You want to wow your prospective client by sharing testimonials and case studies that prove you can help them improve the important outcome they are facing. As you look at your list of successes, you choose the three largest companies. Each is a marquee logo on its own, but ...
In 1965, the futurist, Alvin Toffler wrote, "The acceleration of change in our time is, itself, an elemental force. The ...
No salesperson wants to lose a deal, especially a large enterprise-level deal. No matter how good you are in sales, losses ...
Salespeople often run into problems during the sales conversation. When these problems recur over time, it can cause a ...
You are in an operational role, where your job is to execute what your salesperson sells. Occasionally, a salesperson asks ...
Since forever, salespeople have been told, occasionally taught, and less frequently trained to use good questions. Despite ...
Recently, Andy Paul shared with me that the average win rate in sales is 17 percent. That means it must be nearly impossible ...
I recorded a podcast with Andy Paul, Mike Bosworth, and Vince Beese. Andy started by addressing the idea that some people, ...
The decision-maker sitting across from me was explaining how every company in my industry had failed him. He disclosed his ...
Behind every successful sales team is a sales manager with incredible leadership skills.
When you are building a sales force or a sales team, you will hire people that have been trained by other sales ...
Are you tired of mediocre results and missed targets?
One outcome of solution selling was that sales organizations and their teams began to believe that their solution was what ...
Are you tired of using the same old sales techniques that fail to close deals and bring in new clients?
“You can’t learn to be good at sales, it’s just something you’re naturally good at.”
Social selling promised sales organizations they would no longer need to make cold calls to create new opportunities. When ...
In recent posts here, I have suggested that success in sales is going to require professional expertise. As the uncertainty ...
Many sales leaders believe that they will achieve their sales goals by increasing the number of new opportunities their ...
Something that helps you to be a good leader is to believe everything is your fault. A few days ago, there was a LinkedIn ...
No sales leader will dispute that prospecting is critically important to generating new deals and net new revenue. Many ...
My first job, which I started at age 12, was delivering newspapers. Making money meant knocking on every door in three ...
Sales leaders often require their sales force to fill their pipeline with several multiples of their quota. Ensuring you ...
Many sales organizations use a terrible approach to negotiation, one that harms salespeople and their companies. Concessions ...
One mistake weak salespeople make is pursuing clients that are easy to win but difficult to service after the deal is ...
Many salespeople believe they are selling value when they are really selling their products and their services. This is the ...
Those of us who have had the experience of selling in a highly commoditized industry adapt to the lack of differentiation. ...
One of the most important things about the One-Up approach you find in Elite Sales Strategies: A Guide to Being One-Up, ...
In The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need, you will find three competencies that most salespeople are lacking. The first is ...
Every day we hear from individual sales reps that they get no support to improve their sales skills. We also hear from sales ...
In today’s fast-paced business environment, change is constant. While some buyers claim they would prefer a ...
Seventy-five percent of sales hires fail in their first year.
It is rare that salespeople default to prospecting, looking instead for other sales-related work. Sales leaders who worry ...
As a sales leader, I require my teams to pursue strategic clients. I discourage them from spending their time on companies ...
One reason salespeople fail to win clients is because they have a difficult time building sales trust. Business acumen is a ...
If you listen to salespeople in conversation with their prospective clients, you may notice that some salespeople are better ...
It isn’t easy for a sales manager to run a sales team. There are always obstacles, including buyers and decision-makers who ...
Great consultative salespeople have many attributes that help them guide their decisions and interactions with prospective ...
Sales leaders use many KPIs to assess their sales teams. These metrics help sales managers improve their results and achieve ...
Do you wish you could remember the details of your conversations with prospects and clients? The more time that passes, the ...
If you feel like something has shifted with sales communications, you are paying attention. We have more ways to communicate ...
As a new salesperson, I won three very large clients in short order. One was the state of Ohio, and the other two were big ...
Sales is the lifeblood of any organization. Without a strong sales team, it doesn’t matter how great your company’s product ...
Many B2B sales representatives believe they are consultative because they ask questions and avoid being pushy. Asking ...
Selling effectively has never been easy, regardless of what you sell. In B2B sales, both buying and selling have become more ...
Congratulations! You won your big deal dream client after pursuing them for two years. You have a signed contract, and their ...
In any pipeline, you will find many potential deals. Many records that show up as opportunities are not close to being deals ...
While I am not romantic about the past, there are several things I miss about the old days of selling. Generally, things ...
When sales managers fail their sales teams, every stakeholder is harmed. First, the salesperson is harmed by not being ...
A stranger asks you for money. Do you say yes?
A senior leader was unhappy with his sales force because they consistently failed to meet their sales targets. To improve ...
