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The Sales 2.0 Process
A key difference between Sales 2.0 and Sales 1.0 (aka “old school selling”) is where sales people should spend their time and energy in the sales process. The graph opposite illustrates this point...
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Go to your next Sales Meeting Naked
I went on a sales call a couple of weeks ago where the rep arrived and spread out about 15 products all across the prospect’s desk. Then she just started talking (and talking) about the products. All...
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Empty Your Sales Pipeline
When I last held down a real job I worked in a small sales team of senior sales executives selling high-end, high-cost technology projects to Wall Street banks. Like most sales teams we would have...
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What is a Sales Cycle?
How long is your sales cycle? How do we shorten our sales cycle? Interesting questions but how do you answer these if you don’t know what your sales cycle is? I’d like to be a bit odd as usual and...
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As the Market Drops, Don’t Be a Closer
The sky is falling. Well, the stock market and many of the great behemoth financial firms that I have sold to over the last dozen years are. Let’s say many of us are not in the most upbeat mood right...
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Top 20 Sales Books for a Sales 2.0 World
It’s a question I’ve been asked a lot over the last few years. “What are the best sales books?” Here’s my top 20 sales books somewhat in order (putting them in order is super-tough for me as it’s like...
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Sales Calls: 14 Preparation Tips
An IDC study from last year revealed only one out of six sales professionals were “extremely prepared” for an initial meeting with a customer. 57 percent were either not or only somewhat prepared....
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Has Your Proposal Gone to Neverland (Part II)?
photo credit: JD Hancock In a previous piece about proposals I said that you should try to avoid producing proposals without selling all the decision-makers in the sales process first. I thought it...
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Don’t Propose. Close.
I don’t care how many proposals you have out. Truth be told you probably don’t really care either. What you care about is how much money you are going to put in your bank account this month, this...
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Deals Have Momentum
photo by Loco Steve Deals rarely slow down then close. Deals that close have momentum. The pace of the communication accelerates as you get near closing. The prospect has questions. They are about to...
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Do you value your selling time highly enough?
“As we discussed, I’ll get back to you with ideas and the data you requested on A, B & C” That’s how an initial meeting ended recently with a technology sales person. In general, I liked the way...
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Show me the money
“Show me the money, Jerry” Those are the words from a classic movie scene in the film Jerry Maguire (see the video at the end of this post). It’s also a great phrase to keep in mind when selling to...
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Don’t just check in
Nice post by David Brock. I went on about “just touching my base” here. It drives me nuts. I’m glad David agrees (smart dude!) “Checking In,” Is Not A Next Step! For those of you that know me, this...
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Trigger event types
This post is in reply to a comment left by Louis Gudema on my last post. If you haven’t checked out Louis’ blog, you should. He’s writing some excellent stuff about modern sales and marketing over...
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Use leverage
Great post today by Anthony Iannarino. It’s really critical to give your prospects a reason to act; otherwise your biggest competitor–status quo–will win. How to Get Leverage A few weeks ago I sent a...
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Do you believe proposals have magic powers?
Do you believe proposals have magic powers? If I put the question this way then I’m sure you’d say “no”. But throughout my career I’ve observed sales people acting as if proposals do have magical...
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Every Sale Should Be THIS Easy
Here’s a great story from Joanne Black of how easy it easy to close a deal when you’ve been referred in. There are social selling techniques you can use to get more referrals. Sniff around this blog...
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Has your proposal gone to Neverland?
I was reminded the other day of one of the “classic” problems that is experienced by so many people during the sales process – proposals that have “gone to Neverland”. The scenario goes like this…you...
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Proposal Time Wasting
I had the opportunity to be a buyer of some B2B services a couple of months ago. The seller in this case was begging us to waste a lot of his time. He kept contacting me and the other decision-makers...
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