I did some counting recently. 2022 marks my 37th year in the sales profession and the 27th since my first sales training role. For the past 25 years, I’ve focused on finding holistic performance solutions that move the needle on the metrics that matter and radically improve sales mastery and performance. I’m still enjoying a […]
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Have you reviewed sales enablement job descriptions lately? As members of the burgeoning Sales Enablement Society or the Sales Enablement Community of ATD (and almost anyone close to the Sales Enablement market) will tell you, “sales enablement” means different things to different people, and is being executed differently in different organizations. This certainly is apparent in […]
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Reality Check Stop and think for a moment about the difference between the average high school theater production and an Oscar-winning movie. Got that in your head? Now, do the same with the average high school orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (the “other” CSO). Clear? Now, do the same comparison for the average telemarketing […]
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It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. ~ Winston Churchill. Complex B2B selling is not easy, but it is a lot simpler than some want you to believe. I think it makes sense to step back sometimes, and take a look at things through […]
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If I hear, “Sales training doesn’t work” one more time, I think I’ll scream. If done well, sales training works fine, for what it’s designed to do. This may spark a semantics debate, especially with my friends in the sales consulting space and others with a performance-orientation, but to me, training – in and of itself […]
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It sometimes surprises people to learn what separates the top 4% of sales producers from the rest. Judgment is one of those surprising skills. In fact, it’s such a differentiator, that I consider judgment to be one of the superpowers of selling. Part of the 22nd Century Selling Skills In my presentation on 22nd Century Selling […]
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The concept of sales value creation has been getting a lot of attention again lately, in the sales blogosphere. It should. I don’t believe in metaphorical “silver bullets,” but the ability to create value when selling is as close as we may come to a silver bullet for our profession. We tend to forget that […]
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There’s a societal behavior pattern at work with social selling, which I find fascinating. Shout It From The Rooftops Have you ever noticed how we tend to shine a spotlight on the behaviors and social mores that we want to morph and replace with a “new normal?” By shining the spotlight on an issue and […]
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I guess it’s somewhat funny that a simple, two-step addition to sales coaching has taken a 3-part blog series to communicate. Hopefully, it’s been a good journey for those who have come along for the ride. In Part 1, I laid out the overall framework of the two-step addition, and explained Addressing the Right Issues, […]
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In part one of this series, I discussed the misnomer inherent in the term “best practices” and recommended “top performer practices” instead. I also pinpointed the reason for the bad reputation, since poorly executed best practices projects often fail to produce tangible results. In the projects I’ve run over the past 25+ years, I’ve learned […]
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