Sean's Sales Vitamins

It’s nearly impossible to avoid stressful situations at your job, but the more you’re able to curb your negative impulses under pressure, the more successful you’ll be at work and in life. This article outlines different methods that help control impulses before they cause damage. We all have things we...

At one time or another, all salespeople have been confronted with the dreaded gatekeeper—that office assistant or administrator who intercepts sales calls, blocking you from talking to the high-level prospect you want to reach. The conversation typically goes something like this: You: “Hello, is John Jones in the office, please?”...

I know you know you're good at selling. But HOW do you know? What makes you so good? What is it specifically about how you sell that makes you so good? What is your sales philosophy? What is your sales approach? What are your sales liabilities? What makes your prospecting so good? What makes your engagement skills so good? What is about how you sell that makes you good, I mean really good? Can you answer these questions and a host of others that describe your selling capabilities in a compelling manner? Are your answers unique and specific to you? Can you articulate your OWN specific approach to selling that makes you better than everyone else? If your answers are you work harder than the next guy, that you build better relationships or that you have a passion for sales, you're not good or you can't articulate why you're good. I've interviewed hundreds of sales people in my day and few are very good at explaining why they are good and this is a problem. If you're good at selling, know

Jessica Hagy, the woman who literally wrote the book on how to be interesting (How to be Interesting), shares her top dinner party tips.

Buyers and sellers have always lived in a system of comfortable checks and balances. While one may have had more information, the other seemed to have money

[box]Sales development uses specialization to close more deals.[/box]

In the process, there are two main roles: One that focuses on finding people who are a...

How to stay motivated and improve personal effectiveness can feel challenging. There are many factors that impact both of these things.
Below are 25 things I have done personally and I encourgae m...

hen I was a young buck, one of my first tasks as a sales guy was to contact this large cabinet maker.
I was trying to sell them a $60,000 website package. And if I got the contract, I'd personally get a $9,000 bonus in my pocket.
It seems small now, but it was HUGE to me back then.
I hustled together a meeting with the VP of marketing for this cabinet maker.
Their VP of marketing was amazing. I loved this guy... he was like a nice-old mid-western grandpa. And he was wonderful to me. Let's call him Mr. Cabinet.
In a job (cold calling) where 95% of the people I contact hated me, Mr. Cabinet was so damn refreshing!
He WANTED to talk.
He WANTED to hear my ideas.
He WANTED to do business with me.
And I sure as hell WANTED that $9,000 bonus!
So as the meeting went on, I was more and more convinced Mr. Cabinet was ready to sign the contracts.
 

Back to Mr. Cabinet. He wanted our company to send a proposal, so we did. We spent a lot of time & money on it because we were so convinced this contract was in the bag.
The proposal went well!
Mr. Cabinet was smiling and shook my hand.

After one week of not hearing back, I sent an email to Mr. Cabinet explaining all the details.
Didn't hear anything back.
Ok... no worries... I left a voicemail for him after a few days.
He emailed back a one-sentence email saying, "So sorry, I did get your email, but I haven't had a chance to really look through it."
Two months went by, and I kept contacting Mr. Cabinet and all I got was radio silence. I didn't understand how the deal seemed like a sure thing... to complete radio silence.
To top off my rejection, the CEO of my company started blaming me for screwing up the deal!

----- Ok... let's pause ----- What the hell happened here?
This was a classic case of a deal gone bad, and I'm going to show you exactly what went wrong with Mr. Cabinet:
Essentially I was doing free consulting.
You see, buyers are smart. They know you'll do a bunch of free work for them, educate them on everything that's important, how they should do it, what the timeline is...
They basically get EVERYTHING free from you.
So now they have your ideas, and can get one of their minions to do it for them.
All they have to do is show them the blueprint YOU gave them.
Essentially I did all the work and planning for Mr. Cabinet, allllll for free. Wonderful.


So here's the three of the 47 questions from our Breakthrough Sales Training. Ask these questions before investing time in a person like Mr.Cabinet.

Learn the 7 ways of how social selling helps sales professionals
generate more sales and crush their quota

Okay, I don’t actually hate prospects—I just hate calling them “prospects.” My priority is to create customers who become advocates. That's why I also hate the old-fashioned tug-of-war methods most firms still employ to capture customers...it doesn't get the relationship off on the right foot. Old School vs. New School...