Posted 7 hours ago by Dave Brock

As sales people, we are supposed to provide solutions to our customers problems.  We either lead with Insight, making customers aware of opportunities/problems and incenting them to change; or we find a customer that knows they have a problem and is looking to solve it.  At some point, we ...

Posted Wed at 10:23 AM by Helen Bereschinova

The Real Customer Experience through the Eyes of Your CustomersYou may have watched the CBS hit TV show “Undercover Boss.” If you aren’t familiar with the show, each week the cameras follow around a corporate executive who goes “undercover” to participate in various job...

Posted Tue at 11:05 PM by Dave Brock

OK, maybe misery is too dramatic, but at its core, unless our customers are “miserable” we will never be successful in selling them. This morning I was having a conversation with a sales person in a healthcare related company.  We were discussing his sales strategies, value proposi...

Posted Mon at 11:18 PM by Dave Brock

Everyone acknowledges the world is changing, perhaps faster than many want, but it is changing.  Change isn’t the issue, it’s a fact.  The issue is, How Do We Respond To/Deal With Change? There are probably five ways of dealing with change. Instigators!  There are the fi...

Posted Mon at 11:39 AM by Helen Bereschinova

Do Your Homework!Sorry for yelling but I just got off a very annoying call with a sales rep who was following up with me from a Sales 2.0 conference I went to recently and it reminded me how little prep/homework many of us do before we call our clients and prospects. I won’t name names this gu...

Posted June 13 by Dave Brock

Get your minds out of the gutters!  My mom reads these posts! I’ve been avoiding this in my blog for some time, but I’ve broken down and decided to write about it.  The “C” words I’m talking about are Commission and Compensation.  A few weeks ago, a coll...

Posted June 12 by Helen Bereschinova

Selling in teams does not guarantee success. As a matter of fact, sales teams are frequently misused and ineffective. On the other hand, some organizations have cracked the code and consistently use them successfully.Let’s take a look at the ten laws behind successful sales teams.1. Have A Sha...

Posted June 11 by Dave Brock

It’s clear we’re in a frenzy of networking and connecting.  There seems to be a rush to establish connections, friends, whatever.  People are reaching out, connecting, racking up the numbers.  They’re using every channel possible–LinkedIn, Twitter, Fa...

Posted June 10 by Dave Brock

Last week, a couple of my friends looked at a couple of different, but parallel issues.  Jim Keenan published  You’re Boring.   I struggled through the post, took me a couple cups of  coffee to stay awake—just kidding Jim!  Dave Stein posed a question about ...

Posted June 10 by Helen Bereschinova

How to Tactfully Discuss Customer Complaints with EmployeesWe all want our customers to be happy and to let us know when something has gone awry, but do you know how to successfully handle situations where multiple customers complain about a long-term employee?This can put you in a difficult positio...

Posted June 8 by Dan Waldschmidt

What’s the cost of doing nothing? What will happen if you don’t start working on your idea? Who get’s hurt if you don’t make any mistakes or end up with regrets? You have to think through this scenario every day of your life. Why do anything at all? It takes quite a bit h...

Posted June 7 by Dave Brock

My friend, Anthony Iannarino wrote an interesting post, A Cheap Sales Force Is An Expensive Problem.  He hits on a critical issue and mistake–one that I see too many entrepreneurs and small business owners make, often with devastating results. Too many entrepreneurs and small business ow...

Posted June 6 by Dave Brock

How Do You Make Money?  This question, and it’s variants, is probably the single most important question for us to understand.  Being able to answer this question and it’s variants is critical to our success as sales professionals.  It’s not a simple or a trivi...

Posted June 5 by Dave Brock

I’ve been writing a several posts about social technologies and social selling  (“Hiding” Behind Social Selling  and What’s All This About Social Selling).  One of the key points of the articles and the many great comments is, social selling and social technolo...

Posted June 5 by Helen Bereschinova

Ask any manager, V.P. or business owner what one of the biggest challenges they face in making their revenue numbers and they’ll tell you it’s in identifying, hiring and retaining good sales reps.  If you are familiar with my management philosophy, then you’ve heard me talk ab...

Posted June 5 by Dave Brock

The post, “What’s All This About Social Selling,” provoked a lot of reaction.  As I started reading the discussions, I started thinking more.  Do the “social tools,” make us less social? As you know from the article, I believe “social selling” or ...

Posted June 3 by Dave Brock

There’s a lot of talk about social selling.  When you peel it back, it’s a lot of talk about technology–choose your favorite; Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, and so forth.  In theory, we’re all supposed to be Chattering, Yammering and Jiving.  But is this w...

Posted June 1 by Dan Waldschmidt

There’s no good replacement for hard work. No viable alternative. No efficient substitute. Hard work is in a league of its own. And trying to find something more effective is probably why your business strategy is failing. No great idea works if you don’t work. Hard. It used to be a g...

Posted May 30 by Dave Brock

Sales people are accountable for generating revenue—–Duuuuggghh! Ask a sales person what their primary goal is, they say:  “I have to make my quota!”  Ask them what that means and they say “I’m accountable for generating $X million in orders or revenue....

Posted May 28 by Dave Brock

I was having a conversation about the “state of sales” with some colleagues recently, some of the smartest people I know in looking at sales performance.  I asked them, “How are you seeing sales organizations leverage Lean concepts?”  The reaction was quick, &l...