Tag Archives for " Top Producers "

The Untapped Power of Sales Discovery Skills

Sales Discovery Skills

Some in the sales profession consider the act of discovering what is important to prospects or clients and understanding their challenges, opportunities, needs, and requirements to be the most basic skill in selling. After all, this is taught in every Sales 101-type course on the planet, right? By contrast, to true top producers, Sales Discovery […]

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Stop Wasting Money on Sales Training

Stop Wasting Money on Sales Training

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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Judgment – The Superpower of Selling Skills

Judgment - the superpower of selling

  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 Four Pillars of Sales Value Creation

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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The Path to Sales Growth through Customer Focus – Part 2

This post continues the previous discussion of enabling sales growth through customer focus. “The journey toward sales growth starts and ends with our customers.” – Mike Kunkle Customer Focus Framework for Sales Growth In part 1 of this series, I shared my Customer Focus Framework for Sales Growth.  The five pillars of this framework include: […]

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The Oversimplification of Sales Performance Work

The Oversimplification of Sales Performance Work Yes, you read that right.  I’m worried about some of the things I’m reading and trends I’m seeing in the world of sales performance improvement.  Simple is good.  Oversimplified is not. If you’ve been reading my work for a while, you may remember that I define performance levers as […]

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Adaptive Buying and Selling Alignment

Adaptive Selling

I’ve been thinking about this concept for about six months and have finally decided to document it here now, even as work in progress. The name I’ve given my concept is Adaptive Buying and Selling Alignment. It’s a mouthful; I know. Perhaps that name won’t stick, but it’s a “working title” and I like it […]

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How to Increase Sales with Top Performer Analysis – Part 2

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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