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A year ago, I was working with a professional services firm in a competitive industry in a competitive market. The people who were talking (ahem, “selling”) to potential clients were well-educated practitioners, not traditional salespeople. They did a fabulous job telling potential clients about their expertise, how they’d handle the problem, and what they could…
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It’s officially football season, which means you may be getting a dose of analogies and metaphors involving the 85 scholarship limit, cover 2, the veer and shoot, and the SEC in Birmingham, not Washington D.C. To get this fall going, let’s extract some lessons from Saturday’s games to help you develop your sales organization and…
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Tell me if this sounds familiar. In management meetings, sales say something like, “We have a great pipeline, with over X number of qualified opportunities, totaling 5x what we need to hit our number.” It sounds like some good math, right? But when you inspect it, it turns out that there are only about 8…
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In the last article, I wrote about forecasting and the importance of a proper sales process to get it right. Without the right sales stages and milestones, you get the wrong signals. You hear a lot of, “Deal looks good.” “They loved our demo.” “They like us a lot.” And you have 0 idea what’s…
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You’ve got a goal this year. A number. A target. Will you hit it? Will your team? It’s what you want to know. It’s what your CFO wants to know. It’s what your partners or investors want to know. Forecasting is not as sexy as closing a big deal, but it’s nice if you like…
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Several years ago, a CEO whose company I had helped took me to lunch. We had barely spoken because I’d worked with his head of sales. He said to me, “I owe you thanks. Because of you, I sold my company for life-changing money.” I asked him how. He said, “Before you came in, we…
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There are a lot of myths in the world of sales. Unfortunately for CEOs who don’t come from a sales background, they get fooled by these myths. They mistake them for “conventional wisdom” because they hear them so often. Even for CEOs who come from a sales background, it’s easy to believe what they hear…
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Ask yourself if this sounds familiar. You ask one of your employees or team members about an opportunity with a potential new customer. “Looks good,” he says. “Why’s that?” you ask. “They liked what we had to show them. I feel good about it.” You ask, “What’s the next step?” “I’m waiting to hear back.”…
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This is roughly a 6 minute read. Last time, I told you about the New York based 73mm ARR company who called me. They called because their sales organization was a mystery to top leadership. Despite being well-funded and lined with industry pros, they weren’t hitting numbers. They were making sales, but not enough….
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Probably an eight minute read In October, I got a call from a company’s COO out of New York. We’d talked before, and I’d done some training for his company, so he was familiar with me. He said, “Adam, we need to talk. Sales missed their goal last quarter, and this one isn’t looking…
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