When I have an unreasonable customer, I have no problem encouraging them to do business elsewhere (again, after making reasonable attempts to satisfy them). The investment of time and emotional resources are often not worth trying to satisfy such a person. Better to lose one out of 50 customers--especially if that customer is taking 10 times the time and effort to deal with.

You hear about disruptions in industry, in tech, in art. Something or someone who comes along and makes the world abruptly shift, seemingly overnight. Well, there are disruptions in sales calls, too. Questions, actions, and behaviors that have the power to change the conversation and how the client sees you.

Choose the Best Time and Strategy for Cold Calling. Ultimately, picking the right time to make your sales calls is essential to sales success. While these six rules of thumb are a good place to start, you may find different strategies work better for your business. Test these approaches and adopt the ones that work for you. You might be surprised to find how many more prospects you can reach with a few simple tweaks.

"I am fine with my current product lineup..." is one of the worst things that a salesperson can hear. They are happy with what they currently have, and if they are already using a solution of yours you have to tread very carefully to ensure that you don't lose a current customer in pursuit of a higher package or price tag. So today, I wanted to share with you a few responses

Selling original or quirky products is often an uphill battle. However research that involved an analysis of quirky products sold by some 7,000 craft entrepreneurs on Etsy suggests that effective storytelling that helps people relate to such offerings can turn them into successes. This article shares three storytelling techniques that work.

People today are bombarded with messages from morning until night. We can't check email or drive to the store without seeing flashing banners, mostly aimed at selling us something. Today's consumers are experts at tuning these messages out, leaving salespeople with an important question: Do you ensure your message is seen and heard? Connecting with clients today is often about building trust.

Last week, I posted an article on the Impact of Relationship Building Challenges in Sales. The article explored what happens to salespeople who are skilled at selling, but aren’t very good at building relationships, as well as those who are great at building relationships but aren’t very skilled at selling. While there were some terrific insights, the one thing that was missing from the article was what great relationship builders do that everyone else fails to do.

Although the marketing world has been changing drastically over the years, some things have stayed the same. I'm talking about human psychology. There are tried and true tactics that win every time based on how we behave and what signals our subconscious behavior and emotional triggers. According to McKinsey & Co., 80% of consumers want retailers to personalize their experiences — so when you use sales psychology, your audience will believe you understand them and their needs.

Sales prospecting is hard for many reasons. Perhaps the hardest – millions of other people are doing it as well. Meaning, it can feel almost impossible to stand out. The key is leaning into your unique personality and finding out what works for you. But, sometimes, it helps to have some inspiration.

Six in 10 of today’s tech buyers are millennials, and they hold the largest number of decision-making roles in corporate buying. If you haven’t already learned how to sell to millennial buyers, it’s past time to get caught up. Millennials are the first generation to grow up with computers and internet access, and their habits are shaped accordingly. Millennial buyers spend more time researching online, abhor phone calls, and are socially conscious.

Businesses are bound to make mistakes and disappoint their customers. But how you build your apology message and your careful attention to executing it appropriately can make the difference between losing those customers or increasing their loyalty. When delivered well, your apology message can improve the customer relationship to the point where it is stronger than if the mistake had never happened — a phenomenon known as the service recovery paradox.

Self-reflection is the gateway to learning from sales experience, for both sales professionals and the people responsible for coaching them. The tricky part is finding the time to invest in self-reflection, but also—and this could be the real reason it happens less in sales—having a reliable way to do it. Sales self-reflection takes learning from experience to a whole new level, extracting the real gems from a sales interaction, and developing valuable skills that can be refined and applied in other situations.

Sales must be a top priority if you want your business to thrive. It's not enough to simply have a great product or service; you need to market it effectively and convince potential customers that it's worth their time and money. As we approach the year's final quarter, business owners across various industries are feeling the pressure to close out the year with high financial numbers.

Surveys. They're supposed to take the pulse of a company's performance through the eyes of their customers. However, they frequently deliver the opposite -- a veiled and biased pile of data that is used only for your monthly performance reports. This happens because many organizations are prone to customer deafness. Surveys are constructed based on what companies want to hear, rather than on what customers need to say.

While it is the sales team’s job to bring in business, simply cranking up the heat to get the numbers you want can produce an environment where stress backfires. Too much stress in any professional situation will mask talent and lead to poor decision-making. Instead of dialing up the pressure, the author recommends leaders engage with sellers in three areas: 1) Focus on creating an exceptional sales experience. 2) Focus on the sales process (not the outcome). 3) Focus on coaching to improve performance.

The days of buyers relying on sales reps for product information are long gone. Buyers are savvier than ever and have shifted to digital channels to research solutions. In fact, TrustRadius’ 2022 report, B2B Buying Disconnect: The Age of the Self-Serve Buyer, revealed that virtually 100% of buyers want to self-serve all or part of the buying journey. Because of that shift, traditional enablement no longer works. Enablement functions that focus only on sellers are missing a massive opportunity.

In the dynamic and data-driven corporate world, effective communication is paramount, and one of the key tools for this communication is corporate presentations. Corporate presentations are the perfect way to communicate ideas, proposals, and facts to your business's internal audience as well as external stakeholders. In fact, over 35 million PowerPoint presentations are given daily to more than 500 million people.

The Great Rationalization has arrived, and buyers are more risk-averse than they’ve been in a long time. One effect of selling in a more challenging economic environment? Having to make your pitch to larger buying committees that include skeptical, budget-conscious executives. It’s a challenge facing almost every B2B enterprise seller – and it’s a challenge we’re here to help you address.

Maximizing profit and growth should be a top priority for businesses, along with client care. But profit cannot be achieved in your business without making sales. Sales are the lifeblood of a business, and without revenue, your business crumbles. Many business owners fall into the trap of thinking that a lack of sales means a money problem. While yes, not meeting your sales targets will turn into a money problem, I most often see small business owners not knowing how much needs to be sold each month to keep their business afloat.

As buyers, we know how much the digital-first world has transformed buying behavior. It isn’t just the volume of choice. It’s unrestricted access to seller information, without actually having to rely on the seller for it. This has put B2B sellers in quite a tough spot. Now, sellers have an even smaller window and shorter opportunity to make an impact on their prospects.