How do you coach a salesperson to improve their sales results using digital tools like LinkedIn? It seems like an easy question. All you need to do is present it at a sales meeting, maybe send a few articles you found, and that should be it. Right? Unfortunately, lurking underneath the seeming simplicity of digital selling are a number of complications that differentiate these new sales activities from business as usual. If you try the training and coaching approaches that worked in the past, you'll soon find yourself stuck in the mud. So let's look at some ways you can leverage sales coaching to drive online selling skills in … [Read more...]
The Hidden Influence That “Price Anchors” Have on Your Prospects
Is $200,000 a lot for a house? The answer depends a lot on where you were living when you first looked into buying a house. Your opinion of what a house should cost will be shaped differently depending on the first prices you saw. So if you lived in San Diego, California you would have a much different perspective than if you were in Lincoln, Nebraska. Not only would this affect your conscious price comparisons, but it would even effect your subconscious approach to pricing houses. That initial shopping foray created an anchor in your mind. And it's been shown that those initial anchors have a way of hanging on as we make future … [Read more...]
The Sales and Marketing Alignment Program You Need to Know: This is How You Get Them Working Together
When the topic of "sales and marketing alignment" comes up in a room there tends to be one of a few reactions by the sales and marketing leaders who are present. The "sure sure, yeah yeah" head bob. - "Of course creating alignment is important in this customer-first, connected environment! We must do everything we can to bring sales and marketing together"... and then they go back and things continue as usual "We're just not ready for making this kind of shift." There's agreement that a change needs to be made, but it's not a crisis so it gets no organizational attention. "This is just some BS that people talk about on that … [Read more...]
Smartphones Don’t Cause Evolution: How Misunderstanding Technology Can Hurt Your Professional Network
There's an awful lie that I see tossed around by social selling "gurus", technology ninjas, and futurists. They love to suggest that technology has caused humans to evolve. For them, technology is driving a fundamental and permanent shift in the way we communicate, engage, and even think. They think that Facebook and other social media platforms are changing how we relate to each other. Or the fact that we can look up that "one actor in that one movie" on Google (instead of putting brain power into remembering) demonstrates that our memories now work differently. The argument goes that changing technology leads to changing people. In … [Read more...]
Why Understanding the On-Demand World Will Make You A More Successful Salesperson
The on-demand world has fundamentally changed how we consume information and content. And if you want to stay relevant in sales, you ned to understand how this changes what prospects and customers want and need from you. Remember when you could only watch your favorite television show at a specific time and on a specific day? Now, because of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu and online platforms like Youtube, we can watch shows whenever we want. Our TV has become "on-demand" and we expect to be entertained whenever we want to be. The internet has fundamentally changed more than just how people watch television. Buying is … [Read more...]
How Watching Netflix Will Make You a Better Salesperson
It's a Friday night. It's been a long week, but you're finally at home and ready to unwind. You sit in front of the TV, open up Netflix (or Amazon Prime, Hulu, or your favorite streaming option), and BAM...all of a sudden you are faced with a massive number of choices. Lists and lists of movies, TV shows, documentaries, shorts...they keep coming. There are so many options that you might spend all of your time going through them and trying to pick one. I call it the Netflix Hole, where you spend your down-time looking through all the entertainment options instead of being entertained by one of them. If you've spent any time there, … [Read more...]
You Can Easily Avoid Being a Pushy Salesperson: How Sales Sherpas Guide Prospects to the Next Step™
It’s a Friday night at the local singles bar, the “meet/meat” market where packs of single men and women mingle in the hopes of finding Mr. or Mrs. Right. You probably know of a few of these places, either from your past or because you’re going to one with your friends next weekend. If you look around carefully, you'll notice that they’re packed with mini-case studies of the sales process. There is prospecting happening, referrals being asked for, value-building… the whole shebang. More than anything, there’s a lot of “asking” to get to the next step in the relationship. It might be asking if you can sit next to someone at the bar, … [Read more...]