I’ve been paying attention to some of the recent data about the sales process and keep thinking about the concept of Time to Value (TTV). I’ve heard of it before but never put much thought into it until now. Here’s a good description of it by the Baremetrics Blog. The main definition is the amount […]
Category: Qualification
Dear Buyers – It’s OK to Tell a Sales Rep NO
No is actually the second-best answer a sales rep can hear besides the obvious yes. The worst sin in sales is not for a sales rep to lose a deal, it’s to take a long time to lose a deal. So, the faster you can figure out a solution is not the right fit and […]
Managing Expectations is a Key to Success in Sales (and Life)
Think of the last time you were pissed off about something. I almost guarantee it’s because your expectations were off. For example, if I’m driving into the city at 8:00am during the workweek I expect to sit in traffic. If I hit traffic driving home from the airport at midnight on a Friday night after […]
The Top 8 Questions to Ask Prospects to Sell More Effectively
There are plenty of sales questions we need to ask throughout the buying/selling process to help uncover a need, create urgency and gain commitment. Here are the questions I ask and the reasons why: […]
The Best Person to Speak With
Who is the best person to speak with about this? I’ve been a huge fan of the top-down prospecting approach for a long time now. This is where you craft and send a targeted e-mail message to a C-level executive asking for direction on the best person in their organization to speak with about your service or […]
Does That Make Sense?
“Does that make sense?” I hear reps ask this all the time during their sales calls, demos, and presentations and it drives me nuts. Has anyone ever said “No” to that question? Even if they said “Yes,” does that really tell you whether or not it made sense? No, it doesn’t. […]
The Sales Handoff
This is arguably one of the more important but least focused on points of the sales process. None of the handoffs throughout the sales process are smooth and almost all of them include multiple levels of miscommunication that tend to frustrate the client. Let’s breakdown each one. […]
I Can’t Stand This Email Technique Any More
I’ve hit my breaking point. After having the same email technique used on me twice in one day, and having three of those same emails forwarded my way, I had to write. You might know the one. It goes something like this: […]
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 […]
