Most of us don’t have the luxury of choosing who we work with and, unfortunately, not everyone can be trusted. You already know this, and you probably learned it the hard way like the rest of us. There is no magic wand that you can wave over people to make them more trustworthy. What’s baffling...
Category: Sales Training
Why Salespeople Struggle with Trust
Salespeople tend to be either the most undermanaged or overmanaged people in the entire company. In some ways, this makes sense because their roles and responsibilities require a lot of autonomy, judgment, and duties that are executed outside the view of management. Naturally, there are bound to be trust issues from both salespeople and management....
Do Blind Squirrels Find Nuts?
You have all heard the phrase, “Sooner or later a blind squirrel finds a nut” and we are all amused (or pretend to be anyway). I ask you, when have you ever seen a blind squirrel find a nut? For that matter, when have you ever seen a blind squirrel? Chances are slim to none....
Sales Suffering From Home Run Syndrome?
If a baseball player doesn’t hit a home run every time he steps up to bat, then what was the point of the swing? That’s a silly question for a number of reasons, but sometimes we adopt this mentality in sales. It’s called Home Run Syndrome. If we are not great every time we try,...
B2B Cold Calling Made Easy
Cold calling for Business-To-Business sales is one of the most misunderstood opportunities for salespeople. Quite often anymore it feels like a tool that no one even has, or if they do, they don’t know how to use it. Many salespeople like to think that emails were the long-awaited coffin nail for actually picking up the...
How To Deliver Bad News To Your Customer
Salespeople hate to deliver bad news. I mean – really hate it. Of course, no one wants to be the bad guy when it comes to customers, but salespeople especially hate it. Why? Because much of their career is based upon being liked and it isn’t easy to get someone to like you when you...
Selling Means Never Having To Say I’m Sorry: How to Apologize
Capitulation is a really fun word to say, but it is not so fun to do. That’s often what an apology is; a surrender to the blame. That’s what we’re trained to do as salespeople; make the customer feel like they are always right (even when they are not). The more we say ‘I’m sorry’,...
LEROY’S Method Of Managing Difficult Customers
Most of us know the legend of Leroy Brown from that old familiar tune. He was badder than this and meaner than that and quite possibly the last person you would want to cross paths with. But what happens when you suddenly have him as a customer and he is not happy. Whether or not...
A Customer Escalation Policy for Salespeople
One of the biggest challenges for a salesperson is having a company, team, and process that backs up the promises they make. Sooner or later as a salesperson you will encounter a situation where you created an expectation with a customer only to find that production cannot or will not meet those expectations. This can...
Identifying Good, and Not So Good Customers Using The Challenge Chart
Did you ever wonder why solving one problem for one customer while solving the same problem for a different customer can be a completely different experience? For example, one customer completely understands your proposal and quote and you can close the deal in twenty minutes. The next customer who, on the surface, is very similar...