Sometimes, communication between you and a friend, hiring manager, prospect, or client just stops. Crickets….You try to get in touch — still nothing. It’s mysterious and troubling. You do have choices, though, on how to respond. Was It Something I Did? The usual reaction is to second-guess yourself and analyze what you might have done ...
Stepping into a sales opportunity is like stepping into a boxing ring — you’ll be throwing punches and ducking and weaving. The goal is to remain focused at all costs, not lose your nerve, and engage every tactic at your disposal to win. Emotions are involved in a sale from the very beginning, even before ...
Call me slow off the mark but I’ve never jumped into the customer experience pond. For some reason I’ve not been tempted to dive bomb it and announce I’ve arrived. Instead my instinct has been to sit on the sidelines and watch its progress. Recently I’m beginning to understand why… It’s all to do with that ...
In the last few years we have seen radical changes in the sales landscape. Instead of the traditional contact-qualify-pitch-sell-close pattern, today it’s all about establishing relationships, discovering client pain points, and creating value. Insight selling is the phrase of the modern sales era. But if you dig in and talk to champion sales innovators and ...
For the last several years, my corporate clients have asked me to integrate storytelling into the presentation excellence programs I customize for them or to enhance individual presentation objectives. One marketing department requested a storytelling workshop to align their team’s messaging on how their roles and services added value to their internal customers. For another ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
