Selling Power predicts that by 2020 the number of salespeople will drop from 18M to 3M mostly due to online interactions and other sales support functions taking their place.
In the early 90s I wrote a column for TeleProfessional Magazine. My book Sales on the Line was doing well, and I was the voice of reason [...]

Sellers assume that when they make a prospecting connection and notice a ‘need’ that aligns with their solution, it’s time to sell. For some reason, a ‘need’ has been equivalent to an action call – much like when we see a child moving toward the road or a hot stove that we go into action [...]

Do you spend a lot of time collecting names that might be prospects?
Do you spend a lot of money learning how to follow prospects on line, so you can guess where they are in the decision making process?
Has all of this activity substantially increased your ROI?
What you’re forgetting – or ignoring – is that no matter [...]

Sales has a goal: find a prospect with a need and sell a solution. You can call it anything you want, use all of the fancy terms about serving your client, be a Trusted Advisor or a Relationship Manager, do whatever you can to understand need and make nice. But at the end of the day, your [...]

As a sales professional, you learn early on that your need to ‘understand’ a buyer. But what, exactly, do you need to understand?
On the sales end of the equation, you NEED to understand the prospect’s situation to make sure you are placing the appropriate solution in the right place. This same data will give you ability to fine-tune your [...]

Buyers buy when they want to resolve a business problem.
Buyers buy when all of the members of their decision team – all of the members – agree that it’s time to resolve a problem.
Buyers buy when their internal system – their culture – knows how to make room for something new without disrupting the status [...]