How to f*ck up a B2B meeting
Let’s be honest — there are a lot of ways to mess up a B2B meeting. (Or even totally, yes, fuck it up.) There are millions of B2B salespeople globally (and the number is actually going up despite what we think tech did to B2B) and, let’s face it, not everyone is making quota. Not […]
B2B Sales Essentials
Let’s start with one caveat up front about B2B sales: it’s a tremendously complex topic that people unfortunately often make more complicated, instead of simpler. Entire books have been written about B2B sales. Entire websites are devoted to the topic. This is one page on our website. It’s not going to cover every single aspect […]
A silent customer isn’t a satisfied customer
Customers lie. Shouldn’t be breaking news, but sometimes we try to forget that. Even though the field of economics has long wanted us to believe in “rational actors,” the reality is that people lie, cheat, steal, are misguided, etc. It happens. You hope it’s not normative, but it happens. There’s a secondary issue too: a […]
The power (and importance) of rejections in sales (and life)
Let’s start with a quick funny story. It’s not directly about sales, but we’re going to get there — don’t worry. I had a friend who was a consultant for a business that Microsoft (enterprise!) eventually bought. One of his client engagements was this: they flew him to Atlanta, and the client was a restaurant […]
Use automation, yes — but don’t be a robot
There is a ton — a literal TON — of talk these days about automation. It’s the next great promise. The Fourth Industrial Revolution. All that. The New Yorker actually had an article last year saying automation would be like compressing the Industrial Revolution (the one you learned about in school) into the lifespan of […]
Qualification/discovery calls are much harder than we think
We’ve had “qualification calls” (or “discovery calls”) in sales almost as long as we’ve had phones. And still, most people seem to not understand the full breadth of how it actually works. It’s tricky — and you don’t want it to become a disqualification call. Here’s a new way to think about it.
The issue with sales is often vocabulary
The sales process has lots of different handoffs in terms of responsibility for the prospect. Every time you do another handoff, there’s a chance that someone is going to drop the ball. (Sad but true.) One of the most fraught handoffs in sales is between SDR (sales development rep) and sales execution. It’s often a […]
The zombies in your sales funnel
Welcome to some Halloween-themed posting. Your sales funnel might be a bad episode of The Walking Dead. Here’s why.
Monitoring employees is a key to sales. But don’t get weird.
We live in a sales world now where tech is deified. We all love us some CRMs, automation suites, AI advancements, etc. It’s seemingly all we write and talk about out there in the “thought leadership” ocean. But what if a lot of this is BS, and really the key is old-school monitoring employees and […]
How often are you using face-to-face communication in sales?
We all know the importance to face-to-face communication in sales (we’d hope), but just how important is it — and are sales teams starting to screw it up and miss quota? Here now: a brief investigation.
