“Disparaging what one cannot obtain, as in The losers’ scorn for the award is pure Sour Grapes.” This expression alludes to the Greek writer Aesop’s famous fable about a fox that cannot reach some grapes on a high vine and announces that they are sour. By nature, sellers are competitive. The best salespeople are naturally...Read More

In the last post, I started down the road of what makes a well-rounded sales pro. First and foremost, I think Super Sellers are self-starters who continue to invest in their own success with a continuous love for learning. Buying has evolved at warp speed over the last decade so sellers need to continue to...Read More

Everyone hates to fail. We don’t want to admit to failure. I despise it. Even though we’re familiar with sayings that tell us how much we learn from failure, how it makes us stronger . . . and all those other rah-rah messages. Sure, we learn what we SHOULD have done. That’s easy to see...Read More

Not to name drop but I have some extremely smart friends and colleagues that have written and are writing amazing sales books. I’ve reviewed a lot of them here on The Pipeline blog and usually bring a few with me when I go to train a sales team. Many of my clients are devout readers...Read More

Most of it, anyway, is actually terrible. I write this knowing that it could be confusing since many of you would consider what we do at The Selling Agency as “Sales Training.” Hear me out. When I look back at my years as an Account Executive in multiple organizations, I can recall almost every single...Read More

A while back I was in Washington DC giving a spectacular talk on Personality as a Seller’s Competitive Advantage. Along with my co-host of The SellOut Show, Dianna Geairn, we were invited to speak to the Institute for Excellence in Sales (IES) membership audience and as a mutually beneficial perk, the day before our early...Read More

“Don’t you just LOVE meetings!” . . . said probably no one ever. Sales meetings, in particular, were usually met with an eye roll so hard from me that I could examine the back of my brain. Time after time, whether they were weekly, monthly, or scheduled on a whim, sales meetings devolved into sessions...Read More

There’s all this free sales advice out there … So, why aren’t your sales team members killing it? Why aren’t they soaking it up? Why aren’t they studying YouTube, signing up for all the webinars, and buying all the freaking books? Seriously, WHY? Don’t they WANT to kill it? Don’t they WANT to be the...Read More

Why do we love toddlers and small humans in weddings? It’s not because ring bearers and flower girls perfectly execute their duties with the style and panache of professionals. It’s because, in spite of rehearsals, practices and coaching, we know that they are a wild card and are capable of melting down, going off course...Read More

Our clients are usually classified as “Small Business” – though I absolutely DESPISE that term. The US economy is POWERED by Small Business! In fact, as of the 2010 census, Small Businesses make up to 99.7% of Employer Firms in this country (a “Small Business” is defined as having less than 500 employees). Yeah –...Read More