Marketing automation people are techies who just love the idea of extracting data with wizzy technology. But they are not sales people. As a result, there are some ‘features and functions‘  missing. Like, how to close sales.
The glaring issue is the concentration on the top of the funnel vs. the bottom of the funnel. The sales industry [...]

You hate to cold call, right?  Dale Carnegie taught us (in 1937) that we have to get in front of people to make a sale. In those days, there was no other way.
Yet we’re still listening to him, believing that getting in front of prospects will give us an edge – forgetting, of course, that everyone else [...]

I am having a contest! Ready to play? Since my Monday posts are about Buying Facilitation®, and I’ve written so extensively on it, it’s time to put some of your learning into practice. How does Buying Facilitation® fit with the sales model (especially given that both models include managing the buying decision, albeit using very [...]

I hope you laughed at this cartoon. Indeed, the cartoon is all-too-accurate: what are we trying to sell our prospects?
We are so busy trying to get them to agree with us and close a sale, that we sometimes don’t know what we are selling.
Are we selling them a solution so they will solve a problem? [...]

Sales is a needs assessment-problem discovery/solution placement model. We use relationships and industry knowledge and well-conceived product data to align with prospects to help influence them to choose us.
Now, with technology, we have even more capability to offer product data and find our what’s happening with the buyer. The internet, e-marketing, webinars, websites, are offering [...]

I once told a group that I was going to title a book I’d Close More Sales if it Weren’t for the Buyer. I got a standing ovation! And I assumed I’d get a laugh. That’s like saying ‘I would have had a better birth experience if it weren’t for my mother.’
Why do we assume [...]