Year: 2017
The NFL season opened Thursday, September 7th, with the Kansas City Chiefs versus the New England Patriots. In the pregame show on NBC, they ran a clip of Patriots’ Coach Bill Belichick addressing the football team of the high school he attended as a teen. In his message, he said, “Trust is not given to you. It is…
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…
When you lose a sale, whose fault is it? Is it the customer who doesn’t know what they want or need, the competition who gave the customer an offer they could not refuse, or the customer’s unwillingness to fire a long-time vendor? Or do you blame the lost sale on the most common explanation of…
Use your smartphone to increase sales —and I don’t just mean by dialing prospects. This two-minute video demonstrates an easy way to use your phone to do the selling for you and increase your Impact! As a Sales and Leadership expert, I assure you that the time you invest in using this tool will deliver big results.
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…
A while back I had the honor of being the emcee of a two-day team-building program featuring two NFL legends, one of which was Joe Gibbs, former head coach of the Washington Redskins. In interviewing Coach Gibbs, I asked him if past behavior was a predictor of future behavior. His answer was a resounding yes! When I…
A key executive for one of my clients passed away recently, and although I tried desperately, I could not make my travel arrangements work out properly to get to the funeral service. To make matters even worse, the morning of the funeral I realized I had forgotten to send flowers. I immediately called a florist,…
When 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…
Read MoreFor 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…
Read MoreYesterday morning I had the privilege of hearing Daymond John (of Shark Tank) being interviewed by Jeffrey Hayzlett, CEO of C-Suite Network Advisors. Jeffrey asked Daymond about his strategies for success, and Daymond said that he is always learning, always trying new things, and always adjusting his strategies in order to keep growing. Not everything he does…
Read MoreWhenever 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.…
Read MoreIn 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…
Read MoreA medical doctor recently asked me what I did for a living and after sharing about my role as a speaker and expert on influence and impact, he shared how he has become a better person—and a better doctor—by learning how to listen better. He spoke about not merely listening to the words being used, but…
Read MoreWe all want success, and we may even expect it in some way, but not everyone attends to the details and habits that build a successful outlook. This morning I walked into the lobby of the Residence Inn where I am staying in Winston-Salem and witnessed a surprising scene—the entire hotel staff was going through…
Read MoreLoyalty 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…
Read MoreWe 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…
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