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

Sell Better With Psychology: Sales and Self Talk If you’re a salesperson, you probably talk a lot. You talk to your sales manager, to other people on your sales team, to potential clients, and to former customers. You might even talk to John Golden if you’re filming one of his Sales Expert Insight Interviews for SalesPOP! But, how ... Read Post

The B2B buying process is shifting, and as a result, selling as we know it has shifted, too. Until lately, salespeople had a lot of control. Armed with a territory, price structure, and targets, they could roam, free-range style, so long as they managed their territory and produced results. Sales management provided oversight, bridged with ... Read Post

Our CEO’s new ebook, Ten Guiding Principles for Entrepreneurs, is now available in the Pipeliner Sales Reference Library. It’s free, and packed with indispensable advice for entrepreneurs and sales insights. There is no universal guideline to building your business from the ground up and 10 Guiding Principles for Entrepreneurs does not try to provide you with one, ... Read Post

Tips from a Real-Life Buyer Could this be you or someone you know? A lead comes in, and gets assigned to a salesperson. The salesperson, seeing that it’s a reputable company and potentially a decision-making buyer, decides he’d better make that call right now, without any further preparation. Freeze frame! As the rep is poised ... Read Post

Congratulations on closing the sale!  The contract is signed and implementation is moving forward.  Time to move on, right?  Wait! Not so fast. Often overlooked is a retrospective meeting with decision makers.  This is an opportunity to look back, debrief the process, and tweak your tactics.  A retrospective conversation is a way to know what ... Read Post

  In 1725, a young Italian painter named Giovanni Antonio Canal, or as he is better known, Canaletto, learned an extremely important lesson about the business of painting. That lesson turned him from a down-and-out painter of everyday Venetian life into a wealthy artist whose works were fought over by Catherine The Great and other ... Read Post