01
2015
Bridging the Gap between Your Sales Message and Your Buyer
Probably one of the most frustrating issues facing sales people today is being able to deliver a compelling sales message that reaches the right audience with the right message. Oftentimes sales people are presented with the “Corporate Sales Message” that was created by someone in the Marketing Department, and chances are the person who created that message never had a real one-to-one conversation with a…
21
2015Death of a Salesman – Fact or Fiction?
No, this isn’t an article about Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize winning play about Willy Loman. Instead, I want to address one of the three big myths that were debunked at the recent SiriusDecisions Sales and Marketing Summit last week in Nashville. They reported that popular metrics indicate that buyers are 57% of the way through their purchase process before they engage a sales rep. They…
28
2015
Just-In-Time Sales & Marketing Resources
Most of us will relate to the term “Just In Time” to Supply Chain Management of resources and goods for manufacturing. The concept is designed to eliminate companies ordering and storing all of the items they need in inventory in order to reduce the cost of warehouse space and reduce overhead. So they work with their suppliers to provide the items they need just when…
09
2014
We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us!
I was fortunate enough to have grown up with some great cartoon strips and along with Charles Schultz’s Peanuts, the little opossum Pogo, often provided us some insights into our own lives. I personally have used this quote many times to reflect on different situations in my life, causing me to take a deeper look in the mirror and take an honest look at myself….
20
2014
What is Your Time Worth?
We all understand that time is money, right? Well, just how much money is it worth to you and your organization? I have been amazed with the number of recent surveys and reports that have come out with how much time is wasted in the area of people searching for things they need to do their job. Now I’m not talking about the amount of…
21
2014Making a difference!
Make no mistake about it; sales people make a difference! Often times though, they need mentors in their lives to help them understand how they make a difference and why that’s important to them and the people they sell to. Notice, that I used the word “mentor” as opposed to Manager or coach, because here is how the dictionary defines the word “mentor”: 1.a wise…
13
2014
Bad Leads or Bad Lead Follow-up
I don’t know about you, but I hear all the time how Marketing doesn’t produce good quality leads. I’ve even heard that Sales only follows up on about 15% of the leads that Marketing provides. Does that sound about right? OK, so our image to the left shows our old friends Sales and Marketing going at it again over this whole over worked argument about…
30
2014Talk about the Problem First, Not the Solution!
I happened to attend a round table discussion recently, that was put on by the Social Executive Council, hosted by Judy Mod, who is one of the Principals at Social Gastronomy. The discussion centered on today’s buying process, from the buyers’ perspective. The bottom line of the discussion was that the key to success for sales people and companies, trying to sell their products and…
18
2014
Are you Helping or Hampering your Sales People?
If we look at the illustration presented here, you will notice that both rowers are rowing in the opposite direction. Since they both have their backs to each other, they can’t tell what the other rower is doing. All they know is that they both are rowing and thinking that they are helping to row the boat, but they don’t seem to be getting anywhere….
05
2014
The Blind Men, the Elephant, and Componentization of Content
I recently commented on a Sales Craft LinkedIn discussion in which Sharon Little with Appcelerator had the following discussion: Enablement and the Content Paradigm, and in her discussion she included an article that was written by Corey Sommers, VP of Business Development at WittyParrot. I was so impressed with what Corey wrote about that I contacted him and asked if I might use his article as…