Understanding the Sales Force

OCTOBER 31, 2022

My MacBook Pro is running Monterey version 12.6 and it has been charging to only 80%. This was driving me crazy so I did some digging and found that the default battery setting is "Optimized" where it says the following: "To reduce battery aging, your Mac learns from your daily charging routine so it can wait to finish charging past 80% until you need to use it on battery.".

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Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022

The Sony PlayStation, Gorilla Glue, Aquafina, and The George Forman Grill were all introduced in 1994. You've heard of those but have you heard of Vamp Nail Polish or KoronaPay? They were also introduced in 1994.

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Understanding the Sales Force

AUGUST 25, 2022

While you don't need to know a single thing about Baseball to read this, it is another article with a baseball analogy. If you don't enjoy reading my baseball analogies, you can ignore this but I must warn you that today's analogy will reveal the two underlying causes for sales opportunities getting stuck in the pipeline and not reaching a close. If you don't care about that then bye-bye until the next article.

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Understanding the Sales Force

AUGUST 8, 2022

If your car was manufactured in the last few years, you probably have a rear camera that helps you see your surroundings when you need to back up, back into a parking space, or drive backwards on the interstate at 65 MPH. Okay, maybe not the last one. Somehow, my Genesis GV80 always knows to display its rear and overhead cameras when I'm pulling into the garage.

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Understanding the Sales Force

JULY 27, 2022

When you think about cars, you know there are coupes, sedans, crossovers, SUVs, and sports cars. You also know there are luxury cars, mid-range cars and economy cars. You also know there are fast cars and slow cars, flashy cars and vanilla cars, big cars and little cars, white cars, black cars and every color in between. But if you were to think about specific features that differentiate one car from another, you would have to really think about it, wouldn't you?

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Understanding the Sales Force

JUNE 24, 2022

I use a tool called Zapier to create zaps that automate some of the tasks that I do. Zapier's newsletter had an article on 11 tech tools you need during economic uncertainty or in other words, during a recession. I clicked on the article and the first tool recommendation was written by Linda Scorzo , CEO of Hiring Indicators on the topic of competency based assessment technology.

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Understanding the Sales Force

APRIL 4, 2022

I find ideas and material for this Blog everywhere, especially when I'm not looking for them. Yesterday I received a daily email from a Paul Reddick, a baseball coach who was drumming up some business for his baseball institute. It resonated - not for its baseball coaching - but as sales coaching. Here's what it said: If your coach is talking about any of the pitching flaws that you see listed above….

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Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

I bought my first cell phone in 1985. The enormous device was hard wired to the car, connected to a heavy metal box, and cost $2,000 to install. All calls in and out were billed by the minute and my bill averaged around $1,500 per month. The coverage was so spotty that most calls were dropped several times per conversation. The only practical way to use the "car phone" was to find a coverage area, find a place to park in that area, and then have a conversation.

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Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 18, 2022

One hundred years ago, most men and women wore hats and dressed up to go everywhere. Sixty years later, Dress for Success was founded and at the same time became somewhat of a thing where if you wanted to be successful, you needed to dress like you were successful. That was followed by business casual Fridays and then always business casual. Finally, the tech industry ushered in the current movement for business dress, the "who cares?

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Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 14, 2022

I heard from Bob last week and whenever I hear from him it usually means he got himself into a jam with another sales opportunity. Regular readers are familiar with Bob, one of the worst salespeople on the planet. New readers might want to catch up on the six prior articles about Bob. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6. So what did Bob get himself into this time?

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Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 10, 2022

I found it challenging to write this article. The company that provides us with cyber-insurance required that our entire team watch a series of 21 training videos to make us more aware of how hackers operate, how easy it is to be hacked, and what we must do differently in order to protect our data, privacy and accounts. Imagine my surprise when the first video described hacking operations as businesses with outbound prospecting operations whose goal is to convert their emails, texts and calls in

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Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 24, 2022

This is not an article about COVID but I will begin by asking which COVID policy you believe is the most stupid. My vote is for the mask requirement in restaurants because the premise is so moronic. While you're alone with your group at the front door and until you reach your table you must wear your mask. Then, when you're seated at your table, among all the other diners, you can remove your mask.

