The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions I just read this great blog post and thought I would share it with you in it's entirety. Read it in order to upgrade your networking skills to current best practices. Ignore it and run the risk of looking like a rookie, or worst still, frustrating … Continue reading Why Do My Email Intros Bomb?
Category: Core Skills
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software made its way into the lives of sales professionals with the introduction of the PC software, ACT!, in 1986, and the client-server software, Goldmine, in 1989. The dotcom bubble took these apps online and soon spawned Salesforce.com - the 800 lb gorilla of the CRM industry. Instead of tracking customer contact information … Continue reading Are You A CRM Master or Slave?
Voicemail is a powerful sales tool, but it can hurt your reputation if done poorly. Voicemail gets a bad rap, and it’s easy to understand why. We’ve all received (and left) rambling, self-centered messages that are hard to hear or have no contact information. These messages are frustrating and we typically delete them before reaching … Continue reading Do You Use Voicemail Like a Rookie?
Sell More by Double-Checking Your “Gut” Instincts Have you ever told your sales manger you were excited about a sales prospect, only to be caught dumb-struck when she asks you to explain why you are so confident they will buy? Many top performing sales people develop a gut feeling for good prospects, but that doesn’t … Continue reading Use B.A.N.T.E.R. To Increase Your Sales
Salespeople often ask multiple questions in one run-on sentence. Here’s why and how to stop. A sales manager I worked with called the habit of asking multiple questions in one run-on sentence “nervous mouth.” It drove him crazy when he observed sales reps ask two or more questions in a row rather than asking them … Continue reading One Question at A Time, Please
Almost every sales person has heard about the ABC’s of selling. That is of course...Alway Be Closing! Unfortunately, many sales people mistake this sage wisdom to mean they should always be asking for the order. That may have been the original intent of the “old school” sales dog that came up with that sage bit of … Continue reading The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins With A Single (Next) Step.
Fortunately, a simple fix improved my sales performance, personal relationships, and effectiveness. In the1990's, when I was working as a sales manager at MCI Communications, I was made aware of a bad habit I had developed that almost cost me my job. The VP of Sales I reported to pointed out that I interrupted people … Continue reading Listen Up Sales People…This One Bad Habit Almost Ended My Career – It May Be Hurting Yours Too.
Underperforming sales reps turn their sales manager into a nanny, nag, or worse still, a narc. Top sales reps know how to leverage their sales manager to make them even more effective. If you are one of those sales reps who is constantly making excuses for failing to meet quota, while you secretly know that … Continue reading 3 Reasons to Love Your Sales Manager
You finally set the meeting. It was confirmed by your contact's Executive Assistant. You are on for 10am tomorrow morning. Are you ready? Pilots are trained to go through a pre-flight checklist in preparation for every single flight they take. It doesn't matter if this is a 20-minute shuttle flight or a 12-hour transoceanic flight, … Continue reading The Importance of a Pre-Meeting Checklist
You are only fooling yourself when you ignore your key sales metric. Every sales person has a key activity number they know they need to achieve in order to meet their quota or self-imposed sales goal. They just may not realize it yet... We all want signed contracts, so that is the ultimate number we all … Continue reading To Thine Own Self Be True
Sales Growth 