The question I ask sellers and business owners most often is, “What’s the biggest obstacle to where you are now and achieving your sales goals?” What does your gut tell you is the most popular response? What would YOU say? Here they are in descending order: 3rd most common response – “Better pricing/lower costs would...Read More

“They haven’t called me back.” It’s the most common response to “Where are we with prospect ABC?” This response, “They haven’t called me back,” lands with a thud at my feet like a bag of rocks when I hear it from a seller or business owner. I can feel the disappointment when they say it...Read More

Being an account manager, or a business owner, for that matter, is like being a master juggler – up in the air on any given day are dozens of details on a to-do list that spans customer calls, billing, paperwork, dozens of emails, and meetings, meetings, meetings. It’s hard to fit business development into those...Read More

I hear sellers and business owners tell me they “Don’t want to be too pushy” at least 5 times a week. Trust me, if you have to say that, you’ve never been “too pushy”. Many of us have had negative experiences with salespeople that have a bulldozer mentality. They’re not afraid to run over you...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

Guest Post by Selena Silvestro, Director of Ground Floor Strategies at The Selling Agency and weekend warrior baseball fan in the bleachers. Read on for first-hand sales advice for Small Business Owners, Solopreneurs, and Sales Pros in Small Businesses: Every business lives and dies by its ability to build revenue. Unfortunately, roughly 80% of businesses...Read More

If you didn’t catch on when I shared our Red Carpet Review of the best sales movies, let me catch you up: I’m doing a weekly video show with The Irreverent Sales Girl, Dianna Geairn. It’s “The SellOut Show” – because if we were a live show with an audience, we’d surely always be sold out. So.Many.Metaphors.Here....Read More

You have a sales team or maybe you’ve been plugging away at your own sales efforts for a while now. How do you know how you’re doing? Other than hitting your sales goals . . . or not, how do you measure the health of your sales program? Sales results are one indication of how...Read More

Watching the sales activity of several sales teams lately, I have come to the conclusion that these teams are truly confused about the differences between MARKETING and SELLING. I work with many small businesses where the business owner and/or the small sales teams sell and there is often NOT a marketing department within the company....Read More

Several months back I was sitting in on a sales meeting with a new client, observing her sales team, what she asked of them and what they reported. When asked about the progress on meeting with a particular prospect, one sales rep admitted, with frustration, “I don’t know what his problem is. I just haven’t...Read More