Let your sellers sell. It’s how they learn. Jesse Marsch is the first American to coach a soccer team in the UEFA Champions League, the premier club competition in the world. He’s the head coach of Red Bull Salzburg, the top team in Austria. He’s a master motivator and incredibly thoughtful about how to develop […]

You can’t stop at hearing. You have to listen, too. There’s a significant difference between hearing and listening. We use the words interchangeably. Which is a mistake because “hearing” and “listening” have very different meanings. (Just as persuasion and influence mean distinctly different things.) Hearing is an involuntary process that detects noise (or vibrations). Listening […]

Sales has changed more in the last ten years than it did in the previous 100 years. As Marc Andreessen famously said, “Software is eating the world,” and sales is on the menu too. There has been a fundamental shift leading sales teams to embrace sales automation. However, this new technology is turning sales reps […]

What we do in sales is not complicated. We find the story in every one of our buyers. There are many experts who would have you believe that sales in the B2B world is, first and foremost, a process that is freighted with complexity. While process is unavoidable in selling, it does not define it. […]

“I’m sorry.” As a child, were you ever told to tell someone that? My guess is that you were. Do you remember how it felt? You probably didn’t mean it, so it didn’t feel genuine. See, telling someone exactly what to say never really works the way we’d like. It comes off as stale, and […]

Are you antifragile? Or just fragile? How do you react and respond to volatility, randomness and disorder? I’ve been re-reading Nassim Taleb’s book: Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder. People usually believe that resilience is the inverse of fragility. It’s not. As Nassim writes “Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and […]

The building blocks of great conversations never truly change. Whether you’re trying to sell a product, talk to someone on a first date, or even just chat with your kid to find out how they’re doing, the same rules apply: listen actively, ask open-ended questions, be confident, and have empathy for the other person and […]

Filling your brain with too much sales advice can make you choke when it matters most. It’s true. If you’re spending too much time on LinkedIn searching online for the latest bit of sales advice, I have my own advice for you. Stop it. The reason to stop is because there comes a point where […]

“He doesn’t sound like a salesperson.” The organizer of an event at which I was speaking overheard one audience member say this to another about me. This is one of the greatest compliments I’ve received. Not being “salesy” is something I’ve worked on my entire career. Truth be told, I’m not entirely certain what a […]

Selling doesn’t start until you ask a question. This is counter-intuitive to many sellers. Yet, it’s a hard truth that you can’t sell if you’re doing all the talking. If a buyer wanted a one-sided conversation with you about your product, they’d visit your website. Where they’d be able to gather the same information without […]

Sales coaches and mentors are a crucial part of the sales ecosystem. If sellers aren’t taught how to sell effectively, then they’ll have a much harder time hitting quota. But what about when your do reps have access to sales coaching and mentoring, but they just… don’t remember it? Unfortunately, this happens all too often. […]

Remember Goldilocks and the Three Bears? Goldilocks found the balance between her porridge being too hot and too cold. Sellers are similarly challenged to strike the right balance between being overconfident and being less than confident. Researchers have found that being overconfident has its benefits. It also has downsides that can leave you in the […]