Salesmanship

The Lost Art of Sales Training

Sales training appears to be a lost art these days, Companies no longer train their sales people. Every business wants to hire hot shot, proven guys who can hit the road running. That’s the only way to run a cost effective sales function, or at least thats the way it seems. They treat sales reps [...]

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The Brutal Truth About Sales Management

Sales Manager

Twenty five years in sales management taught me one thing – the job stinks. In the process I also learned how to cope with it, or at least my version of how to do that. Here are my reasons for saying it stinks: The truth is harder to find than rocking horse crap. Sales people [...]

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Where’s The Money

Sales Manager

Customers paying for the sale is the ultimate objective of what we do. The sale isn’t truly closed until the customer pays the bill, and in my book also buys the lunch. So knowing how the customer intends to pay is critical for qualifying the sale. But asking how the customer will be paying for [...]

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The Worst Kind of Sales Coaching

Sales Coach

Sales Coaching like this can be dangerous when it influences people looking for straight advice about how professional sales skills. There’s more garbage talked about sales skills than there is about sex, or making money with your blog, or social media marketing. It’s all crap and winds me up because there are some unfortunates out [...]

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Professionals Never Sell On Price

Sales Manager

Price is never the how professionals sell. It’s too risky and short changes the customer. Sometimes its necessary to negotiate the price but professionals will only do that once the customer has made the decision to buy when the selling price meets his constraints. Selling on price is a fools game, because the only time people [...]

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The Difference Between a Sales Funnel and a Sales Pipeline

Sales Manager

To most people Sales Funnel and Sales Pipeline are two sides of the same coin. Both refer to a strategy for turning prospects into customers. Check our Sales Management coaching tutorials for much more information and ideas. Personally I like to think there’s a difference between a Funnel sales strategy and a Pipeline sales strategy. [...]

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Front Office Sales Coaching Articles

Sales Coach

For the last thirty years I’ve been selling, or managing teams who sell, B2B products or services – everything from Milking Machines to Mainframe Computers, and from Debt Collection to Outsourcing. Along the way I’ve been lucky to work with some really smart people and benefited from the best training available – in Strategic Selling, [...]

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Sales Management in the Front Office

Sales Manager

Managing a sales team isn’t a job for the faint hearted. There are few places aspiring sales managers can go to learn about the job. And even fewer where the information is written in plain terms by somebody who’s done the job – now wearing the tee shirt, and the scars. We’ve included some articles [...]

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Sales Qualification – Why and How to Qualify Sales Opportunities

Sales Qualification

Sales Qualification – why do we need it and how do we qualify sales properly? Proper qualification not only tells us our chances of winning. It also tells us how to win. It helps us plan the ground we’ll compete on, and move the prospect in our direction. It helps us choose contingency plans for [...]

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