Three-Step Plan to Abolish Excuses and Usher in Sales Success Let’s face it. Too often salespeople have excuses (or what they call reasons) associated with their lack of performance. Salespeople may tell you they are too busy servicing existing clients. Or, that a competitor is undercutting price, that they aren’t receiving enough leads from marketing efforts. Or maybe, supply chain issues prevent them from getting prospects to move forward. But bottom-line, the goals still aren’t met... by ..read more

Are You Making Enough Eye Contact on Video Calls? Are you making enough to allow for a relationship to develop? Or are you creating barriers to that relationship through your sporadic or minimal attempts?  Because in addition to helping you quickly build a relationship, direct eye contact also conveys confidence, friendliness, truthfulness, and approachability.  In other words, qualities you can’t afford not to express in sales!.. Most people vastly over-estimate the amount of  ... by ..read more

LinkedIn® Levers: Your Ten-Minute Battle Plan How much do you really know about … Add those numbers up and you get twenty, a number that, as it happens, rounds out to approximately the number of working days available to sales professionals in a given month. Here’s a simple, powerful three-step idea for you and your team that will enable you to take full advantage of that intriguing coincidence... Following this simple plan, you can identify critical information that ... by ..read more

Seven Ways To Sabotage Sales Success You have to wonder why so many salespeople are not achieving quota when there is a boatload of information “out there” informing salespeople how to be successful in life, business and sales... It’s not lack of knowledge that holds salespeople back. It’s often sabotaging behaviors that impact their success. Here are seven that I’ve observed from being a former Vice President of Sales and working with hundreds of sales teams... by ..read more

When Your Customer Experience Hits a “Bump in the Road” One of our faithful subscribers sent in a question. While he’s in the hospitality industry, this could apply to any type of business. There have most likely been times that many of us have fallen short in  . It could be an isolated incident, which is easy to fix. But what happens when it becomes a trend? With that in mind, here’s his question, followed by my answer  I would love to ..read more

Is it Noise … or News? We have more information available to us than ever, both personally and professionally. Colleges and universities offer degrees in data science and analytics that didn’t exist 15 years ago. Success in the short term and long term will be influenced by our ability to assess informational value. We must learn now to look at information in an analytical way to help us make better decisions. That sounds both important and hard because it is. But let’s reframe it to help us get a better ... by ..read more

3 reasons why gratitude in leadership is essential to success a simple “thank you” can make amazing things happen. Productivity goes up. Sales increase. Retention improves, and so does recruitment of top talent... “I bet you can already feel your energy raised just thinking about gratitude,” said Bea Wray, Vistage speaker, author and innovation expert... Wray is a strong advocate of the thank-you note and buys thank-you cards by the hundreds. When she ran a nonprofit served by more than 80 companies, Wray encouraged beneficiaries to ... by ..read more

I Was Neglecting My Customer Relationships “How do I ask for a referral from customers I haven’t spoken with in two years?” That’s what a client asked me a couple years ago, and I was baffled by his revelation. How can smart, experienced sales reps let their customer relationships wither?.. Now I know why, because I’ve been guilty of it myself. I was over-the-top busy last year with business I hadn’t expected. It was a pandemic, and businesses were struggling with managing remote sales teams and “pivoting” their focus to survive. My phone started ... by ..read more

For a Healthy Sales Pipeline, Start with Strategic Prospecting Think about the top sales performers you know. If you spend a day in their life, it’s likely you’ll recognize a common theme: They are constantly tending to the quality and quantity of opportunities in their sales pipeline... When it comes to pipeline management, two habits are central to success:  balanced prospecting and daily pipeline management.  Let’s first define pipeline management. It is the uncovering of opportunities in ... by ..read more

How to Ask for a Referral You’ll never get the referrals you don’t ask for. There are plenty of ways to ask, but the most important thing is  ... Looking to build your confidence for getting referrals? I’ll walk you through each step in my new Masterclass:   From who to ask, how/when to ask, and what to say, I’ve included it all–in detail– so you can finish the course confident that you  get referrals. Find out ... by ..read more