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I was having a casual chat with a friend this weekend who happens to be a very successful commission salesperson in the business-to-consumer space. I'm not sure how we got on the subject, but she told me that, as a consumer, she avoids dealing with commission salespeople.

When I asked her what she meant, she said she avoids buying from commissioned salespeople because "they don't care about me, they only have their own interests in mind." She went o Read More

The tasks of everyday life require good eyesight.

Thankfully, my close-up eyesight is quite good. I can read my morning newspaper, see my breakfast eggs, and clip my toenails without any problem whatsoever (rest assured, I don't do all three at the same time).

But thanks to my nearsightedness, I can't se Read More

Customers need things. Thank goodness for that, because if they didn't, commerce would grind to an abrupt halt, along with all salespeople's careers.

Consumers need books, TVs, furniture, education, massage, barbecue grills, security systems, trees, orthodontics, replacement windows, hair replacement, bass boats, facelifts, vacations to Italy, jewelry, and thousands of other products which we, as sales professionals, are always happy to sell to them. But when we focus on only our products, we can lose sight of the emotional foundation of these customers' needs. Read More

Sales managers, are you hiring salespeople? Here's my advice: Don't Settle.

Sales managers get in a bind and hire salespeople who don't help them meet their business goals. Here's where some long term strategy will trump short term needs Read More

I prefer to spend my time writing about sales, marketing, and management for this blog. It's ground zero for my professional interests.

But today I need to write about blogging. To be specific, I want to write about one blogger who apparently continues to steal others' material in a most brazen manner Read More

Part of a salesperson's job is to explain things. You might need to explain how a particular feature of your product works, or why the customer's shipment of the product has been delayed, or why your return policy is what it is.

But some salespeople can be notoriously poor at explaining things well.

A good "explainer" add Read More

As a manager, how do you communicate with your team? Do you have a systematized, reliable process for sharing both large and small segments of information with your employees? Or do you rely on the default communication structure in any organization Read More

Many salespeople fear silence during face-to-face selling interactions. If the conversation gets silent for too long, the typical salesperson pummels that divine silence with words, often in the form of gibberish, repeating what has already been said, or inane questions such as "Are there any questions I could answer? Read More

But there is a dark side to the blogosphere that we all should be aware of. And we need to do what we can to stamp it out. Enter one "Michael J. Roman." Mr. Roman may have some excellent qualities, but he appears to be a plagiarizer with a significant body of others' work that he claims to be his own work. Read More

Dots are great. They're little. And round. And dot-like.

I'm talking about the small, roundish mark that we're all familiar with, not the candy or the nickname for the name Dorothy (although those deserve respect, too). Look, here's one now: .

Cute, isn't it? Read More