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Archive for August, 2011

Sales is a Game


By Bill Bartlett

Do you “sell to live” or “live to sell”? I have been training sales people for over 16 years and have found a common trait in the highest performers: they “live to sell”. They love prospecting for new business opportunities. They love being in the role of “closer”. Their sales quota is a benchmark that they regularly exceed because just hitting quota makes them “average”. They don’t hide from the fact that they sell by putting words like “account manager” or “territory manager” on their business cards. They have turned the buyer-seller relationship into a game-A game with rules that they create!

All games have rules.  Here are the rules to which the upper echelon of sales people are committed:

1.     You have to be a hunter to survive. Hunting means spending 60% of your month finding new prospects. By the way, most sales people fail because they approach selling like farming; they plant seeds they hope and pray will grow into their existing customer base.

2.     You cannot manage time.  You can and must identify and execute behaviors that enable you to master it. Winning sales people know that the phrase “time is money” is a misnomer. They know they can always make more money, but they cannot recover time that has been squandered.  They identify income-producing activities and focus on them in a laser-like fashion during their “pay-time” hours. (more…)

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Posted in Adapting Sales Techniques, Behavior + Attitude, Motivation, Reinforcement | 1 Comment »

A Proposal: To Send Or Not To Send


By Carol Rosdobutko

Clients and prospects tell on a regular basis about how they spend 5 – 20 hours a week preparing proposals for business they are “hoping to get;” however, most of the time their efforts are unsuccessful.  Why are we compelled to provide proposals when our ‘gut’ tells us we are wasting our time?

Let’s explore some of the reasons we feel inclined to provide proposals:
1. The prospect asked for it.
2. ‘If I don’t provide the proposal I definitely won’t have a chance at getting the business.’
3. ‘I can show the prospect all the other things that I or my company can do for them.’
4. My proposal will give all the details of how I would solve their problems.
5. ‘I’m not great at asking questions – the proposal will cover the things that I’ve missed.’ (more…)

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Posted in Behavior + Attitude, Closing, Customer Relationships, Presentations, Prospecting | 1 Comment »

Get Your Prospecting Activities to Pay Compound Interest


By Hamish Knox

Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity was, “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

That’s also the literal meaning of Sandler Rule #9, “every unsuccessful prospecting call earns compound interest.”

In sales, we take for granted that we will fail more often than we succeed. So on the surface David Sandler’s rule about unsuccessful prospecting should give us hope that the more times we fail the closer we get to a sale.

As Sandler-trained salespeople will tell you, hope is a terrible thing.

(more…)

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Posted in Adapting Sales Techniques, Behavior + Attitude | Comments Off