Proactively managing the sales pipeline by ensuring every deal has a scheduled next step is critical for preventing stalled opportunities and improving closing rates. The Challenge of Stalled Opportunities Recently, I was working with a client to focus on the…
5 Step Sales Call Planning For Your Best Sales Week The average salesperson only spends about 25 – 30 percent of his/her work week actually talking with prospects and customers. Sales Activity Orientation Is A Strength And A Weakness Most…
Fairytale Customers Don't Exist Unfortunately, only in a Disney movie does Sleeping Beauty live happily ever after. In the real world, passively waiting for clients to court you and give you business is a sales strategy doomed for failure. Are…
The Two Opposing Sales Philosophies After years of pursuing sales as a serious closer, I grew into what I refer to as an "of service" sales professional. While I'm still all about closing deals, today I go about it in…
Phone and Email Scripts for 3 Easy Sales Here are the three easiest ways to make a sale and effective scripts you can use in your next sales conversation. All companies, large and small, ask the same question: “How do…
In B2B Sales, Storytelling Builds a Human Connection When we are children growing up, it’s fairy tales and stories that shape our thinking. They trigger our imagination and fuel our creativity. As adults it’s not that different, we are always…
The Shift to Selling From Home In April, “The Great Quarantine” threw sales organizations out of their bull pins and into the home office. This forced sales managers everywhere to accept working from home in a major way. The sudden…
There must be a way, I thought, to see if a deal can really close by end of quarter without telegraphing the concession and having to give that concession later even if they couldn’t close by end of quarter. And…
You cannot be consultative without sharing your ideas and insights. You worry about your dream client taking your big idea and executing it themselves—or worse, giving the idea to your competition. As unfortunate as this is, it is a necessary…
There are often plenty of sensible reasons why people underperform, but there is never a good reason why you should tolerate it in your growing business. It's Not Enough to Just Go Looking For Success So far in this four-part…
Effective deciding and doing starts with a pre-determined course of action, or what some call strategic planning. There is a short little story about four little frogs sitting on a log. One decides to jump off, how many are left?…
Many professionals lack clarity about their results because they have failed to engage in strategic planning. Confusion in business creates poor sales results and a continual drain on the bottom line. From not knowing the purpose of business, to executing…