Mistake 4 Salespeople Make in Meetings- Total Recall

November 5th, 2015

That first face-to-face client meeting is the most important moment in the sales process. There are five stumbling blocks that trip up salespeople in prospect meetings. This article discusses #4 Total Recall. (see #3 - the Lex Luther) The best client sales meetings don't feel like a formal meeting Read More...

5 Mistakes People Make in Sales Meetings – #2 Robot

October 2nd, 2015

The face-to-face meeting with a client, especially the first one, is the single most important event in the sales process. Stumbling block #2 during meetings with new potential clients (read #1-No Traction) takes on the business mantra: "It's not personal, it's just business." If you lose a piece of business with a client to a competitor, does it feel personal? When a startup entrepreneur gets angel funding, do you think it feels personal? When you’ve invested ten years building a team, does it feel personal when that team succeeds or fails? No matter what we think or say, part of being human is that most things that happen to us feel personal Read More...

Sales and Analogy

September 12th, 2015

“That reminds me of French Impressionism in the late 1800’s.” “What are you talking about?” said my future client. “In the second half of the 19th century,” I continued, “the annual Paris Salons controlled the commercial art world. If you didn’t go to the academy and paint in the traditional romantic style, you couldn’t get an exhibition at the Salon Read More...

Sales Insight: How to Cross the Credibility Threshold

November 21st, 2014

Gina is a super smart twenty-six year old. She just got her doctorate from Yale University. She wrote her doctorate thesis on the market evolution of a cutting edge tech product. Ultimately, Gina sees herself in academia, but she’s taken a sales job with an established high-flying tech startup that produces the product she did her thesis on Read More...

What the French Can Teach Us About Customer Service

December 13th, 2013

The French? Really? On the surface, French customer service seems like an oxymoronic concept. Every culture has its code for unlocking customer service. If you use the code, you get better treatment. In the U.S. as you walk the aisles of a grocery store looking for Grey Poupon, what do you say to the clerk in the aisle if you need help? You say “Pardon me” (if you’re in the commercial), or “Excuse me Read More...

Selling to Friends

May 24th, 2012

If your job has a sales component to it, sooner or later you’ll step into the question of whether to sell to a friend. The question can be framed by two competing perspectives. "I always sell to friends. We already have a level of trust, and friends are the easiest people with whom to do business Read More...

The Porcupine

April 11th, 2012

My grandfather Al, was a salesman in Texas for the American Seating Company some seventy years ago. Al was a wise and gentle soul, qualities I'm sure he also had when he was a younger man. (I remember him quietly telling my uncle that putting 7-Up in scotch was a good way to ruin it.) He once told me about the air conditioning system in his company car Read More...

The Paradox of Notes

November 21st, 2011

True or False? What you'll remember from a meeting, without any other recall activity, is about ten percent of what is said. Here's the breakdown... Fifty percent of what gets said in a meeting is missed by one or more parties to start with. Eighty percent of what isn't missed will be forgotten in forty-eight hours Read More...

The Paradox of Planning

September 29th, 2011

My seven year old is studying geography. She endeavored, recently, to draw a map of the world with continents, poles, the equator and compass directions. The result? If you can accept each continent as an amoeba-like lump, she nailed it. Europe, as we live in France, is placed in the middle. Then, as I named them, she scribbled in the locations of the oceans Read More...

Bar Talk

May 31st, 2011

"What's really valuable," I hear one salesperson after another tell me, "is getting together informally with sales colleagues and hearing the latest stories about what people are doing. What are their recent successes, big or small, and their recent embarrassing failures. These meetings, usually at a bar or over lunch, are informative, motivational and give me the feeling that we can help each other out Read More...