Sales people and teams, as with many business disciplines, have demands on their time that exceed the time they have. As with any discipline it’s helpful to have a way to prioritize your actions and within sales, your time has to be focused on moving...
NO SURPRISES is a key part of RELIABILITY. It’s about making sure decision makers get relevant information, both positive and negative, from you versus their peers or, worse, your competition. It requires a clear VISION, a MISSION with milestones and a COMPETITIVE REWARD. With these in place, you can create a sales culture where surprising a customer is a rare occasion. ...
51% of Americans are introverts, according to a 1998 study done by Myers-Briggs. By default that means many of us in the sales profession are introverted and yet, we have to work rooms at events and get on stage to speak to large audiences. It's our job. I'm an introvert and I've learned adaptation methods to get me from being deathly scared of public speaking and mingling, to where it's become natural for me. I'm hoping these methods are helpful to you whether you're an introvert or an extravert....
Sales people have to say no way more than they get to say yes. Saying no in a way that maintains your company's CREDABILITY, VIABILITY and RELIABILITY is something incredibly successful sales people do well because they genuinely acknowledge, comprehend and explain the situation in the customer's language. Learn how to ACE the NO....
Some start-ups think low price is a good strategy to hook those important, first customers. On the other end there's the successful products at the end of their life cycle, with lots of competition, where product managers and sales teams use price as a means to extend product life. In my experience using price or any offers that focus on the customer paying less for your product when there has been no change in COGS, is a sign you may no longer have a real value proposition....
On multiple occasions Lew would say, “Being reliable to our customers is one of the best sales tools we have.” He learned that from Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, practiced it and passed it on to his employees. While it sounds obvious, the extent to which HP would go to deliver on commitments was what earned it the awards, in the 1980s, as the best sales and support organization in the industry. ...
Hosting your executives on sales calls can cause great results or they can just be a lot of work and consternation. They can allow your executives to see and hear the real challenges your face or you can put on a pretty show that draws false conclusions. Executives can make things better or worse by the tone they set. Are executives there to help, as they should, or are they there just to highlight areas where the field needs to work even harder? Which situation do you have?...
