Understanding the Sales Force

DECEMBER 21, 2023

Momentary panic can spell the end of a call, meeting or opportunity. I’ll explain how to always respond appropriately to Your Prospect. I pulled up to pump number five at my usual Cumberland Farms convenience store/gas station. I use their smart phone app to select the pump and authorize the dispensing but after the third failed attempt to authorize payment, I realized the app wasn’t working.

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Prospecting How To Call-back Objections 170

Understanding the Sales Force

NOVEMBER 14, 2023

This article was easy to write because the movie contrasts the best and worst salespeople. This makes two movie posts in a row as I used Sound of Freedom to illustrate that companies don’t know what they don’t know about sales. The Analogy We watched GameStop: Rise of the Player s and despite it being a documentary, found it to be quite entertaining.

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Sales Methodology Groups Up-Sell Motivation 193

Understanding the Sales Force

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

Most salespeople can improve sales effectiveness by changing their beliefs and moving out of their comfort zone. My wife took me to a Vegan restaurant for lunch and I ordered a sandwich that consisted of coconut, lettuce and tomato on multi-grain bread. I not only didn’t hate it, I liked it. I showed my wife that it had bacon in it and she swore it didn’t.

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Understanding the Sales Force

OCTOBER 23, 2023

People get dug in on their opinions. Supporters of Israel vs. Supporters of Hamas. While most Americans can’t imagine anyone supporting Hamas, there are actually 16% who do. iPhone vs. Android. Each phone has its advocates and 85% stay with the same brand. Trump versus Biden. Half the country won’t vote for the other candidate. I could go on and on but today, those were the first three examples, and most obvious three examples that were top of mind.

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Account How To Face-to-face Call-back 203

Understanding the Sales Force

OCTOBER 10, 2023

Do you know who said, “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time?” It was Abraham Lincoln. And he should know. America had a civil war under his watch! Many outstanding leaders have been polarizing figures. Can you say Donald Trump?

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Scale Twitter Policies Call-back 193

Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

Did you watch any or all of Attorney General Merritt Garland testifying at the House Oversight Hearings? I’m going to explain how that hearing, and others just like it, are the same as presentations that salespeople make to buying/purchasing committees at large companies. Congressional hearings aren’t expected to uncover any new information, they won’t have a gotcha moment, and minds are not going to be changed.

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Company Decision Maker Proposal Up-Sell 193

Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

I’ve written more than 2,000 articles on my Understanding the Sales Force Blog and there are hundreds of other sales blogs. Some are written by sales experts. Some are written by marketing experts. Some are written by enablement experts. Some are experts at writing but without subject matter expertise. Some aren’t experts at anything but still they write.

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Sales Leadership Hiring How To Account Based Marketing 203

Understanding the Sales Force

MAY 30, 2023

Some of my long-term problems had such simple solutions. If only I had thought of the obvious solutions first. For example: For decades, I could not drive for much longer than two to two and a half hours before my eyes would get so heavy that I risked falling asleep at the wheel. Day or night, year after year, all of our trips were based on how far I might have to drive.

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Examples Sales Consultative Selling Sales Process 283

Understanding the Sales Force

MAY 23, 2023

My wife chose some beautiful new shrubs and flowers and I was digging the holes to plant them in the garden. The largest shrub required the largest hole and it was to be placed in an area of the garden that I knew was quite rocky. Sure enough, after just three shovel fulls of dirt, I hit rock and it was bigger than both my shovel and the hole. I was stuck.

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Pipeline Sales How To Closing 310

Understanding the Sales Force

MAY 10, 2023

All the requirements have been met. We have already seen these factors occur across the board: Low QoQ GDP. High interest rates. Massive layoffs. Inflation. Stock Market down. Cost-cutting. We are now seeing these events in sales organizations: Missed forecasts. Closing delays. Failure to hit quotas. Order cancellations. We know what doesn't work in a recession.

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Revenue Cancellation Forecasting Quota 344

Understanding the Sales Force

MARCH 7, 2023

What kind of car should you drive? Answering that question with anything other than, "It depends," is irresponsible because there are so many variables. Choosing a car depends on budget, family size, how much stuff you load into your car, the length of your drives, the logo/ego influence, fit and function, ergonomics, appearance, perceived value, reliability, cost to drive it (gas/electric/mileage), and so much more.

