Posts in Best Practice
People Buy From People They Like

Whether you sell toothbrushes or medical equipment and everything in between — until a customer (a) knows who you are, (b) likes who you are, and (c) trusts you there is no purchase. The depth of the trust required varies but there must be at least a base level of trust in place.

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What Makes a Great Sales Pitch Not Salesy?

The sales profession is not among the most admired. There even is a term, salesy, to describe a person or an approach to selling in an unaware, aggressive, and superficial manner. As I think about what makes a sales pitch great, I would argue that by their very nature, every sales pitch is salesy.

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How to Build a Cohesive, High-Performing Team

At some point in our lives, we have all been a part of a team. Some of these teams may have effective and exciting while others may have been ineffective and infuriating. The biggest variable to team success was probably how cohesive it was.

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Seven Wildly Effective Habits of a Sensational Fractional Sales Leader

As a fractional CMO/VP Marketing for many companies, I got a front-row seat watching a terrific fractional sales leader in action. The CEO hired us to provide the company with a "kick in the pants" to the organization and be catalysts for growth.

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Sales Is a Numbers Game... Or Not?

Not every opportunity converts; consider the time and effort it takes to have a conversation with a potential customer; for the salesperson, this means a world of difference; a few dollars make a big difference; the one number that makes or breaks success; CRM to counterbalance to the self-perception of greatness. Sales is a numbers game!

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Pivoting or the Art of Moving to Plan B

I hate the word “pivot”… and use it all the time. In disliking it, I am not alone. In recent years business publications like Inc. have included the word “Pivot” in their list of buzzwords labeled “overused,” “ridiculous,” “worst,” and “to avoid.” It is indeed an overused term.

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Smart Risks and Big Rewards

A few have figured out how to spend their days taking smart risks that improve their lives and propel them to new levels of success with little chance of ending up dead, homeless, or any other number of unappealing adjectives.

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We Have No Money ... and It's a Lie

Speaking to a friend of mine recently, he lamented that what had seemed like a promising business opportunity a few weeks back was now just a stone wall of “We have no money.” And he went on to say that in this day and age everyone wants everything for free and that less and less people are willing to pay for good services.

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DO NOT DISCOUNT!

Discounting reduces the value in the eyes of your customers. And that is terrible news mid- and long-term. And even worse, it is often meaningless for the short-term. If you are successful in closing a deal by offering a discount, the psychology that is at work when you do has detrimental effects.

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Persistence

Most of your prospective customers will not buy from you instantly. You cannot simply introduce someone to your product or service once and expect that they will go the rest of the way by themselves. Studies have shown that only about 2% of sales will close after the first meeting.

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