IMPACT
For the past thirty-five years I have used option selling to help close business. and neuroscience reveals why this works so well. It boils down to choices, engagement, stress, and risk aversion. Traditionally, sales people go for the trial close and just offer one solution. If the prospect does not feel the risk is low enough…
Whenever I give a keynote or work with an executive team, and an audience member finishes a statement or an exercise, I urge the rest of the group to give that person a hearty round of applause. In my work as a Sales and Leadership expert, I’ve discovered that doing so changes the energy and dynamics of the group.…
In the United States we are two weeks shy of our national Thanksgiving holiday, a celebration that can be traced to an autumn harvest feast held by the Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians in 1621 at Plymouth. Giving thanks is an important cultural tradition, and similar celebrations of the harvest occur in countries throughout the world. These…
Loyalty is a valuable commodity. First and foremost, of course, our loyal and valued customers buy from us, and better yet, they come back, again and again. But they also tend to sell us in a way that we can never sell ourselves. As a Sales and Leadership expert, but also as a customer, I have seen that loyalty…
We rarely think about it or recognize it, but we all operate with something known as “normal strategies by default,” those ingrained strategies we have used all our lives to help us get to where we are today. As salespeople, some of those strategies are geared toward protecting us from rejection. Yet when those strategies…
A client cancels a meeting at the last minute. A customer cancels an order you were expecting. A long-time customer is lost because a competitor has wooed them away. The unexpected happens more often than we might like, and for those of us in sales and leadership, dealing with the unexpected should be expected. Yesterday I…
The act of seduction is not always about romance and sex; it happens in sales all the time. I remember going after a deal many years ago where the buyer was trying to seduce me into lowering my price in exchange for more business the following year. But guess what? I said no! I had fallen for…
If you want to differentiate yourself from the competition, you have to play your own game, not the game everyone else is playing—which is doing whatever the customer is asking to make the customer “like” you. The old saying that people do business with people they like is only true to a point. What is more true…
What does your pipeline look like? What percentage of your pipeline does your biggest account represent? A few years ago I was in Sao Paulo, Brazil, doing a keynote on negotiations. During the break, a CEO of a small company that produces automobile parts approached me and complained about the purchasing agent of a major automobile…
This past Saturday I cheated! I fell off my no carbohydrate diet with a trip to the bagel store. I ordered and then proceeded to one of the two cash registers to pay for my order. The first register was directly ahead of me, but customers were waiting there; the second was around a corner, and it had no…
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Thinking big positively impacts your Velocity, but it also involves taking some well-thought-out risks. Are you taking calculated risks to gain Velocity and achieve success? #VelocityMindset #ThinkBig #TakeRisks #AchieveSuccess
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Fear is a really powerful force that can stall your progress and impeded your Velocity. If you allow others to trigger your fears while trying to negotiate, you simply will not get what it is that you are after. So what should you do to close the deal whenever the negotiations don’t go as planned? Find…
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Sales and leadership have taught me a great deal about relationships, and so have those of you who have been on this journey with me over the years. We have worked together and grown together, and you have allowed me to develop as a consultant, speaker, and writer. That is why I am so excited…
Read MoreWhat happens when a customer says no to you? What do you do? Ninety percent of salespeople accept no as an outright rejection and just move on. But that is the worst thing you can do! In doing so, you disqualify yourself from numerous sales. Why? Because a good sales executive will encounter between three…
Read MoreMichael Lewis’s 2003 bestselling book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, which inspired the 2011 film Moneyball, examined the Oakland A’s baseball team and their general manager’s approach to assembling a team that could compete, despite its comparatively low payroll. A’s manager Billy Beane introduced baseball to sabermetrics—“the application of statistical analysis to…
Read MoreNone of us in sales escapes the occasional “no.” The power lies in understanding what each customer or prospect means when they say it. Once you know that, you’ll know what to do about it. Here are five typical reasons a customer/prospect says no and the appropriate solution for each: Reason 1—Bad Timing No matter…
Read MoreDo you get frustrated when your prospects or customers do not return your calls? I know I do. I may be a Sales and Leadership expert, but when I don’t get a return call, I still review what I said to figure out what I need to change in order to get better results. Remember: Your customers and prospects are…
Read MoreDoes your organization know how to support a sales hunter? As a Sales and Leadership expert, I have noticed that this relationship can be a complicated one—on both sides. Below is a letter written by a hunter to management that addresses typical issues hunters face. The letter is meant to raise issues hunters should address to gain the support they…
Read MoreWhen is change the ingredient necessary to success? Do you have the guts to call for a change the way Nick Saban did in Monday night’s College Football Playoff National Championship? His quarterback, Jalen Hurts, who has been working for him for two years and amassed a record of 25 and 2 wasn’t producing in…
Read MoreWhen my 23-year-old daughter Amanda started her job in New York City on October 1, she decided to join the company gym and be there at 6:45 every morning. That means leaving for work every morning before 5:45 a.m. to drive the 30 minutes to catch the 6:15 ferry to the city. I figured this wouldn’t last long. Boy did she prove…
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