I sell, there­fore I am. OK maybe it’s not really that deep.  How­ever, if you are now and want to con­tinue to be a suc­cess­ful sales per­son there are at least  5 truths as it relates to your per­sonal devel­op­ment Pro­fes­sional sales peo­ple must con­tin­u­ally learn and adapt. Fail­ure to change may mean that we lose  the […]

It’s Sep­tem­ber, so I’m guess­ing  you, like most of us,  had your annual or quar­terly National Sales Meet­ing at some point in the last few months . You know the meet­ing com­pa­nies have early Jan­u­ary, mid Decem­ber or just ran­domly through the year.  My com­pany has fis­cal year end in June so for us we […]

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 […]

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 their […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]