If You Keep Doing What You’re Doing, You’ll Keep Getting What You’re Getting
This is my way of paraphrasing a famous statement made by Albert Einstein. And I think it applies to managers and owners of sales-driven companies. Over the 43 years that I have coached these companies, I’ve observed that many entrepreneurs and owners who are frustrated with the results their sales and marketing efforts are producing. …
How to Coach Your Sales Team for Superior Performance
One of the problems with many sales teams today is the sales leader or sales manager became a manager because of his/her selling proficiency, not because of their coaching and managing ability. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that very few (if any) colleges and universities offer a four-year diploma in sales management. In…
How to Conduct Profitable Sales Meetings
Sales Meetings vs. Selling Time Sales meetings are the bane of many sales representatives. That’s because they perceive they don’t get any value out of these weekly exercises. The next time you plan a sales meeting, I’d like you to take into consideration the value of the selling time that is required to conduct the…
The New Normal Is Coming
Based on recent business publication reports, approximately 60% of the American workforce has indicated that they want to continue to work from home after the pandemic. This is going to force an immense change in the way we sell. Access to decision-makers will, I predict, become even more challenging due to the fact that they…
You’re Using Your Great-Grandfather’s Sales Process
The vast majority of American business-to-business salesforces are using a sales process that was first documented in 1893. I have read the 1893 edition of the NCR sales training manual and, tragically, it describes the process that many (if not most) American business-to-business salesforces are utilizing. Impact on Sales I also know that this outdated…
What’s the Difference Between Pilots and Sales Professionals?
I know that title might seem to be a little bit odd but, when it comes to recurrent training, pilots outperform salespeople hands down. For whatever reason, the sales profession has the perception that getting trained once is enough for a salesperson to be proficient throughout his/her career. Nothing could be further from the truth.…
Root Cause Analysis
Attempting to dramatically change/improve the productivity of your salesforce, without conducting a thorough root cause analysis, is an exercise in hoping that your efforts will produce positive results. In my experience, too many sales improvement initiatives are launched as a result of a senior executive saying (sometimes in a very loud voice), “Do something about…
Do the Math
There are many numbers, or metrics, that need to be monitored in order to optimize the results of your selling efforts. Most sales professionals spend much of their time trying to generate leads or, in other words, they’re trying to fill their sales funnel. Obviously, that’s important. But what would happen to your top and…
How WAS Next Quarter?
No, I am not using bad grammar. I worded the title to this article deliberately, because I wanted to emphasize the fact that most sales managers can’t predict the future results of their team’s current efforts due to the fact that very few managers have documented, defined and metrically managed processes in place. Without metrics,…
The Catch-22 of Recurring Revenue
One of the significant contributors to revenue plateauing in companies that deal with their customers in a recurring transaction mode is this catch-22. Specifically, once a salesperson has a portfolio or a book of customers that he/she is serving, they can frequently become so busy taking care of those existing customers that they don’t have…
You’re Not That Different
Over the course of the past forty years, I’ve worked with thousands of business owners, CEOs and/or high-level executives to facilitate the implementation of new, more effective and profitable selling processes. Many of them, probably ranging into the hundreds, have shared that their business is absolutely and totally unique from other businesses. I find that,…
Let’s Get Emotional
No, not that kind of emotion; but the emotion that exists when you ask a prospect to change his/her vendors, products and/or business processes. You see, although the topic is frequently glossed over, I believe that natural human emotion is an inevitable component of virtually every sale. For instance, I believe that your prospects are…
Are You Training the Wrong People???
In forty years of conducting professional sales training, I’ve learned that frequently the problem with a company’s ability to produce profitable revenue does not rest in the hands of the salespeople. Rather, the suppression of sales, albeit inadvertent, is a function of sales process bottlenecks. You see, all salesforces have processes. Most of these processes…
Do You Employ a Sales Saboteur?
Many entrepreneurial organizations that rely on a sales team have fallen prey to a phenomenon that I’ve observed over the years – specifically, the sales saboteur. This person is a sales professional who, for a variety of reasons, believes that he/she doesn’t need to comply with policies and procedures within the company. They actually behave…
If They’re Not Talking, You’re Not Selling
It’s an old axiom in sales that the best salespeople listen better than they talk. I’ve noticed that some salespeople confuse the ability to recite volumes and volumes of information regarding their product and service as selling. In fact, all they’re doing is talking. Unfortunately, if you are not listening, then you can’t learn what…
Your Sale Has Stalled… Now What???
