Sales is the battlefield of business, with unknowns around every corner. If we’re going to win on this battlefield, then we have to stop trying to control every outcome and focus on what we CAN control – ourselves. So how can we ensure that we identify the things we can control on any sales call,…

Ever sold something and immediately regretted it? While the rush of making a sale is great, if we’ve taken on a bad client or sold them something that’s time-intensive to deliver, a dream sale can quickly become a nightmare. Instead of focusing on selling anything to anyone, the highest-performing salespeople don’t cultivate a pipeline full…

You made the sale – congrats! But don’t think that you’re done. Until that check is in the bank, you haven’t completed the sale. In fact, you’ve only just begun. As a salesperson, it’s all too easy to overlook the importance of the money customers owe you. However, managing accounts receivable is vital for any…

In crowded markets, it’s tough to stand out from competitors – especially if what you’re selling is more expensive. Add to that the fact our prospects are more inundated than ever with information and challenges. If we’re not showing up with value, then we will be sent to voicemail and have our emails deleted. However,…

When most of us think of sales, ‘certainty’ isn’t the first word that comes to mind. Sales is a tough industry, buyers are tough to get ahold of, and we’re encountering more stakeholders than ever in every deal. Yet, we have a product or service that makes the lives of our customers better, allowing them…

Every salesperson struggles with it, and it costs some of us our commissions, our careers and even our families. It keeps us up at night or wakes us at 3 a.m. in a cold sweat. It’s what our sales leaders say we must improve if we want to succeed, and it’s the thing we hate…

It’s tough to engage prospects in conversations, and even tougher to convince them they need what we’re selling. Yet there are salespeople who seem to have long conversations with every prospect they speak with, and who drive meetings and sales faster than anyone else. After listening to the results of more than 30,000 sales calls,…

Convincing someone to part with their money is a tough job, but it doesn’t have to be. What makes calling prospects difficult isn’t having a conversation – something each of us do multiple times a day with friends and family – rather, it’s trying to have a conversation while convincing someone to buy something. The…

Getting ahold of decision makers is hard enough, but what’s even harder is having a conversation you thought was going well suddenly go off the rails. There are a lot of reasons a sales conversation can go south, and Bulletproof salespeople don’t ‘hope’ they’ll know what to do when it inevitably happens. Instead of hoping,…

Salespeople spend a lot of time working towards a prospect saying ‘yes’ to the sale. However, the top sales performers in any industry use a different strategy: They’re always looking for reasons to say ‘no’ to a prospect, and to hear ‘no’ as well. Why would a salesperson purposely elicit the word ‘no’ in a…

We all know it’s easier to sell to someone who’s already a customer, but how many of us are systemizing a sales process that keeps customers for a lifetime? Certain industries like insurance, auto sales and realty depend on customers coming back to them again and again – yet they’re still hoping that they convert…

The most stressful moments for most salespeople don’t happen when they’re engaging with a prospect. Instead, they happen in the moments right before the salesperson hops on the phone. Why? It’s because few salespeople do anything to prepare in the moments before the call. It’s surprising how many don’t even look at the name of…

We know discovery is a critical process in sales, and most salespeople have an idea of which questions they need to ask when they get in front of a prospect or have them on the phone. Unfortunately, too many of us use our discovery questions as clubs in the conversation instead of levers. This results…

‘Value’ is an over-used term in selling, because few salespeople understand what it means. That’s because ‘value’ will look different in every industry, in every company, and with every prospect. Does that mean we give up on trying to define it, and more importantly, provide it when selling? Absolutely not, and according to some of…

Ask a salesperson what they’d prefer to do instead of being on the phone or visiting a new prospect and you’ll never be short of excuses. Yes, calling and being in front of new prospects is the exact thing these same salespeople say they’re in the business to do! Why do salespeople struggle so much…

Selling is tough enough when prospects have so much competing for their attention, other salespeople, professional priorities, personal issues. That’s why it’s downright depressing when we find out we lost an opportunity because our own sales process failed. Whether due to a poor handoff or lack of a next step on an account, too many…

