In my first sales job, I had a very tough product to sell: advertising for the worst TV station in our market. In order to earn our customers and deliver actual value for them, we had to hustle in a major way and get mega creative. Media buyers didn’t readily see the upside of placing ... Read Post

Clearly the traditional view of Marketing–simply being a lead generation engine, focused at the top of funnel–no longer holds true. Marketing has a rapidly evolving role that takes it much deeper into the buying process than ever before. Neil Rackham defines it like this: “The role of marketing in the consultative problem-solving sales is around ... Read Post

In the world of customer support, skills matter – and, for the most part, these skills will go largely unnoticed by customers, of course, unless they are absent. That is to say, a customer is more likely to notice poor customer service skills before they recognize someone for their superior skills. But, regardless, it should ... Read Post

What kind of people do you really need on your sales force? Let’s continue in our current series of lessons, and have a look back at the composition of the Continental Army fighting for American Independence, and the British army at the time. I pointed out at the end of my last post that what ... Read Post

The urgent importance of the elusive C-suite executive is a pervasive misconception that leads to wasted time, effort and money. Read Post

Interview with Frank Cespedes, Part 2 Frank Cespedes teaches at Harvard Business School, and is the author of Aligning Strategy and Sales: The Choices, Systems, and Behaviors that Drive Effective Selling (Harvard Business Review Press), which was cited as “the best sales book of the year” (Strategy + Business), “a must read” (Gartner Group), and ... Read Post

“If only HP knew how much HP knows, we would be three times more productive,” Hewlett-Packard CEO Lew Platt said. Had Mr. Platt been referring to his sales organization, he would have increased the multiple. Sales teams possess immense knowledge – from finance, marketing, strategy, product engineering and customer support to street smarts about customer ... Read Post

Thomas Edison famously said, “Genius is one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.” If you want to be a genius at prospecting, the inventor’s insight explains how to do it. The key to successful sales prospecting is preparation: The more thoroughly you vet your suspects, the richer your ultimate prospecting list will be — making you ... Read Post