At a friend’s recommendation a while back, I read a short but poignant book by Jon Gordon: Training Camp, A Fable About Excellence. You may recognize his name from one of his many other books, such as The Energy Bus, The Carpenter, and The Positive Dog. Jon has a gift to take business and life...Read More

In an interview by Paul Watts for his show Sales Reinvented Podcast he asked me “What’s one thing you wish you knew earlier in your sales career?” My answer: “I wish I would have known to be more hardcore at pre-qualifying.” Yup. Pre-qualifying prospects is critical and when I think of all the thousands of...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

We talk quite a bit about asking questions in the sales process. Ask better questions. Don’t assume. Listen. Don’t “tell”. And there is one more super-fantastic way “questions” can be the MVP of your sales game. Ask questions about your prospect’s questions. What? I started paying attention to this a few years ago. As a...Read More

“Don’t you just LOVE meetings!” . . . said probably no one ever. Sales meetings, in particular, were usually met with an eye roll so hard from me that I could examine the back of my brain. Time after time, whether they were weekly, monthly, or scheduled on a whim, sales meetings devolved into sessions...Read More

Over these past few weeks, I’ve had strong reinforcements of my core beliefs about sales training: Most of it needs to be, “Undone.” I see proof every day that Sales Onboarding is upside down or backwards. I see sales training that is hype, technique and manipulation-based vs skills focused. Much of the current “well-known” sales...Read More

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

Last week I decided to try something new with my sellers. I recognize this look of exasperation when I ask my sellers about their latest selling activity: prospecting, pre-qualifying, meetings, et cetera. For Account Executives or Account Managers, making time for Business Development can be incredibly tough with all they have to get done in...Read More

“Oh crap. Is it too late to resuscitate?” Recently, a sales team found out the hard way that a client was pissed about something that happened several months ago. Unfortunately, they found out because they are being shut out of an enormous opportunity. They were coming at the opportunity from several angles with several divisions....Read More

As the topic of probably 1/3 of all conversations and certainly 1/3 of all social media posts, this election is truly remarkable and will certainly be dissected 7,432 ways in the history books. What I think is remarkable from a sales vantage is how these Presidential Candidates are masterful in their communication and the response...Read More