Resources
- BNET Author Biography
Geoffrey James has sold and written hundreds of features, articles and columns for national publications including Wired, Men's Health, Business 2.0, SellingPower, Brand World, Computer Gaming World, CIO, The New York Times and of course BNET. He is the author of seven books, including Business Wisdom of the...- more about Geoffrey James »
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- The Customer-Focused Sales Process
- Most sales processes are vendor-focused. They define what the sales rep is supposed to do in order to move the sale process forward. (For an example of this see my previous post "Is Your Sales Process Obsolete?") As such, they try to shoehorn...
- Blog posts 2008-03-05
- The Perfect Sales Process?
- Your sales process is probably broken. Here's how to fix it. Any sales process creates a structure that helps track the progress of the sale. However, most sales processes also encourage dysfunctional sales behavior. I've recently stumbled across a sales process model...
- Blog posts 2008-01-08
- Closing Rule #2: Set an Objective.
- Myth: Every sale has a single, all-important point where the deal closes. Truth: Some extremely simple sales processes have a defined close point, but complex sales processes (i.e. almost all B2B sales) have a series of points where the prospect makes a decision, even if it's just...
- Blog posts 2007-10-09
- The Customer-Driven Sales Process
- As explained in my previous post, traditional vendor-centric sales processes are ineffective because they don’t reflect the way that customers want to buy. As such, they can get in the way of a sale as many times as they help move the sale forward. The...
- Blog posts 2007-04-06
- Video: Alan Watts on Sales Process
- The above video which features the voice of the Zen philosopher Alan Watts reminds us that selling isn't all about the closing. It's really all about the process. by Geoffrey James
- Blog posts 2008-08-01
- Is Prayer Part of Your Sales Process?
- I've interviewed hundreds of sales gurus and sales professionals over the past half decade and I'd say that at least of quarter of them have some element of prayer mixed in with their idea of how to sell. It's not always explicit, but I've been around...
- Blog posts 2008-11-04
- Ten Steps to a Perfect Cold Call
- Click here for The Ultimate Cold-Calling Tool. It's free, and it's Sales Machine's most popular post! Two weeks ago, I looked at that mainstay of sales process: cold calling. I couldn't let that subject drop without providing a take from one of...
- Blog posts 2009-02-16
- Sales Process = Your Worst Enemy
- If you're not adaptable, your sales process can get in the way of making a sale. A recent comment to the post "Top 10 Lies Customers Tell Sales Reps" showed a classic example of a sales rep almost blowing the sale simply because the customer's behavior didn't match the expected...
- Blog posts 2009-07-20
- Is Your Sales Process Broken?
- Your sales process may be badly broken... and might not know it! Sales processes are like filters through which you view the customer world. You may be seeing "normal" attrition in your pipeline when, in fact, a better process might convert twice as many prospects. How, then,...
- Blog posts 2009-08-24
Additional Resources
- Is Sales Process Wasted Effort?
- I recently had a conversation with Julie Thomas, the CEO of ValueVision Associates. She pointed out that most companies have sales processes that define the steps in the sale that seems logical to the seller, such as "initiate cold call," "obtain appointment for presentation" and so forth. However,...
- Blog posts 2007-09-27
- Some Irish Pearls of Sales Wisdom
- I like pithy observations about sales and sales culture. I recently interviewed author/sales guru Donal Daly, CEO of the TAS group, who hails from County Cork, home of the fabled Blarney stone. Perhaps as a consequence, Donal definitely has the proverbial "gift of gab." Here, in honor of the...
- Blog posts 2009-03-17
- Sales Culture: Interview with Michael Dell
- This morning's post "QUIZ: Assess Your Sales Team's Culture" explained why sales culture is so important. Some of the ideas behind that post came from a conversation I had a while back with Michael Dell, the founder/CEO of Dell Computer. In this never-before-published interview, Michael discusses the culture he tried...
- Blog posts 2009-07-09
- Sales Trainers I've Known & Loved
- I mean "loved" in a platonic "really love your ideas" way, of course... Anyway, last week, in the post "How Technology Killed Marketing," a reader accused me of lying in my bio. He originally emailed the accusation to me, evidently under the misapprehension...
- Blog posts 2008-12-15
- Fixing CRM (Pt. 2): A Simple Process.
- CRM is worse than useless if your sales process is so complicated that nobody follows it. So the next step to fixing CRM is to have a sales process that makes sense and is extremely simple. As suggested by the poll in my recent post "Is...
- Blog posts 2008-03-18
- Live Post: Sales 2.0 Conference in Chicago
- Today I’m posting a “running update†of everything that happens at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Chicago. This conference sponsored by one of my publishers SellingPower features real-life customer stories about how they use the latest technology. It will probably be worth your time to check this...
- Blog posts 2009-09-10
- Sixty Seconds to Sales Success
- There are few silver bullets when it comes to achieving sales success. Here's one, and the best part is, that for most people, it will only take 60 seconds, because they won't get past the first question. This seriously valuable process comes from Greg Wingard, the...
- Blog posts 2008-04-30
- Referrals as a Sales Strategy
- Now that you know how to get a truly effective customer referral see my previous post, here's how to make referrals the core of your sales process, and in the process render your marketing group largely irrelevant: Step 1. Expand referrals beyond your customers. At the...
- Blog posts 2007-09-10
- Why Sales Reps Hate CRM.
- I've yet to hear any sales professional say anything good about CRM. Every time I post about CRM (as in "Five Signs Your CRM System is Failing" and "CRM is Almost Dead"), the only salespeople willing to praise the technology are the ones selling CRM. A...
- Blog posts 2008-03-12
- Can a Test Reveal Sales Talent?
- A reader writes: I recently was interviewed for a sales managment position. The company uses Caliper, a personality assessment tool to make hiring decisions. It's the first time I have ever had to take a test in over 15 years of sales managment. ...
- Blog posts 2008-06-19
- 6 Fatal Sales Management Errors
- A few months ago, we reviewed "Nine Dumb Things Sales Managers Do" and "More Dumb Things Sales Managers Do." Those errors, while annoying, didn't usually mean the failure of the entire sales effort, and possibly the entire company. By contrast, here are six truly FATAL errors...
- Blog posts 2009-01-16
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