Are They at 57% Yet?

As a kid, I recall many of our family vacations involved long drives to some place or other. Inevitably, after my sisters and I exhausted the car games we played in the back seat, we’d eventually start whining to Dad, “Are we there yet?” Fast forward to today, I get the sense that too many…

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Are You Taking Advantage of “Presales”?

The “presale” is a concept that is fairly new in the world of sales and it’s used in a variety of ways. Here are just a few: Kickstarter campaigns “presell” items that are in development. Retail stores – most notably Macy’s – have presale events. Customers buy items before the “actual” sale starts, at the…

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Customers Only See Part of Their Problem

In today’s complex B2B world, we know our customers struggle to solve their problems, along the way, perhaps searching for solutions to solve their problem. From the Challenger Customer, we know roughly 5.4 people tend to be involved in the process and we know the majority of these initiative end in No Decision Made. As great…

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Tap Into the Power of Timely Sales Follow Ups

Recently in this space I shared two simple tips for increasing sales: Unless your prospect tells you directly to stop calling, keep calling, and See yourself as a doctor, not as a sales person. Today I want to suggest some more tools so you can do the first of those more easily. What we’re talking about…

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2 Simple Ways to Boost Sales in Your Small Business

It is often said that nothing happens until a sale is made. A corollary to that is if you make a lot of sales, a lot of things—and good things to boot—will happen. I’m not here today to sell you some secret sauce to improve sales, but give you two simple, and very concrete, easy-to-understand,…

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Numbers Make the Conversation More Interesting

Numbers are the bane of many sales people’s existence. Everyone wants to talk about numbers, but it’s far more fun and easy to talk about our cool products, the flashy features, and all the bells and whistles. Or in conversations with our managers, it’s easier to talk about all the stuff we are doing, or…

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Do You Really Understand Your Buyers?

Do you really understand your buyers? No matter what you sell or whether your buyers are purchasing your wares for themselves or on behalf of their company, you are selling to human beings, and they’re an odd bunch. They make decisions based on some very odd triggers, beliefs and reactions. Yet somehow, we have to…

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What’s the Problem with Demos?

Demos Sell! I was visiting a company recently, they had a full court press on doing demos. People were measured on the number of demos they were doing, they had created a contest around who did the most demos, they had banners and buttons around the Demos Sell theme. There was a problem—which was the…

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3 Ways to Get Your Product in Stores and in Front of Buyers

Does your small business sell a product or service that needs to get in front of a larger audience, or find its way into more stores? Maybe you’re trying to sell it online right now, but you just aren’t connecting with customers. You’ve tried SEO and maybe even AdWords in your small business, but the…

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Bad Selling Fundamentals = Bad Social Selling

Social Selling is the “Easy Button” for every sales person’s dreams of making quota. At least if you believe 75% of what’s written about Social Selling, all you have to do is leverage LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or whatever your favorite social selling platform is, and you will be successful in sales. Make connections, have a…

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