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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
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 ...
Recently I had the opportunity to work with a great client at their worldwide sales conference in Miami. During the two days, I spent several hours with their sales management team and four hours with their salespeople, they have a great sales culture and you could feel the attitude in the room. In the post-meeting ...
Most salespeople call a prospect with the goal of getting them live on the phone. While there is a chance you’re calling at the right time, with the right message, the majority of the time, this is not likely. Interrupting someone’s day for a sales conversation is a breeding ground for a bad conversation. Even ...
“Emotional intelligence” and “sales” are not often mentioned together — they’re considered oil and water. Sales leaders often mistakenly confuse emotional intelligence with being weak, which is far from the reality. Emotional intelligence is a crucial leadership skill, and the research supports its inclusion in a winning sales team. #1: Emotional self-awareness. Are you the ...
