There’s an old joke that goes “What’s the last sound you hear before sales call planning starts?” The answer is “The car door closing in the prospect’s parking lot.” As I work with my clients, I’m astounded at how many senior salespeople don’t do sales call planning, and today my friend Jack Malcolm wrote a [...]

In my last post we saw how a shortened sales cycle destroyed the chance to build value and help a prospect discover whether a solution could help accomplish his goals. Now let’s look at how the salesman could have created a different kind of sales cycle – we’ll start with the first interchange between the [...]

A young salesman that works for a client of mine asked me why prospects that initially seemed very interested would stop returning his phone calls after he gave them a presentation and demo of the product and provided ball-park pricing. Let’s look at what happened to see what wasn’t working for him. The conversation would [...]

In my past two posts, I’ve discussed why your value proposition may not be working well, and how you can build a value process to replace it. This final post in the series covers the benefits of the change. When you build a value process instead of a value proposition and work to achieve the [...]

Let’s start this discussion about building a value process with five fundamental thoughts about value: 1.       Value is defined by the prospect, not by the salesperson.  Just because you can build an ROI spreadsheet that shows how the prospect will benefit doesn’t mean the prospect will see value. This is true even if you have [...]

In this series of blog posts I’m going to examine how you can increase sales by changing the way you approach your value proposition and begin really building value for your prospects and differentiating yourself from your competitors. In the good old days when cars had carburetors instead of fuel injection, the back pages of [...]

I’ve written a lot in this blog about how much more effective it is to ask questions than it is to pitch your product. I’d like to tell you a story that provides a great example of that.  I went to the Portland Auto Show last weekend and had an encounter I think might be [...]

I started this series with the premise that tightening your market focus in the face of flat sales is a better strategy than looking for more leads and a wider market. I hope you’ve convinced yourself as you’ve read these posts that you can in fact increase your sales with a tighter focus. I’m going [...]

The hard part starts now – it’s time to implement the tight focus you’ve been working on and keep your sales force (even if your sales force is just you) focused on selling to the ideal prospects you’ve identified. On the surface, it’s an easy task; you just don’t let them sell to any prospect [...]

Let’s continue our discussion about why you should tighten your market focus. In this post, we’re going to make a big counter-intuitive leap. You don’t need more leads; you need to stop wasting your time selling to prospects that won’t ever buy. Here’s how – Quit selling to prospects that aren’t in your sweet spot. [...]

If you want to get out of the rat race of thinking you need more and more leads and more and more prospects to increase your sales, you should start by focusing on your prospect rather than your product. Most small businesses sell to their prospects based on what their product or service is; some [...]

This is the first in a five-part series about a fundamental error in thinking small businesses make when sales are flat – as they are for many companies in this economy.  The series is based on Part 1 of my book, “Small Changes That Help Small Companies Make Big Increases in Sales.” The error I’m [...]

While marketing collateral like brochures, presentations, demos, data sheets, white papers, case studies is essential, if you’re not careful, a lot of it really won’t help you sell. Why? Because…. Marketing collateral is very bad at persuading a prospect to buy: When salespeople try to use their collateral, whether print or web-based, as a tool [...]

My good friend Jack Malcolm just posted a blog that gives a different look to the problem of connecting the dots. As usual, Jack is right on – take a look at The 4 Pros for a broader discussion of the issue. 6X9C5Z9TVGYN

Salespeople often struggle to close business when they sell based on product features, advantages, and benefits, even when they know they have a clear competitive advantage. Their products get seen as commodities They lose to lower-priced competitors They have prospects who decide not to buy anything at all They face price objections even from prospects [...]

Asking questions is a much more powerful sales technique than pitching your products. While a lot has been written about what kind of questions to ask, from “ask open vs closed questions” to Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling method, I haven’t read much about what I consider to be the most important part of asking questions [...]

In a small business, when you’re at the point of adding your first salesperson, or expanding your sales force, it often looks like you need to expand your market to be sure there are enough deals for the new person or people to chase. In most situations, I don’t think so. Instead, you should be [...]

As I help small businesses with their sales issues, I often get involved with wider business issues. I’ve often thought about how great it would be if I could find a framework for suggesting small changes to non-sales business problems. Well, I’ve found that framework. I’ve just finished reading “Awesomely Simple” by John Spence. His [...]

As you can see from this website, I’ve just self-published my new book, “Small Changes That Help Small Companies Make BIG Increases in Sales,” and it’s been an incredible learning experience. I decided to write the book to find a wider audience for the lessons I’ve learned over the past few years because I can [...]

We’re all familiar with the Hunter / Farmer analogy for salespeople – Hunters go out and find new deals, Farmers nurture existing customer relationships. Neither of these sales types fits very well in startup or early-stage companies. Early on, small companies need a third type that I call “Explorers”. These salespeople have a lot of [...]