To win C-suite–level sales, you need a set of attributes most salespeople lack. Without them, your chances of winning over C-level executives is a little less than winning the lottery. By working on five key attributes, you improve your ability to sit across the giant desk ...
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 ...
When sales leaders suggest that sales training doesn't work, they are referring to the check-box training you often find in ...
Of all the sales metrics, sales volume is one of the biggest. Whether your product costs one dollar or ten thousand dollars, ...
As a sales manager, you’re used to having all kinds of conversations with sales leadership, including forecasting and ...
The current state of sales is not good, and if we continue down this path, it will only worsen. Key failures are taking ...
The truth is that the sales conversation is one of the largest variables of success. The conversation is the only vehicle ...
My competency model for B2B sales includes more character traits than sales skills. Much of the time, a lack of certain ...
First impressions are everything.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch… or free sales training, right? Wrong!
There are only three ways to acquire top sales talent. The first way is to buy it. The second way is to build it. The third ...
Whenever I write that sales success is individual, it causes an immediate response from readers who argue that there are ...
Your numbers are low, leadership is breathing down your neck, your team's morale is slipping and you're doing your best to ...
Selling has never been easy, and it seems like the sales challenges continue to grow. Here are the top 10 challenges you ...
One way to measure sales success is the number of deals closed. While some deals are larger than others, and some are easier ...
When we talk about sales growth, we are looking at the increase in revenue in a period. For example, in 2021 you generated ...
Can you really conduct valuable sales training virtually?
To make a sale, you must first start a conversation. Outbound lead generation is an excellent way to get in touch with the ...
In a recent post on LinkedIn, I noted that accounting managers rarely ask people for advice on motivating their accounts ...
Some people believe that selling is a job or a profession, while others believe it is a set of skills one can acquire. ...
Much objection-handling training is old and outdated. It was created and developed long ago for the way people used to buy ...
The close rate, also called the win rate, is a common statistic for measuring sales effectiveness. The average close rate ...
You often hear people talk about creating value for their clients. Much of the time, this refers to a salesperson’s solution ...
Are you hitting your targets? If not, you aren’t alone: Only an estimated sixty percent of reps hit their quotas.
Ask a salesperson if they are consultative, and you will find most answer in the affirmative. After nodding in agreement, ...
Are your team’s win rates dwindling while your sales cycle stretches into eternity? If so, you’re likely looking for ways to ...
You’re looking to learn some new sales techniques to help you crush your targets, and you’re wondering if top down selling ...
Selling is challenging enough without having to do it at a distance. While the combination of video and audio is better than ...
Once, questioning the sales process would have been the equivalent of suggesting the Earth was flat. Sales leaders believed ...
My first sales job was delivering newspapers. I knocked on people's front doors and asked them to subscribe to the ...
Salespeople should consider two categories of strengths and weaknesses when working to improve their effectiveness. The ...
Every sales leader and their team has the primary sales objective of increasing their revenue. To achieve that, different ...
There are many variables that might influence the outcome of a deal. You might have the exact idea your client needs at the ...
When people are quietly quitting, working from home, and avoiding the office, it's important to make sure your culture isn't ...
The profession of sales continues to evolve. Over time, the role of the salesperson has been sliced into two different ...
Some time ago, I received an email from a salesperson. He introduced himself, mentioned his company, and included four links ...
If you or someone you know has sales call reluctance, you have come to the right place. I am perfectly qualified to help you ...
There is a new conversation starter in B2B selling. It is more effective than other, older conversations because it respects ...
If you look at any leader with a high-performing team, be it a college football team, an orchestra, or a sales organization, ...
Lifetime value is what you expect a client to spend with you over the course of your relationship. Let's assume a large ...
A trigger event is something that forces a company to change. For example, at the time of this writing, the Federal Reserve ...
There are two ways to describe what a sales manager does. One is to look at the outcomes they are responsible for creating. ...
Pricing power refers to a company's ability to set and increase prices without significantly reducing demand for its product ...
