Mechanics of Selling

I had a revelation this week that has led me to think about an old “sales 101” rule in a completely different light. If you’ve been a salesperson for longer than 10 minutes, you certainly know rule #1 is to always talk to the decision maker. “Get past the gatekeeper….find the decision maker….”
You’ve heard this [...]

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We really waste a lot of energy sometimes, don’t we? In a profession that relies on our mind to do the heavy lifting, we certainly fail to think about things in the right way. One example of that is “who we see as the enemy.

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I got this question from one of my clients last week. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is a common problem for sales professionals–especially in complex (long) selling cycles.
Let’s start at the top. You are in sales to solve problems. The solving of your customer’s problems will pay you [...]

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Recently the NYTimes Magazine ran a piece written by the Freakonomics guys, Dubner and Levitt. The article was titled, A Star Is Born. Get it and read it. It provides a wonderful look into the traits of high achievers. No reason to go into a lot of detail here–only to say that everything in the [...]

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I got the proposal via email a week after the sales person and I had talked at length. It was well designed. It was well laid out. And it came with a fabulous letter introducing it. (I presume all from some template that a higly paid consultant had devised).
BUT…..
It didn’t hit the mark because the [...]

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I’ve always heard the definition of insanity is: Doing the same thing and expecting different results. But I happened on another definition the other day that I think it applies to the business world. That definition is: Trying to manage things we can’t control.
When you think about it there’s a whole lot more things [...]

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