Are you lagging or leading? Let me share with you a bit of my diagnostic process. When I talk with sales leaders or business owners about their sales teams, I ask, “tell me about their performance?” Their response is usually something along the lines of, “Well, we missed our target last quarter,” or “We’ve had...Read More

I remember a funny moment about 10 years ago when a client figuratively slammed the door on me. I had set my sights on this customer as an ideal prospect for my printing solution. I found the right contact, called, emailed, called, emailed, called, called, and one day she answered the phone and said, “Tell...Read More

Whether I’m working with a fresh-faced new seller or a seasoned pro, one thing that almost every seller does is “underprepare” for meetings and calls. Even when they know I’m going to join them, listen in, or attend the meeting with them, they grab a blank notepad and dial or walk into a meeting. I’ve...Read More

Over these past few weeks, I’ve had strong reinforcements of my core beliefs about sales training: Most of it needs to be, “Undone.” I see proof every day that Sales Onboarding is upside down or backwards. I see sales training that is hype, technique and manipulation-based vs skills focused. Much of the current “well-known” sales...Read More

Potatoes, Eggs, Bacon, Croissant, Orange Juice, Dolphins. See what I did there? Your brain started looking for a pattern: Food, Breakfast Foods … then, BAM. Disruption. Want to get someone’s attention? Disrupt patterns AND their expectations. Our brains are, say it with me now, FUTURE PREDICTION MACHINES and we’re constantly surveying and assessing for what...Read More

Probably one of the most frustrating scenarios in sales is when you have a conversation or exchange with a prospective customer, follow up with a brilliant email containing a meeting request, information, or pricing, et cetera … and then, NOTHING. Your Follow-Up FLOPPED! • Why didn’t they respond? • Why haven’t they replied? • I...Read More

I often joke about tattoos I would get – if I were the tattoo-ing sort. There are 5 or 6 phrases I use so regularly. They’re soundbites that are recurring in most of our training sessions – that after a while, my sellers can repeat them back to me like audience members that know the...Read More

I will admit I’d like to see your face right now after reading this title. It wasn’t intentionally “click bait” but when sitting in a client’s office and discussing his sales process, he wrote on his whiteboard: “Prospecting: *Research *Call/Connect *FU” He immediately realized his abbreviation for “Follow Up” looked like a particularly nasty insult...Read More

So many of our blog posts and discussions are fruits derived from working through situations with sales teams in sales meetings and training sessions. I’ve written about plenty of my own selling successes and hard lessons learned but I am always in discovery mode looking for better ways to connect with clients, more effective ways...Read More

Road tripping this to a volleyball tournament a while back, I had 3 hours to spend in the car with my 12-year-old daughter. We listened to hundreds of songs on my iPod. Rolling through several decades of old and new ones. At one point, she marveled at how many songs she knew – as in...Read More