Yearly Archives: 2022
Discussing Price Prematurely-Why and How to Avoid It
In sales, price is always part of the discussion. Often, however, buyers want to know the price early, before sellers can adequately understand needs or position value. This presents a challenge. Unfortunately for sellers, competing on price alone makes your product a commodity. It’s a race between competitors where the lowest price wins. And this race […]
Is Your Account Management Strategy Effective?
As a sales leader, have you ever calculated the cost of poor account management? For example, let’s suppose your superstar salesperson closes a big account. This could be an enterprise client with hundreds of locations worldwide. But this account is local in your hometown. The account stayed active for one year and then left for […]
Creating Sales Conversations That Matter
“Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the mouth,” is what Mike Tyson said about boxing. Every sales leader has a plan to make their numbers, until reality hits them in the mouth. Markets change, requiring shifts in strategy and execution. For sales leaders, we need to prepare our sales teams with the […]
Sales Clichés and Bad Sales Habits to Avoid Like the Plague So You Don’t Ruin The Deal
Recently I saw a post on LinkedIn that proclaimed to be a “game-changing, disruptive and transformative solution.” I was not surprised to see a post using the “game-changing” sales cliché with zero likes and zero comments. Sales clichés are ineffective if you are the seller and frustrating if you are the buyer. Sales clichés are […]
Salesperson or Trusted Advisor: What’s the Difference?
“We have the best product in the industry, beat the competition’s price, and we still lost the business.” This is a gripe we hear from even the most experienced salespeople. In the modern sales environment, the best product does not always win. And the lowest price does not always get the deal done. What trumps […]
Sales Lessons From the Hundred Acre Wood
Whether a galaxy far, far away or the Hundred Acre Wood, the fictional world can be as real as our own. For generations of children, the Winnie-the-Pooh stories feature adorable, anthropomorphic animals. Since 2000, however, many mental health professionals see the characters as distinct, very adult, disorders. Although this read can be controversial, it is […]
3 Steps to Maximize Your Sales Training Investment
The secret to maximizing sales training is simple. Plan strategically, reinforce consistently, ensure buy-in. Simple, but not easy. In this article, we will outline how organizations can maximize their sales training to increase performance, prevent failure, and maximize their sales training investment. Plan Sales Training Strategically Strategic is one of those business buzzwords like synergy, […]
Creating Your Own Sales Cinderella Story
One of the best things about March Madness is a Cinderella story. This is the team that comes out of nowhere, surprises everyone, and advances beyond anyone’s expectations. Sure, we expect perennial powerhouses like Duke and Kansas to do well. And we set our brackets accordingly. This year, all eyes were on the Saint Peter’s […]
Tips for More Effective Sales Storytelling
There is something fundamental about storytelling. Just after the first humans arrived in Europe 30,000 years ago, we find cave drawings in France and Germany. Of course, these were lions and rhinos, but they tell a story of the people and their culture. This need for storytelling carries through all ancient societies like Sumer, Egypt, […]