‘Adding value’ are popular words in sales, and for good reason – if we’re not adding value to the lives of our prospects and customers, we can’t expect them to care about what we’re selling. You may have a lot of resources available, whether it’s pricing sheets, delivery timetables, product samples, etc. However, the time…

Prospects don’t care what we’re selling until they know we care about them. That means not just taking the time to research their industry, market, and challenges, but also being able to share what prospects don’t know – but should. If we can move beyond asking prospects what’s keeping them up at night and move…

Ever try to sell to someone who was angry? And how did that work out? The best salespeople tend to be the best influencers – and I’m not referring to their Instagram following. The basic function of a salesperson is to help their prospects make decisions, and of course to influence them towards the outcome…

One of the toughest parts of any sales role is trying to learn the ‘company pitch.’ It’s something that every junior salespeople has to memorize and oddly, something senior salespeople don’t seem to use at all. If a ‘pitch’ is so valuable, why do the most successful salespeople not use them? They do, in fact,…

Sales is one of the most stressful careers in any company because it’s our job to encourage people to make decisions. With everything going on in people’s lives, convincing them to prioritize the decision to consider what you’re selling is tough, and it’s why sales experience some of the highest turnovers of any job field….

How many deals have you lost in the last year? And do you know why those deals were lost? Those are questions salespeople often avoid because in this industry, mindset is everything and focusing on lost deals sucks. However, without taking an honest look at where we’re losing deals, we’ll be hoping those issues don’t…

In every industry, the folks who know more about their targets tend to win. Sales is no different – those salespeople that are great at learning about their prospects and their companies are able to craft better solutions. In the military, the process of building a target package or intelligence profile is often the difference…

Have you ever gotten along so well with a prospect that you were afraid of sacrificing the friendship for the business? It’s a common problem with even senior salespeople. In fact, the more history we have with a prospect, the more we tend to avoid tough conversations. However, to manage our pipelines means to be…

Ever spoke with someone who really wanted you to like them?  And did that make you want to have a relationship with them or not? It doesn’t work in social situations, but it’s often the chief strategy of salespeople. Desperate for the sale, they turn on the charm and try to leverage rapport to win…

When was the last time you tried something new in your sales process, even if you were already hitting your sales goals? As we advance in our sales career, it becomes tougher and tougher to improve. Paradoxically, the thing that allowed us to be successful – our willingness to adapt and try new things –…

Once we get the hang of selling, it’s easy to put ourselves on auto-pilot – focusing on the things we’re great at and ignoring or minimizing the areas where were struggling. One lesson we learned in the military was that we were only as strong as our weakest area. In sales, our weakest area may…

One of the scariest things any of us can do is go into an unknown situation where the stakes are high. Where rejection is likely. Where success and failure are on the line. Yet, that’s exactly what we’re asked to do as salespeople every day: Introduce ourselves to strangers and still accomplish our mission. When…

Every salesperson on the planet has an area where their sales typically stall. For some, it’s filling their pipelines with new prospects. For others, it’s overcoming prospect concerns during sales calls. Regardless of where your sales are stalling now, it is possible to create a crystal ball to use throughout your sales cycle; knowing ahead…

We spend a lot of time researching prospects, qualifying them, reaching out and demonstrating that we can help them solve their problems. But if you’ve been selling any length of time, you know that the time between the demonstration of what you sell and getting buyer commitment is where many sales are lost. Prospects don’t…

“I’ll give you a call next week,” are words that salespeople love to hear until they learn to dread them. In the early days of a sales career, we hang up after a great conversation and can’t wait for the phone to ring after the prospect reviews our offer. Then we wait and wait some…

Green Berets are known around the world as high performers, but when I was able to study them on the battlefield, I was surprised to learn they nnever judged themselves on how well they could shoot. They understood their value wasn’t in how effective they were – rather, it was how effective they could make…

Few people wake up thinking, ‘I hope a salesperson calls me today.’ Why is that, when we have a life-changing product or service to offer them? It’s because most salespeople focus on themselves and what they’re selling instead of the challenges our prospects face. The few salespeople who are solution-focused experience more return calls, engagement…

