One should always hesitate before pronouncing something "the best," and be even more circumspect before saying "the worst." But what the heck? The worst thing I hear reps say to open a cold call is "Did you have a chance…
In Part 1 of this blog series, I defined the methods that a business — through its salespeople — can use to get to know its customers: the zero-advantage public information sources; the one-way communications of advertising, focus groups, and…
Businesses have never really known their customers. Salespeople have. And salespeople are, by and large, rather autonomous. They keep what they know to themselves. Surveys can only tell you so much, and almost nothing about your prospects. Focus groups aren’t…
In Part 1 of this blog series, I looked at how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane and his quant team analyzed a bazillion baseball stats and figured out that everyone had been wrong for years about almost everything. Because…
It’s April, and that means the Great American Pastime is underway for the 148th time. That 148 years is a clue that I’m talking about baseball, not the ever-popular participation sport of staring at your smartphone as you cross a…
In Part 1 of this blog, I recounted the tale of two teams of sales reps who went from a highly successful Intensive Test Drive with ConnectAndSell Lightning™— in which they learned to use the tried-and-true Breakthrough Script, pioneered by…
This evening, up on the 21st floor at the restaurant “Daniel’s Broiler” in Bellevue, Washington, with the ever-shrinking (mass, not violet) James Townsend, ConnectAndSell’s VP of Customer Success, just as I was settling on the lamb chops, I heard a…
In Part 1 of this blog topic, I posed a question. If Chef Andrew’s 1-hour-and-42-minute walk to work at the famed Edinburgh restaurant 21212 is longer and more strenuous than Chef Alicia’s 46-minute commute to 21212 — a train ride…
If you follow my posts on LinkedIn, you may have noticed that I publish the stats of our top-of-the-funnel team — in the common tongue, our Sales Development people. Here’s an example from Wednesday, vernal equinox week, 2017: I have…
The “cold calling is dead” debate can get pretty lively, with surprising insights occasionally emerging from the endless back-and-forth. One such insight, for me anyway, came from reading the responses to a simple question: “Why is cold calling so controversial?”…
