Most salespeople (think about the 80% on the wrong side of the 80/20 rule) are overly optimistic, usually to their detriment.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not looking for pessimistic brooding hoards, but viewing sales through rose-tinted glasses has cost many salespeople many sales.  I remember reading the “Dictionary for the Disenchanted,” which defines ... Read Post

Other than a few books on tape (wow that makes me sounds old) and a few random seminars, I have never formally been trained in sales. I have a marketing degree, but, and this might be surprising to some of you, it required a grand total of one class on the sales game. That said, ... Read Post

Serving is selling I recently struck up a conversation with my insurance agent, Kevin, about the link between customer service and sales. We both agreed that the line separating these two distinct disciplines is fuzzy. Where does customer service stop and selling start? Kevin said that while his company tends to reward agents for writing ... Read Post

Are you still asking prospects, “What keeps you up at night?” That kind of question is making you look out of touch and may also signal to your prospect that you are totally uninformed about their world, their business, and your place in their ecosystem. Nowadays, it’s crucially important to show potential clients that you ... Read Post

Prospecting – everyone’s talking about it and there are a lot of different approaches. Here’s WHY it’s important and how to do it with a trigger-based approach. There is no sale, no close, no deal, unless we get invited to the table. It all starts with getting in the door and getting that first meeting. ... Read Post

Casey Stengel, the baseball legend, said it best, “You look up and down the bench and you have to say to yourself, can’t anybody here play this game?” I wonder about it when it comes to a marketing team’s willingness and ability to prove the ROI for their lead generation programs.  Can anyone play the ... Read Post

Teaching our customers is a cornerstone of recent sales advice (see, for example, The Challenger Sale, Insight Selling, Upside Down Selling, and  Agile Selling). Today the helpful, knowledgeable salesperson is showing up in best-in-class sales organizations. Helping customers learn is really not a new idea — salespeople have always been teachers. Nowadays, however, we’re not just teaching ... Read Post

I’ve been observing how quickly Alyson Stone from Pipeliner CRM has made a significant contribution to the body of B2B selling content through the blog she curates. This is a high-quality destination, with a fine assortment of contributors. I posed a different question to Alyson. How about if I interview you for your own blog. ... Read Post