In the past few weeks, I’ve received over a dozen requests from salespeople regarding what to do when their sale has stalled. The symptoms of a stalled sale are as follows: Your customer does not respond to your phone calls and voicemails as they once did. You see, at one point in time, you and…
Sales Team Segmenting
In my experience, all sales teams can benefit by segmenting into three compartments. This assumes, of course, if you have more than two salespeople (LOL). The segments are the top twenty percent, the middle sixty percent, and the bottom twenty percent. Twenty percent of all salespeople are the top producers. These are the men and women…
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The New Reality of Prospecting
During the course of my sales career and my sales coaching career, I’ve seen traditional prospecting strategies – canvassing, networking, cold-calling, et cetera – become increasingly less effective. As a matter of fact, most salespeople do their best to avoid prospecting because they know, based on their experience that it does not produce the desired…
How to Hire Your First Sales Rep…Profitably!
During the course of my sales career and my sales coaching career, I’ve seen traditional prospecting strategies – canvassing, networking, cold-calling, et cetera – become increasingly less effective. As a matter of fact, most salespeople do their best to avoid prospecting because they know, based on their experience that it does not produce the desired…
Consideration Rate – The Missing Metric
The most important and most frequently overlooked metric, as it pertains to business-to-business marketing, is consideration rate. Simply stated, consideration rate is the percentage of desirable sales opportunities that, at minimum, consider you. For instance, if in your market there will be 1,000 decisions made next quarter and you are providing quotes to 100 potential…
Appropriate Person Prospecting
Recently, one of my client’s salespeople told me that he was having no luck cold-calling. I role-played with him, and his presentation was very good. That wasn’t the problem. Doing a deeper dive, we discovered that the vast majority of the people that he contacted (if he contacted them at all) were “not interested!” He…
Your Feet Are Too Small!
No, this isn’t an article about buying or selling shoes. Rather, the reference that I make in the title is to the size of your marketing footprint. In today’s very crowded, very competitive sales arena, the team that has the best and biggest marketing footprint is, more often than not, the team that gets the…
Selling Versus Telling
There seems to be an age-old debate regarding the differences between selling and telling. When I make sales calls with my clients’ salespeople, I’ve noted an increase in the number of sales calls which are inappropriately identified as “selling”. More often than not, these people are telling. They tell the customer about their products or…
Sales Compensation with Consequences
The Missing Link for Predictable Performance Countless hours, dollars and efforts have been put into creating and recreating sales compensation plans. Management frequently says things like, “If I worked for me, I’d be making a ton of money!” We mistakenly feel that creating a comp plan that rewards sales success is the best way to…
Forget Your ABCs (Always Be Closing)
The title of this article refers to a cliché from the old school of selling. “Always Be Closing” was actually made famous in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). As a sales strategy, it worked very well at one point in time. But, those times have come and gone. Today’s buyer is much more sophisticated than…
It’s Training Time Again
Historically, many companies embrace sales training strategies during the first quarter of most years. This is a great way to kick off the New Year, re-motivate the team, as well as put in place some sound principles to help the team sell more by selling more effectively. Following, please find a checklist for you to…
What’s Your Plan, Stan?
I’m paraphrasing a line from Paul Simon’s 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, which I’m sure most of you readers are too young to remember. But, it is that time of year when salespeople need to start developing a plan for the next year. Unfortunately, and I probably should say tragically, this is the time…
9 Ways the CEO Screws Up Sales
In many of the consulting engagements that I’ve had over the past thirty-nine years, the real sales productivity obstacle is the CEO. Now, I don’t pretend for a minute to say that CEOs and/or business owners are deliberately sabotaging themselves. But, nonetheless, their actions contribute to persistent underperformance of the salesforce. Following are the actions…
Time for a Speed Test
The speed test that I’m referencing is the speed at which you and/or your organization respond to customer inquiries. Recent studies show that your probability of closing business drops considerably when the delay of responding to an inquiry is as little as a few minutes. As a matter of fact, some studies show that your…
Managing the Aging Salesforce
As my generation (the baby boomers) age, this topic seems to be coming up more frequently than ever before. CEOs have asked me many times, “How do I motivate my senior salespeople?” Or, another version of the same question is, “How do I keep them in the game?” Before I answer that question, let’s take…
Whatever You Do, Don’t Do This
The “this” that I’m talking about is the practice that I’ve seen MSPs and IT consultants repeat many times. Tragically, each repetition costs the MSP and/or IT consultant a ton of cash. The behavior that I’m talking about is the result of success that the MSP has had. Ironically, the more successful small MSPs are,…
Vital Steps for Sales Success in 2015
This article is going to address some numbers that most salespeople and business owners overlook. But, these are truly the vital numbers, or metrics, that will spell tremendous success for you and/or your team in 2015. Most of us recall the old mantra of “calls plus demos equals sales”. And, that’s true, but it is…
Stop Training Your Sales Team!!
