Category: Sales

There are a few times in my career in B2B sales, an endeavor in which I am still engaged, when I have made a very serious error. It forced me to operate on my back foot, defending, instead of selling on my front foot, playing offense and causing…

There aren't too many things more important in sales than gaining first meetings with your dream clients. Nothing happens until you can meet and explore change. This post is unlike my usual Sunday offering. Instead of my usual focus on personal…

One of the critically important, yet neglected, concepts in sales is the idea of "creating a preference" to buy from you and your company. Not only do you need to create a desire to work with you, but you must also create a preference for your…

Of the many sales skills you need to succeed in consultative sales, the first ones on the top of any list will be listening skills. The stereotype that salespeople are good at speaking is true and accurate, but the best salespeople have listening…

The reason we think in terms of value creation is that it is how you create a strong preference for your prospective client to buy from you instead of your competitor. Throughout the B2B sales conversation, you can do and say things that are value…

Some factors lead to stalled or declining sales. They are known, as are the remedies that would result in increased sales. Only those willing to acknowledge the root causes of poor sales results and changing their actions have any hope of turning…

In Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition, I wrote about the four levels of value. The main idea was that the lower levels of value, like your product and experience, don't rise to the level of compelling change or position…

What makes a call "cold" is that the person you are calling is not expecting your call. Because they are not expecting your call, you interrupt their day, even if they aren't doing anything important when you call them. You can never know who you…

The question as to which prospecting method is the most effective can be answered in two ways. The first answer is that cold calling is the fastest and most direct method to acquire a meeting in B2B sales, even though many salespeople wrongly…

All clients are not created equal. Just like you and your company are more valuable to some clients, some clients are more valuable to you and your company. On the other end of the continuum, some prospective clients are not only not valuable to…