Many people address everything else but themselves. In financial terms, people often -- especially in these hard economic times -- serve their creditors, and if there's something left, then it's left for them. And that actually perpetuates that situation -- you continue to serve your creditors. If, on the other hand, you paid yourself first -- set aside 10 percent of your pay and begin to build a nest egg, and then use the 90 percent that's left to take care of everythin […]

I've noticed that a lot of salespeople overcomplicate their selling environment by focusing on every possible to do of a particular sale.  I have found that if instead I focus on the 1, 2 or 3 most important sale advancing to do's -- selling becomes very simple. At a high level, the job of a sales pro is to talk with people to find alignment of interest or not -- and if there is alignment work through what has to happen in order to decide let's do busin […]

Salespeople commonly struggle with the question: "What makes your company the one I should do business with? What makes you different?"The way they (or most) respond is predictable. And it's actually laughable. But it's highly predictable and very common. When a salesperson, sales executive or business executive hears that question they usually say -- without knowing anything about the customer -- something like: "Our differentiation in the marketplace is&h […]

I'm often amazed at how many senior execs (who are involved in the sales cycle) completely extract themselves from expertly applying their own company's sales process and skills. I see this so often that it really, really amazes me.It doesn't matter the size of the company – let's say it's a small company and the CEO knows most of the customers and regularly calls upon them. Then he or she wants the salespeople to get better at what they're doing […]

The planning effort for some -- if not most -- salespeople, sales managers and sales organizations is a box checked and then long forgotten by this time of the year. Now that we're sneaking up on the midpoint of the year, it's a good time for a check-in on that 2011 sales plan. (See my post titled “Remove the anxiety from the question: 'Can I see your 2011 sales plan?'" from last December.)This can be a very informal assessment. The objective is to se […]

The first trick of knowing how to get things done is knowing what to get done. There are two important considerations when we look at how we invest our time and energy. One of those considerations is knowing what not to do. It's almost like being purposeful about creating a "not to do" list. That helps you get focused on what should be on your "to do" list.What I find most helpful -- and again, like so many things, it's often about going back to the basi […]

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that line above in the headline of this post. It came to mind following a recent visit to a leading business school, where I was invited to speak to a sales-related class of mostly seniors. They use our book "Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play" as part of their curriculum, and I speak to the students there from time to time. The class is comprised of 100 of what could be argued were some of the brightest young people in the United States -- i […]

It has been said that people love to buy and hate to be sold to. The "buying" part of this equation has definitely changed, most notably around where buyers engage sellers in the sales cycle.We use a skill called "structuring a conversation" to help sales professionals navigate the changing buying environment and the needs that prospective customers have in different stages of the buying process.Not too long ago, buyers engaged sellers fairly early in the process to […]

Many of us have had a "slip of the tongue" with email, inadvertently sending a message to the person we were talking about instead of the colleague we had intended it for.Had we been communicating with both at the same time we'd have written that response differently.  The intent is the same, but often, when we're sending a quick note or question to a co-worker, we tend to talk in shorthand without all the pleasantries.Mistakes happen. And I very recently f […]

Have you ever been frustrated by your client's decision-making process during the sales cycle? Or perhaps struggled with your own ability to make good sales decisions?Many sales professionals do not realize that they can dramatically improve how decisions are made simply by planning what they want to achieve during each client conversation.The "call plan" is the key tool to help you prepare for and conduct more purposeful client meetings. Ideally you should have a […]