The best salesperson in the room is not always the one with the lowest price. It is not necessarily the one who produces the fastest quotation, represents the largest company, or carries the thickest product catalog. The most valuable salesperson is the one customers trust to tell them what is coming next. That is especially […]

There was a time when a salesperson could walk into a customer meeting knowing little more than the company’s name, its general business, and the name of the person sitting across the table. The salesperson would ask a few broad questions, talk about capabilities, leave behind a brochure, and hope something interesting emerged. That approach […]

Customers do not need more sales pitches. They need more clarity.   They are trying to navigate material shortages, component constraints, changing tariffs, longer lead times, new technologies, geopolitical uncertainty, and the enormous demands artificial intelligence is placing on the electronics supply chain. Every day brings another headline, prediction, warning, or opinion. Much of the information […]

There is an old belief in sales that the real competition begins when the request for quotation arrives. That may have been true once, but it is certainly not true today. By the time purchasing sends out an RFQ for a printed circuit board or electronic assembly, many of the most important decisions have already […]

One contact does not make an account. If you have only one contact at a customer, you do not have an account. You have a contact. Maybe that person likes you. Maybe she answers every call, sends you requests for quotations, and tells you what is happening. That feels like a strong customer relationship—until she […]

There was a time when a salesperson could pick up the phone, call a customer, and ask, “Do you have anything I can quote?” The buyer might have had a stack of drawings waiting, the approved vendor list might have been short. Those days are gone. Today, that question does not sound helpful. It sounds […]

One of the biggest myths in business is that customers buy primarily on price. It is a belief that has shaped sales strategies for decades, leading many companies to assume that the lowest quote will always win the business. After spending more than forty years working with electronics manufacturers, OEMs, and EMS providers around the […]

Okay I know this is about the millionth column that Ive written on this subject, but you’re just not getting it! Let’s stop pretending. The phone didn’t stop working. You just stopped using it. Somewhere along the way, salespeople convinced themselves that email was “efficient.” That LinkedIn messages were “strategic.” That marketing automation was “scale.” […]

I’ve been around man! I’ve been in enough conference rooms, factory floors, and late-night airport lounges to know one thing for certain: most companies think they lose business because they lack capability. They don’t. They lose business because they fail to inspire confidence. That’s a hard truth. Engineers love specs. Operations teams love process charts. […]

I’ve been in this business long enough to hear every excuse in the book. The market’s soft. The economy’s uncertain. Customers are holding back. Pricing pressure is brutal. Competition is unfair. Politics are unstable. Supply chains are unpredictable. Let me tell you something that may sting a little: the market doesn’t care. It doesn’t care […]