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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

A few years ago, I was talking to a sales manager. He was expressing some frustration, “I’m doing my job of selling, my customers need to start doing a better job of buying!” When you think about it, there’s actually a lot of truth to that statement — at least the “doing a better job of buying” part. 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

Sales people are trained to be problem solvers — we ask questions, probe — once we find a problem we attack like a pit bull and don’t let go until we’ve wrestled the problem to the ground and gotten the order 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

My friend, Ardath Albee, and I were commiserating the other day. We see so many misguided approaches, whether they are sales people, marketers, individuals. They know the theory–yes, they’re supposed to be customer focused. They know they are supposed to talk about customer needs, problems, goals. They know they should focus on solving customer problems by proposing great solutions. But, to often it’s not like that. Just after the words, “how can I help you,” or “what are your needs,” leave their mouths — before we have a chance to respond — they go on and say, “but let me tell you about our products,” or “let me tell you about me,” or “can you help me?” The focus shifts immediately back to them and what they want Read More

Several days ago I wrote: The Most Used, Useless Metric In Sales. At the same time, I posed a question in LinkedIn asking people their opinions on the worst metric in sales. I was surprised by many of the responses. They included quota and revenue targets in every form–monthly, quarterly, annual. They included pipeline metrics, many variations of activity metrics and lots of others. Some of the metrics were very bad, many were simply bureaucratic reporting-having little to do with assessing sales performance, some represented micromanagement on the part of managers Read More

Customer Centricity is a hot topic these days.  I get on my soapbox on Customer Focus, Customer Experience, How Buying Is Changing, and various aspects o Read More