July 2020
Sales Fundamentals: Old Dogs & New Tricks
It’s funny what you remember. When I was a kid, one day my father brought home a set of cassette tapes. They were sort of a motivational program on creativity by a guy named Mike Vance. To give you some background, Vance’s job was to energize and activate creativity at Walt Disney and, later on, …
Keep in Touch
This is particularly for the remote sales professional. If you’re not in the main office, chances are you work from home. You’ve cordoned off a room or the attic or wherever, and that’s where you ply your trade. (Mine’s in the basement now, and formally referred to as The Nerve Center.) In this environment, it’s …
Sales Presentations
Disaster may await, but (at least in my experience), it’s incredibly rare that a roomful of people want to see your sales presentation fail miserably. They may be skeptical, they may prefer another vendor (or the status quo), or they may just want to get to lunch or back to their desk. In reality, people …
In Front of the Camera
Here’s a quick tip. Whenever practical, turn your scheduled conference calls and demos into video calls. The advantages are innumerable, but here are a few: Engagement – You see them. They see you. Which means they have to pay attention, and it means you have to pay attention. You can’t check email or surf the …
Selling by Walking Around
One of the seminal business books of the 1980’s, In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, (kudos to you if you’re too young to know of it) explained the importance of ‘managing by walking around.’ The idea was that you learned things, absorbed the culture, uncovered problems and opportunities, and understood how …