I was “blessed” with the opportunity last year to look for a job. It seems like in the tech industry it’s a matter of when and not if. So the process began. Update the LinkedIn profile, check. Update my resumes and cover letters, check. Start networking and bugging everyone, double check. And low and behold invites for interviews started to happen. Good times, or was it? Crazy Interviews. I’ve always prided myself in my ability to interview well. I prepare, do background checks on the company and interviewee… look for common ground, and have a pretty good handle on what the job entails and how ..read more

Sales engineering is truly an art-form. To be awesome, a sales engineer needs to invest effort into the technology, the business opportunity, and most importantly their personal style. I like to say they need to be left and right brained. Technical, creative, personable comes to mind. They also need to gain the trust of those they are partnered with and presenting to. Here are my 5 points of discussion of becoming an awesome sales engineer. Top 5 traits of an awesome sales engineer. They are integral part of the sales team. They should never present themselves as a sales person. They need to ..read more

We’ve all had them and maybe we were one ourselves. Maybe we still are? Managers that simply could not let go of any control. This goes for owners of businesses as well. You know the type… they’re pretty sure no one can do the job as well as them. They have the “If you want a job done right you have to do it yourself” philosophy. I wish I could tell you this applies to new managers only… unfortunately it doesn’t. Three Issues of Micromanagers and Control Freaks Issue #1: If a manager has become too important to the end result that if anything happens to them the company suffers… big problem. T ..read more

Somewhere along the way sales professionals thought they had found the infamous “silver bullet” for sales success. “If I just Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin I will have thousands of sales easily!” Question… when has marketing using email, faxing, or mailers ever worked that way? Isn’t social media the same? You’re return will always be fractions of a percent for the effort. Always has, always will be… and you know what? That’s o.k. So, Is social media a waste of time? Law of Large Numbers and Social Media I first became aware of LOLN with my first sales job as an insurance agent for Metropoli ..read more

Just Business… Nothing Personal… Of course business is personal. The concept that somehow when we call something “business” the personal touch to the end user and/or potential customer becomes less important is just wrong. I don’t care if you’re the owner of a small “mom and pop” organization or the CEO of a global conglomerate all business is personal or at least it should be. Talking with one of my daughters some time ago I realized that she and her circle of friends really hate “big business”. There were many reasons for this with most of them, as a self-proclaimed capitalist, hard for me t ..read more

The sales industry as a whole has always been a transitional career move/path environment. Today it’s more than ever. Managers, Owners, Presidents, and CEO’s are short fused with their sales teams. Sales members are looking at the proverbial “grass is greener” across all industries in response. A great time to hire and get that sales team dreamed of. Or so I thought. Making calls, networking, job board listings produced some wonderfully qualified candidates. Resumes full of talent and capability. There was no way this wasn’t going to work. My actual attempts to hire top sales talent seemed to ..read more

The quickest way to demotivate a sales team member is to screw with their paycheck. Yet so many times a company will build a compensation plan and commission statement that leads to this. They are outdated, vague, confusing, assuming trust with numbers, and so on. Why? It is imperative that this never happens. Here is a basic outline of a compensation plan with some reasons things get iffy on commission statements. Sales Compensation Plans. Sales compensation plans are built with company goals in mind. If designed correctly they should be a motivator for the sales team members as well. A win-w ..read more

No matter how great an organization is there are always customer issues. It could be a misunderstanding, personality conflict, a service level issue, or simply customer remorse. Many times all of these at once. As the original relationship builder, the sales professional needs to be able to work with customer issues or as I like to fondly call them, customer heat. Customer heat usually comes after perceived issues, real or not, haven’t really been dealt with. At least to their satisfaction. Many times there’s this believe from the salesperson that if they ignore the complaint long enough it go ..read more

As one of the original 5+ million that purchased the Kindle Fire a new tablet love affair has transpired. I now own 3, one for each member of my family, and they’re perfect to carry around for all our personal and business duties. The later being a huge unexpected surprise. Below are 10 sales and business applications that I recommend. 1.) TextMe – Free Text and Calls – FREE Link: TextMe – Free Text and Calls My two cents: A powerful sales and business phone texting product for the Kindle Fire. I use it a lot for international connections. Description from TextMe: TextMe is a cross-platform co ..read more

I would constantly hear the term “a teaching opportunity” any time someone made a mistake. At first this kind of bugged me to be honest. It seemed like a kinder, gentler way of saying they screwed up without saying it. As an upfront guy this tactful approach seemed… well… weak. But then as I thought about it more it actually made a lot of sense. These issues/problems should be times for teaching opportunities, not scolding’s, if you’re truly trying to build the best sales team possible. My training’s typically consisted of announcements, training, reporting (accountability), and success storie ..read more