The skills that Sales Sherpas™ need to guide their customers through their buying journey are much different from what drove success in the past. The future of the sales profession seems to be changing daily. New technology and rapidly changing customer needs are combining to reshape the foundations of the success as we move into the heart of the 21st century. So it begs the question: How can you stay relevant and excel as a sales professional? What skills will keep you on the path to success? Luckily, LinkedIn puts out an Emerging Jobs Report every year which has some insights we can use. The first LinkedIn Emerging Jobs … [Read more...]
Why Mindfulness in Sales Will Make You Happier and More Effective
When people think of "mindfulness" their minds are often filled with images of monks calmly meditating in a lotus position next to a flowing stream. They rarely connect mindfulness with salespeople prospecting on the phone or delivering a sales presentation. But I'm going to suggest that salespeople can get a lot out of mindfulness tools. It can help them improve both their personal satisfaction and professional success. It can help them focus. And yes, it can help them sell more. Let's look at why mindfulness can be a powerful path for salespeople and how they can start walking it. The Mindfulness Trend in Business Mindfulness … [Read more...]
How Peer Pressure Kills New Sales Initiatives (And How it Can Save Them)
Let’s be honest, the world of selling is changing a lot right now. For those responsible for leading, managing, and coaching sales teams, there is always a new program or tool to adopt. But, as you might have found out, it is rarely an easy transition. Getting people to adopt new behaviors is hard. There is usually a lot of resistance and change is slow. Many factors impact that friction, but there’s a big one that escapes most people’s attention. Peer pressure. Peer Pressure Stymies New Programs On a recent podcast by author Malcolm Gladwell, he shared a story about the career of Wilt Chamberlain. Wilt, while one of the best … [Read more...]
Why You Fail in Changing Your Selling Habits (And What to Do Instead)
There's an often-quoted, always mis-attributed aphorism that goes, "If you always do what you've always done, you will always get what you've always got." It points to the fact that if you want to get different results, you have to change your activities. If you want to different outputs, you need different inputs. Sounds simple, right? But if it's simply a matter of different inputs, then why do many of us consistently fail to change our sales results? It's because at the beginning of each new year, each new quarter, and each new sales contest, salespeople sit down and promise themselves (and their sales managers) that it's … [Read more...]
How to Build Empathy with Your Prospects (And Boost Your Empathy Skills at the Same Time)
The robots are coming. And they're here to take your sales job. At least, that's what we're afraid of. It might be true that technology can be integrated into many steps of the sales process. But it can't do everything. For now, there are a number of skills that computers can't learn. One of those is our human ability to create empathetic connections with prospects and customers. This is a key ability for the modern seller. By developing your empathy skills, you'll find your sales conversations much more effective. And more importantly, you'll create a skill set that is in demand and hard to replace with technology. What is … [Read more...]
How Salespeople Can Make Videos Quickly and Easily for Social
When I'm speaking to sales teams on the power of sharing content online, one of the most common responses I get is: "How am I going to find the time!" After diving in, it quickly becomes clear that it's not just a matter of minutes and hours, but of training and bandwidth. Creating relevant and insightful content isn't easy. That's why there are whole departments of people (called "Marketing") that do it. They spend their time and energy developing the skills, doing the research, and putting together the messaging. So salespeople are understandably frustrated when they feel they are being asked to become brand marketers as well as … [Read more...]
3 Things You Need to Do to Improve Your Sales Meetings
Have you ever sat in a sales meeting and thought, "What is the point of this meeting?" Even worse, have you ever been running a sales meeting and half-way through thought, "What is the point of this meeting?" Weekly sales meetings often turn into a "zombie activity". We put it on the calendar without thinking, it's just there because it's there every week. And then we go through the motions until the meeting is over and we don't have to think about it until the next one. No one seems to know the purpose, and no one gets anything of value from attending or leading the meeting. Eventually, they drop out of the schedule due to lack of … [Read more...]
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