Phil Lauterjung

Posts Tagged ‘sales skills’

As the recession wears on more and more companies are trying to find sales nirvana.  The number of articles, postings, tips, tricks, and short cuts are increasing every day.  But, once again, reality bites.  Point-of-the-post alert!! – There are no short cuts, only hard work!!

A report released a few months ago by Dow Jones and CSO Insights on Sales Performance Optimization noted that the number of companies using a formal or dynamic sales process decreased this year.  The reason they concluded that happened was that it required hard work.  An astounding 63% of the companies surveyed only had a random or informal sales process in place.  I hope I don’t need to tell anyone that those companies had worse sales results than the 37% with a formal or dynamic sales process.  Read more... (483 words, 3 images, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

Photo - Flickr (Kattni)

I have often found it amusing how many sales managers insist that their salespeople must sell to CEOs.  I mean, think about it.  How many salespeople are there compared to the actual number of CEOs?  If all of those salespeople were successful, when would those CEOs get anything done?  They’d spend all their time meeting with you and me.  Hmmm, maybe that’s why it’s so hard to get an appointment with a CEO?  Read more... (629 words, 2 images, estimated 2:31 mins reading time)

Photo - Flickr

There has been a great debate raging for some time now asking if cold calling is dead.  It’s a legitimate question taken in light of some of the issues I raised in my previous post – Has the Sales ‘Game’ Really Changed? .  No one has to tell a sales person that it’s increasingly difficult to secure appointments with key decision makers.  Read more... (494 words, 2 images, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Think about who has the most control over the buyer/seller relationship.

If you’re old enough, think about that relationship before we had internet browsers, cell phones (remember when pagers were high-tech?), email, or any of the other tools we now take for granted.  Back then, where did buyers have to go to get information on products and services?  Most often, it was only available from the suppliers via their friendly sales rep.

Fast-forward to the 21st century (OK, maybe the end of the 20th century) – where do buyers typically go to get product and service information?  By now you know where I’m going with this – right?  Read more... (285 words, 2 images, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)