Many sellers approach sales calls for business development with some anxiety. I can completely understand that feeling. In spite of good, better, and even amazing efforts, if you’ve been in sales doing business development for a while, you’ve been on the receiving end of grumpy prospects, hang-ups, yelling, or otherwise unpleasant calls. I can completely...Read More

A while back, I had the honor of giving the closing keynote session for the AA-ISP Digital Sales World Conference in San Francisco with my Co-Host of The SellOut Show, Dianna Geairn. Closing out the conference gave me the ability to sit through all the previous sessions where inside sales experts talked about best practices...Read More

“Disparaging what one cannot obtain, as in The losers’ scorn for the award is pure Sour Grapes.” This expression alludes to the Greek writer Aesop’s famous fable about a fox that cannot reach some grapes on a high vine and announces that they are sour. By nature, sellers are competitive. The best salespeople are naturally...Read More

When was the last time you were blown away by someone trying to sell you something? That long ago, huh? Maybe never? With the ever-increasing ability to serve ourselves in the pursuit of purchases, as buyers, we’ve been putting a lot of distance between us and sellers until we’re really sure we need someone to...Read More

Why does the sales profession get a bad rap? What’s the number one reason many people don’t want to be approached by a seller? Is it that we think they’re too pushy? Is it that we don’t want to be confronted with a choice or have to reject someone? Is it because we think they’re...Read More

Super successful sellers have some similar key characteristics. Self-starting, hard-working, disciplined … there are core traits and outliers that show up on personality tests. However, more telling to me than any of those core traits is the investment someone makes in their own career and skills. Well-rounded people have interests in many things and that...Read More

In the last post, I started down the road of what makes a well-rounded sales pro. First and foremost, I think Super Sellers are self-starters who continue to invest in their own success with a continuous love for learning. Buying has evolved at warp speed over the last decade so sellers need to continue to...Read More

What does it mean to be great at SELLING? What makes a Super Sales Person? There’s a remarkable amount of time, energy, and money wrapped up in building an effective salesforce – rightly so. Sales teams are the revenue drivers for the organization so we’ve got to invest in the vehicle, right! Like most things...Read More

Sometimes hard problems CAN have easy answers. Well, “simple” perhaps, because it requires effort and work. Sometimes, as an Account Executive or Business Development Rep, the grind of prospecting and pipelining new opportunities made me feel like Fred Baker from those old Dunkin’ Donuts commercials where he zombies about saying, “Time to make the donuts.”...Read More

How excited does your prospect get when they see your email pop into their inbox? Wouldn’t it be great if they had a Pavlovian response and immediately expected to see something cool, interesting, or insightful when they clicked on your message? Sadly, most “clicks” on sales messages – especially cold or following up – are...Read More