When we say “sales is broken,” we are talking about outdated sales approaches. More sales organizations practice a legacy ...
The strategies you might use when pursuing a small or average-sized company cannot help you win large clients. These large ...
When trying to close more deals and reach your quota, mistakes can be costly. Avoiding common pitfalls can help you improve ...
One of the negative outcomes of the pandemic was the shift from meeting with your clients in real life to virtual. It can be ...
U.S. companies spend over $70 billion annually on training their sales teams.
My client in Cincinnati stopped me from turning on my laptop. I was preparing to share my company’s slide deck, but before I ...
Do you want to be 57% more effective at sales than your competitors?
The email that found its way to my inbox states that the company will pay me $100 for meeting with one of their salespeople. ...
A good sales manager drives their company’s success by leading their sales team and leading growth. Success is scarce in a ...
Some sales gurus will try to convince you that you need not be known, liked, and trusted to win deals in B2B sales. Some of ...
It has never been easy to lead a sales force, but it is increasingly difficult today. The idea that sales is broken is a way ...
Imagine this: One of your star reps has spent months communicating with a prospective customer. You’ve helped your rep ...
A sales funnel is a concept that illustrates the various stages of a customer's purchase decision process. While sales ...
Supply chain issues and wage growth have been pushing the Fed to raise rates faster than ever, but despite these strong ...
Reaching prospective clients will be more challenging in the future. I know, you think it’s difficult enough now, but the ...
How you sell is a major factor in sales success. Even though the sales process is no longer linear, we still divide it into ...
As a writer, I care deeply about words. Words and phrases have meanings. When used incorrectly, words can confuse others or ...
Sales operations is the business function responsible for supporting the sales force by improving efficiency and ...
As B2B sales organizations continue to reorganize their go-to-market (GTM) sales teams, there is a convergence into revenue ...
When we assess the sales performance of the sales organization, we measure their results against their sales targets. The ...
You wouldn’t expect an NFL team to head into a game without having their plays ironed out. Similarly, your sales team can’t ...
There is nothing easy about leading a sales force or a sales team. Time passes fast, and you can look up to find you are ...
Customer loyalty is critical for growth companies. B2B sales organizations that lose clients (churn) must recover lost ...
B2B sales organizations sell to other companies. Sales leaders and their sales teams are responsible for an increase in B2B ...
Every sales organization and sales professional must choose between two sales approaches: traditional and modern. The ...
Only thirteen percent of customers believe a salesperson can understand their needs.
The investment you make in sales enablement ensures your sales force's effectiveness and will allow sales teams to create ...
Over time, as the external environment changes, sales organizations adapt their sales approach to match the needs of their ...
Over time, buyers have changed, and sellers have had to follow. B2B salespeople have had to find new ways to create value ...
You might have found sales success using a positioning statement about your company and your offerings. You may have found ...
There are rainmakers and rain barrels. The rainmaker makes rain by creating opportunities and generating sales and income. ...
Are you doing everything you can to hit your goals? If you’re not budgeting adequately for sales manager training, you might ...
If you are in sales long enough, you will notice sales organizations (not yours) and some salespeople (not you), underinvest ...
According to Linkedin, seventy-eight percent of the salespeople engaged in social selling are outselling their peers who are ...
The writer Kurt Vonnegut used to tell his students to "pity the reader." Vonnegut wanted his students to slow down and think ...
The different types of sales include B2C (business to consumer), B2G (business to government), and B2B (business to ...
When it comes to competition in sales, there are two conflicting ideas. On the one hand, there is nothing you can do about ...
In The Lost Art of Closing: Winning the 10 Commitments That Drive Sales, you will find one of the most powerful sales ...
There are several types of sales. Some salespeople sell to consumers (B2C), while others sell to government entities (B2G). ...
Forty percent of people respond better to visual information than plain text.
The reason professional B2B selling evolves over time is because decision-makers need something new from salespeople. When ...
In 2010, I said that “Negotiation is the art of the deal.” And it’s still true today.
There are several ways to improve the effectiveness of a sales force, and B2B sales training is the first way most sales ...
Having the best product or solution on the market isn’t enough to close more deals. You can have all the best features and ...
B2B salespeople need to create a pipeline of new opportunities to achieve their goals. To do this, the salesperson will need ...
In sales, it helps to be known, liked, and trusted. Anyone who argues against the idea that salespeople no longer need to be ...
B2B salespeople have been taught and trained that their company and their offerings are what make them different from their ...
Many of the older, outdated sales approaches forbid salespeople from answering questions about price. These approaches ...
"Whoever is in a hurry, shows that the thing he is doing is too big for him." —The Earl of Chesterfield For as long as ...
