Why, What, How, Who, When, Where We see versions of these words in different contexts. If you’ve ever been a journalist, these are the fundamental issues the journalist must address in any story. If you are a Simon Sinek fan, by now you have internalized his principles of “Start with why.” We don’t talk much […]
Diversity Is Critical, & Not For The Reasons We Think!
This is one of those posts that starts with an apology or a disclaimer. I hesitated writing it, because what I am writing can be so easily misinterpreted, or I may be very naive/poorly informed. (I’m less worried about the latter, I know I need to learn) Diversity is important–it’s critical for our organizations. We […]
Culture and Values Count in Leadership
So many of the discussions on sales and business performance focus on strategies, competitive positioning, product/service superiority, and even customer satisfaction/loyalty. As we talk about how we execute at the highest levels, depending on what a pundit is selling, the “secret” to success is the application of certain technologies, methodologies, training, programs, content, tools, processes. […]
How to Talk About Competitors? You Don’t
Not long ago, I read an exchange about how we should talk to our customers about out competitors. Some felt we should take a “leadership” position offering our views and insights to the customer. Frankly, I was appalled with some of the opinions in that discussion. We have no business talking about our competitors products […]
The Real Future Of Selling, Not What You Think It Will Be
There seems to be wide agreement that the pandemic and related economic and social challenges we and our customers face, will change selling forever (and I think for the good.) The concept of “virtual selling,” seems to be dominating many of our conversations. Digital transformation, more broadly, covering selling, marketing, customer experience, and other parts […]
Great Coaches Don’t Give Answers
Both managers and the people they coach often have the wrong impression of coaching. Too often, we go to our managers looking for answers. Great managers tend not to give answers. As people looking for coaching, too often we go to someone asking, “What should I be doing? Should I do this? What am I […]
Be Unapologetic About Helping Your Customers Succeed
I got a LinkedIn message today from a great sales person. It was intended to be a humorous and fun comment, ” The only reason why I don’t click ‘like’ or comment your posts is just I would like to avoid that my customers can see that I am searching for new ways to convince […]
Reinventing Selling!
The pandemic, social change, and economic crises impact all of us, personally, organizationally, and how we engage our customers. It has forced each of us to rethink, reset, and change. We all know that selling is changing profoundly. As much as some might wish that things get back to normal, we know that normal has […]
What’s Important To Your Customer?
We know our solutions have to create value for our customers. The challenge, however, is making sure that value we create is important to our customers. Too often, we focus only on the cost of our solution. We compete on the basis of price, too often making sure our price is less than those of […]
You Should Be Selling The Way You Buy
I recently had a great text conversation with an outstanding sales manager. The time zones worked out–it was evening his time, so he had the time to be a little philosophical, it was morning my time, I was desperate to find something to write about. We were talking about general approaches to engaging customers more […]
