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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Leading the team and creating a healthy sales culture are primary responsibilities of the sales manager. Very often, I’ll ask a vice president of sales or the sales manager how often they meet 1:1 with their people. And the typical answer sounds something like this: “I am in touch with every one of my people
After a crazy week of speaking, consulting and traveling amidst winter storms, I thought I’d try something new and take requests for a weekend post. Shelly Lucas, Senior Marketing Manager at Dun & Bradstreet, was first to respond with this doozie: “…would love to hear your take on whether or not paying sales commissions still makes
As I work with senior executives, sales leaders and salespeople, I’ve observed a trait that is common among top-performers in all three roles: The very best executives, managers and individual contributors are Selfishly Productive. I started incorporating the description Selfishly Productive into team sessions I was leading a few months back and noticed what an impact that phrase had
Hate is a strong word, so strong that many of us won’t let our young children use it. But it has its appropriate place in our lexicon. There are things I hate and I’m sure you have your own list, too. I hate cancer. I hate the herb rosemary. And I hate the word “presentation”
I posted this one year ago and it’s a true as ever. Since the publication of New Sales. Simplified., I’ve constantly been in the air. I am grateful for how Southwest allows me (and salespeople everywhere) to do what needs to be done, and they make it as fun, easy and efficient as possible. And
I lost it during a client’s sales team meeting this week. Words I don’t normally use came spewing from deep within with great intensity. I was with a wonderful company for whom I did good deal of consulting and coaching earlier this year, and it was fun to join them for their late summer sales meeting
Every once in a while we see something special. In 1980 I was thirteen and I can remember watching the winter olympics on a little black and white TV in my basement bedroom. After we (sorry Canadian and European friends), beat the big bad Soviet Union (remember the CCCP on their jerseys?), I forced my
I love talking Sales, particularly New Sales. Today I had the treat of being interviewed for the “In the Arena” podcast by my friend and mentor, S. Anthony Iannarino. What fun and what a privilege to spend 20 minutes sharing perspectives on prospecting and what I am seeing across my client’s sales teams. Anthony’s blog, thesalesblog.com,
Tomorrow I’m headed east to work with a great new client. They’re a highly successful firm with many top-producing salespeople. It’s a fun change of pace to get called into a “healthy” sales organization looking to take its game to the next level versus a more typical engagement where things aren’t going so well when
I love sports. I’m not a very good athlete, but I sure love the distraction, fun, entertainment and sales and leadership lessons that sports offer. It’s supposed to be a great time of year to be a sports fan. Baseball season is approaching the home stretch and the NFL Preseason is getting into full swing.
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
