I was asked recently by a long-term client, “What makes the difference between an average sales organization and one that is world-class?” Great question – and one that deserved some forethought to answer. So, after a few long flights and a couple of days of contemplation I shared the outline below with him. I’ll be […]
Category Archives: Sales Training
The Root Causes of Losing Deals You Can’t Afford to Lose
Sales organizations, large and small, spend millions of dollars annually on sales process, sales methodologies and sales training and more often than not end up disappointed with their ability to improve their overall sales results. They’ll often assume that the primary problem is that they chose the wrong sales effectiveness firm to work with and they’ll choose another firm – only to find that the same problems continue to exist. In reality, unless they can find the root cause of the sales deficiency, they’ll continue to chase their tail, and spend far too much money doing so.
Influencing Your Client’s Evaluation and Decision Process
The average sales person (and team) tends to be overly deferential to their clients. Which would be a sound strategy if the average client had a clear idea of how to evaluate their alternatives to ultimately choose the best among alternatives.
UnSelling ™ – Straight out of the Consultant’s Playbook
While at Accenture I recall being struck by how infrequently great consultants actually “sell” in the traditional sense of the word. Did you happen to notice that “close” or “sell” isn’t listed above? The reason: when done well, consulting doesn’t require a lot of pressure or slick sales-oriented tactics – because we build enough credibility and trust to make these techniques unnecessary.
Are You a Go-Getter or a Go-Giver?
This topic is all about helping sales (and non-sales) people to realize that winning new business is not about selling (or “telling”) more aggressively. It’s about changing the nature of the relationship between buyer and seller to one of collaboration.