The units I studied on the battlefield were always interested in the technology that would help them get better results, but they didn’t abandon everything they’d learned during land-navigation training just because they now had GPS units and handheld drones. The same applies when using technology in our sales outreach – we can’t forget the…

Salespeople know that what got them to wYet salespeople and their leaders struggle to determine what they should be training their people in when there are an unlimited amount of options available. Training has to be relevant and immediately applicable if we’re going to get salespeople engaged, and that’s a challenge in and of itself….

Too many salespeople hope their questions will be witty and insightful enough to grab the next prospect’s talking and sharing their challenges. If there were a few magic words that got anyone sharing their secrets, then anyone could sell. Unfortunately, few prospects want to share details of their lives and businesses without having gained something…

We know it’s easier to convert an existing customer than it is to develop a new one – but limiting ourselves to only selling to current cuctomers limits the impact and income we can make. What if we could turn our existing customers into a source of intelligence for how to better convert new prospects?…

Intelligence can make or break a sale. The ‘market intelligence industry’ is booming, because salespeople know the better prepared they are, the more chances they have of success in the sale. Too many salespeople are engaging in gathering intelligence – but they’re doing it too late in the sales process. If we’re waiting for a…

‘Mindset’ is thrown around a lot in sales. ‘Have a great mindset’, ‘it all starts with mindset’, ‘master your mindset to master your life.’ So, salespeople do whatever they can to pump themselves up before call blocks, visualize positive outcomes, and all the ‘tricks’ that exist to improve our mindset. Unfortunately, no one tells salespeople…

When was the last time you learned something during a sales team meeting? When many of our teams went virtual during the pandemic, we lost that ‘learning by osmosis’ that so many salespeople relied on to learn what was working and what wasn’t. There’s a lot to be learned from overhearing sales calls from our…

“Once you’re flat on the canvas, it doesn’t matter how great you would’ve been in the second round.” The first seconds of any sales call are the worst. The salesperson always knows they’re an interruption, and the prospect always knows they’re being ambushed. It’s that awkwardness that often keeps salespeople doing anything BUT making calls,…

The best sales skills in the world won’t help if you’ve selling to someone who can’t buy. That’s a hard-earned lesson in the field of sales, and unfortunately, most salespeople only half-learn it. They pursue prospects that aren’t a great fit for their product, service, or company, in the hopes that they can overcome quality…

‘Consultative selling’ is a buzzword among salespeople, but few understand how to do it, or the impact it can have on conversion and client retention. Why? Consultative selling means building a customized sales process and custom solutions – and that’s a time-consuming process that can involve dozens or hundreds of individual steps and questions. Yet…

If you’ve seen folks try to prospect on social media, you’ve seen sales done poorly. Meaningless polls (do you like peanut butter or jelly?), spammy messages (book some time on my calendar) and pitches with no context. Yet there are salespeople leveraging social media successfully every day – what are they doing differently? That’s what…

There’s a lot to be said for doing what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it. It creates trust, and it creates customers. So why do so many salespeople suck at it? If we’re only managing a few prospects, it’s easy to remember all the promises we’ve made,…

Tackling a new territory is something every salesperson does at least once during their careers, even if it’s getting established in the territory they’ll be working for decades. Many salespeople are regularly sent into a new market as well – having to research new prospects, develop new relationships and sell to new customers every few…

A term that is little-known in the world of sales is ‘Up Armor.’ However, hidden in that term is a way to turn around just about any sales problem we can encounter. In combat, troops learn quickly if their armor can take what their opponents are throwing at them. If their armor is too weak,…

Salespeople are paid on results – and that is a double-edged sword. Companies need sales to stay in business, but that often leads to salespeople trying to sell as quickly as possible and losing prospects in the process. There has to be a happy medium; moving prospects through a sales process and doing it in…

With sales systems, we have to be willing to take a step back to move forward. Any time I hear a sales manager tell their team about a new requirement, I hear audible groans. Salespeople are attracted to sales because of the freedom it offers, yet managers have to be able to scale success if…

‘Coffee is for closers.’ The hard-sell philosophy might have worked when folks were selling swampland in Florida, but in lengthy sales cycles or those with multiple decision makers it just doesn’t work. The alternative is a lengthy sales cycle and that means plenty of opportunity for a stalled sale. To systemize moving prospects through a…

