Is It Ever A Good Time? – Sales eXchange – 149

One common objection sales people face when making prospecting calls, is when the potentially prospect says “now is not the right time”. While timing is important, and understanding how specific triggers can help improve your timing, the fact remains that perfecting your timing will only help you in a very (very very) small way, in a very narrow part of you potential prospect segment. Here is why. Timing is only important with two buyer groups, Passive, those who have realized … Continue reading →

A Free Course in Political Selling and Competitive Strategy, Starting Today!

If you’re in sales and haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on in the political arena, you’re missing a rare opportunity (once every four years, anyway). And if you have been paying attention, but don’t understand the opponents’ strategies, tactics, mistakes, wins, positioning, messaging, attempts to control the narrative, political alliances, allegiances, and all the rest, you’ve got some work to do in two areas of advanced selling: leveraging influence and politics within your customers’ accounts and devising and … Continue reading →

3 Ways to Steal Time

There a host of things you can focus on to master to improve your sales execution and results, but none more than the need to master time. We all start with 24 hours at the start of the day, and how we use it will determine our success more than anything else. I have never heard a sales person, no matter how good, tell me they have run out skills, but at one point they have all run out of … Continue reading →

Guidance On Going “Over Their Head”

We have all faced the situation where the person we have been working with on a sale turns out to be the wrong person, or more often an obstacle to moving the deal forward. While it is OK to be frustrated, you also need to act, and when you step back the only logical thing to do is escalate things, go higher, or what sales people commonly call “going over their head”, for me the only smart way to get … Continue reading →

Leveraging Value Once Defined

A couple of weeks back, I was asked about value, and provided a firm definition for value. The definition is step one, it provides the direction for the seller, next sellers need to learn how to surface it and leverage it for the mutual benefit of the buyer and the seller. As a follow up I was asked: So working with that definition of value, that is removing obstacles that stand between the buyer and their objectives, how does a … Continue reading →

Stop Selling For Your Competitor!

Many sales people and their managers feel that a good sales person is one who is moving forward. This is fine, so long as you don’t move so fast that you miss or pass opportunities along the way. Remembering that your buyers are moving at just a fast a pace, and are dealing with many of the same realities you are, namely greater demands on their time and resources, less people and resources to get things done; leaving them, like … Continue reading →

3 Ways to Win With Curiosity – Sales eXchange – 145

While curiosity may have killed the cat, a lack of curiosity will kill sales, every time. Yet with all the expectations placed on sellers these days, most don’t feel they have the luxury to be curios, or worse, the don’t have the need to be curious, they have their talk track, and they feel they have all they need to know. Looking at the latter first, unfortunately it is still very common to see sales people pitch and preach, spray … Continue reading →

A Working Definition of Value

Sales like other groups have certain common words, reference points and symbols. They use them to communicate facts and concepts both to the tribe and to their buyers. The challenge is that often these words or symbols are often quiet subjective and open to broad interpretation, unless the seller defines the term. If they don’t which is usually the case, it opens the door to miscommunications, and missed sales. Take the word value, I challenge you read one brochure or … Continue reading →

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