It seems like I struck a nerve with this pre–Labor Day post I put on LinkedIn: "If cold calling is dead, who got these results last Thursday? Were zombies talking to the CIO of Carnival Cruise Lines and VP Product…
In Part 1 of this two-part blog post, why did I say, “Let your sales reps make perfect lists for you by letting them make perfect lists for themselves"? Because making perfect lists is easy if you start with any…
Everybody who does outbound prospecting thinks about lists, talks about lists, buys lists, scrubs lists, allocates lists to reps, reallocates lists to new reps, re-reallocates lists as territory models change, tries new list vendors — and often (usually when new…
Yesterday I got some very pointed, and welcome, feedback from Stan Fischer, my new friend in, and very much from, New York. Stan said that I have utterly failed to make a big deal out of the most important outcome…
As the great philosopher Yogi Berra may have said, prediction is difficult, especially if it’s about the future. But I’m in the mood to try something difficult today, so here goes. First, a prediction about how consumers will buy in…
"Management by Serving Suggestion" is a phrase that jumped off my tongue at the end of a visit to one of our customers, who will remain anonymous for obvious reasons. I was trying to capture what it was that bothered…
To conclude this four-part blog series on coaching, here's a step-by-step guide for using the "Coach by the Numbers" process to get each representative on your sales development team up to an optimal level of cold-calling success. Get rigorous about…
To summarize, in reverse order, the content in Part 1 and Part 2 of this four-part blog series: Sales development conversations are like prize fights: you will never get to use your late-round skills if you are knocked out in…
Conversations, like golf swings, come in distinct parts. For the golf swing, we have the setup; backswing; transition; downswing; impact; and follow-through. For sales development conversations, we have opening and agreement to engage; communicating value; offering the meeting; agreeing to…
The desire to coach sales reps has blossomed in the spring of 2016. At a recent American Association of Inside Sales Professionals conference in Denver, it seemed like every presentation — including mine — had something to do with coaching.…
