I have a question: if your job is to get people to buy your solution, why do you spend so much time doing stuff that doesn’t bring in business?
I  recently spoke with a sales guy who told me that for two years he’s been making appointments to do presentations for a relatively small ticket solution, and then [...]

Since I’m the Queen Contrarian, I’d like to say that the ‘need’ we think that buyers have is not a real need.
First of all, we often meet them at the wrong end of their buying decision – when they are just starting their search for a possible solution. Not only have they not committed to [...]

Why do so many of your good prospects not close? You’ve worked hard doing your sales job: you gathered good data and understood their need, you were a trusted advisor, they liked you and your solution. But they didn’t close.
Where did they go?
They went off-line. They went back to their teammates and their old vendors and their old [...]

What is the difference between selling to an internal customer and selling to an external customer?
Nothing.
At the end of the day, there is the buyer, the seller, and the solution. The influencer, the influenced, and the idea, or request. Regardless of the moving parts, one person wants another person to buy in to something that [...]

Lots of folks are out of jobs at the moment. It may not be you, but you may know someone.
My friend Jill Konrath has a passion for helping people get back to work. She has a site, Get Back To Work Faster that includes all-things-necessary to get a job – articles about job search and [...]

Because of the feared, or actual, financial crunch, companies are stepping back from their normal decision making behaviors. The problem is not that there is no money; they are just not spending it.
If that weren’t enough, they are so scared of making bad decisions that they’ve added additional  stakeholders to each decision team to spread the risk. What does [...]