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Who am I to argue with General Dwight D. Eisenhower? He made the comment in this post’s title regarding the Normandy invasion. He was reflecting upon how little the actual battle resembled the D-Day plan; a plan that resulted from a truly stupendous effort on the part of the Allies Read More

What’s in it for the customer? From day one of a sales career, the necessity of thinking in that context is crystal clear. Everybody knows it. Everybody believes it. It’s intuitively obvious!!! BUT …sometimes the obvious is not so easy to execute Read More

I know, I know, you’ve all heard the “ask why five times” cliché over and over and over. Why repeat it again? I’ll tell you why. It’s because of a story I heard just last week from an extremely successful rep with more than 30 years of experience Read More

I don’t quite know how to react to the feedback I’m getting on my series of selling with finance blog posts. It ranges from comments like, “Excellent, this is so critical,” & “I commend you,” to “I wouldn’t waste my time reading this irrelevant-to-sales stuff,” and “Sorry, I skipped that post because I don’t understand finance and don’t need to.” There’s not actually too much in between. Seems pretty polarized with vastly more of the latter Read More

Critical question: Would a CEO, CFO or C-Whatever-O rather talk to you about features, benefits, price and discounts or an ROI of 78% and $486 grand of positive net cash flow Read More

OK, fine. I’ve become a (possibly annoying) evangelist for the notion that “Every H-Rep Needs an E-Rep.” That is, every human rep needs an electronic alter-ego to supplement his or her never-ending, always-more-demanding responsibilities. More food for thought below. Am I right Read More

The knee-jerk response of any self-respecting sales rep or manager is an indignant, “Of course I’m a change agent!” But, as anyone with a complex sell cycle knows, the biggest competitor is “do nothing,” and the underlying reason is the no-guts, change-resistant customer. If a sales rep is a change agent and therefore an agent of change, how can this be so Read More

Ask any sales manager about the need for continuous sales training and you instantly get agreement that it is important. So why isn’t there more of it going on? The fact is, most money spent on sales training is wasted. Typically, it annoys most reps, bores many and is totally forgotten within 30 days Read More

This sign has been on the bookshelf of every office I’ve ever had. In those years before I earned a private office, it sat next to my telephone. (A few of you out there will recognize its heritage… Read More

A client of ours who provides engineering and integration services recently established an alliance with a hardware/component distributor. It’s a great match, dramatically extending the value each company can provide to its customers. The challenge to our client is educating their new partner’s 1,500 sales reps Read More