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…

The first question a prospect has to answer before becoming a customer is: “Do I trust this company?” And salespeople, in an effort to accelerate that trust, often try to over-commit and over-deliver. This actually kills more sales than it creates. But let’s back up a bit, because every time a salesperson interacts with a…

In a period of history where almost all of our prospects are struggling, the last thing a salesperson wants to be is another problem to deal with. Unfortunately, that’s exactly how most prospects see us. Why? It’s because salespeople rarely show up with valuable information – solutions that mean our prospects struggle less after talking…

A lot of salespeople can get a prospect close to becoming a client and then drop the ball on the final inches of the race. They may say their prospect didn’t have the budget, another supplier undercut them, it turns out it’s not the right time, etc. Regardless of the reason, it’s a mis-management of…

It’s inevitable that sooner or later, our prospects and clients will go through a time of crisis. Whether that crisis is negative, such as a downturn in their own businesses, or positive, as in a lot of demand and not enough personnel or supplies to deliver, the salespeople who are prepared to be a solution…

In the midst of all the call quotas, meeting goals and closed business salespeople have to manage, it’s easy to hope we remember to mention new products or services we have available. Multi-tasking account management, prospecting for new leads and educating prospects on new ways we can help almost guarantees those new products and services…

Chad Hastings, a sales manager with Alta Equipment, shared a strategy with us that allows sales leaders to hold their salespeople accountable for reaching out to all their accounts – not just the easy ones to do business with. Salespeople don’t exist to sell our products and services as quickly as possible. Rather, they exist…

One of the smartest minds in sales is Jeff Bajorek, and we were able to sit down with him to talk about making sales Bulletproof. One of the chief challenges we discussed was outbound campaigns to convert conversations – a perennial issue in the world of sales. Jeff made it clear that leads are different…

In an interview with David Copeland, we learned that in 2019, his team was slated to attend 96 trade shows to meet prospects had to take a hard pivot in 2020 – only attending 3 trade shows. Thankfully, David’s salespeople were still able to maintain relationships virtually because they remained relevant. The one thing that…

 In an interview with Brian Haug, we discussed the importance of ensuring changes stick in a sales team. Because our salespeople are learning things every day that allows them to better connect with and serve clients, it’s critical that sales leaders take the time to download those lessons for the benefit of the team –…

When salespeople are in an industry with long buying cycles or buying windows, prospects will often weeks or months before they are in a buying mode – and a lot can change in that time. A formerly viable account could lose funding, interest, need or even go out of business altogether! We recently sat down…

It’s a fact that not all buyers are created equal, yet many salespeople spend a lot of time pursuing prospects that either can’t or won’t do business with them. When we sat down with Dale Roznowski, an engineer-turned-sales-leader, we asked him how he advised his salespeople to prioritize their time and decide which prospects actually…

Technology has become ubiquitous in prospecting – salespeople embraced social media, LinkedIn, and auto-responders as sales tools that get results. Unfortunately, few salespeople are leveraging technology throughout their sales cycle to ensure their deals have a higher chance of closing. As Phil Gerbyshak shared with us on our recent livestream series, technology can actually help…

If you’re judging the success of your sales career by how many sales you make, you’re destined to live in feast or famine. You’ll be chasing the next deal in front of you and not planning for long-term revenue. It’s a cycle of pain that will never let you get on top of what does…

While email should only play a small part in our prospecting systems, it is still a great communication channel and should not be ignored. But how do we differentiate our emails from the dozens (or hundreds) of emails our prospects receive? We sat down with a sales legend recently and he told us the only…

In a livestream conversation with Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter,” we discussed one of the key challenges salespeople faces – time management. The most impactful way to make that happen? “Don’t work off a to-do list, work off a calendar,” Mark said. Whether that looks like phone calls, emails, social media messages and even old-school…

There are hundreds or great books, blogs, podcasts and courses on sales tactics, processes and strategies. Unfortunately, few – if any – talk about how to make sure salespeople actually apply them. None of them share how to turn those great strategies into systems. For two decades, I’ve been traveling the world and studying teams…