There has for some time now been and ever growing gap in annual revenue numbers between the large international board shops and the smaller local board shops. While most of the smaller North American shops are in the under $50 million-a-year revenue range, the big guys are now hovering around the billion-dollar range-a-year range. There […]
People Don’t Like To Be Sold, They Like To Buy
I just finished reading Jeffrey Gitomer’s The Sales Manifesto, and I loved it. In fact, I was so inspired by the book that I read it twice. Not only that, I just ordered a box full of copies to give out to some of my clients’ salespeople. This little red book is so powerful that […]
Getting Your Sales Momentum Back
A short plan to get things kick- started when your sales are stuck in neutral So your sales are down right now. Your numbers are in the gutter and no matter what you do you can’t seem to get anything going. You’re beating on your outside sales team and they are doing everything they can […]
On Being A Great Sales Manager
The position of sales manager is the most important and yet most underrated position in the company. Just to be straight here by the term” sales manager”, I mean the top sales person in the company, the one who is responsible for managing, measuring and motivating the sales team; the person who is responsible for […]
The Consultative Sale
The best way to sell is the consultative sale. The best way to get people’s attention is to help them solve their problems, give them solutions, and most of all be valuable to them. The mistake that most people make is to blast off about how good their product is without taking into consideration what […]
On Being A Great Independent Rep
This week we are going to talk about what it takes to be a great rep; and what you can do to not only delight your principals but more importantly develop a win/win partnership with them where you both win more business and make more money. First of all: get over it. Yes you’ve been […]
The Only thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself
Why don’t you like to cold call? I am making the assumption that you don’t like to call people, you don’t know because most of you have told me you hate it. But, if you get down to it why? Why do we all hate doing this? It’s because of fear, fear of rejection, fear […]
Seven Character Traits Of A Top Notch Salesperson
Searching for greatness Yes, I now that the world of sales is more difficult today than ever before. We all know that the competition is stiffer, and that it is much harder to get a prospects’ attention than ever before. But there is hope. There are things that never change, and that is the type […]
Using LinkedIn To Find New Customers
In last week’s column we talked about getting prospects to call you and I cited a case study by my associate, LinkedIn expert Bruce Johnston. At the end of that column I promised that this week we would talk about how he did get prospects to want to talk to the client, a metal fabricator […]
How To Attract Great Reps
Look we all know that this is one of our industry’s greatest challenges. For a number of reasons not the least being that many board shops have screwed many reps over the years, it is getting more and more difficult to get good reps to represent us. I know that of all the services I […]