Somehow, it seems that a post on preparing for sales calls/meetings would be totally unnecessary. One would hope all sales professionals would have a plan for every call, if only to manage their own time very well. When I talk to sales people about the importance of sales call/meeting planning, the responses tend to fall […]
Relevant Benefits
Features and Benefits
Somehow, we think features and benefits are important. Every beginning sales course talks about how we present Features And Benefits (When I first started, I learned how to present Features-Advantages-Benefits—FABs). Our product marketing and marketing teams load us up with content and presentations with endless lists of features and benefits. Visit any web site, and […]
Find Your Sweet Spot
Who should buy stuff from you? If you’re like most business owners or leaders that I know, your knee-jerk answer is something just slightly smaller than “everyone on the planet.” But “everyone on the planet” can’t be your sweet spot customer. You need to narrow it down a little. Businesses who need insurance or parents, […]
Elevator Speech Part 3: What You Offer
So you’re rounding the corner now on the elevator speech, which I say is something all business owners should be able to do. You’ve done the market story, which was part 1, and the why you, part 2. You’re about 30 seconds or so into your one minute talk. And I hope you agree that this […]
Selling the Vision is Easier Than Selling the Product
I’ve never sold a computer or licensed software in my career. I’ve never sold consulting services in my career. Frankly, it’s really difficult selling those things. Take licensed or even SaaS software products. You have to know about things like GUI’s, software architectures, installation, coding, memory utilization, caching, pipelining, and all sorts of little details. […]
Seth Godin Was Wrong: The Trouble with “Remarkable”
Seth Godin is a pretty smart guy. He invented permission marketing, popularized tribes, and taught us how to become the linchpin of our professional environments. He also reinvented book publishing with the Domino Project. Among his many good ideas is the concept of the Purple Cow—the idea that being remarkable is the key to attracting attention and success. Well, I […]
The Killer Closing Technique
Through my career, I’ve been “taught” and subjected to 100’s of different closes. The assumptive close, the puppy dog close, the limited time close, and the list goes on and on and on.
CLV versus EVC
The concept of CLV or customer lifetime value has been used for many years to describe the value of a particular customer or customer segment to a company.
Are You Selling What Your Customers Want to Buy?
All too often, I see businesses advertising their wares…but from their own perspective. They talk about their expertise and what they DO or MAKE, thinking that’s what people are buying. Of course, that’s not what they’re buying at all.
Care About Them, Not Us
We recently bought an ad for a client and the ad rep suggested we make a big deal out of the fact that our client has been in business for 130 years. I politely told her that we definitely were not going to do that.
