As a B2B salesperson, we are faced with two facts in the marketplace: first, skilled & motivated B2B salespeople are worth their weight in gold, and, second, their sales manager can accelerate or stall their sales career success. Is your sales manager a lid lifter or a lid to your sales success?

Jacob Carpenter of the Trust Factor states, “Yet if there’s one defining trust-related stat of 2022, it’s this jaw-dropper from PwC over the summer: 87% of executives think customers highly trust their companies, while only 30% actually do. (The findings were based on a survey of 500 business leaders and 2,500 consumers.)” My question to you as a sales manager or salesperson is – How do you ensure your customers trust you and your product or service?

Wow! It’s December already and time to reflect on 2022 and plan for 2023. We at ELAvate firmly believe not so much in “life balance” but a “wholesome life” that leads to less stress and more success. Begin by reviewing your 2022 by answering and reflecting on these questions.

Mindfulness can be achieved in countless ways, a few of which include meditation and yoga, to name just a couple. While those things are not for everyone, all people can certainly benefit from mindfulness. So if you’re not into yoga or chanting quietly to yourself, how do you achieve mindfulness in our fast-paced, high-stress world? And what is the goal of achieving it? Being mindful can help you achieve more with less.

Even very successful salespeople fail more than they succeed. Not every prospect becomes an appointment, not every customer interaction ends in a successful sale. I learned long ago that “Failing Forward” in daily sales activities is the secret ingredient that lifted me up to future sales success. “Failing Forward” means learning and growing from your sales mistakes, customer rejection, and marketplace changes.

The advent of hybrid selling has led to many blogs and articles on the supposedly new skills of a B2B salesperson in the post Covid marketplace. Let’s review the attitudes or attributes of successful B2B salespeople in this new era.

B2B selling skills really do still make a difference when buttressed by the key attitudes found in this blog. My advice: Hire and promote people for these B2B selling attitudes and train them in B2B selling skills.

Stir Crazy is a phrase that dates to 1908 according to the Oxford English Dictionary and the online Etymology Dictionary. Used among inmates in prison, it referred to a prisoner who became mentally unbalanced because of prolonged incarceration. It is based upon the slang stir to mean prison.

I have been negotiating deals across cultures for over 30 years. This blog is not about negotiating skills but insights to make your negotiating more successful. Remember successful means a win for you, your company and your client.

Companies often approach me to “ELAvate” the negotiating skills of their sales people. These are companies that have a sales team in place, done the basic selling skills training a few months or a year or two ago, but they still find their sales productivity lagging behind expectations. A cursory investigation by their sales managers leads them to the conclusion that their sales people are losing sales towards the end of the sales cycle and, therefore, sales negotiating skills are weak.

Survey after survey indicate that customers do not trust salespeople. I believe one big reason salespeople are not trusted is because they are more interested in selling their solution rather than aligning with the customer feelings and emotions about the problems they face. Salespeople who don’t show compassion can come across as pushing product or seem more interested in meeting their target or commission plan even when their good intent is to show the customer how their product can solve problems.

Many sales managers have approached me over the years to conduct negotiation skill training for their salespeople to be more successful in conducting negotiations with ever more knowledgeable, demanding customers. Based on my experience and on-line research, I have found these are the major reasons for salespeople failing to negotiate successfully

Over your career you may find you are in a sales slump or even experiencing sales burnout. I have been in a few short slumps over my long career in sales. They have been short because, I believe, of the “non sales” activities I engage in on a regular basis to keep me “sales healthy.” Sales burnout has many of its root causes in your thinking and attitude. As my favorite sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer says, “You become what you think about all day.”

Having survived 2 years of Covid, sales teams are coming out of “ZoomHibernation” to the face the challenges of selling in the post Covid marketplace. Proactive sales managers are engaging their teams to “Regroup, Recharge, Refocus” to this new market environment. Let’s review some activities you, the sales manager, can do for each of the “R’s” to drive and motivate sales team success.

In the post-Covid hybrid B2B sales world, I have found it more difficult to prospect and engage new prospects to meet and discuss problems and needs my company can solve. There are many reasons for this, but, let's focus on not the "why" but the "how" to leads, turn them into prospects that give you appointments. I though have been perplexed on how to use some of the more advanced "techno" tools to get a return on my time and investment.

At Maxwell Leadership, we believe that leadership is influence—nothing more, nothing less. If you don’t have a positive influence on your customers, your effectiveness as a salesperson and your development as a trusted salesperson will be diminished. Demonstrating integrity with your customers is a competitive advantage. Customers want to deal with salespeople they can trust.

I read this article by Monica Guzman and thought of how many times I have had hard, difficult conversations with customers who are indifferent or objecting to me or my solution. What interesting about these conversations is both the customer and the salesperson believe they are right in their perceptions.

Hiring B2B Salespeople is a substantial investment. Without a solid ramp up or orientation schedule, your sales organization can be wasting valuable time and money on sales reps that are slow to produce, or, even quit!

Many B2B salespeople say prospecting is tougher in this post Covid, hybrid marketplace. Recently Hubspot investigated the latest research on prospecting via cold calling by B2B salespeople. I have summarized the key points from Hubspot here and added a few other relevant insights on cold calling.

I read the “Daily Drucker” every day and apply Peter Drucker’s wisdom to my job as a salesperson and sales manager. You see, I am an entrepreneur who is a businessperson that sells. My self-perception is not as an “employee” or “salesperson” but a self-directed manager of my career for a life of success in sales. I read the Daily Drucker to help me navigate my career with purpose and achievement in the marketplace.

How well you inspire trust with your B2B customers can be your competitive advantage or kill the sale. Effectively building trust leads to healthy long term customer relationships that is a win for both you and your customer. With customers limiting their “exposure” to salespeople, quickly establishing trust is a must to move the sales process forward.