Asking the right question starts the sales process and helps to achieve this goal of  How do you sell more? Yet far too many sales people focus on asking the wrong questions or asking the same questions that everyone else has asked.
Before traveling into the why, one important word in the first paragraph is “asking” [...]

I have the fortune of being on advisory teams for a number of technology firms in the San Francisco and Boston areas and I have a very distinct memory of when I learned the power of different perspectives.
One of the companies I’m an advisor for is VendorRate.com – They take the risk out of buying [...]

Here’s a different perspective for you: I think that a successful sales career is based less on your ability to get people to say “Yes” and more on your ability to get to “No” faster and more often.
Unless you want to be the kind manipulative salesperson that everyone loves to hate, you can’t really “get” [...]

I love working with sales people.  We’re focused, high energy, action, and results oriented.  Most of us are pretty good communicators, so it’s fun to talk to other sales people.  Whenever I get into a discussion with a group of sales people, one thing is really clear:  As sales people, we have a compelling need [...]

Cross-cultural selling has unique challenges.  And selling to people in a culture that is not your own is never an easy task. International sales professionals rely on a series of different skills.
One of the first cross-cultural skills you pick up in international sales is learning how to look for different perspectives other than your own.
Wondering [...]

The openness to ideas, especially ideas that you disagree with and that make you uncomfortable, is one of the foundations of mastery. Judge these different perspectives on their effectiveness in a single situation, knowing that there is no right and wrong. There is only effective and ineffective.

We all have one — the first one that is.
And we all do whatever we can to convince others that ours is the best looking.  Our perspective that is.
We love our own opinion.
WE love the sound of it.  WE love the logic of it.  WE love the fact that we can have an opinion in [...]

Steven and Tammy wanted to have a new patio built in their back yard. They had looked at patio stone and brick products for several years, and finally decided this was the summer they were going to look into getting it done professionally. With Steven’s new health problems now in the picture, doing the project themselves was out of the question. If they were going to do it, they were going to have to hire someone to do it.

Sales is changing. The web is rushing in new ways of buying and therefore new ways of selling. The art of selling is not on its way out but, some of the darker elements of sales are.

It may be time that sales organizations re-examined a core belief that may in fact be limiting their revenue growth rather than helping it.  The question revolves around the need or practicality of having a dedicated sales force.  I’ll state my bias right from the top, I don’t think it is always necessary, and I [...]