The headline of this article may sound like blasphemy from a sales trainer who has over 38 years of experience training salespeople, but it is a heartfelt suggestion. When many CEOs and business owners see revenue problems, they default to a statement like “Let’s get some sales training going.” Whereas, in reality, I believe the…
GIL CARGILL NOMINATED TO SALES LEAD MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION’S TOP 50 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE IN 2014
November 11, 2014 – Los Angeles, California – Cargill Consulting Group, Inc. announced that Gil Cargill, Founder & CEO, has been nominated as one of the “50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management” for 2014, in the Sales Lead Management Association’s annual election. James W. Obermayer, CEO of the SLMA, said, “We have over…
The Needle Is in the Haystack… Find It!
I think the headline of this article accurately reflects the hope of most prospecting efforts. Regardless of what you and your team sell, if you’re engaged in prospecting as it has been taught for decades, then you are directing your team to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. This thought hit me after a…
CEOs Make Lousy Sales Managers
That’s right; my observation is that most CEOs manage their organization’s sales and marketing processes incorrectly. I hasten to point out that this is not a criticism of CEOs, but it is a reflection on the lack of formal sales management education that is present in most higher-learning institutions. As a matter of fact, how…
Sales Is Still a Numbers Game
But, the numbers that you need to monitor and measure have changed dramatically, and I do mean dramatically. Back in my early days of selling for IBM, one of our management’s mantra was “calls plus presentations equals sales; and that worked. But, in today’s world, there are many other metrics that need to be monitored,…
Bad Data + Bad Decisions = Bad Sales
Sales executives have perennially shown anxiety regarding the quality of data available to them. Questions like “Should we hire more salespeople?” or “Should we get more leads?” are constantly revolving around in the minds of those professionals responsible for managing sales forces and sales processes. I believe that most of these decisions are made with…
Sales Manager or Cheerleader
That’s right; a sales manager who does not manage based on process and metrics is relegated to the role of a cheerleader. He/she will say things like “work harder” or “work smarter”. All of those exhortations are nothing but a cheerleading type of motivating statements. In order to compete consistently in today’s world, a sales…
Your Mother Taught You to Avoid Strangers… and That Was Darn Good Advice When We Were Children
We were taught that strangers meant danger and that we should avoid strangers at all times. That was great advice from Mom, but it’s horrible advice for an entrepreneur trying to build his/her business. In fact, in order to grow your business, you must talk to strangers. That’s where many entrepreneurs start the process of…
Running Faster Won’t Help
I’ve noticed a trend over the past few years of entrepreneurs working harder, longer and faster in hopes that they would set an example and their team would follow them. This is a flawed strategy from the start. By running faster, harder and working longer, all you’re doing is exhausting yourself. That exhaustion frequently manifests…
I sat in a time machine last week
No, more accurately, I should say I sat in a time capsule. You see, I needed to borrow a desk and a PC and was near a friend’s company. He graciously allowed me to spend some time at the desk of one of his salespeople who was out of town. I became aware that I…
9 Ways to Improve Your Sales | Convert More Traffic
In last week’s installment, I talked about ways in which you can increase the amount of traffic that you and your team work with. Please recall that I define traffic as individuals who come to your website seeking information and/or a solution. Traffic can also be defined as people that attend your webinars, lunch-and-learns, tradeshow…
Nine Ways To Improve Traffic – Driving Traffic
In the preface that I published last week, I talked about the fact that you and your sales team need to be very clear regarding the results that are produced by your products and services when a customer contracts with you. If you don’t understand the quantity of results (as measured by the client) and…
The Preface
Welcome to my nine-week sales acceleration program. During the next nine weeks, this newsletter will publish one chapter from a book that I am developing. Our overarching purpose in writing this book is to help the 21st-century sales professional understand that the rules of the road have clearly changed and that our old strategies and…
Nine Ways to Improve Your Sales
In order to kick off 2014 in the best way possible, I’ve been asked by many of my clients to document our unique method for improving sales. Candidly, there is more information than I can put into one easy-to-read article, so I’ve broken it down into the nine steps that we at Cargill Consulting Group…
Director of First Impressions
This is one of the most important, lowest paid and most frequently overlooked job descriptions in most organizations. I refer to all customer-facing, non-sales employees, who have an opportunity to talk to your customers, as directors of first impressions. I’m sure this has happened to you more than once: You called an organization with a…
