Archive: Attitude
-
May 31, 2011
No CommentsAre you listening to your customers with “Happy Ears”?
One of the biggest causes of improper forecasting is going into calls with your prospects and customers listening with big ole “Happy Ears”. When you are listening with Happy Ears a funny thing happens in your sales brain: You stop asking good questions You start congratulating yourself and counting the commission in your head You...
-
Feb 06, 2011
1 CommentThe Excuse Department is Closed (Part 1)
I was reading an excellent TechCrunch post today written by Mark Suster called Improving Sales: The Excuse Department Is Closed. Mark, with his sales coach Kai Krickel, refined his sales approach using TEDIC – or “The Excuse Department is Closed”. You should read Marks original post to get his perspective regarding the value, and challenges,...
-
Jan 17, 2011
No CommentsBusiness values
Lucy Kellaway from the Financial Times had a great post about sets of values. She contrasted the recently-released values from Goldman-Sachs with those of a retailer in Finland, Stockmann. The Stockmann values are worth a read for anyone interested in business. The company is very clear that their #1 goal is making money – that’s...
-
Jan 09, 2011
No CommentsCustomers or prospects?
More and more, I am facing sales to 2 groups: Current customers New customers Writing the 2 groups out like seems kind of silly. It’s obvious that sales can be divided like this. So, let me ask you: do you really sell differently to each group? When you pick up the phone to call someone,...
-
Jan 04, 2011
No CommentsTripIt….get started fast…
I read about TripIt in some column somewhere….it was rated as an amazing travel app. I’d love to write a full review of it, but the dang software was so simple that I almost don’t know how it works. Let me explain a bit… First of all, it is really cool. For me, the key...
-
Jan 03, 2011
No CommentsDoing the little things
I was working on a deal recently, and we got to a point where we were losing. There was no doubt about it – you have heard the customer say these things…. “Well, we did prefer the other product when we saw it, but we still are considering you.” “Price will be very important in...
-
Nov 07, 2010
2 CommentsConsultant or closer?
The last bubble (the tech one, not the real estate one) was all about solution selling, trusted advisors, and consultative selling. To me, it seemed sometimes like a lot of talking and PowerPoints but not much selling. I definitely over-reacted to all the solution selling propaganda…. it seemed to me like people were just looking...
-
Nov 03, 2010
No CommentsHow to know what you don’t know?
One of the challenges in selling is staying ahead of the curve (technological, competitive, etc). There is so much to know, and it’s scary to go into a call and get asked questions you don’t know the answer to. To be asked about products, companies, platforms etc that you may never have heard of. Sometimes...
-
Sep 20, 2010
No CommentsSelling, like painting…
I spent the weekend working with my wife to prep a rental apartment we have for some new tenants. It involved basic prep work, cleaning, repairing some wear and tear, and also some easy touch up painting (or so I thought!). The problem was we had no touch up paint left over from the original...
-
Sep 11, 2010
No CommentsThe power of ignorance
I was listening to a new cold-caller we hired. We got him on the phone really quickly – the best thing seemed to get some real-life experience. I quickly saw just how good this guy was. We finally got someone on the phone, and they went technical fast. Our guy just kept asking about any...
