Many sales pros clutch when it comes to negotiating final terms. When the almost-customer pushes back, or comes up with a last-minute demand, the sales pro caves, afraid to lose the sale at the tail end of the process. The result is a deal that's less profitable, and a...
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...
Corporate executives and sales managers are always telling sales professionals that they should strive to be "trusted advisors" to their customers. Fair enough. However, if sales pros are supposed to be "trusted advisors" why do so many sales managers treat their employees like wayward, lying children?...
Why Sales Pros Hate Instant MessagingIM Has It's UsesFor the most part, I agree that many salespeople dislike IM. I attribute this dislike to the fact that most salespeople are slow to adopt any tool unless and until it proves to help them close more business.That said, one area...
Market Requirements = Garbage.RE: Market Requirements Garbage"Sorry, but most Marketing groups do a terrible job at all of these things. These are the kind of unmeasurable activities that waste money. Marketing should be responsible for one thing -- lead generation -- and only through activities where the impact can be...
Sales Pro, Know Thyself!Keeping your CoolAs a salesperson it is one of our prime objectives to keep our cool and manage our emotions. When we let customers get underneath our skins and effect what we are doing that is when we need to take a time out and readjust...
Successful sales pros value their customers so highly that they're sometimes unwilling to risk a hard-won relationship by negotiating an agreement that's favorable for their own firm. The reasoning seems to make perfect sense: if the customer gets a good deal, then the vendor gets screwed, and vice versa....
Have you heard about the storm worm? It's a particularly nasty computer virus that's been popping up all year in different forms. What's different about this virus is that it has a business model and is actually making money for the people who created it. And those...
The Five Sales Call MythsDah!What sales professional with any tenure doesn't acknowledge these "Myths?"What IS surprising...What is surprising is how many "sales pro's" seem to forget or ignore the customer's agenda...instead getting way ahead of themselves by focusing on product attributes (functionality, features, what's new, etc) or by leading on...
The Sales Rep is Dead; Long Live the Sales Pro.Death of Sales RepsWhat an interesting subject. Agreed, much is in the process of becoming commodities and they can cetainly be accessed directly by customers.I contend, however, that the death of sales reps and the realization of the value of sales...
The Oscar-winning movie The Music Man contains a key scene that says a lot about sales. The main character, Harold Hill, sells student's music instruments and uniforms under the false premise that he'll remain in town as the music teacher. When the scheme unravels, the little boy he's...
Five Reasons CRM StinksMyopiaSpoken like a true sales hack. If you've made your quota by noon, you should have a higher quota......and the best sales people I know crank even harder right after they've closed a deal.Intelligent sales pro's know that once the rolodex is handed over it naturally becomes...
Marketing folk continue to throw brickbats at sales pros. The latest salvo came from BNET's new PR blogger Van Travis, whose post Bad Marketing Follows Bad Sales trots out the traditional complaints. According to Van, many if not most sales pros are: Uncommunicative. They "spend so much time...
Customer calls - whether in-person, on-phone, or online - are the heart and soul of B2B sales. So it's surprising that misconceptions about sales calls abound, even among sales pros who ought to know better. Here are the most common myths and how they torpedo sales success:MYTH #1....
Two key questions that every sales pro must confront: "What are my basic values?" and "Do I believe in what I'm selling?" If the answers don't agree, you'll never be very successful in sales. Even if you've got fantastic sales skills, customers will sense internal conflict and be far...
After reading some of the comments on this blog from non-sales folk, I'm convinced that there are a fair number of businesspeople who neither like nor respect sales pros – especially the ones working in their own company. That attitude can be a major impediment to getting things done,...
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...
I've been harping on lead generation because that's where sales pros need a lot of help. In fact, over 70 percent of sales leaders are not satisfied with their lead generation process, according to a survey of sales managers conducted by Jim Dickie, the head of the research and...
There’s a revolution going on in the field of sales process, and you need to know about it, because the companies that are in the vanguard are about to kick the living daylights out of firms clinging to the same old, same old. ...
I want to finish the segment on objections before moving on. I realize that this is pretty basic stuff, but if you dont master the simple stuff, the more advanced stuff wont work anyway.There are three objection-handling techniques that should be in the mental tool kit of every sales...
