Here’s the chronology:
11/25/04 – Initial telephone contact with company president
12/17/04 – The one and only face-to-face meeting (…with the president mainly, plus a brief conversation with the founder)
12/21/04 – Original proposal for a Sales Excellence Council
01/10/05 – Opportunity recorded in my CRM as “Closed-Lost”
01/10/05 through 04/18/11 – Not a single conversation or e-mail for over [...]
In his book, The Truth About Leads, Dan McDade writes, “Close to 80 percent of buyers state that when they are in the market for a solution (such as software or services), they found the vendor, not the other way around.” Let’s run that through our brains one more time…
80% of the time, the buyer [...]
I can get away with telling Todd Schnick he’s out of his mind because he’s my partner and my friend. (…and the fact is, sometimes I really do think he’s nuts.) He’s also, as Anthony Iaanorino has said, “wicked smart.”
He’s broken a significant chuck of the code on how to use social media to engage [...]
We all know it’s a lot easier to sell something to someone who has bought from us before. Knowing this, I habitually make a personal contact with 5 past customers during the first month of every quarter. (By the way, that’s one terrific best practice. For me, the 20 per year is perfect. For you [...]
It’s tough out there. Yeah, the economy seems to be recovering a bit, but it’s still pretty ugly. Seems like a lot of the folks I interact with feel like this is the “new normal” and that the economy will continue to stumble along for years and years.
There are also a growing number of economists [...]
Have you ever said something during an internal company meeting and when you’re done think that maybe you actually said something worthwhile? Maybe even pretty darned good? Maybe something that can be packaged and used to help everybody sell better-cheaper-faster?
It happens all the time!
You say things. Your colleagues say things. 90% or more of [...]
Do you have enough time? Does any sales rep have enough time to get it all done? And how about our customers? How many of them have enough time? How often are they just too darn busy to meet with us? Maybe even more significant, how about the whole network of decision influencers within each [...]
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again and again… Every h-Rep needs an e-Rep. That is, every human sales rep needs an electronic alter-ego; a highly personalized, customized, electronic version of him or herself. I repeat the refrain for two reasons:
It is unequivocally true
Appalling few sales reps have bothered to create [...]
My colleague Todd Schnick is a smart guy. While I can’t lay claim to thinking up the “14 arrows” I talk about in today’s podcast, I sure as heck can use them to generate marketing muscle! If you want to read about them, check Dreamland Interactive.
Here’s the scenario: The company is a B2B distributor of printing equipment and supplies. It was founded by a team of three people with a financial backer 14 years ago. In 2010, their 52 sales reps brought in just over $60 million in revenue. Annual sales growth has settled in right around [...]
