When I started in selling, it was a truism that you had to be persistent. Studies seem to show that most buyers won’t buy until they have had 6 – 8 contacts with a sales rep. Most sales reps give up after 3 calls.

I know that early in my career persistence worked. I heard through tbhe grapevine that my persistence was making an impact and people were starting to do business with me.

Lately I have been hearing buyers tell me about sales reps that they will NEVER do business with. Why? It is because they are …

Continue reading

We ended the last post with three components of the value proposition: 1.    The problem you solve 2.    The knowledge you bring to the equation 3.    You Let’s take a deeper look at these: The Problem you solve: What is it that you do for your customers?  – Do you…

Continue reading

Gerhard Gschwandtner,  founder and publisher of Selling Power Magazine, was recently the keynote speaker at the Sales 2.0 conference in Chicago. In his address, he claims that technology is replacing the sales professional. I find this hard to believe; yet, I have been around long enough to see a lot of things and people replaced by technology. So, I want to explore this a little.

I remember when airlines and grocery stores put kiosks in place vs. agents and cashiers. I thought great this is going to be challenging. Yet now these operate smoothly for most people and in …

Continue reading

This is the beginning of a series of posts designed to help peole that don’t see themselves as sales people develop the tools to sell.

I don’t know about you, but if I can get someone to let me talk to them about my business, I believe strongly enough in it, that I can often transfer that belief to them. However, getting to the point where they will want to have a conversation takes a lot of work.  I recently heard a trainer say, “I would do the work free, people pay me for the aggravation of getting to the location”.  …

Continue reading

Jorge Lazaro Diaz says it better than I can in his post on on Selling the Invisible on Jobing.com. He reviews the book Selling the Invisible by Harry Backwith. Who points out that when buyers buy complex solutions they don’t understand, it is often the intangible things that sway the decision.

For example I work in a world where money is the end product. How much can my firm recover. So my operations management team is often all about the numbers. And yet when buyers can’t see the magic sauce they are looking at other elements:

 – How well do we …

Continue reading