You Can’t Buy Customers… But You Can Buy Leads
I’ve always found it interesting that the people that talk to us about our Autopilot Prospecting service have almost a subconscious calculation going on. In other words, when they talk to us – and, I’m sure, when they talk to other lead-generating / prospecting companies – there is a calculus occurring in their minds that…
What Undercover Boss Teaches Us
My wife and I have, on occasion, watched the TV show “Undercover Boss“. If you’re not familiar with this show, the premise is that the CEO or President of the company will disguise him/herself and work undercover in the job, side by side with employees within their company. The show has a very humanistic flavor…
You Can’t Teach Ambition
Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of believing that they can turn someone who has little or no ambition into an extremely ambitious person. This is a common philosophical mistake that I see engrained in the creation of many sales compensation programs. The entrepreneur would say something like, “If I worked for me, I would be…
It’s a Numbers Game
It’s an old cliché that prospecting is a numbers game. This is very true, but not enough of us know what the real numbers are. You see, as I said in an earlier article, you must make two sales to get a new account. The first sale is the sale of an appointment to discuss…
Stop the Prospecting Insanity
As my title implies, I believe that most business-to-business sales forces today utilize prospecting strategies and tactics that are just insane. If you believe in the traditional definition of insanity as doing something repeatedly in hopes of a different outcome, then you must agree that most sales forces are prospecting repeatedly in hopes of a…
The Most Important and Most Overlooked Sales Metric
Many companies manage their sales process from the backend forward. In other words, they measure the dollars that are produced by the process and make the assumption (and it is an assumption) that the process is working if the dollars are, relatively speaking, acceptable. I emphasize the phrase “relatively speaking” due to the fact that…
We’re Not in a Break/Fix World Anymore
I’m liberally paraphrasing from the movie, The Wizard of Oz, but Dorothy told her pet that they weren’t in Kansas anymore. Some IT consultancies believe that the day of the break/fix business plan will continue or, even, will resurrect itself. I’m here to tell you that it won’t. As the reliability of technology increases and…
Change Your Name Please
What’s in a name? The answer is: Everything. One of the biggest problems facing the MSP profession is the name of the profession, MSP. What does that mean to the average business man or woman? Obviously, to insiders it stands for Managed Service Provider. But, you see, we don’t sell to insiders; we sell to…
The First Sale
One of the biggest problems that I see in selling both high-tech and low-tech products and services is the prospecting strategies utilized by today’s sales teams. You see, more often than not, these teams completely ignore the first sale. The first sale is the sale that is required to get a prospect to invest time…
Quick…Grab your business card
No, I’m serious. Grab your business card and take a look at it. Does it present the image that you’d like? Does it communicate a unique value proposition with regard to doing business with you and your team? I’m writing this because I came back from speaking at the recent ASCII Success Summit in Austin,…
Time Kills All Deals
This is a cliché, but it is so true. Click the link below to enjoy a three-minute video wherein I share some strategies for overcoming the procrastination problem that tends to cause some salespeople to avoid following up in the frequency or intensity that is needed in today’s marketplace. HOW TO RUIN A HOT LEAD…
That Was Then, This Is Now
At a recent conference, the owner of an IT consulting firm approached me and started a discussion regarding the challenges he and his team are having finding new customers. To sum up the conversation, it became clear that prospecting was something that he did not need to do in the early days of his business.…
One Call Does Not Do It All
There was a time when one phone call would secure an appointment for a salesperson. I can personally recall many times where I Photo credit: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ would spend the day “dialing for dollars” (a.k.a. prospecting) and end the day with a good number (10-15) of appointments for the following week. Those days, sadly, are gone.…
Sometimes You Need a Trojan Horse
If you remember your Greek history, the Trojans were able to invade an enemy city by hiding in a Trojan horse which was brought Trojan horse in Canakkale, Turkey (Photo credit: Wikipedia) inside of the gates. Once on the inside, the Trojans were able to accomplish their goals. This story reminds me of the challenges…
The Cold Facts about Cold Calling
I wrote this post to present some facts, as I know them, regarding the process of cold-calling. Rather than present my opinions, I’d like you to draw your own conclusions based on the facts associated with the time-honored process of cold-calling. First, a brief history lesson: History Of Cold Calling Cold-calling, as we practice it…
