You are in an operational role, where your job is to execute what your salesperson sells. Occasionally, a salesperson asks you to join them on a discovery call or a presentation. You are being asked to join this meeting because the client’s operations people will have questions that the salesperson can’t answer as well as you can ..read more

Since forever, salespeople have been told, occasionally taught, and less frequently trained to use good questions. Despite this universal advice, most salespeople fail to ask powerful questions because they don’t have them. When sales managers talk about sales questions, they suggest more open-ended questions and fewer closed-ended questions. While that’s better than nothing, there are other, more powerful types of questions ..read more

Recently, Andy Paul shared with me that the average win rate in sales is 17 percent. That means it must be nearly impossible for most salespeople to reach their sales targets and goals. Losing 83 percent of opportunities, whether they are real or pretend, isn’t an effective strategy. Creating good opportunities takes time and energy, losing them is tragic ..read more

The decision-maker sitting across from me was explaining how every company in my industry had failed him. He disclosed his “problem” and his “pain points,” just as I was hoping. You know that feeling that suggests you are going to have an easy time winning the client’s business? I was certain I was winning this deal. I gave him my legacy approach presentation all about why he should buy from my company ..read more

When you are building a sales force or a sales team, you will hire people that have been trained by other sales organizations. The range of different sales training will go from no training to a one-day sales training to a professional level of training that included a development plan and coaching ..read more

Are you tired of mediocre results and missed targets?  ..read more

One outcome of solution selling was that sales organizations and their teams began to believe that their solution was what would win them deals. With a blind faith that their solution was the best choice for their clients, they identified the client’s problem and offered their solution, positioning it against a competition’s solution. There are still true believers who are faithful to their solution, even though it counts less than it did in the past ..read more

“You can’t learn to be good at sales, it’s just something you’re naturally good at ..read more

Social selling promised sales organizations they would no longer need to make cold calls to create new opportunities. When this turned out to be false, many sales organizations turned to inbound marketing to fill their B2B sales pipeline ..read more

In recent posts here, I have suggested that success in sales is going to require professional expertise. As the uncertainty in our environment increases, buyers and decision-makers are hesitant to make changes that would improve their results, worrying they might make things worse ..read more