One of the easy traps for anybody who is managing their own sales activity to fall into is to start chasing the big deals. One of the sales meeting myths, usually put around large organisations by non-sales people is that:

Every sales person wants to close a single deal on day one that blows his/ her [...]

A lengthy promotional email landed in my inbox and, because the subject caught my attention, I opened the email and skimmed it. There were a number of issues that I could comment on, but the one that stood out was the following paragraph:
Below you will see some of the templates we have built for our [...]

One of the most powerful sales tools is often abused and can be an obstacle to effective selling. I have lost count of the sales people that I have interviewed over the years who seemed credible but were incapable of making an effective sales presentation. They immediately forget all the things their sales training and [...]

As a result of this website I get quite a few emails about business opportunities, many offered as joint ventures. What amazes me is how bad many of them are, for example here’s one I received this evening:
Hi John,
I stumbled across your website and as I was reading, it suddenly occurred to me that you [...]

People often tell me about email mis-communication. Earlier this week, a business I like and trust sent an email broadcast apologising for any offence that may have been caused by the email broadcast sent the day before. They have a novel means of maintaining a relationship with their database by forwarding little jokes. They are [...]

(Regardless of the Economic Environment)
Talking to a local business the other day reminded me of something that all businesses need to be aware of. My friend told me that they had suspended direct sales activity to focus on longer term marketing. This was because all the good conversations resulted in a “not ready to buy [...]

I’m often asked to suggest business opportunities that “don’t require any selling”, the short answer is no. The longer answer is why? I ask why because every business (and a lot of what you do outside of your business) requires you to sell. So if you’re already selling regularly why are you afraid of selling [...]

Well I finally got around to watching the last episode of ITV’s Natural Born Sellers last night. For those (most of you I guess given the low ratings and late night slot) that haven’t been watching, it seems to be another (remember the flop that was Peter Jones’ Tycoon) low budget attempt to create their [...]

In a recent conversation with the sales manager of a local firm I was very surprised to find out that they do not track their customers as they move through their sales funnel. To be fair they did have a "sort-of-record" of some recent leads, having recorded the recent leads as rows in a spreadsheet. [...]

In a meeting with a local business last week I was surprised to find out that they don’t use the product they are selling. The product is fairly high end (tens of thousands of pounds) and the typical sales cycle will involve educating the customer on the need for the product. As the business [...]