Not sure why it took working full-time for 35 years before pulling the trigger to make this happen, but I am so thankful that I finally listened to advisors, mentors, friends, and peers telling me to do it. I recently completed my first-ever sabbatical. 30 days off… The entire experience was wonderful, instructive, life-giving, convicting,
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This Wednesday I’ll be the guest of sales performance expert Dave Stein on his Sales Executive Webinar Series for Sales & Marketing Management Magazine. If the title of this blog post intrigues, angers or interests you, click here for more info and to register. And since you are here already, let me encourage you to take two minutes
I had an experience with one of my client’s top salespeople that prompted me to break out a favorite Princess Bride quote. Like many of you, I’m tired of hearing from today’s nouveau sales experts that prospecting is Dead; that it’s foolish and stupid to even think about picking up the phone to proactively call a prospect
I’ve been noticing how little time executives and salespeople actually spend on their highest-value activities and stated priorities. It sounds silly and it’s certainly nonsensical. If something is a major objective, a priority, or deemed highly-valuable, how in the world does it end up getting less of our time and focus? Even as I typed and now reread that last
I didn’t want to write Sales Management. Simplified. I was compelled to write it because of what I was observing in company after company with less than optimal sales results: frustrated executives, overwhelmed, overworked sales managers, and underperforming, confused, poorly led salespeople – many of whom working in anti-sales cultures. To say that I’m glad I
I love talking New Sales and this incredible interview just posted by Doug Burdett (The Marketing Book Podcast) may be my favorite conversation yet! If you sell in any capacity, lead a sales team, or you’re an executive in a company that needs more New Sales, please invest the time to listen to this powerful conversation.
I get it. The “system” seems to be set up to commoditize sellers. There are procurement people with letters after their names that specialize in a special form of torture. Dreaded RFPs. Invitations to come do your Dog and Pony Show or present a capabilities overview. Buyers who seem disinterested in why and how you, your company, and your
Several of my favorite go-to sales guru friends and I (the usual gang who’ve being doing webinars together lately) were asked to contribute a session the Sales Kickoff Summit 2016. It’s a HUGE two-day event featuring more than 30 sales experts and we were happy to lend our support, names, and ideas. Here’s the question
Last week I had the privilege of joining a company’s management team and key salespeople for their annual leadership retreat held in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. I was impressed with and energized by this company’s leaders and its culture from our first interaction. It was fun working with them to prep for the full-day session they asked
I get asked to review more books than I can possible get to, but when the one and only Keenan launched Not Taught: What It Takes to be Successful in the 21st Century that Nobody’s Teaching You, I immediately headed to Amazon to grab a copy. If you don’t know or follow Keenan (yes, he has a first
Figuring you’ve read enough predictable New Year’s predictions to make you gag and that you’re tired of being pandered to about how to make your resolutions stick, I wanted to offer a different approach to help us maximize sales performance in 2016. Skipping the pleasantries and softening statements and fully expecting to labeled as politically
Sometimes the solution to our sales problem is so simple that we can’t see it. I am pretty sure that this is one of those cases. What We Want We (sellers and sales leaders) ALL crave a full, healthy (fat), balanced, moving pipeline of sales opportunities. What We Typically Do Unfortunately, most of us in
Sales Friends, I get it. We want to be liked. We want to be seen as responsive. We want to show customers that we care and that we listen and that we can follow instructions… All of those things are wonderful. But there’s just one little problem: very often defaulting to our prospect’s (or their
This is Trevor. He’s the senior executive of a company he founded in the UK. He’s also an amazing human being. I think it is fair to say that after the few days we just spent together at our Supercharge Your Sales Leadership event in Atlanta, our relationship crossed from client-coach to friends. The way
