Welcome to SALES with ASLAN, a weekly podcast hosted by ASLAN Co-founders Tom Stanfill and Tab Norris, geared at helping sales professionals and sales leaders eliminate the hard sell. At the end of the day, we believe that selling is serving. ASLAN helps sellers make the shift from a ‘typical’ sales approach, to one that makes us more influential because we embrace the truth that the customer’s receptivity is more important than your value prop or message. The goal of these interviews is to spotlight various experts in the world of sales and sales leadership – sharing informational stories, te ..read more

Your reps may be great at peeling back the layers of each organization to find the right decision-maker, but how do they overcome objections and a meeting? Chances are there is a gatekeeper that is ready to throw up one objection after another, all in an effort to filter out the riff-raff and not waste the decision-makers time. Gatekeepers are typically great at their job and have seen just about every tactic out of the 1990s sales for dummies playbook. The truth – traditional sales strategies and tactics no longer work. That might be a hard pill to swallow, but customers have more information ..read more

The prospect is a great fit. Check. The prospect’s needs and challenges are clearly understood. Check. The rep has gone out of their way to make the process easy. Check. The deal should be a slam dunk – right? Sales reps can do everything right, and yet overcoming objections can still creep into the equation as they enter the negotiation phase of the sales process. Tension builds, a line in the sand is drawn, and poof, the prospect walks away. If this sounds familiar, it should. It happens every day in the sales world. Instead of learning from their mistakes, most sales reps will simply take i ..read more

Welcome to SALES with ASLAN, a weekly podcast hosted by ASLAN Co-founders Tom Stanfill and Tab Norris, geared at helping sales professionals and sales leaders eliminate the hard sell. At the end of the day, we believe that selling is serving. ASLAN helps sellers make the shift from a ‘typical’ sales approach, to one that makes us more influential because we embrace the truth that the customer’s receptivity is more important than your value prop or message. The goal of these interviews is to spotlight various experts in the world of sales and sales leadership – sharing informational stories, te ..read more

“Selling doesn’t begin until the customer objects.” Sound familiar? For decades, sales have been about closing at all costs and these archaic catchphrases have become commonplace among sales leaders. While they are ingrained in the fabric of the sales landscape, they have become detrimental to the success of sales teams across the world. As buyers become more educated and options continue to expand, outdated sales tactics are making it more difficult for salespeople to build relationships and close business with any consistency. The challenge for many leaders is that we were taught these princ ..read more

Let’s face it, sales teams spend countless hours each year role-playing, analyzing customer discussions, and more – all in an effort to improve their effectiveness at overcoming objections. For decades hard sales techniques have been the prevailing strategy, but as buyers continue to become more educated about the products they are buying and the competition continues to grow, a different approach is needed. Before we dive into common objections, we must first understand why reps fail to overcome them despite available resources. Why Reps Struggle With Objections With so much time focused on o ..read more

Welcome to SALES with ASLAN, a weekly podcast hosted by ASLAN Co-founders Tom Stanfill and Tab Norris, geared at helping sales professionals and sales leaders eliminate the hard sell. At the end of the day, we believe that selling is serving. ASLAN helps sellers make the shift from a ‘typical’ sales approach, to one that makes us more influential because we embrace the truth that the customer’s receptivity is more important than your value prop or message. The goal of these interviews is to spotlight various experts in the world of sales and sales leadership – sharing informational stories, te ..read more

“If you build it, they will come.” We aren’t talking about a cornfield in Iowa, but the statement rings true in sales, nonetheless. This is especially true when discussing building rapport, and for sales leaders looking to build a robust referral pipeline, it simply cannot be overlooked. There is no hiding the fact that decision-makers are constantly being bombarded with the next great solution, day in and day out. The increase in sales traffic is a direct result of the globalization of the marketplace. Similar products that were once only targeting regional customers now have the ability to e ..read more

Referrals are the golden goose of sales leads and prospects. They come prepackaged with a seal of approval from a trusted source, they already have an idea of the type of solution you provide, and they can move through the sales process faster than prospective clients that are cultivated through cold outreach. Recent studies have shown that around 85% of decision-makers start the buying process with a referral. Despite the overwhelming majority of prospects starting the buying process with a referral, only around 2.5% of business closed is sourced from this amazing resource. What should be a s ..read more