Sales and Football Are Both Games of Inches
If you have ever listened to any football games, the commentators inevitably speak about the fact that games and frequently championships are won by inches. The same applies to sales. Obviously, we aren’t running a ball up and down a field. But small increments of improvement can produce huge changes in your top and bottom…
Why Cheap Prices Will Destroy Your Business
Many of the MSPs, VARs and IT consultants that I encounter seem to be hell-bent on lowering their prices. Their focus, unfortunately and tragically, seems to be on providing superior service at a price lower than the other guy. This race to the basement, as far as prices and fees go, is a business-killer. Let’s…
The Myth of the Rolodex
It is almost an age-old cliché that many managers and CEOs want to hire salespeople who have a “good rolodex“. Unfortunately, many of these decision-makers are duped by this old-school philosophy. In my experience, a good rolodex is a measure of a salesperson’s potential in very few industries. If your company sells insurance, financial planning…
How to Build an MSP Sales Force from Scratch
One of the common mistakes that I’ve observed in the MSP community is the mistake of hiring salespeople based on their alleged experience. I use the word alleged deliberately due to the fact that many salespeople in the MSP world are very good at getting hired but not quite as good at doing the job…
Do You Suffer from Funnel Blindness?
Funnel blindness is a phenomenon that affects many salespeople and their employers. As the name implies, once opportunities go into the funnel, they are to some degree hidden from the view of management as well as the salesperson. Opportunities that go into the funnel prematurely are the most significant contributors to this problem. In other…
Educational Marketing: What Is It? Why Do You Need It?
One of the shifts in the buying process that has occurred in the 21st century is the fact that our prospects come to us with more information about our products, services and competitors than ever before. Back in the early days (some call them the “good old days”), prospects needed to talk to a sales…
Three Magic Words
There are three magic words that, at the end of the day, spell success or failure for your marketing effort: reach, frequency, and repetition. Reach simply speaks to the number of potential buyers that you reach at any given time. For instance, if there are 10,000 decision-makers/influencers in your market, how many of those people…
Your Sales Problems Are in the Mirror
That’s a phrase that I shared with a gentleman that I met on an airplane recently. During the course of a coast-to-coast flight, he ranted and complained about the poor quality of his sales team. In asking him some questions, it became apparent that his lack of leadership was causing the problems with the sales…
What’s Up With That?
During the course of the past week, I have taken phone calls from sales representatives of various companies. I need to point out that these companies are organizations which I found on the web and completed their information request form. I asked for their salespeople to contact me. Now, I hasten to point out that…
What are Your Proposals Saying?
In the course of coaching my MSP clients, I regularly review their proposals. The proposals that are being published today by our industry really are not good selling proposals. Sorry folks, I don’t mean to be blunt, but that’s the truth. Most proposals that are being circulated today do not address the comparison in a…
Word of Mouth Prospecting
I’m becoming incrementally alarmed at the number of salespeople and/or solo entrepreneurs that really believe that word of mouth prospecting is the primary strategy that they will use in 2013 to achieve their goals. I’m here to tell you that the vast majority of these people will be dramatically disappointed at the end of the…
Do Your Presentations Violate the Law?
No, not any criminal or civil law, but the law of physics. Do you recall your high school physics lessons where we learned that an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless a force is applied to it? In this case, the “object” is your prospects businesses operating conditions. The Challenge Selling MSP or…
Be Careful How You Market…Words are Powerful
Don’t Ever Do This A while ago, I inquired about a piece of software that I had some interest in. I downloaded a free copy of the software and saved it to my hard disk, with all intentions of exploring in detail over the weekend. The next morning, I got an email from the company…
Setting the Record Straight
Over the past few years, I have noticed that business magazines (especially those focused on sales) have an annual tradition of publishing editions which tout “new, revolutionary, dynamic” sales techniques. It seems as if this annual ritual is repetitive in nature, by which I simply mean that there don’t appear to be very many new…
Why Sales Teams Frustrate CEOs and What You Can Do About It
I’m writing this post as the result of a very interesting question that was posed to me. Specifically, one of my associates asked me why CEOs, who are troubled by the poor results that their sales team produces, continue to seek advice from that very same sales team regarding what should be done to improve…
Are You Running Your Sales Program or is it Running You?