At the start of each year, the sales manager is given a sales quota, which is the total of their salespeople's individual ...
The salesperson working for a small company may worry they have too little sales collateral, while those who work for very ...
Time is your finite, non-renewable resource. While it may feel like your time is renewed each day, it’s important to ...
Many salespeople score poorly because the client doesn’t find their conversation valuable. Your prospective client will ...
I am not a researcher. What I know about sales comes from my experience selling. At age 13, I delivered newspapers and got ...
Salespeople typically have a list of factors that they believe influence their success in sales. For example, many ...
You never hear the head of the accounting department ask about how to motivate their accounts payable clerks to pay the ...
Senior sales leaders often complain that sales training doesn't work. There are several reasons why they might be right, but ...
The Oxford English Dictionary offers two definitions for productivity. The first is "the state or quality of being ...
To understand how to talk about your features and benefits, you must start by identifying the level of value the stakeholder ...
Salespeople are a superstitious bunch. There are those who believe Monday isn't a good day to make cold calls, and there are ...
It is important for sales leaders to understand that, when pursuing a deal, the contest isn't between their company and ...
You don't hear a lot about social selling anymore. Its promise was that every salesperson would reach their goals by simply ...
When distinguishing sales leaders from sales managers, titles do not tell the whole story. It is possible that a person with ...
You've finished your discovery process and collaborated with your contacts on what they need. You've also done your best to ...
A long time ago, I noticed that the contacts I called on were not always interested in the meeting they had accepted. The ...
The answer to the question, "Can you teach me how to sell?" is “Yes, I can teach you how to sell.” But the answer is also, ...
In personal or professional development, you can’t cheat. To improve yourself or your teams, you must do the work. The ...
Sales leaders need to know their team has enough of the right opportunities to reach their goals. They also need visibility ...
Selling is a craft. It's a performance. It's also a bit of a mystery. Why is it that two salespeople who work for the same ...
A salesperson walks into a prospective client's office alone. They engage in a conversation with a contact or several ...
Sales Leaders and Sales Managers invest in many things they believe will improve their results. Many, if not most, of these ...
The idea behind needs-based selling is knowing what your client needs. Once you understand the client's needs, you position ...
In the sales world of the past, you would have made a single cold call to a prospective client. Most of the time, you failed ...
A cold call is any call you make to a prospective client who isn’t expecting to hear from you. Some percentage of ...
This post is an adaptation from Leading Growth: The Proven Formula for Consistently Increasing Revenue. You can preorder ...
For five years, I interviewed people. Some days, I interviewed as many as 40 people. These were short interviews for people ...
Many are enamored by sales science. They believe that applying science to selling can improve their results. They look to ...
In the past, the salesperson would call their prospective client and ask for a meeting. The value proposition for the ...
Like many salespeople, you may have been taught to believe that your solution is the value. It is true that your product or ...
One reason clients may distrust salespeople is that they believe salespeople are hiding some inconvenient truth. Prospective ...
This post is an adaptation of a chapter of Leading Growth: The Proven Formula for Consistently Increasing Revenue.
"I have my own sales style." Whenever you hear these words, you can translate it to mean, “I’m winging it." Fortunately for ...
The best performers in any endeavor are dedicated to the fundamentals of their work. As B2B sales grows more complicated and ...
Recently, someone on LinkedIn encouraged me to "keep disrupting the industry." To be clear, I am not a disruptor. There are ...
Different types of sales require different approaches. A salesperson who sells to the government (B2G) is going to need to ...
In the book The Challenger Sale, the relationship salesperson scored poorly. What most readers didn't realize was that the ...
Selling effectively in the 21st Century requires asking clients a new set of discovery questions. These new questions ...
There are three generations of sales approaches being used today. The first is the legacy approach, which is over 50 years ...
Your path to revenue growth begins with your ability to fill your pipeline. Without a full pipeline, growth isn't likely. ...
This question is often posed: Who are the best salespeople? The answer is salespeople who are One-Up. If you want to improve ...
