Should You Be Selling? Or Marketing?

Every now and then, someone will return a product or otherwise complain to my office that they wanted a sales book, but received a lesson on marketing instead. What they fail to realize is there’s a very good reason for that: Salespeople who want to succeed in today’s cutthroat world need to stop selling and [...]

Selling skills for … doctors?

I’ve been suffering from a pretty severe sinus infection the past couple of months (!) and, after two visits to my regular doctor who couldn’t find a solution, I went to an ENT (ear, nose, throat) specialist. After all, they’re the sinus experts in the medical world. The first appointment with the ENT consisted of [...]

Cold Calling in 2010

Walk into any sales meeting in the world today, and the top subject is activity. How much activity is each sales rep doing? Could they squeeze more activity into their already busy schedules? The issue usually escalates into sales activity reports. Managers want to know how many cold calls you’re making, and some even take [...]

The Cold Hard Truth About Cold Calling 2.0

There’s a new trend on the Internet today, and it’s the idea of Cold Calling 2.0 that a lot of authors are now pushing. They claim that it’s a new method, and unlike the old antiquated method of calling strangers at random, hoping to find a prospect, Cold Calling 2.0 supposedly works better. Somehow. Here’s [...]

Successful Sales Prospecting In A Recession

There’s plenty of panic and uncertainty among salespeople today. Most hear the endless news stories of our current economic recession, and they assume they ‘ll have a much harder time selling. The fact of the matter is that it’s actually easier to sell more in a down economy – if you’re using intelligent sales prospecting [...]

The Case Against “Objection Handling”

Learning how to overcome objections is an integral part of just about every sales training process, whether it’s formal corporate training, or a book you picked up in the airport. It only makes sense, right? You need to have comebacks to common objections because they’re going to come up anytime you try to close a [...]

The Proper Way To Get Referrals

As a business owner, I interact with and buy from outside salespeople on a fairly regular basis. Most, of course, ask for referrals at some point after the sale, or in many cases, several times after the sale. Here’s the catch: The sales reps who get referrals from me don’t need to ask. They’ve earned [...]

How NOT To Get A Sales Appointment

Over the past couple of weeks, my staff has been dealing with a very persistent – but poor – salesperson. He is the very antithesis to my sales techniques, and is a great example of how NOT to get an appointment. It all started off with a call to my office, stating that he’s going [...]

Most Salespeople Lose Money Wasting Time

I just posted a rant on another site about this – the fact that so many businesspeople, and salespeople in particular, waste unacceptable amounts of time doing menial tasks that should be outsourced to someone else. Many years ago while still in sales, I read the book Walk Like A Giant, Sell Like A Madman [...]

On Procrastination, Optimism, and Failing to Take Action

Ahh, a new year. For salespeople, it’s even better than a new month. It’s a time to start fresh, with a clean slate, and get back to work renewed and recharged. I can see the trend just from observing traffic and sales volume to NeverColdCall.com – it’s literally explosive compared to the average volume we [...]

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