From the monthly archives:

April 2009

What to Do When Your Sales Process Conflicts with Your Prospect’s Decision Process

April 28, 2009

If you’ve been in sales awhile, you’ve learned to find your way through multiple sales cycles. You’ve developed a sense of process.
Your process is the series of steps you go through with your prospect to arrive at a successful transaction. It’s a mental map of the route you must navigate to arrive at a sale. [...]

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Approach Senior Executives Carefully

April 26, 2009

If you call high and aren’t ready for the conversation, it could end your life prematurely – at least in that account.
Have you heard about vibratory courtship?
No, this isn’t about kinky sex — at least not for humans.
It’s the way a male spider approaches a web-spinning female without being mistaken for dinner.
The male taps carefully [...]

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Call High or Go to a Movie?

April 24, 2009

Ross Perot, founder of Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Perot Systems, billionaire, former candidate for the presidency of the United States and famously cantankerously outspoken Texas personality, used to tell his sales people at EDS to “call high or go to a movie.”
Perot’s point was that his sales people will never close a deal on [...]

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How to Control the Only Two Things You Can, and Stop Wasting Energy on What You Can’t

April 22, 2009

When you stop trying to control things you can’t, you’ll be able to focus more of your energy and attention on gaining complete control over the only things you can: your behavior and your actions.

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Selling and the Delusion of Control

April 20, 2009

How much control you do maintain over your prospects during a sales cycle?
If your answer is ‘a lot,’ I have a bone to pick with you. At best you’re deluded. At worst you’re a control freak.  In either case you’re probably working against your own best interests.
Let that harsh judgment forewarn you that you’re about [...]

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Skepticism Is Smart, But Don’t Let It Stop You from Improving

April 19, 2009

In prior articles here you’ve read some controversial selling advice that runs counter to everything you’ve been told to think or do.
What now? Do you reject it or try it out?
Before you read any more suggestions about selling — including mine — a few disclaimers.
I’ve read more than a hundred books on selling, and I’ve [...]

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Learn to Embrace ‘No’

April 17, 2009

No may be the single most dreaded word in selling. But you can learn to appreciate it.
We’re learn from early childhood that no is a constraint on our ability to get or do what we want.

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How to Try Out New Sales Approaches with Low Risk

April 15, 2009

[This is the fifth in a series about Prospecting and Sales Negotiations. The prior post suggested some ideas that have helped me improve my prospecting. Some of them go against the grain of a lot of current thinking about good selling skills. This post suggests ways you can try out new sales approaches at relatively [...]

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Change Your Mindset, Improve Your Prospecting

April 13, 2009

[This is the fourth in a series of posts about prospecting and sales negotiations. The two prior posts gave you some ideas on behavior what to avoid when you're prospecting. This post gives you new ways to think about what you're doing. With these new perspectives you can eliminate some of the habits that irritate [...]

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More Behavior to Avoid When You’re Prospecting

April 10, 2009

[This is the third post in a series about prospecting and sales negotiations. The preceding post suggested that you can hurt yourself by "spilling the beans" too early. This means you should avoid telling your prospect too much about your product or company until she's told you about her problems, goals, wants or vision.]
Life, interrupted
How [...]

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