Couldn’t resist that headline? How about the puppy? Aaawwwww. Someone marketing-wise once told me to always have flags, puppies or kids in any marketing materials. I hate to admit that it works, even if it is a little hard sometimes to fit a puppy into a data center disaster backup scenario. With a little creativity…
Why do most sales people struggle with territory development? There are several reasons behind this but it starts with the fact that sales management doesn’t typically convey clear guidelines around territory development expectations during the recruiting process. In fact, prospecting is an area that is generally glossed over by both the sales candidates and sales…
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I am a self-professed sales discovery devotee. Across my 25 years of selling technology solutions to the enterprise, show me a top performing sales rep or sales team and I’ll show you a sales rep or sales team that does discovery exceptionally well. In fact,…
What is discernment and why is it so important in enterprise sales? According to the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary discernment “is the quality of being able to grasp and comprehend what is obscure”. My old fashioned paper back version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines discernment as the ability “to come to know or recognize mentally”. Over…
What is discernment and why is it important in sales? According to the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary. discernment “is the quality of being able to grasp and comprehend what is obscure”. My old fashioned paper back version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines discernment as the ability “to come to know or recognize mentally”. Over the years,…
Ah the proverbial sales funnel. All of us in sales have lived by it and some of us have died by it in our careers. What is it? Has it changed? Who changed it? The sales funnel is a metric driven tool used to measure sales conversion ratios. That is to say the percentage that…
Ah the proverbial sales funnel. All of us in sales have lived by it and some of us have died by it in our careers. What is it? Has it changed? Who changed it? The sales funnel is a metric driven tool used to measure sales conversion ratios. That is to say the percentage that…
Remember the days when the dreaded executive admin (aka-gatekeeper) would screen all incoming calls to their executives. As a salesperson, you were convinced that they all looked like battle axes, always woke up on the wrong side of the bed and never had even the semblance of a sense of humor. Then the emotionless screening…
Where do you find wisdom? Through a Google search? In a book? I conducted a Google search for wisdom because that is where most people these days try to find things. The top results listed wikipedia and several on-line dictionaries with the definition for the word wisdom. I happen to like wikipedia’s definition of wisdom…
What’s the world coming to? My local car wash called me for a customer satisfaction survey and asked me to refer people that I know. Seriously though, why don’t all businesses do a better job of asking for customer referrals? It is a fundamentally sound business development process that a lot of sophisticated high tech…