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Influencer Closing Company Consultative Selling 280

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

For those of you who are familiar with my series of articles about Bob - the worst salesperson ever - you can catch up by enjoying, laughing, and making fun of him here. 12 of the articles that show up on that page are about Bob! Today, I reviewed the worst OMG evaluation of a sales manager that I have ever seen. It was literally the worst because he was in the 1 percentile, meaning that 99% of all sales managers are stronger than he is.

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Promotion Sales Management Sales Sales Process 296

Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 4, 2023

CEOs, Sales Leaders, Sales Managers and HR Directors are under water when it comes to sales selection. They get it right about 50% of the time and that includes salespeople who stay but underperform. After reading Malcom Gladwell's book, Talking to Strangers , I can finally explain why the success rate is so low.

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Hiring Sales Sales Management Tools 296

Understanding the Sales Force

DECEMBER 12, 2022

Each week we can read multiple lists of the top new movies and TV shows to stream at home. Lists of the Top SUV's, Sedans, and Coupes are also prevalent right now. And of course, as we move ever closer to the holidays, there are lists aplenty on the Top Gadgets, Luxury Items, Gifts for Her, Gifts for Him and Gifts for Kids to peruse. But it's also the time of year when I publish my list of the Top 10 Sales and Sales Leadership Articles of the year.

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Understanding the Sales Force

NOVEMBER 14, 2022

Brad Bolino emailed me a link from a recent Wall Street Journal article titled, " Millennials are Changing What it Means to be Successful in Sales.". I read the article three times to make sure I wasn't rushing to judgement, didn't experience an inappropriate knee-jerk reaction, and that I correctly interpreted what the article implied: The journal relied on anecdotal evidence from a handful of millennial salespeople and buyers to suggest that millennials are transforming the sales profession.

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Journal Buyer Sales Decision Maker 156

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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Compensation Motivation Salary Hiring 294

Understanding the Sales Force

OCTOBER 21, 2022

If you aren't aware of the crime taking place in most of America's big cities, you have either been living in a cave or experiencing willful ignorance. Most of the criminals are repeat offenders and those who are captured and arrested are usually back on the street committing additional crimes later that day due to cashless bail. If you think about it, and you don't have to think very long or hard, cashless bail mirrors how companies deal with under-performing salespeople.

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Hiring Company Sales Enablement Sales 308

Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 27, 2022

Isn't it awesome when you learn about new tricks your computer, phone or software can do that you weren't previously aware of? I've been using a number of new widgets on the home screen of my iPhone 13 and I love how quickly I can get or enter information! Isn't it fascinating when you thought you knew what a product was all about but you were wrong?

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Software Software Follow-up Groups 261

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

AUGUST 3, 2022

I do my own weeding and that "hobby" takes up a lot of my free time. Weeding is like playing the arcade game wack-a-mole where you pull the weed, use a weed wacker, or poison the weed on Monday and two more weeds appear in its place on Tuesday. If you think about territory sales or sales into a specific vertical, reps should be calling on the same customers and prospects all the time.

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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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Hiring Tools Sales 156

Understanding the Sales Force

APRIL 20, 2022

How quickly can you determine why a salesperson is failing? Dinger loves to play catch with his ball. He has seven of them but loves his white ball the most. When we're out playing catch and I point to a ball and say, "there it is" or "right there" or "get it" he just can't seem to find it! Dinger has good listening skills but his ability to see the obvious isn't very good.

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Account Groups Objections Revenue 296

Understanding the Sales Force

MARCH 15, 2022

So there will be Major League Baseball in 2022. Suddenly the b g and moaning about the owners has stopped and everyone is just happy that baseball is back. Speaking of baseball and bringing sales into the discussion, let's talk about coaching. First the baseball. When my son was home for winter break, I asked him to rank all of his baseball coaches, an exercise that he found quite interesting.

