Paul Nutt, author of Why Decisions Fail, studied 400 decisions made by senior executives in medium and large businesses. Decisions studied include Disney’s EuroDisney failure, various components of the Denver International Airport construction, etc. Nutt’s research found that fully half of the decisions had failed. A decision “failure” was defined as a decision that either … Read full article
Is your sales team performing far below potential? Mine was. As a first-time sales manager many years ago, my office ranked dead-last out of 64 offices. We had ten salespeople, nine of whom had less than one year of sales experience with our company and were performing far below standards. The lone exception was Norm, … Read full article
Sales Results = What you do? + How you do it? First, let’s look at how you sell relates to the care you show the customer during the sales cycle. Since customer care is now a commodity, how you do things is no longer a source of differentiation. That leaves what you do on each … Read full article
I have a book published by Harvard Business Review titled Business Classics: Fifteen Key Concepts for Managerial Success. The book contains the 15 articles in HBR’s history that have sold the most reprints. One article, published in 1964, was titled, “What Makes a Good Salesman,” by David Mayer and Herbert Greenberg. The author’s research found … Read full article
In my book, “Getting Into Your Customer’s Head, I describe the “buy-learning” process customers go through when making an organizational buying decision. But don’t for a minute think that your customer is doing a good job of buying. According to studies referenced in the leadership book, For Your Improvement: A Guide for Development and Coaching, … Read full article
All experienced salespeople are skilled at communicating care for the customer during the sales cycle. It is still true that for some (and indeed, far too many) salespeople, customer care is a hypocrisy: they pretend to care about the customers’ needs when in fact they do not. They have become extremely effective at creating the … Read full article
In my seminars, we have an exercise that asks salespeople to consider the next three appointments they have set, and answer the questions, “What is your objective for that sales call?” The answers I received at a recent seminar fell into the following categtories: Create a need Discuss their marketing objectives Overview our capabilities Build … Read full article
Situation: a company’s top sales rep is promoted to sales manager, but does not receive sales training on how to perform a sales manager’s duties and responsibilities. Here’s what happens next… Untrained sales managers: Don’t know how to be an effective sales manager, so they continue to do what comes naturally — they continue to … Read full article
Mistake #9 Inconsistent recruiting and selection program. We have all hire somebody that didn’t work out the way we thought they would, so we all know the cost of a bad hiring decision….or do we? What about those candidates that we don’t hire? I learned this lesson years ago when I rejected on particular candidate … Read full article
“A problem well stated is a problem half solved.” Charles F. Kettering With a few variations, 80 percent of the objections sales people hear are: “It’s too expensive.” (I can’t afford it.) “It’s not in the budget.” “I don’t need it.” These objections point to a problem with a single cause: the customer has little … Read full article