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Paying commission wisely is a big challenge for business owners and managers. Commission can either drive sales performance, or turn your sales team into a bowl of oatmeal.

Selling is a profession of immediacy. Commission salespeople get paid for what they sell today. The presence of weekly, monthly, and yearly sales goals stresses the need for immediacy. Given all the attention on the “What have you sold for me lately” mentality of

ummm…. so March sales?
Please stop telling me about your stupid pipeline.  I know you have all the answers teed up for me.  I don’t give a @#$%…
I’m not your mom or you sales manager so stop pitching me on how amazing your three month selling cycle is.  Frankly I don’t care.
I am sure your pipeline [...]

Everyone wants to differentiate themselves in the eyes of buyers. Yet they often pick the most conventional, beige, bland and predictable ways of demonstrating it. They pick the latest fads or are forced to do something that once worked, 15 years ago, for their manager and is now labelled as a “methodology”.
There are some great [...]

The challenge with talking about sales presentations is that it immediately invokes an image of a one way conversation. The only thing that can be worse is if it included a PowerPoint presentation read by the presenter. To me selling and presenting are two different things that only on occasion and under specific circumstances go [...]

Now, I’m no Anthony Hopkins, but training in acting and theater has definitely enhanced my sales career. With one foot in the world of theater and the other in the realm of business, here are a dozen suggestions to help you perform effective sales presentations.

Consultative selling is just about the only kind of selling anyone talks about anymore. We don’t push products – we solve problems. We don’t sell stuff – we form partnerships.
I realized how far the pendulum had swung the other day when a sales manager told me that his team is trained to find the customer’s [...]

These questions will throw you off course. Beware!

Image via Wikipedia

“How do you make an orange?”
When I ask business owners and groups of sales professionals that question, I get a lot of different responses (as well as the occasional mystified look):
“I buy them at the store.”
“I pick them off a tree.”
“I start with a seed.”
“So what you’re telling me,” I [...]

Image by Simon Clayson via Flickr

Two weeks ago I wrote a post called What Is The Primary Role Of A Sales Manager?. In that post I basically asserted the primary role of a sales manager is to facillitate an enviroment where people can be productive, but in retrospect I missed one key point. In addition [...]