You think you’ve “qualified” your prospect. You’ve asked all of your qualification questions and they met whatever checklist of criteria you’ve established for qualification. So, you think you’re done with qualification. However, you’re not. Here’s where many sellers make a critical mistake. Have you confirmed whether the prospect has qualified you? Qualification is a two-way […]

The fact that we have different conversations with different people is an accepted fact. The way you talk to your kids is different from the way you talk to your coworkers, which is also different from how you would talk to your barista at the local coffee shop. The amount of time that we talk, […]

At the beginning of my sales career one of my first sales managers assured me, “Andy, selling is simple. It’s not easy. But, it is simple.” Well, sales should be simple. But, usually it isn’t. The most effective way to simplify your selling is to make sure that you truly understand your buyer’s desired outcome […]

Be conscious of the ripple effect in your selling. You’ve seen the ripple effect in action. Toss a rock into a still pond and the waves ripple out from the point of entry in concentric circles. It happens in sales as well. Think about a first call with a potential buyer. The challenge for you […]

Here’s a common sales problem that inflates pipelines, distorts forecasts and consumes precious time and attention from sellers and sales managers. John is working on a sizable opportunity. It would be a nice win for him and the company. The prospect is well qualified. And, in fact, supporting John on the opportunity has consumed a […]

Asking great questions is probably the most effective way to make yourself valuable to your buyers. Not talking or presenting. Asking questions. “The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.” So said Thomas Berger, the famous American author. Acquiring knowledge is one important purpose of asking questions. You can’t learn […]

When you think about your future in sales, what do you see? You have the obligation to invest the time and† effort to think about your future and anticipate what it will hold for you. Henri Poincare, a famous physicist, said “It is far better to foresee, even without certainty, than not to foresee at […]

There are no right answers to questions that are never asked. It’s like the old basketball adage: You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. It’s been said that 90% of getting the right answer is asking the right question. I’m going to modify that statement to make it more precisely applicable to sellers. […]

Mindfulness, compassion, competition and joy. These are the four core values upon which Steve Kerr, head coach of the Golden State Warriors in the NBA, has built his teams that have achieved such great success, including winning two NBA championships. (Yes, the past couple of seasons have been tough due to injuries to critical players. […]

What are your sales biases? Are you even aware that you have sales biases? And how they are hurting your productivity? One of the primary reasons that salespeople stop improving, and start struggling, is that they begin to believe that they know what they are doing. And, they stop learning. I know it sounds strange […]

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Most everyone is familiar with the concept of a vicious cycle. It’s a repeating series of connected events in which each cycle reinforces the negative outcomes of the previous one.) Unfortunately, I often see salespeople who are stuck in a variation of a vicious cycle, that I call a Vicious Sales Cycle. A Vicious Sales […]