A party isn’t a party if no one shows up, and your sales funnel isn’t a fun place to be if you don’t have any leads or ...
Sales leaders and managers demand their teams capture their activity and opportunities in the CRM. (This tool could probably ...
It's important to be organized in sales. You always have open loops you need to close, like sending a new contact the case ...
Most sales organizations train their sales teams. Fewer train their sales leaders, even though the evidence suggests ...
Over time, B2B selling has changed and become increasingly more complex. A large part of the changes in how we sell in the ...
A flywheel is a mechanical device used to smooth out energy in combustion engines. It's also a heavy wheel used to oppose ...
Selling today isn't easy. Buyers have greater needs and expect more of sales professionals, while decision-makers complain ...
Think about the last time you bought a shiny new electronic gadget. Did you read the manual, or did you start tinkering ...
Most of the strategies related to sales and buyer psychology come from Robert Cialdini's work. Sales professionals are ...
It isn't easy to schedule a meeting with your dream client. If you are in an industry where you must practice competitive ...
We’ve all heard the saying, “trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.”
Most of the time, sales organizations accept their reps’ low win percentages and the linear stages of the sales process. ...
There is an old fable by Aesop about the ant and the grasshopper. The ant is industrious, diligently working through the ...
There are two major types of selling. The first type is transactional and the second is complex. The difference between them ...
“If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business.”
Your only vehicle for creating and winning deals is the sales conversation, which comprises several sales calls. The better ...
There are many problems plaguing B2B sales organizations, but the one that garners the most attention relates to how buyers ...
Every sales organization needs to determine how they interact with decision-makers. How the sales force sells determines the ...
Sales reps normally start their sales discovery process by building rapport, working to make some connection with a decision ...
Fifty-seven percent of B2B executives prefer to be contacted by phone
If ever there was a time to train salespeople, that time is now. The sales model we describe as the legacy approach repels ...
A small hole can sink a big ship. Even the smallest crack can let in water; before you know it, you’ll be sinking faster and ...
All sales organizations are pursuing their sales goals during a difficult time, as buyers expect more from their providers. ...
Sales leaders and sales managers spend a lot of their time worrying about new opportunities. To ensure they have enough, ...
There are some sales organizations that sell to companies that are seeking to change providers. In these cases, the B2B ...
No respectable contractor would start construction on a building without first having a blueprint. Your sales leadership ...
B2B buyers have raised their standards. They now resist the self-oriented legacy approach to sales, which are typically ...
To win C-suite–level sales, you need a set of attributes most salespeople lack. Without them, your chances of winning over ...
There are a lot of ideas about how to be a better B2B salesperson. For example, you could prospect more, something most ...
I learned negotiation at Harvard Business School. A lot of the ideas in the class came from Getting to Yes, a book by Roger ...
If you’re not prepared, making a cold call can leave you feeling like a deer in headlights.
One element of sales performance management is conducting a sales performance review of each salesperson on your team. There ...
One of the most difficult challenges in B2B sales is building consensus. When you accepted your job in B2B sales, the job ...
There is nothing worse than having to mark an opportunity record in your CRM as "closed lost." The second-worst prompt is ...
In sales, differentiation is critically important to success. One of the most popular business differentiation strategies is ...
There is a battle being fought in B2B sales, fueled by disagreement on how sales organizations should improve their results. ...
Nobody likes rejection. It’s one of the reasons why almost two-thirds of sales reps report that cold calling is their least ...
As a sales manager, you need to report on the success of your sales team, and a weekly B2B sales report allows you to share ...
There are different types of leadership styles, and sales in particular has a number of sales management styles. Effective ...
Your success in sales requires you to engage with all types of people. Selling happens in conversations about change. ...
The discovery phase of the sales process always proves to be critical. Most salespeople waste discovery by asking the client ...
There are two dominant sales models being practiced by B2B sales organizations and sales professionals. The most prevalent ...
The B2B leads that show up in your CRM courtesy of your B2B marketing function and their marketing strategy are not ready to ...
There are all a lot of titles for sales professionals, including account executive, account manager, sales representative, ...
Occasionally, even successful salespeople find themselves in a sales slump, where their pipeline isn't working as well as it ...
Most of the time a sales organization’s success depends on its sales force having a high level of sales effectiveness. In ...
In any human endeavor you find mastery, you find organizations and individuals who place a high premium on continuous ...
B2B sales reps spend a lot of their time creating new opportunities. Some are fortunate enough to have a steady stream of ...
Territory mapping is an important component of sales performance management. The optimal sales territory mapping for your ...
To achieve different outcomes inside the sales conversation, you need to ask different questions. Because it is helpful to ...
