The Sales Blog
In the summer, I ride a bicycle. A few years ago, I was training to ride across Death Valley. A friend of mine, Johnny, spent the summer training with me. We rode a century (100 miles) together almost every Saturday. Once we rode 107 miles in the rain. Johnny never complained. … [Read more...]
Some people live in poverty. Real, physical poverty. They can’t meet life’s basic fundamental needs, like food, water, shelter, and clothing. Too many people are truly impoverished, and they deserve our help. But there is another kind of poverty. This kind of poverty is far … [Read more...]
So, you say you would do anything to succeed, anything to have that level of success? But would you really do anything? Would you set your alarm clock to wake you an hour and half earlier each morning and rise without hitting the snooze button? Does your mission motivate you to … [Read more...]
The human brain is really made up of three brains. The oldest part of the brain (from an evolutionary perspective) is the archipallium, or reptile brain. It includes the brain stem, and the cerebellum. This part of your brain is responsible for all of the automatic functions of … [Read more...]
Selling well is a balance between conflict and collaboration. The more—and faster—you can move away from conflict and towards collaboration, the better. But conflict is built in. Conflict at the Start The conflict begins at the very onset of the relationship. You want a … [Read more...]
For God's sake can we please stop talking about sales like it's 1954? Don't you cringe when you hear people say things like "People don't want to be sold? Is it really your experience that salespeople are walking into their prospect's doors spraying and praying? I'd have an … [Read more...]
When I teach undergraduates my Personal Selling course (a survey on business-to-business sales), I begin the class by asking the students to tell me what words they would use to describe salespeople. Without failure, I hear words like “greedy,” “selfish,” and … [Read more...]
Are you approaching your work with excellence as your primary goal and outcome? If you are what you repeatedly do, as Aristotle famously said, are you practicing the habit of excellence? It's easy to be mediocre. If you look at a bell curve, you've got very poor performance on … [Read more...]
Take a look at the scale in the picture above this post. The scale is perfectly balanced. Your results in life—and sales—are very much like this scale. The scale that is your results is always precisely balanced, too. Whatever you put in on one side your side of the scale … [Read more...]
Those of us who write and speak about selling today are often guilty of communicating as if each idea is a universal truth. Most of what we write our broad generalizations. This is what makes them useful. You can understand the idea and use it where it’s beneficial to do … [Read more...]
Leaving A Trail of Negativity Behind You