In today’s world, salespeople are expected to be more than great talkers – they also have to understand how their products work and be able to explain that to potential customers. That’s why salespeople with technical backgrounds are so appealing, but they often come without any background in sales, communication or relationship-building. Salespeople with technical…

Cold calling is one of the most feared events in a salesperson’s day, and even in their career. The chance of connecting is low, and the opportunity for rejection is high. Why is that? After studying more than 10,000 sales calls ourselves, we noticed that most salespeople make the call about them – ‘Let me…

“Do your customers know, like and trust you?” That’s a question that’s been asked hundreds of times, and it’s one of the hardest ones to answer because ‘trust’ is such a hard thing to measure. We know when we trust someone to fulfill their commitments, and once trust disappears it’s very difficult to rebuild it….

Stay in sales long enough, and you’ll encounter problems. Problems finding qualified leads, problems getting them into conversations. Problems getting them to commit to meetings. Problems getting their commitment for next steps. To sales leaders, this often sounds like, ‘our leads are poor quality,’ ‘no one is picking up the phones,’ or ‘folks want prices…

Whether salespeople know it or not, they’re using processes when they sell. Unfortunately, if those processes aren’t systemized, then they’re rarely updated and often hurt sales more than help them. What worked pre-pandemic won’t have the same effect today. In order to ensure we’re capturing what’s working across our pipelines and keeping it up to…

Sales is one of the few career fields where ‘fake it till you make it’ is an actual strategy. Unfortunately, when that technique works it often breeds salespeople who assume they don’t have anything new to learn. Instead of encouraging salespeople to up-level their skills, success unfortunately confirms a false sense of confidence that damages…

When it comes to sales systems, there is no topic salespeople argue about more than automation. Some salespeople love it, some say it costs them sales. Sales leaders understand how it can save time, but many are reticent to use them for fear of turning prospects away or lowering engagement. There’s a middle road, and…

As we interview salespeople around the world, we hear about the need for more prospects, more meetings, more proposals and more sales. What that ultimately comes down to is: More time. Salespeople know this, but they still sit down every day and re-create every conversation and write each email by hand. Those that don’t are…

How many direct messages do you get each day that you ignore or delete? If you’re like most of us, the answer is: Too many. Just because so many folks are mis-using direct messaging as a prospecting method doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, and that open up an incredible opportunity for salespeople willing to leverage…

Salespeople around the world are trying to shorten their sales cycles and sell more quickly. You’ve likely tried all the tricks they do: software, auto-dialers, and email blasts. To truly sell more quickly, we need to stop focusing on how to save ourselves time as salespeople. Instead, according to Joe Malmuth, we should focus on…

As a salesperson, it’s critical for prospects to know your time is as valuable as theirs. One of the biggest time sucks in the world of sales isn’t data entry or chasing down tough-to-reach prospects. Rather, it’s getting ahold of someone and spending time with them, only to discover they’re not the decision maker for…

‘Providing value’ has become a catchphrase in the world of sales, but there’s a massive problem with trying to deliver value in our outreach: Value looks different to every single prospect. Of course, one of the jobs of a salesperson is to discover the individual challenges of their prospects and match up their product or…

The toughest thing about using a system isn’t following a step-by-step plan as most salespeople are great at leveraging those. Instead, the hardest part is having a system to use at all. When salespeople and their leaders think about creating systems, it can become overwhelming. Where to start? With pipeline stages? Outreach campaigns? Call scripts?…

Salespeople spend a lot of time generating conversations, discussing value and developing relationships – but how much time do they spend looking at how well they’re doing all these things? That’s the question we asked with Ian Selbie, a sales trainer who began his career with Apple and holds the title as one of their…

As a salesperson, you’re likely trying sell more, close deals faster, and deliver more value than competitors. And you’re not alone – which is why so many salespeople try to win on price. It’s a strategy that works – until it doesn’t. We’ve all experienced the pain that comes when a prospect pays more for…

“Whoever is first to the field will be fresh for the fight.” – Sun Tzu Ever waited on the phone to ring or emails to come in and wondered why sales were in a slump? You’re not alone. Every salesperson, at one time or another, realizes that running a referral-based business puts our success in…

It’s the unicorn of sales outreach – closing prospects on the first call. A sales leader who has a stellar record of this is Bob Bolton, a man whose career in advertising sales put him at the top of his field. We sat down with Bob and discussed how salespeople could achieve a one-call-close, or…

The more we’re in front of our prospects, the easier it is to stay top of mind and increases the chance they’ll think of us when they’re ready to purchase from us. For years, this has meant salespeople have to make the time to research their prospects, get them on the phone and provide value….

