Twenty-one days into the month and I had zero on the books. Null. Zip. Noth­ing. You get the pic­ture. How­ever, the sit­u­a­tion was bright­ened with an appoint­ment so I got busy. Get­ting up early, I did my pre-call research and gath­ered all my mate­ri­als. Arriv­ing early, I greeted the par­tic­i­pants of the meet­ing with a smile […]

What hap­pened to the days when you sat down and reviewed ser­vice con­tracts for sales leads? You know, find those accounts you sold that kept renew­ing their main­te­nance because the prod­uct works so well? Nice and easy, you call them up and sell a multi year renewal for a dis­count (they win/you win, the com­mis­sion check […]

I was in my sec­ond sales job (copiers) when my manger took her team to a Zig Zigler sem­i­nar.  At one point Zig drew this on his over­head pro­jec­tor: “THIS!” he pro­claimed, “is THE secret to sales.” As I stared at it try­ing to fig­ure what the hell it was, Zig said: “Belly to Belly”. Good one, Zig.  […]

I was half way through last year (2008) and like most sales peo­ple – it was a very chal­leng­ing year. With two kids in col­lege, fail­ure was not an option. Yet, with both new accounts and sales vol­ume on the decline, my com­mis­sions were down and often miss­ing in action. I’m in the com­puter networking […]

Thanks to the Hired Gun for val­i­dat­ing that, yes, every­one does hate me. I’m start­ing to won­der if Hired Gun works where I do… Regard­less, I still have a job to do. So, on to a more  under my con­trol kind of topic. Know­ing your indus­try and the busi­ness of your prospects. I’ll spare you the industry […]

They don’t hate you per­son­ally (most of them any­way). But they do … they really do.  They hate you for your job, your role and your (per­ceived) income.  They don’t rec­og­nize that what you do is a pro­fes­sion and how hard you work. Or how much shit you take. Face it, an unde­ni­able fact in corporate […]

Fri­day after­noons is your best weapon Yeah I know, we’re sales peo­ple. Part of the great things about our pro­fes­sion is the inher­ent free­dom – which includes the abil­ity to screw off on Fri­day after­noons. This is so ingrained into our sales DNA that I know a few douch­bag sales man­agers that sched­ule team meetings […]

So it’s mid year. You’ve cold called the crap out of your dirt, hit the ones you want, called the ones you need, and pushed the ones you know could use your prod­uct and noth­ings hap­pen­ing. You are so happy.…The wife and kids are at the pool, and com­plain­ing about the heat and being bored doing […]

I’m rel­a­tively new to this sell­ing thing all things con­sid­ered. So, maybe this is just me being naïve. Or maybe it’s a rev­e­la­tion that will shock all of you, but I have recently dis­cov­ered the great irony of sales. What I’ve always heard my col­leagues and peers in sales say is not unlike what The Sales […]

We are sales­peo­ple with many years of sell­ing expe­ri­ence. We get up in the morn­ing pickup the bag and go to work We worry about stuff like quota, get­ting the kids through col­lege, and whether the execs in our com­pa­nies will screw up our gigs. We’ve had a few great years, a cou­ple of down years but most of our years are pretty darn good. On aver­age we make in 80th per­centile of most the peo­ple on the planet. (Which isn’t near as much as you’d think)