Mistakes during your sales conversations cost you deals. Buyers have dozens of options and more power than ever before. That means you can’t afford to slip up during sales conversations. Your buyers won’t have it. They’ll move to another vendor faster than you can blink, leaving your pockets empty. Knowing the most common mistakes will help you avoid them. […]
Why The Best Salespeople Are Phenomenal Project Managers
At first glance, project managers and sales professionals don’t seem to have much in common. They inhabit different worlds and generally aim for different goals. Budget-conscious, time-crazed and snoopier-than-normal, the stereotypical project manager seems, at most, a very distant cousin of the freewheeling, outgoing and glib sales practitioner. Yet the best salespeople are able to […]
The Ins & Outs of Variable Pay Compensation Structure for Sales Teams
With increasing focus on grit and many claims of meritocracies in organizations across the country, why does variable pay compensation even exist? On top of that, why are sales people some of the few employees subject to variable compensation structures? I wish I could say it’s all about incentives, but the truth is a bit […]
Is Your Sales Team Spooking Potential Customers?
We’re all familiar with the dreaded phone call from a unwelcome sales person. The phone rings from a number you haven’t seen before. You consider letting it go to voicemail, but curiosity wins. You answer – and immediately regret it. On the other end is someone who doesn’t seem to understand your business and doesn’t seem to […]
Always Start With a Vision
Often during a coaching session, I will ask a salesperson, “What is your vision for this account?” More often than not, they reply with what they are trying to sell or how large they want the account to be, almost always in terms of pure revenue value. Some might think of that as a vision, […]
The Difference Between a Good Salesperson and a Truly Great Salesperson
We’ve all witnessed it and marveled at it when it happens. It’s the stuff of riveting nightly news stories. It mostly appears in a crisis situation when someone is in immediate life-threatening danger and somebody jumps in to perform a herculean rescue while other more mortal people stand gazing in a state of awe. But […]