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Missing Your Market? It’s Not Always About Sales Skills. Sometimes It’s About “Fit”

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Sometimes, it’s just about “fit.” It’s not how sharp you are, or how well you can sell. It’s not about your prospecting chops, or how you present. It can just be that you miss the mark…with the market. Or as Johnny Cochrane famously said… What does this mean? That maybe you have a great offer…but…

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Networking Like a Pro: 6 Must-Take Actions for Referral Success

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Some businesses run on referrals. It’s usually because: A. Actually a lower cost of sale to have people refer business to you than search for those deals one by one; B. The service is purchased based on trust (consulting, law, etc…); C. Someone’s afraid to prospect. Let’s skip category C for now, and focus on…

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Growth – Whose Job Is It, Anyway?

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A client (professional services firm) aims to grow by 40% next year. And it’s doable. The plan is actually simple. A certain level of retention on existing clients/customers, with some predicted growth there, and that takes care of 70% of the growth. The rest will come from new clients/logos. But there’s a problem. And it’s…

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In Sales, Sometimes You’re The Problem

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In the middle of a 0-10 football season in high school, one of our coaches said, “Everyone says you suck. Just don’t suck.” To which one of our players responded, “Thanks for the inspiration, Lombardi.” After the laughs wore off, there was some truth to what our coach said: sometimes, having success doesn’t mean being…

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Want to Raise Prices? Here’s One Way.

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(This isn’t a chest-beating fantasy about how much you can charge if only you’re tough enough and gutsy enough. That’s not reality. Some industries won’t stand for it. Some prospects have too many options they prefer. I do believe, often, you can charge MORE than others and win. But rarely can you charge 65% more…

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Winning Business BEFORE The Meeting

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When I started business school, I remember the teachers lining up and saying, one by one, “I teach you how to make it,” “I teach you how to count it,” and finally, “I teach you how to sell it.” Every business has these functions, whether the person running the business or the firm wants to…

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Why Your Consults (or Discovery Calls) Go Sideways

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To Help You Win… One of the questions I get most often is, “Why aren’t I closing these opportunities?” To be honest, it’s ACTUALLY phrased like this: Lawyer: “These leads just don’t have any money.” Consultant/Service Provider: “I don’t know what’s going on. Business is slow.” CEO: “Deals keep pushing, so I’m guessing next quarter…

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Conversion is About Math, and That’s About Competing

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To Help You Win… My client is a DUI/DWI attorney in Illinois. And last year, when we started working together, she was grinding to grow her firm. She’d been building it for 7 years, on her own. She was doing it all. Filing. Drafting. Meeting with clients. Going to court. Working with the ad agencies…

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Mission ImPossible: 4 Steps to Finding the Truth in Your Pipeline

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Mission ImPossible: 4 Steps to Finding the Truth in Your Pipeline   Let me know if this scenario sounds familiar… You’ve got a sales team (of some sort). You’re invested in marketing. You’ve got some sales leader or a group of them who are responsible for “driving revenue.” And you’ve got goals for growing your…

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Objections

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The Problem of Objections   It was the same conversation I have all the time: “I need my people to be able to handle objections,” the managing partner said. “Why’s that?” I asked. “They just can’t handle them. They don’t know what to say. Can you help them with that?” “I mean, I can do…

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