“They just made an unbelievably poor decision.”
Did you ever watch a customer or prospect make a bad decision? OK, dumb question… We’ve all lost deals because the guy on the other side of the desk just flat didn’t do a good job of making the decision. And because we hold the customer’s best interests near [...]
I don’t need my cup of extra-strong coffee to get going this morning. If you’re in sales, you won’t either.
Just read about this Ogilvy & Mather-led contest that insults the intelligence of sales professionals, managers and executives everywhere. Selling a red brick to a panel of “executives” from Ogilvy & Mather, OgilvyOne, IBM and Salesforce.com [...]
Friendly violent debates are really a lot of fun. They’re also the best way to practice selling complex ideas. Fortunately for me, there are lots of folks ready, willing and able to have no-holds-barred, free-for-all arguments about my allegedly brilliant ideas. One of my favorites involves the traditional “sales funnel” metaphor.
I still hold it near [...]
We’re all familiar with the “Law of Unintended Consequences.” My personal favorite is still the plastic whistles that were packaged with Cap’n Crunch cereal back in the ’70s. Blowing the whistle into your phone triggered a connection to AT&T’s long distance dialing AND by-passed their billing system. Free calls! Not exactly what Quaker Oats had [...]
Timing is everything!
Editors tell authors to never ever start a blog post with a cliché. Despite appearances, I always follow that advice, and here’s why the above – when applied to selling – is most definitely not a violation of that writer’s rule. Competition is intense. Depending on [...]
Back in January, I blogged about an epiphany I had regarding proposals. It was quite an eye-opener, since I’ve been exhorting sales reps to improve their proposal-writing skills for years (…actually it’s decades now. Yikes!) So two short months ago I converted to “Recommendation Summaries” that reflected the thinking of the team of folks consisting [...]
March 18, 2010 – 11:14 am
In getting prepared for a meeting with a client’s sales VP, I spent some time analyzing the performance numbers of their 64 reps. There it was again. The same lopsided bell curve I see over and over and over, and no sign of the 80/20 rule either.As always, most of the reps are below average; [...]
Yes, I think so.
Several very unusual things happened during the day and half Sales Excellence Council kickoff meeting that concluded this past Friday. Actually it was the same phenomenon repeated six times.
We were scheduled to begin at 8:30 Thursday morning, and as is my habit with a new client and/or an unfamiliar meeting room, I [...]
March 10, 2010 – 12:32 pm
Actually, I have been saying it myself; for over ten years now – for my whole career really. “It,” in this case being this blog post. It talks about process, it talks about metrics, it talks about best practices, it talks about CRM – daily use of CRM, it talks about sales and marketing working [...]
Later today, I’ll be flying to Monterrey Mexico to kick off a Sales Excellence Council. The YPS Group has done work in Canada and Bermuda over the years, but this is the first foray south of the border and I’m quite excited about it.
Only real difficulty is that my Spanish is …ummm… pretty much non-existent. [...]