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Understanding the Sales Force

DECEMBER 1, 2021

Have you tried recruiting salespeople lately? It's a lot like it was in 2019, pre-pandemic, only different. From time to time, I help clients recruit for key roles. Unlike recruiters, I don't work on a contingency because I take responsibility for the entire recruiting process from soup to nuts and then the client makes the decisions on who to hire.

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Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021

Have you ever attempted to complete a jigsaw puzzle when the entire puzzle is a solid color? You dump all the pieces on the table and say to yourself, WTF? Have you ever come to a strange intersection and the signs are pointing in every possible direction? You sit there with drivers leaning on their horns, urging you to move and you're looking at the signs and wondering, WTF?

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Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

I was on the back of our property with my chain saw and I was ready to take down the third tree of the afternoon. I determined where the tree needed to fall, made the two front cuts to create a hinge and made the final cut in the back to take it down. Only it didn't go according to plan. Somehow, the tree began to drop right where I was standing, ninety degrees from where I intended.

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Understanding the Sales Force

AUGUST 9, 2021

When it comes to navigation I usually opt for Waze but sometimes Siri can find a way out of traffic that Waze can't. On the other hand, try asking Siri to dial a phone number while she's navigating and you'll quickly learn that she can't multi-task. If you are navigating using Apple maps in CarPlay, then Siri will navigate to the address you asked her to call.

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Understanding the Sales Force

AUGUST 5, 2021

We've gone from don't wear a mask, to wear a mask, to wear 2 masks, back to no need to be masked and now back to wear masks indoors, even if you have been vaccinated. CDC Guidelines change almost weekly, often lack the science to justify their recommendations, don't take local conditions into consideration and are usually very confusing to say the least.

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Understanding the Sales Force

JULY 21, 2021

We were watching an episode of the hilarious comedy series The Goldbergs and one of the themes of episode 4 in season 3 was about authenticity. In this episode, Barry and Erica, the two oldest children, accused each other of being posers. The bottom 50% of all salespeople are posers too. In an article last week we discussed how data can help you hire the ideal salespeople.

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Understanding the Sales Force

APRIL 13, 2021

You can find inspiration anywhere. Even in a book called, A Year of Playing Catch. Tom Schaff was nice enough to send me a copy of this book and there was the inspiration, right there on page 128. Why would someone from the world of sales care about a page out of a baseball book? I'll give you fourteen really good reasons. You see, the book is much less about baseball and much more about the following thirteen integral competencies of sales success: Relationships.

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Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

When I was growing up in the hilly areas of central Massachusetts, snowstorms meant that unless cars had chains or studs on their snow tires, cars would not get enough traction to drive up a slippery hill. You could get out of the car and walk up the hill and after abandoning their cars, many people actually did that. When executives running tire and auto manufacturers grew tired of people complaining about this, they finally came up with the perfect solution.

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Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 28, 2021

I hope this is one of my more entertaining articles, although most of the enjoyment will come from the links within. Each year around this time I start thinking about Baseball because I miss it so much. Baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron just passed away becoming the 9th baseball HOFer to pass in the last 12 months. Today there were multiple videos showing wild triple plays in my Twitter feed.

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Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 26, 2021

Just before dark each day a Fox visits our property and drives our dog, Dinger, crazy. If you don't know Dinger, you can learn about his listening skills in this article. Last week, the Fox stole Dinger's green ball, brought it home to his own family, and that really pissed off Dinger! My wife and I have both scared the Fox away but he's a creature of habit and he continues to appear at the same time each day.

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Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 21, 2021

You finally have that big new 4K flat screen mounted on your wall but now the movie you are streaming isn't sharp because your inconsistent internet connection negatively affects the resolution and the big screen makes it even more obvious. Bringing it closer to sales, you invested in the CRM application you needed but your salespeople aren't using it the way you had hoped.

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Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 18, 2021

Among all the product shortages we have experienced in the past ten months, there has been no shortage of crappy movies. It's almost like the movie studios decided to release all the movies filmed in the past several years that weren't ready for prime time and hope that people would stream them at home during the pandemic because we had watched everything else.

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Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 8, 2021

When I made my predictions for 2020 I'm pretty sure I didn't predict a pandemic. Making predictions isn't easy. In the US, sales teams are coming off three robust years of sales growth and while revenue was up during that time, the percentage of salespeople hitting quotas was not. That means the top 20% were not only carrying the load, they carried more of the load.

