Convincing people to buy from you is sort of like fishing. To catch those fish you need a product or service that someone else needs, a process you work consistently, a hook with the right kind of bait, patience and great timing. When it gets right down to it, your ability to attract clients and close sales is not that much different.Ditch the pitch.If you stop and think about it for a minute, it’s pretty obvious that Mr. o...

In my recent Razor’s Edge podcast, I talked with Robin Saitz, CMO at Brainshark. The focus of our conversation was sales productivity and specifically, we talked about what is behind the sales productivity gap and what companies can do about it. Though we’ve heard through the years from CSO Insights that roughly 52% of salespeople do not achieve quota each year (and that’s in a good economy!), Robin told me that the TAS...

As I write and talk about frequently, to succeed with social selling three things are needed: Strategy, Skills and Execution. Unfortunately, many sellers are jumping straight to tactics without having established an initial plan that they can measure and track against and consistent execution is often poor. I’ve written about these things in the past. Today, I want to focus on the topic of skills.There is a level of noise r...

As a seller, are you responsive? Think carefully about this question.Do you know exactly how long it takes you to respond to email and phone calls from prospective clients?How quickly are you responding to leads that come from the marketing department? Do you respond at all?How often do you have to say someone, “I’ll get back to you.”, because you did not know the answer to their question?What about your proposal creation a...

Service excellence is something that I expect from the companies taking my money for the product or service I purchase from them. Yet, I think of countless interactions with vendors recently that cause me to wonder why companies have such difficulty getting it right.Excellent conceptAt its core, the importance of delivering service excellence is fairly straightforward and easy to understand. Even easier is the clear financi...

At the core of what I believe about success in life is personal accountability and responsibility. This is certainly true in sales. If you are not hitting quota, have you taken the time to evaluate your own actions, attitudes and beliefs? Or, as so often happens, are you blaming the economy, the local market, your boss, the crappy CRM system that was installed, or maybe the prospective buyer who doesn’t call you back? It is...

Utilizing the appropriate social media to tools to improve sales performance represents an investment of time, and depending on the types of tools that you are using, money.A common myth is that social media doesn’t actually work; in terms of driving the sales process forward. It does, IF, you have an open mind, you know what you are doing while participating online and you are very clear about the results you want to achie...

There is fair amount of buzz about a concept called “social selling” (often used synonymously with Sales 2.0, a term coined and trademarked by Nigel Edelshain). Certainly some people will argue that sales, particularly B2B sales, has always depended on a sales reps ability to build a relationship with their potential buyer, which could be viewed as a social activity. Since successful selling has always revolved around relat...

Companies invest sizable chunks of time and money implementing lead generation campaigns that are designed to deliver high potential sales opportunities to their sales force. The idea is that sales activity becomes more focused when reps are responding to qualified leads that have the highest potential for close (as identified by specific factors designed into the led gen campaign). In theory, this is exactly what should ha...

2009 will be a year remembered for many things. Most of them non too positive. Financial meltdowns, rampant greed, thousands put out of work. Fear, negativity, anger and often complete disrespect for other human beings showed up everywhere. For entrepreneurs, it proved tough just trying to make it through, while at the same time companies beat them down on price and strung out the process of paying their bills to boot. Sale...