Sales leaders and sales managers spend time looking at their sales team's performance. What they learn by managing ...
The first book I published was titled The Only Sales Guide You'll Ever Need. I wrote it because I recognized that B2B sales ...
When asked about whether they provide sales coaching, sales managers will often explain they don't have the time to do so. ...
44% of salespeople give up after one “no.”
The word technique means you have a way of doing something to produce an outcome. Because success is individual, it is ...
The answer to the question “What is a good customer acquisition cost?” will be different across companies. One company's ...
B2B selling has never been easy, but in our current environment it is more challenging than ever. The contacts you sell to ...
Some buyers make their intent known, sharing what they want and why. They are transparent about their intentions. Other ...
More prospects, more sales. Right? Not always.
A first meeting is not automatically an opportunity. You need more evidence before you can consider a first meeting to offer ...
Success in sales requires an effective outreach strategy. The more effective your outreach, the greater the number of ...
Salespeople have a sales process that guides their approach to creating and winning deals. Sales managers have a cadence to ...
Selling used to be easier. As a salesperson, you might have called on a decision-maker once or twice. Often, you and your ...
Every sales leader or sales manager is responsible for growing their company's revenue. To grow, you need net new business. ...
In a time when there are too many sales organizations chasing too few prospective clients, differentiation is difficult. ...
You might have a huge dashboard spread across two or three screens. You might also have a cluster of gauges that measure ...
As a financial advisor, your clients invest in you, not just your service.
To reach your goals as a sales manager, you need your team to hit their targets. Hitting those targets requires them to ...
On LinkedIn and other social media platforms, you will find advice like "Don't close deals, open relationships." This ...
When budget comes up as an objection in sales calls, seventy-nine percent of deals are lost. If you want to lower that ...
There are differences between cross selling and upselling, and there are also similarities. Both strategies are a way to ...
It is a rare occurrence that a decision-maker will open and read your email. If you are unknown, your odds are about the ...
Technology companies often hijack terms from other industries and use them to name their offerings. This can confuse people ...
“If you can’t solve a problem for your customer, then there’s no basis for a sale. But if you uncover problems you can ...
Sales managers are masters of wearing multiple hats. You’re a leader, a sales rep yourself, a recruiter… and a coach?
Every interaction you have with a prospect moves them closer or further away from a sale.
Forecasting is one of the more difficult tasks for sales leaders and sales managers. In times of uncertainty or instability, ...
One reason marketers and salespeople have trouble communicating is because we speak different languages. For example, we ...
Sales is the heart of any successful organization. It's where the money comes from.
A successful sales culture provides a strategic advantage that is often underestimated. A successful sales culture produces ...
There are several truths about sales that we rarely acknowledge. The first is that, in sales, the competition isn't between ...
For a long time, prospecting was limited to cold calling. Sales managers who couldn't help their team improve their sales ...
In the world of B2B sales, SaaS is one of the largest and fastest-growing industries. Globally, the market is expected to ...
In the way of full disclosure, I started a conference called Outbound. It was a reaction to seeing ads for HubSpot's Inbound ...
One of the worst things you might ask your prospective client in a first meeting is "What is your problem?" or "What are ...
In sales, the word churn means losing a client. Your churn rate is the percentage of revenue you lost due to clients leaving.
There are several ways you might build and manage a territory as a sales manager or sales leader. You want to make certain ...
There is research indicating that salespeople spend very little time actually selling. Various studies show that they spend ...
The legacy approach to sales and marketing strategy continues to harm sales organizations and salespeople. These sales and ...
If there were a popular qualifying strategy that would offend your prospective clients while also projecting that you and ...
Transaction selling, relationship selling, partnership selling, consultative selling… If you’re a sales manager, you’ve ...
Selling isn't the easiest craft to learn. In B2B sales, selling is a series of complex, dynamic conversations about change ...
There are a lot of books and programs about negotiating, and you can learn something useful from any of them, but many of ...
There are people who believe management and leadership are the same, but this is not true.
Ne·go·ti·a·tion: A discussion aimed at reaching an agreement. Though this dictionary definition is technically correct, any ...
How would you like for coldcold calling to become the best part of your job?
At the beginning of the new year, your company will dole out your new quota. Your quota is a goal your company sets for you, ...
A sales pitch presentation is to a salesperson as peanut butter is to a PB & J sandwich. That is to say, it’s not the ...
Would you be interested if I said I had the key to higher employee retention, improved performance, and better workplace ...
The sales industry is shifting. In 2007 it took an average of around four calls to reach a prospect. Today, it takes eight. ...
B2B sales has never been more complex or more challenging. From buyers who decide they prefer a salesperson-free buying ...
