There’s a prospect I’d been call­ing on, for sev­eral months.   Their project has started and stopped sev­eral times this year, but this past month we were hot and heavy on the clos­ing trail. We’d agreed on final sys­tem con­fig­u­ra­tion, made arrange­ments for alter­na­tive financ­ing, and come to agree­ment on final pric­ing. Inter­face specs had been blessed by […]

What’s in a promise? More and more we have to promise more and more.  Sell it , make that weekly nut, take a breath, and do it all over again, and again, and again. One of the most dif­fi­cult things to over­come is the del­i­cate bal­ance between integrity and accom­plish­ment. Those nomads in the land of […]

Mel I am I am Mel Oh now how I love to sell What I do not like is to call cold It makes me seem much too bold No one likes me I’ve been told No one, no one wants to be sold I’ve tried call­ing, email , let­ter “Mr. Prospect,  10 or 2 bet­ter?” Will you meet […]

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 […]