10 Things a sales person should never say and why...

Five Tips to Make You a Better Salesperson.

Can the best sales people become the best sales managers?

Infectious Leadership
What kind of infectious agent do you want to be? Infectious like humor or infectious like the plague? For good or ill the senior leadership of every organization is infectious. By this I mean that leaders’ behaviors tend to be transmitted to their direct reports, who pass them on to the next level, and so on down through their organizations. Over time, they permeate the organization from top to bottom, influencing activity at all levels. Eventually they become embodied in the organizational culture, influencing the types of people who get promoted and hired into the organization, creating a self-reinforcing feedback loop – either positive or negative. Th

Conducting Corporate Diplomacy
The higher you rise in organizations the more you need to be able to practice the corporate equivalent of international diplomacy. Whether you are striving to transform your organization internally or working to shape the rules of the game with government officials externally, the essential challenge is the same: If you want to achieve your objectives, you need to learn how to effectively identify alignment and build alliances in order to get things done. Failure to master this critical skill can lead to trouble: it’s easy for leaders who are used to wielding authority (and making decisions with their place in the hierarchy in mind) to get frustrated and attempt to impel peop

Dispelling The Salesperson Stereotype: The Key To Being More Effective In Today's Economy
As salespeople, we can get very enthusiastic about our business and offerings. As tempered as this enthusiasm may be, we run the risk of being overwhelming, or worse being too “salesy.” This has contributed to the stereotype of the average salesperson as pushy, aggressive, and overly excited. The result is, invariably, a degradation of the sales process. By virtue of this stereotype, internal feelings of pressure and tension are instantly created within prospects and clients alike. The prospect feels he or she would rather be anywhere else other than speaking with you. The reality is that both parties are bringing to the table inherent pressures and tensions that already ex

Building Trust through Empathy: A Practical Guide
Trust is the single most important purchasing factor in any sale. Trust is the buyer’s confidence that the seller will do right by them, and becomes more important as the level of vulnerability (risk, significance of the decision) and dependence (technical, knowledge, time) rises. As I am sure you can imagine, the importance of trust is highest in a strategic sale. Buyers will never work with a seller that they don’t trust, and will most likely choose to work with the supplier that they trust the most. The irony with trust is that most buyers don’t trust sellers. Look at mainstream media and its portrayal of salespeople; they’re dishonest, immoral, manipulative, and wil

Differentiating the IT Services Menu
It seems every week we talk to just another IT services shop trying to kick-start their marketing and sales process. We sit down with the founder and ask the same question: “so how are you different from all the other firms out there?” When we ask that question, we get the same answer: we have a global delivery model, we are client centric, we put people first, we are domain experts and/or we really understand our clients. Woop do flipping do. Welcome to the club. With those credentials, you are beautiful and unique, just like everyone else. Your competitors have the same answer. They have a global delivery model, they are client centric, they put people first,