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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- To Sell More, Put the YOU in Unique
- To promote their own interests, your customers are pretending that your product is just like everyone else's. They even have some evidence of this in the fact that one of your competitors actually copied your software. Your challenge is to make those differences so important in the...
- Blog posts 2008-07-23
- Pay Sales Reps Same as CEOs!
- A sudden thought hit me while I was watching the inauguration yesterday: How come so many CEOs get paid more than the President of the United States? Here's why. The Presidential salary is set by regulatory law. CEO pay is set by asking CEOs how much they...
- Blog posts 2009-01-21
- QUIZ: Assess Your Sales Team's Culture
- Every sales teamn has a "culture" that defines how employees are supposed to behave. The easiest way to understand that culture is to examine the metaphors that team members habitually use. For example, sales reps who constantly compare business to a "battlefield" will react more vigorously...
- Blog posts 2009-07-09
- Top 10 Reasons Sales Hates Marketing
- A perennial bromide of business advice is "align sales and marketing." That advice is generally doled out with an accompanying dose of finger wags and tut-tuts about inter-departmental squabbling. However, my experience tells me that sales professionals aren't interested in "getting aligned" with marketing. Instead, they insist...
- Blog posts 2009-09-15
Additional Resources
- 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
- More About Lies Marketing Tells Sales
- Based upon the number of comments that it's already received, my recent rant about marketing ("5 Lies that Marketing Tells Sales") has apparently touched a sore spot. Rather than respond to the comments piecemeal and wrestle with all that html coding, I'll post my responses here:...
- Blog posts 2009-02-20
- Top 10 Reasons Marketeers Roll Their Eyes at Sales Reps
- Last week's post "Top 10 Reasons Sales Hates Marketing" produced a detailed comment titled "Top 10 Reasons Marketing Rolls Their Eyes at Sales."Â In attempting to tell the other side of the story, that comment was a perfect example of how screwed up thinking can get inside some Marketing groups....
- Blog posts 2009-09-22
- The Seven Myths of Sales Management
- In the post "Better Sales Manager: Obama or McCain" I discussed the role of the sales manager in terms that we're entirely complimentary.  That's not because I don't respect sales managers, though. Let's talk seriously for a moment. Being a sales manager is one of the...
- Blog posts 2008-09-02
- The 7 Deadly Sins of Sales Teams
- Selling is hard work, but it's even more difficult when the sales team starts exhibiting dysfunctional behavior. Here are the seven major sins of sales teams, along with some advice on how to cope: OVERCONFIDENCE. When everyone wants to make big...
- Blog posts 2008-05-07
- Top 7 Lies That Sales Tells Marketing
- Last week's post "Top 5 Lies That Marketing Tells Sales" challenged marketers to come up with some lies that Sales tells Marketing. There was only one relevant response (from "Iggy") but other comments endorsed his comment, so I'll treat it as canonical. Unfortunately, Iggy's "lies" are...
- Blog posts 2009-02-24
- 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
- Note to Sales Management: Butt Out!
- It's hard enough trying to make quota during a recession.  When you're trying to close business, the last thing you need is to have your manager breathing down your neck. Check out his email I just received from a reader: Hi Geoffrey, in this recession I am hearing from...
- Blog posts 2009-05-01
- How to Pick a Sales Trainer.
- Send a link to this post to your manager! It can save you from wasting days in sales training classes that's aren't going to help you sell. Sales training takes time and costs money. That investment only makes sense if, after the class, you can...
- Blog posts 2008-03-26
- A VP of Sales ($1b?) Calls My Bluff!
- In the post "A Chief Marketing Officer Who 'Gets It'" I pointed out that marketing executives should focus on the tactical execution of their only useful functions: generating leads and reducing sales costs. That post generated a comment thread that included a comment from a reader with...
- Blog posts 2008-10-13
- Top 10 Lies Sales Managers Tell Reps
- I don't want to shock you, but sometimes sales managers lie. When that happens, it's not always easy to know what to do. In most cases, you probably want to rethink working anywhere that your manager isn't, uhh..., entirely straightforward. However, if you're not ready to pack it in, here...
- Blog posts 2009-05-05
- The Sales 2.0 Conference Post
- Today I'm trying something different. I’m at the Sales 2.0 conference in Boston and will be providing a "running update" of everything that happens here.  The conference sponsored by one of my publishers SellingPower tends to feature real-life customer stories about how they use technology. I'll be taking notes and...
- Blog posts 2009-05-21
- Real Life Sales Managers from Hell
- Got a lousy sales manager? Not to worry. No matter how bad things are, they could be worse. A lot worse. This post contains a gallery of the worst sales managers of all time -- as contributed by Sales Machine readers. I've provided some polls, so that you can vote...
- Blog posts 2009-10-06
- Rate Your Marketing Team!
- The whole point of Marketing is to make selling easier. Unfortunately, many marketing groups think their job is to "drive" sales. As a result, they waste big bucks on nonsense and fluff. That increases the cost of sales, which inevitably results in...
- Blog posts 2008-05-14
- Should He Lie About Sales Experience?
- A reader writes: I like nothing more than strategy, messaging, and marketing. In this capacity I have done some great things over the years -- including some big-ticket sales along the way. Problem is, none of it took place as a quota-carrying member of...
- Blog posts 2008-07-14
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