The Competitive Advantage

October 8, 2024

Fish Where the Fish Are… How Sales is Like My Favorite Hobby

For those of you who know me, you know that one of my hobbies/passions is fishing. There’s nothing quite like standing in a cool stream, water flowing around your legs (washing away your stress) with a nice smallmouth bass on the end of the line. My happy place!

As I was standing in the Harpeth River recently – yes, that’s why I named our firm as I did – it dawned on me that sales is a lot like fishing. Let me explain…

September 3, 2024

Get Out From Behind Your Desk… In Person Selling is More Effective

Last summer, I posted several times on LinkedIn about a road trip I took – partially to do a little fishing and partially to visit some clients in person. The response I received was nothing short of astounding! Visiting clients in person? You would have thought I was the caveman that discovered fire!

Why is that? Have we become so dependent on technologies like Zoom that the idea of actually sitting down in person with a client has become foreign to us? Are we so reliant on technology that we’ve lost our interpersonal skills?

June 25, 2024

“You’re failing in sales because of the front door.”

My wife and I spent a week at the beach last month and made friends with a couple sitting under the umbrella next to us. We got to know Bill and Nina over a few days and found out that Nina was a former pharmaceutical sales manager… so she and I really hit it off.

During one of our ‘sales discussions,’ she told me about a former sales rep that reported to her who had all of the tools, skills, and personality to be wildly successful… but wasn’t. And as Nina told this rep, “You’re failing because of the front door.”

May 15, 2024

Buyers Don’t Care About Your ‘Sense of Urgency.’

See if any of these sound familiar…

• “I met a potential buyer at a conference last week and we had a really good conversation. So, I can’t understand why isn’t he interested in buying from me today.”
• “The perfect sales prospect downloaded a white paper off of our website yesterday, but she said she doesn’t want a capabilities presentation from us.”
• “I’ve been connected with this prospect on LinkedIn for a month, but they’re showing no interest in becoming a client.”

April 30, 2024

Bad Salespeople? Maybe You Should Blame the Sales Manager.

It seems like every couple of years, I need to rant about how bad selling is in our industry. I was hoping it would improve over time, but that just ain’t happening.

Here are three real sales stories – all targeted at me – that happened in just the last two weeks:

#1) I attended IIeX a couple of weeks ago, and as I was walking by an exhibitor’s booth, one of the sales reps in the booth literally stepped out in front of me, waved his arms over his head and yelled “Stop!” Really?!

September 19, 2023

3 Steps to Seller-Doer Success

The seller-doer sales model is employed by nearly all small-to midsize firms in our industry. It’s a challenging model that asks non-salespeople to BE salespeople. But often, they don’t want to do it, don’t like to do it or don’t know how to do it. So, what’s the answer?

While there are dozens of things you could do to maximize the results of your seller-doer program, the majority fall into three main categories…

February 7, 2023

Want to Achieve Your Sales Goals? Achieve Your Activity Goals First!

As I write this, it’s early February… and even though it’s only been a little more than a month since ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ went into effect, 90% of them have already been busted! Why is that?

December 13, 2022

Setting Your Sales Goal for 2023? You’re doing it wrong!

Right about now, management teams from firms all over our industry are gathering around conference tables to make plans for next year. And one of the key items on every one of those agendas is, “What’s our sales* goal for 2023?”

[*For those of you afraid of the word “sales,” insert “revenue” here.]

Too often, the management team will defer to the president or CEO, who picks a number ‘out of the air’ because that’s what he/she would like to see happen in the next year. Sadly, very little thinking has gone into the president’s sales goal… it’s mostly gut feel and hope.