Process & Method

A sales master will know that questions, when they are meaningful, relevant, open, intelligent, astute, are the foundation to knowing your customer.

The goal is to win business and do it with the least amount of time, effort and energy. The goal is NOT to provide lots of people with pricing and written solution plans.

How do you engage effectively at the CEO level? The very best leaders are focused on delivering results, making a difference, treasuring time, building people, and leaving a legacy. Here are ten rules to honor on your quest to engage successfully.

Sales and marketing people have been bandying around terms like Value Propositions, Unique Selling Proposition, Unique Value Propositions for decades. But, unfortunately, they still mean different things to different people. And they have been misused for too long.

Mastering video conferencing opens up all sorts of opportunities. It puts us ahead of those that only use the telephone. ‘Seeing’ a client makes it easier to build rapport, engage eye-to-eye, ‘showcase’ our wares and gauge reactions.

No business should rest on its laurels, there is always room for improvement. Real leaders are not afraid to admit they don't know something and that they can always learn something new.

Too many salespeople miss out on retention, referrals, re-pricing as delivery gets more expensive and taking care of more customer needs, because they’re not focused enough on delivering value once the sale is complete.

Only managing the volume of a salesperson's pipeline is not always the best approach. If we have too strong a focus on driving these volume numbers, we risk sellers, either consciously or unconsciously, loading the number of deals to meet those metrics whether they be real deals or not, or whether they have the time to develop those deals or not.

The focus of your efforts is about being the authority, being prepared and being professional the whole way through – not just pushing to meet with the ‘person behind’.

Some salespeople when they feel they are not going to get the sale can get into the habit of offering discounts. When you are sold on the value, you won’t be discounting.