Category - Blogs

In the book Achieve Sales Excellence Howard Stevens developed the seven rules of the customer from conducting 80,000 customer interviews over 14 years. This research also included 7,500 sales reps.  Neil Rackham’s research with Xerox, IBM, and other companies with over 1500 sales transactions, agrees with Steven’s research. From my own anecdotal experience: (Being a …

Selling is a beauty contest, not a race. Unfortunately, the majority sales reps and sales leaders focus on their goals, their quota and making the numbers in the forecasted time frame, thus creating the sense of a race. This race approach is very seller centric, not customer centric. According to a recent Salesforce.com study, 82% …

Customer Aligned Selling Customer Aligned Selling is focuses on aligning your sales process with how the customer wants to buy. It includes understanding how they think, understanding and adjusting to where they are in the buying process. Customer Aligned Sellling is being a buyer’s agent helping them through the buying process, not selling. Customer Aligned …

Is your selling strategy based upon building solid relationships through the sales rep’s likeability factor? If so, you are getting a declining return on the sales rep’s ability to get new business or even maintain existing customers. Most sales reps are very high in the red or relationship quadrant. (Whole Brain Thinking) (Herrmann) They have good people skills …

Busyness does not necessarily equate to productivity. John Lee, writes in his blog Lessons Learned from the Least Busiest People that real productivity comes from a free mind, not a busy mind. I love his example of the surgeon running from one meeting to another while also trying to stay focused to operate on a person, …

20 Causes of Sales Problems Below are 20 problems that cause VP of Sales and business owners great distress. These mostly sales process issues that result in poor sales. If you are having less than stellar sales results, see if one or more of these reasons are the culprit. 1) Belief that price is the …

11 Ways to Build Trust In the last blog I talked about how building trust reduces objections. I will now cover 11 ways you can build trust with your prospective clients. With trust, you want to demonstrate three key traits: Empathy, Credibility and Competency.. Empathy = the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, …

Reducing Objections Through Building Trust Howard Stevens writes in the book Achieve Sales Excellence that there are 4 key criteria buyers use when deciding to make a buying decision and the percentage weight given in that buying decision. Those are: 1) Sales Rep’s Competence – the ability to build trust and add value – 39% of the …

No Questions – No Sale – Improving the closing ratio Jill Konrath makes a great point in her latest blog about sabotaging the sale by not asking enough questions. sabotaging the sale A good sales rep relates the product or service features to true business situations. If you are quick to answer the customer’s problem before …

Well, that didn’t last long. Just six years after the end of the Great Recession, another one might be looming right around the corner. The China stock market is in free fall, plunging 47 percent since hitting its peak last summer. Oil prices remain volatile, presenting a significant risk to financial companies. Retailers are struggling, …