oct 2009 | 7:33 amI’m never in favor of price discounting, but it seems every year about this time, we enter into the silly season of price discounting. Too many salespeople and companies that are chasing a number suddenly get the urge to think the way they can hit their number is by price discounting. Nothing will destroy sales motivation more effectively long-term than by allowing yourself to play this price discounting game. You run the risk of permanently lowering your level of sales motivation each time you think price discounting is the solution. If you’re chasing a year-end number, shift your…
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healthysalesman.com
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Quick and healthy recipe suggestion: Paella
22 Oct 2009 | 2:18 pmThe Mediterranean diet is well known for being quite a healthy one: lots of fresh fruits, veggies and olive oil (and a little red wine:) One of the most popular dishes, which originates from Valencia on the East Coast of Spain, is Paella. It's packed with goodness and very tasty. Here's a quick version -
Reduce the chances of developing that cold!
14 Oct 2009 | 2:36 amA group boffins from various hospitals and universities, all PhDs, recently carried out a study of people's sleeping habits and their chances of developing a common cold. They basically got 153 volunteers, men and women, aged between 21-55, to report their sleep patterns everyday for 2 weeks. That was the easy bit for them. They then quarantined them and injected rhinovirus up their hooters (noses). Not rocket science but does make perfect sense, given that the body uses sleep time to reset many systems and put us back into balance (check this out). -
Thinking about buying a Juicer? Watch this!
4 Oct 2009 | 2:28 pmJuicing is basically the extraction of the juice from raw fruits and veggies. The fibre, also known as pulp, is what's left over and usually takes a few hours (if you're Gillian McKeith) or a day for most of us, to pass though the body and come out the other end. By extracting the juices and drinking them in a raw form, we get the benefit of all the goodness immediately. Juices tend to be veggie-based and smoothies tend to be fruit-based, but both can contain both fruits and veggies - did you know that cucumbers and tomatoes are actually fruits? -
Ten Great Reasons to Join a Gym
3 Sep 2009 | 7:23 amModern day gyms are now called Health Clubs, because they are good for more than just building muscle and/or loosing weight. Ten great reasons to join one include: -
The lemon detox diet – how it works
31 Aug 2009 | 11:31 amlot of us have heard about the lemon detox diet, which effectively means fasting for 3-5 days and consuming nothing but a mixture of syrup, cayenne pepper and lemon juice. The promoted benefits on the website - www.lemondetox.com - include: weight loss, increased energy & vitality, shinier hair & stronger nails, clearer skin & eyes, better digestion and a greater sense of well-being. This is all good stuff, but why does it work and is there an alternative?
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Partners in EXCELLENCE Blog
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Value Propositions Change Through The Sales Cycle
2 Nov 2009 | 10:10 amToo often, we tend to think of our value propositions as static. Effective value propositions will change as we execute our sales process. Early on, as we are prospecting and early in the qualification process, the value proposition needs to be only compelling enough to capture the customer’s interest and to get them to consider your solution as an alternative to consider. We don’t have to be differentiated, we don’t have to be superior, we only need to be good enough to be invited to the party. The generic or segment focused value propositions developed by marketing… -
Sales Management, It’s About Inspecting The Process, Not Transactions
26 Oct 2009 | 10:48 amI’ve been away for a week working with a great sales management team. We were doing a deep dive into the issues they faced in maximizing the performance of the organization. An issue came up that I see with virtually every sales manager: “The workloads in managing the volume of activity with our people is overwhelming us, how can we possibly survive with the ever increasing workload.” Too often, as sales managers, we get caught up in managing deals and transactions–it’s natural, after all we’ve been sales people, the excitement of “the… -
Fun With Value Propositions
14 Oct 2009 | 4:15 pmOver the past few months, I have had the opportunity to talk and write a lot about value propositions. I’ve seen a lot of approaches and thought it would be great to create a template, a customizable silver bullet, if you will, that sales people can cut and paste to save time in developing their own value propositions. In using this template, we’ve discovered a “best practice” is to apply it unchanged, but to literally cut and paste it. The benefits of this are self evident–it really engages the customer in creating your unique value proposition. (Cut… -
Can Value Propositions Be Generic?
13 Oct 2009 | 7:42 amMy friend Christian Mauer has written an interesting post entitled, “Can Value Propositions Be Generic?” I can’t resist weighing in. The purpose of a value proposition is to help the customer understand What’s In It For Them (WIIFM) for implementing your solution. The value proposition is what the customer uses to compare alternatives–so clearly to win, your value proposition has to be superior in meeting their requirements. So does the Value Proposition need to be unique? Well – it depends. How’s that for taking a strong position? -
Selling Is About Change And Change Management
9 Oct 2009 | 1:00 amI wonder why we never talk much about change and change management–except when it is happening to us. When it happens to us, we usually are very uncomfortable and resist it. But at its core, isn’t sales really about change for our customers? As sales professionals we are facilitating our customers in changing what they do or how they operate. We are asking them to abandon what they are currently doing, convincing them to do something differently–hopefully to make them better or to allow them to address new opportunities. As part of our sales process, how often do we…
