I have not been blogging much over the last two weeks because I have been doing a lot of thinking about where my site is going and where I want it to go. Over the last few months the majority of my posts have gone off of serious management topics and more to basic sales training. While this is still important, and these are great topics for sales managers to read; this isn’t really where I had originally envisioned the majority of MY posts on this site heading, so I am going to make a bit of... Read Full Story

Announcing the first eBook from SOCOM Sales is a great accomplishment. I have been tossing around on the ide for a while but never had a topic or motivation to make it happen. Knowing that SOCOM Sales should be providing more than sales tips and information, I wanted to offer something to readers that they can take away from and digest easily. The Channel Sales Playbook This playbook is for any company looking to sell through reseller channels or is wondering what is wrong with their... Read Full Story

As I had mentioned in the previous post The Matrix: Lessons in sales, I recently had something short of an epiphany while having a conversation with my boss. The conversation reminded me of the scene in The Matrix where Neo was sitting in the room with Morpheus for the first time. Walking away from the discussion I started really thinking about ‘who’ I am at work and not so much with ‘what’ I do at work. I’ve always been an overachiever but walked a line that kept me from being all I could be... Read Full Story

Does that sound familiar? For those of you that are part of our 360 Degree Leadership group that should sound very familiar since it's the subtitle of the book we're reading. If it doesn't sound familiar then you'd better get reading! This book is awesome. It's not theory - it's real stuff you can use right now. All the teachings are backed by people who've used the ideas. As I read, I find myself agreeing with a lot of its principles but I've also gotten quite a few "Ah Ha" moments that... Read Full Story

As we enter yet another Presidential election season, the politics of "change" have taken center stage (which they always do after eight years of any President). Both candidates are scurrying about trying to present a strong image of change. There is a lesson that we as salespeople can learn from this Presidential election. As salespeople, we are also agents of change. After our prospects have been doing business with our competitors for some time, we arrive to change the situation to their... Read Full Story

Do some quick calculations. How many new sales reps have you hired in the last 2 years. What did you pay them as a guaranteed salary and include all the benefits. Now how much time and money did you invest in training? How much time was spent teaching them the internal workings of the entire operation? What did their potential account list look like? C accounts and all the new business they could find? How many of those C accounts have moved to B or possibly A accounts? Now compare revenue... Read Full Story

I just started reading a new blog called The Pipeline by Tibor Shanto and it is one that you must add to your RSS reader if you have not already. Last week Tibor wrote a brilliant article called Selling to Procurement. In this article Tibor points out flaws in the way most people sell to government procurement agents because of the belief that this type of sale all comes down to a checklist anyways and that no one really reads the proposals. Tibor’s article has gotten a tremendous response... Read Full Story

When I began my sales career selling heavy equipment to industrial facilities across the U.S., my sales manager indicated that it was a good idea to take off any jewelry before going onsite to a customer's facility. On my first sales trip accompanied by that sales manager, I walked over to inspect a piece of equipment at a cement mill while he chatted with the customer off in the distance. When we were leaving the site my manager confided that he got around to talking about families with the... Read Full Story

1. Don’t criticize, condemn or complain 2. Give honest and sincere appreciation 3. Arouse in the other person an eager want 4. Become genuinely interested in other people 5. Smile 6. Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language 7. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves 8. Talk in terms of the other person’s interests 9. Make the other person feel important-and do it sincerely 10. The only way to get the best of an... Read Full Story

By: Evan Sohn (CEO of Salesconx) July 7th, 2008 Original post can be found here It is no surprise that trying to sell in a tough market is one heck of a challenge. Think of the opposite – just how easy it was to sell when everything was going great. Companies buy to either (a) drive revenue or (b) cut costs. Y2K, Sarbanes Oxley, SEC and HIPPA compliance are long gone (unless you are one of the lucky ones) so forcing a company to spend money to get into compliance isn’t an option for most of... Read Full Story