Phil Lauterjung

Archive for the ‘Sales Strategies’ Category

Before you read any further, read the heading again. Our tendency is to say, “Oh that’s not me, I’m a professionally trained salesperson.” Really? Successful salespeople generally have a very high confidence level. It’s one of the reasons for their success; but, beware when you become over-confident. If you’ve been selling for any length of time, you have fallen into the 80% at one point or another.

The 80% number comes from a survey done by RainToday of over 200 buyers of professional services. You may not sell professional services, but the results are applicable to all salespeople. And, worth reviewing. Taking a look at the selling process from the buyer’s perspective can always be beneficial – even if we may not like what it says about us.  Read more... (659 words, 2 images, estimated 2:38 mins reading time)

I know, the title won’t be as clever after this Easter weekend; but let me have a little fun will ya? Oh, and happy Resurrection Sunday to all those who celebrate that event this weekend.

OK, back to the business at hand. Lead Generation. How hard do you work to get leads? Pretty darn hard I would guess. I don’t actually know any company where leads overflow all on their own. Let’s assume you all work very hard to get leads, and you want to make sure you convert as many as possible into sales. No brainer, right? So, what’s your process for doing that – converting leads to sales? Don’t have one, or at least one that’s real effective? Answer these 6 questions and get that process in place.  Read more... (489 words, 1 image, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

A recent discussion thread on one of my LinkedIn groups posed a question that ended up being more interesting than I thought it would be. “What’s the single most important thing to remember about networking?” Now some of you ‘techies’ might be thinking about a different kind of networking, but this was directed toward personal networking. Normally I’ll pass over looking at a question like this, but there were already 13 comments in less than a week. Thinking I might find something interesting I took a look.  Read more... (317 words, 1 image, estimated 1:16 mins reading time)

We all know that sales cycles have lengthened for most of us.  However, The TAS Group, a sales software and training company, has aggregated anonymous data from their customers to come up with some very interesting insights into what’s really happening with sales cycles.  Please note that they kept in mind good business practices and privacy issues in this data.

Here are 5 facts that you might find to be surprising:  Read more... (455 words, 1 image, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

If you are a regular reader you know that I don’t do book reviews.  The reason is, as a very wise man once said, there is nothing new under the sun.  I don’t mean to say that there aren’t very good books published on various topics.  There are.  But, once you’ve read some of the really top books on a given topic you really don’t need to keep reading new ones – most of them simply repackage, or state things with a different twist. [ I probably just blew any chance of a publisher ever picking up anything I might write with that comment.]  Read more... (575 words, 1 image, estimated 2:18 mins reading time)

When one has been in sales for more than a few years you think you’ve got it down pretty well.  If this recession has had any positives, it’s that we have had to examine our professional assumptions.

Difficult times force us to face reality as it is, not as we thought it was.  If you haven’t worked through this process it’s not too late.  If you’ve been out of work and frustrated with the lack of opportunities, now is the time to reassess.  If you have a job with constant pressure to “make the numbers”, this is for you too.  Read more... (879 words, 1 image, estimated 3:31 mins reading time)