Ask Sales Questions & Tip These Odds in Your Favour

How important is it to ask the right sales questions? Forrester Research published an astonishing stat which claims that the first seller to set a vision into a clear path to value has a 74% chance of winning the deal. That’s worth repeating…a 74% chance of winning the deal!

This amazing statistic is getting a lot of buzz in sales blogs and numerous LinkedIn group discussions. And rightfully so.

What this means is that you have a three to one advantage over … Read More

Your Daily Sales Habit

What are your daily sales habits? How do you kick start each day to ensure you have a productive, results focused day? Do you get lost in your email? Do you grab a coffee and chit chat with friends?

Every morning I wake up and have a glass of water with a squeeze of lemon juice. It’s supposed to be good for the liver. What’s more important to me is that this … Read More

Client Sales Meeting Failures: The #1 Cause

Do your client meetings sometimes get derailed? It’s probably because of this one flaw in your sales process: the way you opened the meeting. You have to take control both at the start by setting the context of the meeting, as well as at the end, wrapping up with clear next steps.

I see this failure to open and close meetings properly happen all the time. And I know you do too. This one thing is done so poorly and inconsistently in client sales meetings, that it’s a #1 cause of … Read More

Deconstructing Big Whopper Sales Mistakes

One of my colleagues was recently lamenting about his frustration in a sales pursuit. To me, he committed two really big whoppers of sales mistakes. He was not successful in securing the business with a client he wanted, which is a shame. The prospective client had a tough problem which could have been alleviated with my colleague’s help.

For Fred, my colleague, it was not only a lost sale but a missed opportunity to contribute his unique expertise and make a positive difference. By all rights he should have won this … Read More

LinkedIn for Sales Leaders:
5 Strategies for Results

My research tells me that leveraging LinkedIn yields significant sales results. I am working with Kristina Jaramillo and her partner Eric Gruber of GetLinkedInHelp.com to help me execute a focused plan for LinkedIn. Their approach is strategic and that’s what resonated with me. This guest post written by Kristina speaks to the importance of having a strategy for social selling.

Guest Post By Kristina Jaramillo

I’m sorry to say – but most sales leaders on LinkedIn do not have a strategy. They have a shopping list of tactics that need … Read More

The #1 Mistake in Handling Sales Objections

Think about a recent sales objection that you’ve encountered, one that typically surfaces in your selling world. What do you do when presented with a tough objection? Do you jump in to answer it with a convincing statement?

If so, how is that working for you? Likely, not very well. Here’s why.

Telling is not selling

We know that questions persuade more powerfully than any other selling skill. We know that ‘pitching’ our ideas, products and solutions without getting grounded in clients’ needs beforehand makes it next to impossible to position … Read More

How to Turn Client Objections into Sales Success

One of the questions I get when training sales professionals is almost always about handling client objections. Sales people seem to dread this part of the sales process. That’s because they don’t prepare for them well, and don’t have a positive perception of objections. I look at them as a key learning device for uncovering the client’s needs. Yes, I look at objections not as barriers but as clues to achieve sales success through understanding what clients want.

I recently asked Jim, one of my colleagues, for an update on the … Read More

How to Avoid Being Stumped by Client Objections

The boy scout motto ‘Be Prepared’ couldn’t be truer for sales. Especially when it comes to handling objections. There is no excuse for struggling with the same client objections over and over again. And yet it’s astonishing to see that professional sales people don’t develop a proactive strategy for handling these common objections.

Reactive Objection Handling

In my work coaching sales people, I find that many follow this common pattern:

Dread objections and pray they won’t come up Get defensive when they surface Struggle with a response and lack confidence Don’t … Read More