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When Free Isn’t Sustainable
There’s an interesting post on my friend Gini Dietrich’s blog, SPIN Sucks. I found it and one of the comments both interesting and insightful. It actually created a bit of a visceral response from me...
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The Most Important Thing to Know in Sales
Anyone who has heard me speak knows that I believe business acumen is the most important capability for a successful selling. One of my goals in writing this blog is to support the development of...
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Can You Be Indispensable?
My post on Wednesday focused in on the importance of understanding your customer’s business model to develop a selling proposition that can make you indispensable. For three years now, I’ve been...
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Most organizational charts are broken down, and viewed, from the perspective of position and authority. While this can be very helpful in developing sales strategy, an even better way to break it down...
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Avoiding a Damaging Sales Mistake (Part 1)
In 2004, I wrote about the need to align your sales proposition with the value definition of your buyer. Over the last seven years, I’ve become increasingly aware of another critical misalignment that...
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Avoiding A Damaging Sales Mistake (Part 2)
In yesterday’s post I shared a critical designation, and strategic sales decision, that must be made early in the sales process. Are you making a “status quo” sale, or a “change” sale. Now I’d like...
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Goodbye Flip & A Thought on Focus
Today, Cisco announced that it was closing down it’s FLIP camera unit. Cisco bought the company in 2009 for $540 million dollars. Less than two years later, FLIP is no more. I still remember when I saw...
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Getting People to Action
Behavioral scientists have studied how people respond to winning and losing. They’ve even gone to the point of giving (spotting) people money to put them in a position where they can’t actually lose...
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Coffee Is For Provokers
One of my favorite movies is Glengary Glenn Ross (based on David Mamet’s play). In it, the most down-on-his-luck salesman (played by Jack Lemmon) gets up to grab a cup of coffee. The salesman visiting...
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Uncovering The Real Power of Brand
As I’ve written before, “Brand” and “Branding” are words tossed around in a variety of ways. For small and mid-market companies, the vast majority of what’s thrown around about branding is crap. I’d...
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The 3 Questions to Break Free From Your Competition
I’ve written about the curse of knowledge before. An important sales implication of the curse is that selling organizations become increasingly committed to the belief that it’s the expertise and...
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A Crucial Question for B2B Sales: Can Demand Be Created?
I was reading a recent article, 8 Silly Phrases Marketers Should Avoid on Inc’s website. I enjoy looking at overused, trite and/or meaningless buzzwords as much as the next guy; but I have to admit...
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