No one wants to have any more meetings than is necessary, and especially meetings that don’t have a solid agenda and real and beneficial outcome. Scheduling regular meetings—and keeping them—helps you to produce greater results through your sales team. Create … [Read more...]

Your success as a sales leader and a sales manager depends upon your ability to achieve results through your salespeople. The more effective your sales force, the greater your results. Developing your sales force means improving their skills and abilities, and it is the most … [Read more...]

Tom Peters is fond of quoting retired Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki, who once said: “If you don’t like change, your going to like irrelevance even less.” I like the opening line to one of Tom’s books, I think it was Liberation Management, just as well: “The … [Read more...]

We take our prospective clients as we find them. Sometimes we find that our prospective clients are already dissatisfied, and they often have a pretty good idea of what might help them to produce better results. There is a gap between their present state and their desired future … [Read more...]

We live in the interruption age of the interruption society. We are continually and relentlessly interrupted. These interruptions break our concentration. We lose our focus, and it takes us much longer to perform a poorer quality outcome. While you are reading this, it’s more … [Read more...]

Recently, a number of salespeople have asked me when I would blow up a relationship to advance an opportunity. Here is the scenario. You are working within your dream client’s company, and you have found a power sponsor to coach you and forward your case. So far, so good. But … [Read more...]

Nothing has a greater impact on the outcome of an opportunity than the salesperson. A lost opportunity is won by another salesperson or to the status quo, both of which are ferocious and unrelenting. You must make a difference. You must be the difference. You are the sharp end … [Read more...]

In the past, there were certain attributes and skills that defined successful salespeople. Salespeople that had the ability to close deals, for example, were highly sought after. It was also important that they had the abilities to describe their product's features and benefits. … [Read more...]

Once you have made your sale, you have to execute. Well, your team has to execute and you have to help them. If you don’t execute, if you don’t produce the result that you sold, you put all greater levels of value creation at risk. Or worse. You can’t move to … [Read more...]

I had an interesting conversation with a C-level executive today. Unsolicited, he said: “My biggest fear is that my strategic partner will get complacent.” I pressed him for more. Complacent around my customer's needs This executive (and many more like him, I’m sure) … [Read more...]