Let’s Have Fun! (in sales)

Last week I was in New York speaking at a conference; during my time on stage, I used the phrase, “If you can’t have fun, you shouldn’t be in this room (and probably can’t sell”), and the reaction I received was interesting to say the least. As I scanned the room, bewildered faces seemed to be the Continue Reading

Rules To Maximize the Sales Negotiation Process

The sales negotiation process is a salesperson’s opportunity to meet three critically important objectives: establish a relationship with the buyer; remove risks that prevent a buyer from signing your contract; target a bigger sales package than the buyer originally expected. Here are a few tips to Continue Reading

The Best Kept Email Secret: Subject Lines

Captivating your audience should always be on the mind of a successful marketing and sales professional. For a new or an existing business, email newsletters provide the most cost-efficient method for engaging on a regular basis. While it may take a little while to build an appropriate subscriber’s Continue Reading

4 Reasons Why Your Online Demo is Failing You (and how to fix it)

Let’s get right into it… you get your prospect on the phone, prepared to give the demo of a lifetime, hoping (no hope is not a strategy), knowing that you are about land the deal that will make you the talk of the entire company. Now let’s fast-forward… and the time comes to give what was just the Continue Reading

Thinking about Hiring Your First Salesperson? Read This First.

Returning from SXSW the other week reminded me of some of the most challenging obstacles entrepreneurs face in growing their businesses. Ironically, such challenges arise as things are beginning to look truly favorable. Sales are good. The opportunities list is growing. We’re feeling optimistic Continue Reading

Stay in the Game and You Won’t Drop the Ball

We’ve probably all experienced it at least once: that big deal we had “in the bag” falls through at the last minute, leaving us feeling like we’ve been sucker-punched in the gut. Already basking in the afterglow of our hard work, feeling pretty good about ourselves, we suddenly realize how we’ve Continue Reading

The Art and Craft of Following Up

There’s something uniquely challenging about following up with clients after a sales presentation. If we do it too soon, we risk coming across as overly eager to pocket a commission. On the other hand, if we wait too long, we risk being undermined by a competitor who happens to catch our customer at Continue Reading

Three Strategies for Better Lead Qualification

In a sophisticated world like ours, it never hurts to revisit the basics from time to time. One of the “basics” we’re prone to overlook in sales is well summarized by the maxim, “Qualify, qualify, qualify.” That is, in our rush to close as many deals as possible, we tend to chase a lot of fruitless Continue Reading

Translating Sales Excuses into Sales Performance

It’s human nature to make excuses. When things don’t go quite the way we want or expect, our first instinct is not to self-critically evaluate what we could have done better or differently. We blame other people or circumstances beyond our control instead. We’d make more sales if only our prices Continue Reading

Why It Still Pays to be Persistent

When you live in breath the life of a complex sales, it’s so (unfortunately) easy to play the ‘what if game’... always contemplating if you’re rubbing the prospect the wrong way that he or she will flip the switch and ruin the deal. I’m here to break it to you that not only is being persistent Continue Reading

Regulate the Sale: the F.A.S.T.E.R. Approach (part 7)

This is the last of a series of seven posts on the importance of bringing a focused methodology to the madness that is the sales environment. By this point we’ve done just about all that we can to reach out to the customer directly. We’ve communicated real value by “finding the need” and Continue Reading