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I guess as a blogger, twitter user, and sometime pundit, it’s natural to get into a lot of conversations about the impact of Social Media, and the Internet for that matter, on buying and selling. In the past several days, I’ve had a number of conversations with people all over the world. “How do we leverage social media to sell?” “What should we be doing with social media?” “What is social selling?”I have to admit that I feel a little awkward in these discussions, I don’t by any means consider myself a social media expert—it seems, I’ve just learned how to spell www… Read More

Words are important in sales! We’re always looking for the right word–the one that best conveys what we mean, the one that will immediately resonate with the customer, the one that cuts through everything else creating great clarity Read More

The other day, I wrote an article, Appointments With Sales People Fall Short Of Executive Expectations. In it I cited data from a Forrester Research report on executive perspectives of sales people’s ability to understand their business needs, priorities, and issues. I wanted to extend the discussion, focusing on a topic I’ve found a little nebulous, business acumen Read More

Last Week I wrote about “We Have To Call At The Top,” suggesting the concept of right level selling. There are many times when calling at the “C” level is critical for our sales efforts, yet we struggle to get appointments with these executives. I was interested to read a Forrester Research report on this topic, presenting the executive perspective. Only 15% of the “C” level executives surveyed felt their meetings with sales people were valuable and lived up to their expectations. They went further, based on the outcome of the initial meeting, only 7% would accept follow-on meetings. No wonder they don’t want to see us, we waste their time Read More

I always appreciate Tibor Shanto’s blog posts on cleaning out the pipeline, focusing on real business. He always seems to find the right time to remind us to do this, In January, he encouraged us to Clear Out The Clutter, can’t start the New Year with garbage in our funnel. In March, he reminded us of Spring Cleaning. I’ve been anxiously waiting his third quarter post and reminder Read More

We spend a lot of time talking about closing. We focus on doing a great final presentation or proposal. We worry about finding the right way to close–how to ask for the order in a compelling way. Frankly, it’s too late–sales are not won or lost at the close, they are won or lost much earlier in the sales process–and– unfortunately, where we probably spend the least time Read More

Dave Kurlan wrote an outstanding post: Bench Strength – The Key To Replacing Salespeople. He mentioned that managers must always be recruiting. It’s such a simple concept, but I am constantly amazed at how few managers–at all levels do this Read More

This past week, in New York, I had the pleasure of having breakfast with Mack Hanan. Mack is the author of Consultative Selling, originally published in 1970. Whenever I’m in New York, Mack and I get together to talk about the state of the profession. I started my sales career in the late 70′s. In that time, so much has changed, yet so much has stayed the same Read More

The other day, my friend Kelley Robertson wrote an outstanding article: Is Your Sales Training Putting Your Sales Team At Risk? The article prompted me to think about: Why is product and sales training separated? What would happen if we integrated our sales methodologies and training into our product training? Read More

The other day I was having dinner with a close friend. He’s the President of a division of a company. Eventually, the conversation got around to social media (is it something about me?). He said, “Dave, I just don’t get it, you keep talking about social media and how important it is, but I just don’t get it, I don’t have time for it, my customers aren’t using it Read More