a salesperson selling the products or services of a particular organization or manufacturer. Sales representatives are sometimes employed directly by a company as part of...
A reader writes: Great blog; I look forward to it every day. I am trying to sell our new concept to potential strategic partners, but in order for us to move this project forward we need to get some cash from them to get the...
Help! My Boss is an Idiot!Idiot Sales Managers everywhereGeoffrey,Great letters about sales managers killing their teams. I had two readers of my blog send me emails about what their bosses did. Definitely Dilbert pointy-hair boss moments of shame.One was an email that killed morale....and potentially a sales rep's...
Many sales reps focus almost exclusively upon selling their company and their company's products, and give very little attention to selling themselves. That limits their ability to sell everything else, because when you sell something important, YOU are a big part of the package. ...
A Coles store manager, who was employed by the company for 24 years, was recently dismissed following allegations that she pulled the hair of a subordinate, swore at a sales representative in an abusive manner and conducted herself inappropriately when she engaged in physical contact with a male colleague in...
In yesterday's post "Do You Know How to Sell Yourself?", I pointed out that sales reps are now held responsible for their customers' results and therefore must sell themselves, in addition to their company and its products. Unfortunately, most sales reps are trained to sell their company's...
As Jessica Stillman noted in yesterday's BNET1, young job interviewees are failing in basic interview etiquette -- you know: texting on their mobiles, chewing gum, casually dropping f-bombs; the sort of stuff us 40-somethings tried to get away with in our high school social studies classes. One...
This is the sample resume for applying for the post of sales representative computers. This template will provide you the relevant idea for preparing a sales representative's computers resume.
One of the most important, and often most neglected, job responsibilities of the sales manager is coaching reps. Unfortunately, many sales managers don't know how to coach. I asked Linda Richardson (one of the world's top sales trainers and founder of the sales training firm Richardson) how...
There are three things that are inevitable in this world: death, taxes and lousy management. And of all the many manifestations of lousy management, surely one of the worst is micromanagement. I was recently talking about this with Sam Reese, CEO of the sales training firm...
Effective selling requires more than an ability to communicate a product’s features or benefits. Sales representatives must also develop quality relationships with their customers. Regardless of a company’s reputation, customers choose to do business with people they trust. Sales representatives have to earn that trust by behaving ethically and conveying...
The sales reps for business book publishers have a difficult job. It's a crowded market with powerful resellers the big bookstores who have the clout to call the shots. And while many business books contain valuable ideas, they tend to be similar in title and appearance,...
In yesterday's post, I explained that it's the kiss of death if customers see you as a CONSULTANT. Instead, you need to be seen as a MANAGER. To make this point clear, here's a classic example: IBM. Back in the '70s and early '80s, IBM comprised...
The Internet made the business world go all weird, in ways that nobody expected. Probably the weirdest thing that happened was the transformation of product selling into consultative selling. It totally blindsided the conventional wisdom of the business pundits and made all of them look like fools. ...
One of the big perks of being in Sales has trad- itionally been the freedom to manage your own time. The un- written agreement between sales and management has been that as long as you're making quota, you can pretty much do what you want. But that gentleman's...
The quickest way to damage a budding customer relationship is to use trite phrases that make you sound like a B2B sales rep. Don't get me wrong... there's nothing wrong with being a sales rep, but if you sound like one, it lessens your ability to achieve rapport and...
"I made him an offer that he couldn't refuse." Those words, from the movie The Godfather, have become proverbial for business deals where negotiating isn't possible (or, from the perspective of one party) even necessary. This reveals a great truth - that negotiating is the application of power...
For years, American businesses have treated sales pros as second-class citizens. That's about to end, though, because in the future that's rapidly approaching, solution selling will become the soul of B2B commerce. And that's good news for the selling profession. Let me explain:The Internet transforms any product...
A few posts ago, I lambasted technology that wastes more time than it saves. I was expecting a chorus of agreement from sales reps, but what I got were grumblings from sales managers who simply adore CRM... because it lets them spy on their employees.Of course, it's that "Big...
For the sales organization of a large pharmaceuticals company Sas has developed an intranet application with SAS/IntrNet giving an overview of several performance indicators. Some cover sales of key products; others address the activities of the sales reps who call at doctors' offices and pharmacies. The application users come from...
Some sales reps offer their customers only part of the unique personal benefits they can deliver. The sales reps offer them to a few customers for whom they have a particular liking, or for those who are willing to spend considerable amount of money. A good sales rep offers them...