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Coaching Sales Management Pivotal Exercises 308

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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Closing Influencer Opportunity Prospecting 294

Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 20, 2022

Both AT&T and Verizon have delayed activating their 5G networks near airports because it might cause interference with airplane guidance systems on certain planes, like Boeing 777s. Forgive my cynicism, but how long have the airlines known about that? They have probably had years to prepare for this deployment and update their own technology but didn't and now, at eleventh hour, they sounded the alarm and tried to make it the carriers' problem.

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Airlines Networking System Pipeline 156

Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 5, 2022

My articles begin with analogies so we'll start by asking, has baseball changed?

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B2B Inbound Consultative Selling Outbound 296

Understanding the Sales Force

DECEMBER 13, 2021

This is my annual nutcracker post. I first wrote the article in 2011 and people loved the analogy between the Nutcracker and a sales call. I make minor modifications to the article each year as current trends, best practices, and recent data dictate. Last year, The Boston Ballet cancelled their performance of the Nutcracker but we will be in attendance month and look forward to continuing the tradition.

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Cancellation Trends Data Sales 295

Understanding the Sales Force

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

Today is moving day for Objective Management Group. When we first toured our new space, John Pattison , OMG's COO said, "It looks like something the 1980's barfed up!" I'm happy to report that thanks to big-time help from PENTA Marketing CEO Deborah Penta , our new space is bright, cheery, modern, energetic, open and functional! Thinking about the 80's got me thinking.

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Groups Objections Report Examples 344

Understanding the Sales Force

OCTOBER 13, 2021

Anyone who has followed this Blog over the past 15 years knows that other than sales, the only thing I write about nearly as much is baseball. A Google search from within the Blog yields 605 results, and a search on my son playing baseball over the past twelve years yields 208 results. I haven't really mentioned baseball 605 times, but I have probably written about it 150 times!

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Google Consultative Selling Sales Sales Process 322

Understanding the Sales Force

AUGUST 30, 2021

The CDC is back to focusing on COVID case numbers. Earlier this summer, Massachusetts was reporting fewer than 100 new cases each day but more 1,000 new cases per day have been reported for the past two weeks. That particular metric supports the narrative that the Delta variant is spreading but it does not tell the real story that allows us to assess our risk.

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Report How To Exact Sales 170

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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Decision Maker Hiring Analysis Data 310

Understanding the Sales Force

MAY 3, 2021

Some random thoughts from the weekend and its impact on sales teams. We have a twenty-year old gas grill built-in to a stone wall on our back patio and this year I decided to replace all of the components. New burners, new heat plates, new briquettes, new grates, new ignitor, and new wiring. All told, it took three-hours of work, much of it with the ignitor and the wiring.

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Call-back Hiring Sales Groups 170

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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How To Sales Motivation 323

Understanding the Sales Force

APRIL 9, 2021

Do you remember April 1, 2020? The entire world was in lockdown and at Objective Management Group (OMG) we had just ten days to figure out how to convert our annual four-day international conference for sales experts to a three-day virtual event over Zoom. The 200 in attendance loved it and right after the conference I posted this article with 15 lessons we learned about the transition from a face-to-face conference to a virtual conference.

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Conference Face-to-face How To Groups 182

Understanding the Sales Force

MARCH 1, 2021

Today's post has nothing to do with selling, but is indirectly related because some of the businesses that have been hurt by the pandemic and the government's shut downs have sales organizations. In the US, the so-called COVID relief bill passed the house and we learned that only 9% of the 1.9 Trillion dollars in the plan goes to actual COVID relief.

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Small Business Small Business Government Relationals 221

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 9, 2021

32 years ago, back in the winter of 1989, I experienced one of the most memorable weeks of my life. I attended Red Sox Fantasy Camp where campers like me, all greater than 30 years old and most a LOT older than that, were treated to an incredible baseball experience. The way we were treated, what we experienced, the uniforms we wore, the schedules we kept, the baseball games we played, the coaching, the practicing, the work, the game against the former Red Sox players, and the off hours camarade

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Sales Leadership Follow-up Coaching Up-Sell 353

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

I read that Admiral James Stockdale , a Vietnam War veteran and former POW at the Hanoi Hilton , said, “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”. His combination of faith and brutal reality was the difference between surviving long enough to be released from captivity, and those who died in captivity.

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Leads Marketing Qualified Lead Sales 178