MSP’s face a large number of sales and marketing challenges. First, do you communicate your technical expertise, or the value of the results that you produce? Secondly, do you wait for the phone to ring with prospective customers? Or do you have a pro-active outreach program to find prospective customers. A Few Problems Many MSP’s…
Radical New Compensation Plan
As many of you know, I’ve been coaching sales organizations for over thirty five years. One of the common frustrations that business owners and CEO’s share with me regarding their sales force is the lack of motivation. They typically try to motivate their sales people by offering significant bonuses and or commissions. Unfortunately, I have…
Surprise, You Can’t Manage Sales
Now I know the title of this article may come as a surprise to some of you especially in light of the fact that I’m in the business of helping my clients improve their top and bottom line produced by their sales force. I believe that you can’t manage sales. But, you can…
Vital Considerations for Hiring Sales Superstars
When it comes down to it there is very little magic in finding, selecting and recruiting a sales superstar. The problem that I frequently observe is that business owners, MSP’s, VAR’s and or sales managers make the mistake of hiring people for the wrong reasons. You see, I believe in hiring sales people for their…
Why MSP’s Love / Hate Sales
Sales results are a long standing issue that occurs between sales teams and MSP’s. The purpose of this article is to shed some light on why many MSP’s dislike sales. In a phrase, I believe that there is a love hate relationship that exists. Specifically, when an MSP or VAR has a sales team that…
Breaking Up is Hard To Do
This is not an article about an old rock and roll song. It is however recounting a situation I encountered earlier. During the past few days, I have terminated my relationship with several service providers. My need for their service has been satisfied and I decided to save some money and terminate these relationships. In…
“I AM Trying Hard”!
This is the moment that many sales people who are confusing effort with result. Our profession, while quite rewarding, can be very harsh. Specifically, trying hard just isn’t enough. We sales professionals are always measured on the only thing that counts…new order. If you’re not growing the top and bottom lines for your employer, it’s improbable…
Qualifying Quick Tip
An enormous amount of sales, time, talent and energy is wasted by selling to prospects who can’t buy, won’t buy or worse shouldn’t buy. An easy way to determine whether or not you’re talking to the right person is to constantly reflect on this question. “Has this man or woman ever implemented any product or…
Are You Listening To Me?!?!?
Believe it or not, the advice of listening to your prospect seems to be becoming increasingly archaic and outdated. Unfortunately, it is the best way to get a sale. One of my first sales managers told me that GOD gave us 2 ears and 1 mouth and that we should use those features in at…
Finding & Fixing Hidden Sales Productivity Problems
Over the past 35 years, thousands of CEOs have hired me to help them improve the productivity of their sales force. Without exception, I’ve found that the fastest route to significant, permanent and measurable improvement in both the top and bottom line has very little to do with sales training and much more to do…
Email Madness
I was recently asked by one of my clients to conduct some research to find an emailing service. Their goal was to send out marketing emails to their database and drive some of the contacts in their database to their website. The goal and the concept sound very simple and straight forward. My offer to…
Why Does Marketing Cost So Much?
This is a question many of my clients frequently ask me. CEOs of companies rely on their sales forces to bring new accounts and/or new business into their company. Frequently, they express frustration regarding the cost of marketing. I frankly don’t believe that marketing costs too much; I believe that too much of marketing’s cost…
Are You Following Best Practices, or NEXT Practices?
Any business-to-business sales organization that subscribes to the concept of best practices may be behind the times. It is far more profitable to be concerned about next practices – in other words, what’s coming up next. The manager of a business-to-business sales force should ask him/herself “What’s next?” or “What’s new?” on a regular basis.…
Pipeline or Pipe Dream?
