Sales is exhilarating. Selling is grueling. Sales is non-stop activity. Selling is exhausting. Sales is juggling competing priorities. Selling is chasing a constantly moving target. How do you keep filling your new business pipeline, juggling activities, reports, administrative stuff, client relationships, and AVOIDING burnout? Considering the recent (various) reports that suggest nearly 7 out of...Read More

I received an email the other day from a company letting me know my order had shipped. The message came from “customerlove@blahblahblah.com.” Not “info,” not “orders,” but “customer love.” That made me feel special. For two reasons: It made me happy to know when my package was shipped and when I can expect it. It...Read More

I get frustrated sometimes. More often than I’d like to admit. I found myself explaining the story of Jack and the Beanstalk to a salesperson last week, a very young salesperson, who didn’t get my reference when I said, “There are NO MAGIC BEANS.” It seems that Jack and the Beanstalk isn’t as popular with...Read More

Sometimes hard problems CAN have easy answers. Well, “simple” perhaps, because it requires effort and work. Sometimes, as an Account Executive or Business Development Rep, the grind of prospecting and pipelining new opportunities made me feel like Fred Baker from those old Dunkin’ Donuts commercials where he zombies about saying, “Time to make the donuts.”...Read More

Road tripping this weekend to a volleyball tournament, 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 well enough...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

Every December in Memphis, TN, thousands of people descend upon downtown to participate in the St. Jude Marathon. Runners run or walk a 5k, 10k, half, or full marathon and raise funds to support the mission, research, and children of St. Jude. This year’s marathon weekend raised a whopping $10.3 MILLION dollars! It’s quite an...Read More

Helping sellers build their super sales skills and moving sales teams to outperform their competition puts us squarely in a category to be “Challengers.” Our job is to challenge your status quo – to challenge your mindset, to change behaviors, and to inspire actions. This, as you can imagine, is received differently by people. Much...Read More

There is a great commercial out now that reminds about what the true meaning of “Selling” should be. It’s a Capital One pitch for their new “Capital One Cafes” – where they point out that all banks look and feel the same. Their novel idea is to provide a relaxed, easy environment, “A welcoming environment...Read More

It’s becoming increasingly more difficult to earn a response from a prospect these days. In 2007, it took almost 4 touches on average to get a response. Since then, the average has been more like 8 to 12 but hold on to your lunch . . . According to the Sales Development Technology Report by...Read More