As a great man once said: ”Shh! I’m hunt­ing wab­bits ‘cause it’s wab­bit sea­son.”
Granted we are all not great men like Elmer J. Fudd, Mil­lion­aire. But it is the start of a hunt­ing sea­son of sorts; P&L sea­son. It’s time to start hunt­ing for that elu­sive ani­mal that lives in all your accounts and […]

Do you sell the Ser­vice or the Prod­uct?
In all the sell cycles I have ever been in there is an argu­ment for lead­ing with either.  I must say that sell­ing the ser­vice and giv­ing the prod­uct away has always seemed the smarter choice but almost no one  does it that way.   A few excep­tions to […]

Whats that thing Mom used to say?  God gave you two ears and one mouth.   Active lis­ten­ing is the best great­est skill a sales per­son can carry in their bag. Unfor­tu­nately nearly all sales train­ing revolves around talk­ing, pre­sent­ing and plac­ing the buy­ing influ­ences into cat­e­gories.
Good lis­ten­ing skills is an art form that take a […]

Sales based movies are far and few between. When they do come out they are either about car sales, reflect the sales peo­ple as the stereo­type sleaze­ball or the depress­ing Willy Loman tragic sad sac.  But from time to time a scene or two cap­tures our lives and atti­tudes.
You know them. […]

Recently, I took the fam­ily to the State Fair. One of the great things about the fair, besides the fried Twinkies and other 1,200 calo­rie per bite culi­nary treats, are the guys that hawk their wares. If you’ve never expe­ri­enced this, it’s like one big trade show for infomer­cial stuff.
These guys and gals have […]

We know you love selling…But do you love your prod­ucts???
As a sales pro­fes­sional , when I’m watch­ing the TV, I can’t help but ana­lyze the prod­uct pitches in the com­mer­cials. I start think­ing to myself, man that guy is annoy­ing, but he is toooo smooth. Man that guy sucks,  or that guy was funny.
I’m not talking […]

No doubt about it the phone is your most valu­able tool.
It is the method of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with prospects and clients. When you think about it noth­ing hap­pens in most sales jobs with­out a phone call.   You can’t build your pipe with­out it and you cer­tainly can’t close with­out it.
What amazes me is how bad some sales people […]

At the Air­port last week, had some time to kill before my con­nec­tion so I decided to get a shine. (At this point let me say that a shoe shine is one of THE best things you can ever do. Some­one fusses over you, it’s cheap, there’s imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion, and your shoes look great.)
For rea­sons that […]

This is one of those top­ics that requires some self aware­ness. And, some desire to actu­ally NOT rel­ish in the dis­trac­tions of your job. I know so many peo­ple who just can’t get out of their own way. They spin up inter­nal BS; they med­dle with use­less part­ner reps; or they focus on the details […]