Let’s talk about your sales and profit margins. How effective do you think your Sales and/or Marketing messages are? Are they compelling and converting leads in to opportunities and opportunities into customers with strong and healthy margins? At what rate? And at what cost to acquire a new customer? (If you don’t know your conversion...Read More

Our clients are usually classified as “Small Business” – though I absolutely DESPISE that term. The US economy is POWERED by Small Business! In fact, as of the 2010 census, Small Businesses make up to 99.7% of Employer Firms in this country (a “Small Business” is defined as having less than 500 employees). Yeah –...Read More

I recently recorded a session for a Virtual Sales Summit along with three super-smart counterparts – and our focus was on Coaching the Next Generation of Sales Leaders. My contribution to our sales coaching discussion was “3 keys to coaching behavior changes.” Coaching is one of those broad, ambiguous titles. Some folks confuse coaching with...Read More

If you asked 10 Sales Pros what their primary goal would be, you’d predictably get some variation of, “Close more deals,” or “Grow revenue,” or “Make my quota and bonus.” I like the “eye on the prize” mentality but question those answers as goals. They are outcomes. They are results. Similar to the name of...Read More

With the age of the internet, we’ve all become self-diagnosing doctors with medical degrees from “Google”, right? We are able to search out our symptoms and try to self-medicate, self-prescribe . . . maybe even self-destruct. When we finally seek out medical help we’ve either worked ourselves into a tizzy about the “worst case scenario” possibilities...Read More

  We run across this situation quite often. You started a business. You hustled. You busted your behind. You earned trust. You demonstrated experience and credibility. You brought in the customers and your business took off. But at a certain point, you spent less time selling and more time “doing” and running the business. At...Read More

One phrase that I hear often from sellers and businesses when they describe their offers really makes me cringe. I hear it a lot from sellers trying to paint a broad picture to capture as much potential business as possible. Yeah, I get crunchy when I hear, “We’re a One-Stop-Shop for all your needs.” Yikes....Read More

We’re very close to Thanksgiving and all those Holiday traditions that signal the slowdown of business and preparation for the next year. I know you’re thinking Cranberry Sauce and Mashed Potatoes but hold up – there’s still some really important work to do! This time of year, I’m usually writing about year-end strategies to keep...Read More

Have you ever done the “Sales Walk of Shame” back to your car in the parking lot after realizing you just lost a sale and thought, “What in the world happened?” You didn’t see that coming. You thought things were looking good for you. Your buyer said things were going well. But somewhere along the...Read More

I received an email the other day from a company letting me know my order had shipped. The message came from “customerlove@blahblahblah.com.” Not “info,” not “orders,” but “customer love.” That made me feel special. For two reasons: It always makes me happy to know when my package was shipped and when I can expect it....Read More