Chalmers Brothers’ book, Language and the Pursuit of Happiness has a lot of interesting things to say about language and how it shapes our lives, both internally and our relationships. To start, he points out that we live in language … Read More
sales
Zombie Deals: the obstacle to sales that you have hidden in plain sight
We have enough obstacles to sales but we often add big obstacles without meaning to. I’m talking about the undead, “zombie deals” in your pipeline. They never close and they never die, but you spend lots of time and energy … Read More
How to turn a sales conversation into a proposal
How many times have you had a great meeting with a prospect, had the prospect ask you for a proposal, think, “I’ve got this one”, and then sit down and realize the proposal isn’t going to be as easy as … Read More
12 Secrets of Successful Sales Conversations
You’ve finally got a meeting scheduled with your prospect. (If you missed them, you might want to read about how to get more people to convert on your site, and when to call them to get an initial conversation.) I … Read More
Respond Quickly to Web Leads (or Lose Deals)
How critical it is to respond to web leads quickly? I may sound like a broken record, but research from InsideSales.com and Harvard Business Review indicates that if you can respond within 1 hour, you get 60X more conversations than … Read More
What I learned selling services
Like a lot of people who accidentally became consultants, I got started because I was really good at helping companies solve certain kinds of problems that they had trouble solving themselves. Like a lot of people who start consulting companies, I … Read More
Don’t Pitch Your Solution Too Early
You’ve finally scored the big meeting with the dream prospect. They have expressed strong interest in your company and seem like a great fit for your services. As the Very Important Top Officer (wow, she’s actually in the meeting!) kicks … Read More
The Real 80/20 Rule for Sales
Most people are familiar with the Pareto Principle, that a small fraction of the work takes most of the time, a small fraction of customers contribute most of the profit, etc. This is commonly known as the “80/20 Rule”. Mark … Read More
Enterprise Sales and the Prisoner’s Dilemma
If you’re not familiar with The Prisoner’s Dilemma, it’s an interesting exercise at the heart of game theory. In the dilemma, 2 criminals are imprisoned separately and can’t communicate. The detectives don’t really have enough evidence to convict them on … Read More
Meetup 6/17: How to Keep Your Pipeline Moving
Gary Smyth from Sandler sales training will be our guest speaker this month, talking about a critical sales topic: How to Keep Your Pipeline Moving. If you spend a lot of time that seems like “sales activity”, but have trouble … Read More