Have you ever tried to persuade someone about the merits of a new idea, service or initiative? Most sure you have. Countless times. People do this all the time in our personal, professional and community lives. It is part of being a human. So how did your efforts go? Did you get their attention? Did you convince them to adopt your idea? Did you both get what you wanted out […]
Selling isn’t only for salespeople Read More »
We’ve all been there How many times do we want to tell our clients what to do? After only a few sentences uttered by them we, of course, know immediately what their issue is. We’ve seen it 10s or 100s of times before. It seems so obvious to us what they should do. “If only they would just do this… it would be so much better/ save them so much
Why I want to tell you what to do, but I won’t, even if I know better Read More »
What is the Circular Economy? Circular economy is an alternative for the “Take, Make, Consume and Dispose” mindset and business model. It is easiest to imagine first if we look at the living natural world where there is no landfill, no waste: in this biological cycle things live and die and are recycled and repurposed by nature in a circular manner. There is no waste. Unlike the human world where
How do we sell in a Circular Economy? Read More »
Every business needs to prospect for new clients and customers, even non-sales people often need to reignite past business relationships and form new ones, internally or externally. You don’t need to be the primary salesperson or business development manager to be required to prospect well. Any call you make to another person whose attention you need to grab and focus on what you have to offer or propose is technically
Everybody benefits from knowing how to prospect Read More »
On your marks. Get set. Prospect! Prospecting is the oxygen that fuels the sales fire. It is the ignition point that allows us to get in front of prospective buyers. Great sales people like great athletes do not leave prospecting to chance. They make sure that making prospecting sales calls features regularly in their weekly sales activities. Many experienced sales people make sure they do two or three 2 hour
100 Prospecting Sprint Read More »
Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf… – Native American Proverb How long do we actually listen to another person before we start interrupting? How quickly do our own thoughts take over and we start thinking about what question to ask or what we need to say in reply even before they’ve finished speaking? Do we find ourselves interrupting the person to give our own opinion or finish their
Are you really listening or just waiting to speak? Read More »
The world, more specifically the human world, is changing and moving at lightning speed, adapting and evolving, and getting more complex by the day, to the point where it is becoming too overwhelming for many. Just when we need to be able to really think about and manage complexity, there is a flight to the simplistic to just cope with the day to day. Simple solutions, easy fixes are called
12 Sales Trends for 2018 – Welcome to the State of Flux Read More »
I like to keep on top of what is current, what is emerging, and what is still an idea. This is why I make time each week to do research as it helps me navigate my way around the present and into the future. However, I am finding there is so much to read, so much to get my head around, and so much to integrate into my business that
Back to sales basics Read More »
Freakonomics Steven Levitt, the co-author of Freakonomics, SuperFreakonomics, Think like a Freak and When to Rob a Bank, defines thinking like a freak as: “…putting away your moral compass and not worrying about what the answer “should” be, but focusing on what the answer really is. It means thinking hard about causality. It means going beyond the obvious to consider all the possibilities — but still being willing to accept
We can all benefit from thinking like a ‘freak’ Read More »
To engage with customers, sales people need to think like their customers. What this means is that salespeople have to go about learning and understanding how customers buy. Sales people know, at all times, where their prospects are in their sales cycle. The problem is that they aren’t as clued up on where their prospects are in their own buying cycle. Most sales managers would say that knowing where buyers
Align your sales process to the buying process Read More »