You and I are making cold calls to schedule meetings with our prospective clients. We both have the information for the ...
Only the rarest of sales organizations use a model with soft skills, let alone work to develop them. As a professional, you ...
My take on objections is that most of the time, they mask a client’s real concerns. Because the client is uncertain, they ...
At a company event, two engineers were elated to share that two of their dream clients had downloaded a lead-generation ...
Do you have login fatigue? I know I do.
How confident are you that your sales team can meet your KPIs this quarter?
It would be more difficult for me to share my version of a modern sales approach if the Challenger approach didn’t exist. ...
One of the ways we make trouble for ourselves and others is to categorize and rank things. Our strong tendency to rank, ...
Occasionally, someone asks me about transactional selling strategies. Most of the time, they are suggesting that I have not ...
The root cause of nearly all the price objections is not creating enough value in the sales conversation, while also failing ...
In the past, many people believed the sales process would provide each salesperson with the ability to win the deals they ...
In B2B sales, our messaging has changed, even if most sales organizations haven't made any significant adjustments. Those ...
Whether you call it a funnel, a pipeline, or deals in stages, it's crucial for sales leaders and sales managers to know that ...
Success in sales results from a relatively small number of skills. These skills make up the fundamentals of B2B sales. By ...
The most important thing you need to know about using LinkedIn for prospecting is what not to do. The social platforms ...
Your prospective clients don't want to make a bad buying decision. The more important it is to get the decision right, the ...
The sales process is the stages you go through to create and win new opportunities. What follows here is Sales Process 101, ...
There are certain B2B sales conversations that are important to both the salesperson and their prospective clients. One of ...
If you want to create and win more opportunities, value-based conversations will do more than anything to differentiate you ...
There is a time to work on improving your sales approach, and then there is a time to get back to basics. At heart, I am ...
If you want to increase your sales volume, you will need to pursue one or more of these eight strategies.
If you want to create and win new opportunities, you must ensure you practice some form of a value-based selling approach. ...
There was a time when the most important training a salesperson would receive was concerned with closing. During that ...
The best way to answer the question "What is B2B sales?" is to compare it to other types of sales. The term "B2B sales" ...
The role of the B2B salesperson has never been particularly easy, but as the world, and business, become more complex, so ...
Professional B2B sales is more like mixed martial arts than boxing. In boxing, there are competitors who don't have any ...
Ask any sales leader who has paid for sales training whether it works, and you will find a large percentage will suggest ...
In another time, onboarding a new salesperson would not have been difficult. In fact, many new salespeople did not go ...
What you are about to read may sound like heresy at first. But if you open your mind, you may see something that will allow ...
In October 1992, I had a grand mal seizure while walking up the steps of my Brentwood, California, apartment. It took some ...
According to the legacy sales approaches, you are supposed to identify your client's problem and their pain. Once you have ...
I am tempted to tell a long story about a comment on LinkedIn asking this question, but I am afraid I won't create enough ...
Many salespeople underestimate the importance of how they present themselves when they walk into their prospective client's ...
There are a lot of lists of attributes required of a great leader; most include things like vision, communication, and a ...
If your most senior sales manager left unexpectedly, how long would it take your team to fill the role? In the face of the ...
At some point in your life, someone will tell you that you need SMART goals. SMART stands for specific, measurable, ...
What does resilience mean to you? A few concepts probably come to mind when you hear the word—concepts like toughness, the ...
One of the hangovers from the legacy sales approaches is that the salesperson undervalues the sales conversation for what it ...
We’ve all heard the saying that the best way to learn is by doing. I respectfully disagree.
In any conversation between a salesperson and their client, the salesperson is either One-Up or One-Down. The term One-Up ...
When it comes to change, some clients are more difficult to help than others. This post is not about clients that are ...
Having certain client conversations in a particular sequence can improve your ability to help clients change. It can be ...
Salespeople need stories to sell. Much of the time, salespeople use stories about their client's problems and how their ...
The ability to be One-Up requires you to have more knowledge and experience than your clients. It doesn't suggest that you ...
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