You’ve decided to take the plunge and change careers. You are ready for a brand new start, excited to take on a new challenge. One major mental obstacle stands between you and your new start; the uncomfortable, but obligatory, interview process, which comes equipped with the dreaded “why did you leave your last job” question.

Strengthening customer relationships is a key way for sales organizations to improve sales performance and win more deals.

Nic spent most of her childhood avoiding people. She was raised by a volatile father and a mother who transferred much of the trauma she’d experienced onto her daughter. The combination left Nic fearful and isolated. “My primitive brain was programmed to be afraid of everybody, because everybody’s evil and they’re gonna hurt you,” she told me. (Nic asked to be referred to by only her first name to protect her privacy.)

What makes a great customer experience? For some brands, it’s a frictionless journey. For others, it’s a memorable experience. But few brands are successful being both frictionless and memorable. Research shows companies can choose among four strategies when deciding whether to focus on being frictionless or memorable.

Sales is the lifeblood of any business. Beating the plan yields optimism. Missing the number could mean a scramble for survival. Without sales, your business literally has nothing.

If you’re skeptical about whether you need to prepare for a new era, consider the story of Michael. Michael exemplified a veteran B2B salesperson. As a perennial top performer for twenty-five years in the pre-pandemic, in-person selling era, Michael was skeptical about whether he should embrace the concept of virtual selling when his company announced a work- from-home policy in March 2020.

Sales must help B2B buyers overcome the complexity of buying today by enabling buyers to complete each of the required jobs.

What is buyer enablement? Buyer enablement is the provisioning of information that supports the completion of critical buying jobs.

The most important aspect of making a sale is also a major weakness of every salesperson: Asking Questions.

It’s an enigma to me. Questions are so critical, you’d think it would be the topic of training every week. Yet salespeople are odds on favorites to have never taken one training program in the science of asking a question.

How critical? The first personal (rapport) question sets the tone for the meeting, and the first business question sets the tone for the sale. That’s critical.

Effective coaching sometimes requires us to shift our focus to igniting a coachee’s intrinsic motivation to change, as I mentioned in a previous blog post. This is not always easy to do, and some say it borders on the impossible. The good news is, there is an incredibly powerful tool one can use that has been proven by years of rigorous scientific study.