The key role of questions within the sales process is to uncover the insights and information you need from a customer to be able to demonstrate how your product/service can help. But what are those insights that you need to know? Start with these seven: Read Post

Here’s How to Seal the Sale and Stop Coming in Second. Coming close only counts, the old saying goes, in horseshoes and hand grenades. Your sales efforts are no exception. In fact, being a runner-up in the sales game is often doubly troubling, as you’ve likely invested a lot more in getting their attention than ... Read Post

The countless benefits of relationship marketing are not immediately visible, but research suggests that a positive customer experience will lead to more sales, either directly or indirectly. Most businesses focus on transactions as a measure of success. In a transactional model, your business is dependent on a continuous flow of leads coming in. Marketing generates ... Read Post

You know one of the words universally associated with success that we don’t hear enough? Initiative. Merriam-Webster likes to describe this word, firstly (and probably most succinctly) as the introductory step.  That’s it. So simple, that it’s often lost in a haze of other important ToDo’s. Now, one of the great tricks with initiative is ... Read Post

When you think about it, salespeople have an awesome amount of freedom—but also a huge amount of personal responsibility.  In many senses, we really are entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs march to their own drummer.  They have goals, translated both to financial aspirations (revenue, earnings, growth), and strategies (share, market visibility, brand reputation, etc.)  They develop plans, then ... Read Post

As any Sales Manager knows, most sales forecasting is a mishmash of guesses, unfounded optimism, and outright pipeline stuffing.  And yet, in virtually any size organization, the pipeline is the lifeblood of future revenues, profits, and growth. So it’s science—not guesswork—that should drive decisions. Setting the Stage for Our Big News Pipeliner CRM brings sanity ... Read Post

As previously noted in this blog and in many other places, the B2B sales landscape has changed dramatically in the information age. Thanks to the plentiful information available online, some 70 percent of a buyer’s decision is made before ever speaking with a member of a sales force. It means that sales reps must be ... Read Post

In this series of articles on economic philosophy applicable for the sales force and sales management, we’ve been stressing certain entrepreneurial principles and their importance in sales and commerce. We have seen how empowering it can be to understand some of the root economic principles that guide sales and commerce, and how that understanding can ... Read Post