I had an interesting discussion just the other day about the [putative] rise of Social Selling, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, increase in virtual, rather than physical, sales engagement; and the rush to redeploy field sales resources to inside sales. The topic being discussed was how, or if, a company should adjust its sales strategy to…
They say that a child laughs on average 300 times a day, and an adult just 5 times. If that is true, it is pretty sad. I get how life can catch up with us; but at the end of the day what you see in the mirror is what other people see. If you…
Just because you think your product is awesome doesn’t mean your customers will. I have learned that lesson many times. The customer’s opinion is the only one that matters. As I reflected on our deepening partnership with Salesforce, as announced by Neeracha Taychakoonavudh at Dreamforce, I was reminded of a time when we missed the…
I want to revisit a topic that I wrote about a few years ago about a very dangerous sales forecasting practice, that at its worst can be a terminal illness for a sales person or a sales manager. This disease is still as commonplace as it was when I first wrote about it, but with…
We are always biased. We always see things from our own perspective. We’re focused on protecting our own interests. We get upset when people don’t let us pull out in front of them in traffic and annoyed when someone cuts us off. We get frustrated when the person in front of us takes too long…
Focusing on target customers is critical to improving effectiveness and producing results. Many sellers focus solely on qualification and not on disqualification. While it may seem like semantics, sales professionals need to focus on disqualifying bad deals – opportunities that are not in the ‘sweet spot’. They may be real opportunities – things that would…
