First a chain of logic, then a case in point… (I’ll assume you possess valuable knowledge.)
Fact: The more valuable the knowledge you possess, the more valuable you are to your customers
Fact: As more customers and prospects realize you have valuable knowledge, the more they will seek your advice and the more they will buy [...]
If the sales practices you use on a regular basis are the same ones you were using last year or 2, 3, 5, 10 years ago, they probably no longer deserve the “best” label. Don’t get me wrong, just because something is not a “best” practice doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not an “excellent” practice. [...]
Sometimes the “obvious” is not so obvious. What seems perfectly clear to me – because I work with it day in and day out – might be terribly confusing to normal person; i.e., customer.
A colleague’s focus on “Minimalist Marketing” along with references in a “Quick Reference Guide” to things like discharge/recharge/refresh mode, trickle vs. standard, [...]
Every sales rep, manager and executive must have, use, add to and delete from an RSS Reader. It’s a truly outstanding means to feed your brain and ensure a habit of life-long learning. In my view, it’s the 2nd best one out there.
Given their power and how long they’ve been around, I had assumed pretty [...]
We all know it’s true. Little things really can make a huge difference. But we all cut corners – all the time. We’re busy. We have challenging goals. We’re tempted to let the little thing slide.
Next time you find yourself starting that slide, listen to the following audio clip. It’s only 44 seconds, and will [...]
Knowing your customer’s decision process is critical, but not enough. There’s also the requirement to understand decision criteria and what it is about those criteria that make them important.
“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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