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David Steel's Blog
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4 Nov 2009 | 1:51 pm
4 Nov 2009 | 1:51 pmdeveloping time maching sales concept Past->Present->future. -
Convergence is Everywhere
27 Sep 2009 | 6:12 pm -
Tony Robbins - Why we do what we do
29 Aug 2009 | 3:49 am -
Seth Godin - How To Flip The Sales Funnel
28 Aug 2009 | 4:09 pm -
World Ticket Conference
30 Jul 2009 | 4:16 pmWorld Ticket Conference- David Steel View more presentations from David Steel.
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Fill the Funnel
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Xobni Announces Enterprise Version
3 Nov 2009 | 10:22 amXobni as a Microsoft Outlook productivity web tool is a big success with individual users. With the announcement of Xobni Enterprise, businesses of all sizes now have the ability to deploy and manage Xobni to employees and create enterprise extensions to increase productivity and efficiency. All this is accomplished through an easy-to-use web interface providing what Xobni Enterprise refers to as the “Three C’s” to IT administrators responsible for their company’s Outlook environment. Xobni Enterprise consists of a web-based admin portal that allows IT administrators… -
How Do You Look To Your Prospects?
19 Oct 2009 | 10:55 amWeb tools have and are changing the sales landscape in a big way. We are now using these tools to identify prospects, learn about their needs, communicate with them in meaningful ways, and manage the resulting relationships for long term success. By integrating these sales web tools into our daily activity we are able to sell more, sell more quickly, and sell to more customers than if we have chosen to stay with the old ways. My work with web tools has been focused on improving the results and efficiency from the salesmakers side of the transaction. I received an inquiry last week… -
Gist Adds Free iPhone Application
13 Oct 2009 | 10:38 amMaking an effective web tool more so is always welcome. Gist has released their iPhone application that provides the following features for the mobile professional: Optimized Dashboard– provides quick viewing of both traditional news sources as well as blogs and Twitter updates either by person or company. Event View – delivers automatically created and updated profiles of meeting attendees in a single view plus provides a map of the meeting location. Quick Actions – enable sharing of news, reaching out to a contact or even sending a one-click email to meeting participants th at you… -
Top Sales Experts-Are You Engaged?
12 Oct 2009 | 11:46 amFor most of us in sales, the pace of our day continues to speed up. Customers are beginning to inquire and spend once again, though cautiously. Information is everywhere and flowing past our eyes and ears faster than we can digest it all. Web tools that enable us to earn more customer interactions are prevalent and productive. The pace of innovation and education for sales professionals is on the same pace. How many blogs, books, webinars, workshops, social networking services and live events are you able to effectively utilize? As a sales professional, our need to stay informed… -
#1 Webtool for Sales People-Jigsaw
30 Sep 2009 | 10:21 amWhether you are new to sales or an experienced veteran, everyone shares one consistent obstacle-obtaining the name, phone number and email address of the key people involved in buying from you. Many of the sales and marketing activities are specifically geared towards obtaining this information. Without knowing who to communicate with and how to accomplish this, the sales cycle freezes up. Jigsaw is the Holy Grail of contact information. Founded in 2003 by Jim Fowler and Garth Moulton, their vision for the company was ahead of its time. Crowdsourcing was not yet in our vocabulary or…
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Media Sales Today
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Build Business By Creating an “Ideal Client Profile”
4 Nov 2009 | 1:47 pmDo you have a vision of what your perfect client is? If not, you may be having difficulty reaching prospects that most need your services. As part of his “Five Client Acquisition Best Practices,” marketing specialist Randy Shattuck lists “Define your ideal client profile” as the first step. -
Search vs. Display: Which Really Works for Retailers?
4 Nov 2009 | 12:00 amSome recent Nielsen research (via AdAge) shows that search may not be what's driving the most traffic to retailer Web sites. This study showed less than 10% of online retailers web traffic came from search, and more than 60% of site visits coming from people going directly to a site. -
Ad Opportunity: Holiday Related Spending Extends Beyond Gifts
2 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pmNo one can blame retailers for nervously promoting great deals early in this holiday season. Nearly every large research firm has predicted that consumers will keep a close watch on their spending. Consumer spending may not be as restrained as last year, though. The 24th Annual Holiday Survey by Deloitte indicates that just over half of consumers will spend as much or more than last yea -
Two Words to Improve Your Sales
30 Oct 2009 | 1:17 pmDo you know of two words that can make you sell more? Sales strategist and blogger Lee B. Salz does. In a blog post for Sales Gravy, Salz discusses two words that he calls “powerful,” writing that “they are guaranteed to drive your revenue and income.” Intrigued yet? -
Here’s Who is Actually Spending on Advertising
30 Oct 2009 | 1:00 amYou've heard it before - no matter how counter intuitive, for continued success, businesses must advertise during a recession. We believethat so strongly we did an entire study on it (blog post here). Some recent Nielsen research, via Brandweek, shows who has followed that advice so far this year.