Many salespeople confuse establishing a sales funnel, or pipeline, with creating a pipe dream. We are all naturally optimistic and, sometimes, this optimism gets us into sales trouble – specifically, when we confuse a prospect who is willing to talk to us with a prospect who has a set of needs that can be satisfied…
Why Traditional Sales Training Doesn’t Work
During a conversation with my seatmate on a recent plane trip, I mentioned that my business was helping other businesses to sell more. My seatmate replied that he was President of a company that had, in his opinion, “wasted millions of dollars” on sales training. In fact, he went on to say, “Sales training doesn’t…
How to End Sales and Marketing Conflicts
Conflicts between sales and marketing can become so severe that neither department is able to function optimally. The source of this conflict usually stems from the fact that sales and marketing fail to agree on a clear definition of an inquiry versus a lead, which too often leads to poor sales. Inquiry Defined Inquiries are…
Coaching: The Number One Success Strategy for Sales Management
Since my early days of managing sales teams, I have noticed that many sales managers have either not been trained or have not learned the skill of coaching. The number one objective of all sales managers is to improve the quality of their sales force. This is done through coaching. Far too often, I encounter…
What’s SEO All About?
There’s a lot of noise in the marketplace regarding internet marketing. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising seem to lead the pack in terms of the most popular terms that are being batted around. I have to admit that I have had to take a crash course in both of these technologies. My…
Stop Your Sales from Fizzling
A recent study published in one of the popular sales magazines identified a trend that is disconcerting. Specifically, 21% of forecasted qualified sales have “fizzled”. By fizzling, the authors mean that the sale literally disappeared or leaked from the funnel. James Obermayer, Executive Director of the Sales Lead Management Association, says that sales pipeline leakage…
You Talk Too Much
This is not only the title of a 1950s-era rock-and-roll song, but it is an accurate description of many of the sales calls that I’ve observed. I believe that, as our economy has soured, many salespeople are inadvertently demonstrating desperation during their sales calls. Over-talking has been the bane of many salespeople for many years. …
Micromanaging: What Is It?
I recently got into a heated discussion with a member of a client’s sales team regarding micromanagement. This has become a buzzword with negative connotations. I believe a good manager knows what’s going on with his/her sales team… at all times. I don’t believe a manager needs to be (nor should be) intrusive or disruptive…
“I left a voicemail.”
This is a phrase that we hear from salespeople all too often. Emails and voicemails are not – and I repeat, are not – adequate means of following up on prospects and leads. Sending an email doesn’t mean your contact got the email; the same goes for voicemails. Let’s become proactive and work hard to…
Your Sales Funnel’s Upside Down
As you may know, I have spent the last 32 years of my life helping salespeople and sales managers improve their production. One of the questions that I get frequently is, “How can I improve sales immediately?” Frankly, there is no magic when it comes to sales improvement. However, there are a couple of components…
Are You Selling or Telling?
Over the past few years, I’ve noticed an alarming increase in the number of salespeople who confuse telling with selling. Telling is rattling off all of the features of a particular product or service. Unfortunately, the telling approach to introducing a prospect to your company’s products and services dramatically reduces your chances of turning a…
When was the last time you practiced your sales techniques?
While watching the Olympics this past winter, my wife and I remarked on how fantastic all of the athletes were in executing their sports. The downhill racers were separated by thousandths of a second. The figure-skaters had to do seemingly impossible tasks many times during the course of their performance. The best sports physiologists tell…
Social Internet Marketing Sells an Airplane!!!
While perusing one of the aviation websites that I favor not so long ago, I came upon the article attached to the link below. Social Media Case Study: Piper Aircraft Launches PiperSport Light Sport Aircraft on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter Piper Aircraft was able to sell a brand new airplane, utilizing social internet marketing techniques. …
What’s Your Management Style: Goose or Seagull?
I once had an executive at one of my client companies refer to a management style as “seagull management”. I had never heard of this, so I inquired as to what that meant. I was told a seagull manager is a manager who swoops in, craps all over the place, and swoops out. In other…
Sales & Marketing Out of Step?
As ironic as it may originally appear, one of the biggest profitability inhibitors is the lack of synchronization between the sales and marketing efforts that occur in many businesses. This lack of synchronization can be resolved quite easily, by establishing some “rules of engagement”. Let’s make sure that all members of your team clearly understand…
The Wrong Words Can Prevent a Sale
Don’t ever do this: I recently inquired about a piece of software that I had some interest in. I downloaded a free copy of the software and saved it to my hard disk, with all intentions of exploring in detail over the weekend. The next morning, I got an email from the company thanking me…