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Understanding the Sales Force

DECEMBER 10, 2020

Short article today. Prospects don't pay a lot of attention so the less you say the better. It helps them listen and comprehend more of what you share with them when you use fewer words. But prospects aren't the only ones who don't listen. Salespeople don't listen very well either. As a matter of fact, my dog has better listening skills than most salespeople because my dog knows what to listen for.

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Understanding the Sales Force

DECEMBER 7, 2020

I'm going to share the story of a real salesperson and his current, real opportunity, but change the names of everyone involved. I hear stories like this every day but this particular one happens way too often.

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Understanding the Sales Force

NOVEMBER 20, 2020

I just love it when our lawn looks gorgeous - thick, lush, and green, green, green. Getting it looking that good requires fertilizing, aerating, thatching, over seeding, and frequent mowing, all things better suited to the landscaping company than me. Of course, some sun and water help too. And even with an irrigation system, by the middle of the summer, areas of our lawn begin to look like crap.

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Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 27, 2020

Had an update lately? I get an Office 365 update on Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote at least every week. Yawn. It seems half of them are to fix something that broke in the previous release. Apple updates the operating systems of their various devices on a fairly regular basis. The software for my Apple watch was updated twice in the past month.

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Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 21, 2020

Most companies don't understand that crappy customer service is really a sales issue. When a company's customer service is thoughtful, helpful, kind and thorough, that great customer service actually serves the sales organization. It becomes easier for salespeople to renew accounts, cross-sell, up-sell and succeed. When a company's customer service sucks, it has the opposite effect, creating objections, resistance, disdain and animosity.

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Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

Your teenage daughter, growing 4-6 inches per year, asks for two new pairs of sneakers. She's already outgrowing 3 pairs each year and these two, which are completely unnecessary, would keep her in fashionable footwear for only a few months. It would make total sense for you to say, "Let's wait a few months until you've stopped growing so fast.". An employee asks for a new car, believing that an SUV crossover (not the Maserati in the picture!

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Understanding the Sales Force

JULY 6, 2020

During our first of its kind Independence Day weekend, I thought about a lot of things that loosely tied into sales effectiveness and while they could all be articles in their own right, I decided to write one article tying them all together. I've been writing articles for my Blog for fifteen years - since 2006 - so not only was I an early adopter, I've written close to 2,000 articles.

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Understanding the Sales Force

JUNE 25, 2020

You wake up, the sky is blue, the sun is shining, you open the door and it's freezing cold outside. Or there is the opposite of that, when there are thick clouds, it's drizzling, you open the door and it's hot and humid as hell! Things aren't always what they appear to be. In early April, during the earlier stages of the virus-required lockdown, I wrote this article about some of the remote selling challenges that companies were experiencing.

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Understanding the Sales Force

JUNE 23, 2020

Back in the old days, when you wanted to copy something, you would have said, "I'm going to Xerox this." And for years when you needed a tissue you would have asked for a Kleenex. And when you wanted to clean your ears you would have asked for a Q-Tip. All three of these are examples where the brand and the product were one in the same. We're getting to that same point with Zoom video, where more than half of all salespeople are now using Zoom!

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Understanding the Sales Force

APRIL 9, 2020

Forget Consultative Selling, Value Selling and Sales Process - the things I talk about most often. The inability to sell that way is nothing - and I mean nothing compared with what I'm going to explain today! For most salespeople and companies, the last three weeks has been an absolute roller coaster. Most companies expect their sales teams to be not only active, but proactive; to replace face-to-face meetings with virtual meetings; and to continue pipeline building so that there is business to

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Understanding the Sales Force

MARCH 12, 2020

You know the stories of the Three Stooges, The Three Little Pigs, The Three Bears, and baseball fans have just heard about The Three Batter Minimum (how stupid!). We're not going to discuss any of those threes today but we will talk about the three things companies must do, right now, in this quickly disintegrating economy, to drive revenue.

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Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 9, 2020

You hired a great salesperson that didn't work out. You hired a so-so salesperson that did work out. You hired another great one that kicked ass, and another one that was so-so. That's the story of hiring salespeople. It's mostly hit or miss with an emphasis on miss. In this article I'm going to share an actual example that illustrates why this happens so frequently.

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