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GoldMail's Blog
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“Speak Up” with Constant Contact and GoldMail…
21 Oct 2009 | 2:08 amYour email marketing just got more powerful. The GoldMail team are delighted to announce our partnership with email marketing leader Constant Contact. Just click on the player below for a 2 minute message. With Constant Contact email marketing for GoldMail you’ll benefit from: Significantly above average (97%) Inbox delivery. 400+ email marketing templates. Email open rate & click through tracking. List management & autoresponders. Email coaching and support. This latest GoldMail release is out now. To increase your click-through rate and speak to your audience with impact… -
GoldMail Partners TechSoup Global for Digital Storytelling Event
24 Sep 2009 | 1:13 amAre you an NGO looking for an innovative and compelling way to tell your organization’s story? From September 30 to October 21, GoldMail is proud to partner with TechSoup Global (one of the most comprehensive technology resources for NGOs in the world) for their Digital Storytelling Event. To find out more play this GoldMail. This online event includes expert roundtable discussions, nonprofit case studies, online discussions, live chat and a Digital Storytelling Challenge with great prizes (including a video camera, mp3 players and a GoldMail Synergy account). For a chance to win you… -
New release: Community Widgets, a GoldMail Gallery and more…
14 Sep 2009 | 2:50 pmThe GoldMail team are pleased to announce the release of a new version of GoldMail (2009 08). It’s simplest to show you around with a quick GoldMail, so click on this link or the image below and take a look. This release introduces… A Welcome Screen: which provides access to tutorials and guides, and incorporates a live feed of the latest product developments from our blog, so you can see what’s new at a glance. Clearer “View Notes” Button: we’ve added some text to make sure you don’t miss our slide notes feature (thanks for the feedback). Links to… -
Real estate agents work smarter and faster with GoldMail
18 Aug 2009 | 8:54 amGoldMail had a great time at the Inman Real Estate Connect conference in San Francisco, showcasing our newest tools for Real Estate agents. The show traffic was surprisingly good considering the beleaguered economy and down real estate market and everyone seem to be optimistic and looking forward to brighter days ahead. Representatives from ReMax, Keller Williams, Buffini Group, and Realtor.com were all perusing the halls of the show, looking at productivity solutions for their agents. It goes to show this group of professionals have resolve and are rolling up their sleeves looking… -
GoldMails on Facebook – Now with Thumbnails.
12 Aug 2009 | 3:15 amBeing the leading social networking site, Facebook has long since surpassed its tag of “just for college students”. As this article explains, with tools like Facebook Pages and Groups you can gain new clients, stay in touch with current clients, and promote new products and sales offers. You can also use it to create buzz and PR that is specific about your business. Of course GoldMail is the perfect way to make all these connections more personal and powerful. If you are already involved in professional networking on Facebook you’ll know just how easy it is to post your…
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B2B Rainmaker
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Cash Flow
2 Nov 2009 | 9:28 amCash flow is the life-blood of a business. If you can’t timely receive money into your business and smartly spend it each month, you won’t have a business for long. The best idea can’t survive without the consistent and predictable flow of money in and out of a business. I don’t know the number to quote, but cash flow crisis is undeniably a leading cause of business failure. There two basic elements of cash flow — money in and money out Money in is how a business timely receives money for the products, services, and solutions they offer. This includes… -
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should: A content marketing lesson
31 Oct 2009 | 7:44 amThere are a figurative ton of things you can do as a marketer. But that’s never the point. Just because you can do something — exercise a marketing tactic or strategy — doesn’t mean you should. What you should be doing is what works best — reaching your target audience with a compelling message and call to action that creates sales and revenue opportunities. Why is this important to remind us all? It’s important to recall this simple fact as a reminder because it’s the first thing we ought to consider when thinking about our web presence. … -
Match what you offer to the person you’re offering it to
26 Oct 2009 | 9:42 amSeveral years ago I worked with a client who self described their business as offering the lowest cost, highest quality product in their market. Their sales were lagging. They had a fair level of interest in their offer, but couldn’t attract the volume of interest they needed to sustain operations. Despite their best efforts, they were no longer confident their business could survive. That was about four ago. They exist today and are doing well. Here’s the root of their problem, surfaced with a couple related questions: Are you offering the least cost of ownership of all… -
The power of worldviews — there’s one that matters most
24 Oct 2009 | 5:19 pmThere’s a lot of marketing effort given to how the vendor thinks — the vendor’s view of the world, vision of the future, story, way of making the world better, etc. And for good reason: Who wants to do business with a backward thinking vendor with no direction or future plans? But the vendor’s view of the world is secondary. There’s one worldview that matters most when it comes to lead generation, sales, and selling — the prospective customer’s. You have to understand your prospect’s worldview Your prospect’s view of the world is the… -
Sneak peek
21 Oct 2009 | 12:16 pmI haven’t post new content on this site the past couple weeks as often as I normally do. The reason is I’ve been taking what spare time I have and putting it to work on JS Logan — my business. I’m nearly done with changes resulting from plans I’ve had for some time. Here’s a sneak peek, if you’re interested. It remains a work in progress. More to follow soon. Related posts:B2B Rainmaker Revenue System – sneak peekB2B Revenue Now! – Sneak peek and discount opportunity
