There are a lot of things that we put into our emails and calls that trigger them to be deleted or not responded to by the prospect. Some of the common issues are that the message is too general, there’s no real value in it for the client, they’re way too long, they’re all about […]
Category: Negotiating
One of the Worst Sales Meetings I’ve Had
A while back I had an in-person meeting with the CEO of a prospect that went so poorly it lasted less than 15 minutes. A good friend of mine joined this company as VP of Sales and wanted to bring me in to train the team on prospecting skills. It was a small and diverse […]
Selling to Pleasure vs Pain
We’re all taught to dig for, find and sell to pain. There’s nothing wrong with this approach other than the fact that sometimes we don’t pick our head up and realize sometimes (a lot of times) people buy for pleasure reasons, as well. […]
The Best Way to
Explain Your Value Prop
I see reps struggle with this all the time at every stage of the sale process. They struggle articulating or explaining their value when prospecting, demoing, presenting, handling objections, closing, all of it. A main reason for this challenge is based on how we’re typically trained to deliver our value prop or our “pitch.” As […]
How to Turn
Core Sales Performers
Into Top Performers
I’ll be speaking at the upcoming Digital Growth Conference with a good friend of mine, Ralph Barsi, on the topic of How to Turn Core Performers into Top Performers. This has always been the front-line manager’s biggest challenge and should be one of their top goals as a manger. The “Distribution of Talent” or “Vitality […]
If my mom can do it,
so can you
My mom is about as far away from being a sales rep as it gets. Well, at least the perception of what most people think a sales rep is (Boiler Room, Glengary Glen Ross). I won’t give up her age just in case she reads this (Hi Mom 🙂 but let’s just say she’s well […]
Why I Love Talking to Strangers
My parents always told me to never talk to strangers when I was growing up, and now I tell my 5-year-old daughter the same thing. It’s good advice for kids but now that I’m all grown, I take the opposite approach. Now, I love talking to strangers – and for multiple reasons. […]
Practice Sales
Everywhere You Go
Sales is the best profession in the world for multiple reasons. One of them is that we can (and do) practice it all the time and everywhere we go. The trick is to actively think about practicing sales and to pay attention. If you have kids, you negotiate all the time (“you want to stay up […]
Stop Giving Away the Farm
We are ‘givers’ in sales. We give and give and give and expect one very big ‘get’ in return at the end which usually comes in the form of a signed contract. The problem is that by giving everything away and not getting much in return throughout the process we’re effectively conditioning our clients to […]
The Vendor Client Relationship – In Real World Scenarios
I saw this and laughed for a while because it highlights how ridiculous negotiations are sometimes. This clip brought to mind two things that I wanted to share. The first is that we need to start being less apologetic in sales. We are a very apologetic group in Sales. When someone asks us for the […]