The Competitive Advantage

July 14, 2020

12 Touchpoints While Waiting to Hear Back from a Sales Prospect

I signed-up a new client last week. Pretty excited about it, too. And it only took 2 years to make it happen! :-0

Do you have clients and prospects that are slow to respond? OK, maybe not 2-years-slow – and that was certainly an anomaly for us – but waiting to hear over a period of weeks, or even months, can be very challenging and incredibly frustrating.

June 23, 2020

Make Role Playing the Centerpiece of Your Sales Training. Here’s Why.

True story: My first job after college was as a sales rep for the DuPont Company. While much of the 3-month training program was technical in nature, we also spent a good deal of time developing our selling skills. And on one particular day, we were tasked with doing some role playing (and it was to be videotaped!). My training scenario was that I was visiting a client (played by the Sales Trainer) who started complaining vehemently about the terrible quality of our product. After 30 seconds of being berated by the client and trying to respond appropriately, I just froze up, looked at the camera and said, “Help me!”

May 12, 2020

Do you have a defined sales process? No?! Ignoring it is a HUGE mistake!

Imagine you have responsibility for revenue growth at your firm and you finally decide to pull the trigger and convert a couple of your senior Project Managers to the Seller-Doer role. Congrats!

Now what? Well, one of the items you’ll need to cover in their training is to help them understand your firm’s ‘sales process.’

Sales process?! It’s not a term or a concept used very often in our industry… but it’s critical to your selling success. And here’s why…

May 4, 2020

Selling Success Requires 2 Things… a Good Sales Rep and a Better Sales Manager

8 Keys for Effective Sales Management

I was chatting with an industry colleague this past week and he mentioned he had just repositioned two of his Project Managers into Business Development roles… one as an account manager and one to go after new business.

And then he said something that really surprised me and even made me smile. He said, “This process has made me realize that I’m no sales manager!”

Wow! He is literally the first person in Market Research I have met who has said that. Out loud. Don’t get me wrong… there are a ton of really bad sales managers in our industry – he’s just the first one to admit it.

April 21, 2020

Stop hard selling during the pandemic… use these 9 ‘soft touches’ instead.

I’ve been involved in a number of industry conversations lately around the topic of ‘selling during the pandemic.’ As the uncertainty grows, firms want/need to continue to sell, if only to maintain their business.

For many, however, the inclination is to be too proactive… that is ‘sell harder, sell faster.’ The reality is, though, that the opposite approach will have a much more positive impact.

January 28, 2020

How to Create a Sales Commission Plan for Seller-Doers

I attended the Insights Association’s CEO Summit last week (by the way, if you run a business and have never been – put this event on your “must do” list!) and by far, the topic that generated the most audience engagement and questions was around sales commission plans.

So, for those of you who were not there, here are a few guidelines as you think about your seller-doer team…

October 8, 2019

Setting 2020 Sales Goals? That Big Revenue Number is NOT Enough!

For those firms that take the time to set annual sales goals, they generally think in terms of a BHAG… a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal! That is, “What lofty revenue number can we achieve next year?” And that’s fine. Employees need that target to work toward. To inspire and drive them.

In fact, it was about this time, last year, that I wrote a blog post on how to set those annual sales goals. Click Here to read it.

But those big goals are not enough!

August 20, 2019

Want to host a GREAT sales meeting? Follow this blueprint.

Recently, I had the pleasure – and privilege – of being hired by Merrill Dubrow, President & CEO of M/A/R/C Research, to be a guest presenter at his national sales meeting in Dallas. The other guest presenter was Ryan Barry with Zappi, so I was in pretty good company.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been part of such a well-organized, educational and enjoyable sales meeting. And while I wasn’t there for the entire event, what I did see provides a solid model for how to structure and host an effective sales meeting.