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 ...
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 ...
