Confucius made it clear more than two thousand years ago: “Choose a job you love, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life”. It turns out that it is not easy as we keep reminding ourselves of the same phrase for centuries. Moreover, when we think about “the job we love,” selling is not necessarily at the top of our list…
Tag Archives: selling
Rising with your competitors
In selling, we face two types of competition: internal (peer competition) and external (market competition). In both cases, we learn and practice competition as a war where one must lose for the other to win. In other words, a zero-sum game.
I always try to avoid zero-sum games and transform them into positive-sum games, meaning that both competing parties can be better off in the end. But how can this be possible when selling in a competitive environement?
How to make learning last?
I believe the biggest problem with learning is not about how to learn. It is about making it last. And it goes through three stages:
-learning the knowledge
-learning how to implement
-learning how to become
Any learning experience (training, workshop, course, etc.) reaches its limitations because we often do not go to the third stage, which is the most challenging part…
Selling vs. dating
A sales meeting is almost like a date. And your attitude is clearly defined by your expectation of the outcome. If you would like to build a long-term relationship, you would be more interested in the other party. And you would be genuinely curious about their lives. If you are looking for a short-term benefit (a one-night stand or one-off sales transaction), you would be more talking about yourself because you would like to cut to the chase.
Ironically, most sales trainings teach salespeople how to present themselves and talk about their companies and their products. Even in line with the trend of “problem-solving,”…
Who chooses your customers?
When salespeople lose a deal, most of the time, the reason is price, competition, lead times… in other words, losing a deal is primarily external. I have never met a salesperson telling me that it was his fault.
In fact, it is the fault of the salesperson. Not because they are not good at sales. It is because they choose the wrong customer. Let me give you an example…
Selling at the edge of chaos
Although we like to pretend to do so (through the dashboards we generate from our CRMs), calculating the odds when facing a customer is very difficult. It is mainly because the customer’s buying journey is much more complex than we think.
Trying to sell
We are planning to build a swimming pool in our garden we contacted three pool construction companies. After three visits I asked my wife (who is a teacher) her opinion about the salesmen visited us. Here is how she profiled them…
Salespeople’s trustworthiness problem
Most of the salespeople in B2B sales are not seen as trustworthy by the buyers … because most of them are not.
Learning for Performance 