I was going to call one of my books “I’d close more sales if it weren’t for the buyer”  thinking that people would laugh at the silliness. But when I got an immediate standing ovation from 600 people when I said this, I realized that sales people believed it, ridiculous though it is. It’s like saying [...]

Years ago I did consulting for KPMG. The group I trained sold an 8 figure solution that originally took 3 years to close (we brought it down to 4 months). One of the first things they did was to get an appointment with one of the managers (an entry point, not a real decision maker) [...]

The sales and marketing communities have a historic enmity: marketing people think sellers don’t effectively use the data they gather, and sales folks think marketers give them bad leads. Marketing people are annoyed that sellers get paid so much when such a high percentage of sales don’t close and sales people think marketers are sending the [...]

Recently I was part of an Ideation session in which an insurance company wanted web ideas to better serve their customers. Ideally, they’d end up with functionality that members would find helpful in their health care decisions, offer great customer service through added benefits, and keep them involved with the agency.
What an amazing experience helping the insurance company serve their members. The [...]

The sales model does needs assessment and solution placement. It does not manage the entire sale. Buyers go inside, privately, and do whatever it is they do amongst themselves, and then…. and then… and then they either return or they go somewhere else or they do nothing. Of course we have absolutely no idea what [...]

I was speaking with a colleague today who complained that although he understands his customer’s needs – does surveys of every aspect of their decisions (how, when, what) so he ‘knows’ how and what they buy – and creates marketing materials positioned to address those needs and segments, the buyers still didn’t behave in a way he believes [...]