Have you ever gotten a prospect close to becoming a customer and then saw the sale stall as they asked for more time, more information, or needed to check with another decision maker before making a decision themselves? Most salespeople consider these delays part of their sales cycle, but in industries that already have years-long…

The dream of salespeople is to only work with prospects and customers who are easy to close, friendly, and who respect the value you bring to the table. These are ‘profitable prospects,’ and they’re the unicorns that salespeople spend careers pursuing. But what is a ‘profitable prospect’? Is it the one with the most margin,…

We’ve heard that customers have to both know, like and trust us before buying. What if we could start every conversation focused on the most important element: Trust? Developing trust faster with prospects doesn’t take NLP or language tricks. Instead, developing trust faster comes from understanding the struggles our prospects are going through and empathizing….

As a salesperson, have you ever found yourself in a conversation with a prospect and couldn’t seem to get them interested in you, your company or your product or service? It’s a problem that’s plagued the world of sales since the beginning of time. Companies spend millions each year trying to turn it around with…

If you manage a sales team or are the senior member on your squad, you’ve likely been asked to parachute in on an at-risk sale. While you’re not literally strapping a parachute to your back, you are being asked to solve other people’s problems. That may be in the job description of a leader, but…

How many times have you had a great conversation with a prospect, discussed next steps and hung up the phone or left the meeting feeling on top of the world? And how many times did that feeling disappear when you found out the prospect went with another supplier? That problem is exactly the issue we…

Great salespeople are solution providers, but even the best salespeople eventually have to deliver bad news to a prospect or client – delivery delays, supply chain issues, incorrect orders – and what happens when it’s time to deliver bad news can make or break the relationship. If we’re not solution providers even when things go…

In the midst of making calls, sending emails, studying industry trends and responding to inquiries, salespeople are also expected to know what to do and when to do it throughout their day. Unfortunately, hoping salespeople do the right thing at the right time is a recipe for responding to whichever fire is burning hottest. In…

If you’ve been in sales long enough, then you’ve been stopped cold by a prospect. Maybe they asked a question that you stumbled through or had an objection you couldn’t overcome. Sales teams invest a lot of money training their folks to respond to basic questions, but what inevitably happens? The scripts aren’t specific to…

With competition tougher than ever for many salespeople, we’re not only challenged with getting into conversations but also being relevant. As many businesses begin to recover from a year of shutdowns and supply chain issues, they’re looking for partners that not only offer a great product or service, but also those who can guide them…

The worst time to think about the things you’re going to talk about with a prospect is when you’re in a conversation with them. To solve this problem, many sales teams create a list of discovery questions or call scripts that remind them of the things they need to know about a prospect or their…

The most valuable resource salespeople have isn’t their network, their experience, or even the notes in their CRM. According to Jeff Goldberg, who has been in the field of sales and sales training for almost 50 years, the most valuable and under-appreciated resource salespeople have is their integrity. Fortunately, integrity is something every salesperson can…

Salespeople the world over understand that training rarely trains them to create more results. Often the training is out of touch with the goals they’re pursuing, or it doesn’t apply to the type of prospects they have in the pipeline, or maybe it’s using language and scripts that went out with bellbottom pants. Yet we…

In any conversation with a prospect, the most important thing isn’t being brilliant, or providing the cheapest solution. The most important part of a sales conversation is what happens after the salesperson hangs up the phone. More opportunities are lost due to lack of follow-up than any other reason. Think about the last few conversations…

Ever had a day when you went from one sales meeting to another, to another, to another? When we get on a roll, it can seem like we’re running from one sales meeting to another. That used to look like driving from one part of town to another, trying not to break too many speed…

When someone has expressed interest in a company, a stopwatch starts ticking. The prospect is now testing that company to see how responsive they are and what they respond with. Will they get a spammy email or something more personal like a phone call or custom-made video? Salespeople know that the calls we make today…