The position of sales manager is the most important and yet most underrated position in the company. Just to be straight here by the term” sales manager”, I mean the top sales person in the company, the one who is responsible for managing, measuring and motivating the sales team; the person who is responsible for […]
The Consultative Sale
The best way to sell is the consultative sale. The best way to get people’s attention is to help them solve their problems, give them solutions, and most of all be valuable to them. The mistake that most people make is to blast off about how good their product is without taking into consideration what […]
On Being A Great Independent Rep
This week we are going to talk about what it takes to be a great rep; and what you can do to not only delight your principals but more importantly develop a win/win partnership with them where you both win more business and make more money. First of all: get over it. Yes you’ve been […]
The Only thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself
Why don’t you like to cold call? I am making the assumption that you don’t like to call people, you don’t know because most of you have told me you hate it. But, if you get down to it why? Why do we all hate doing this? It’s because of fear, fear of rejection, fear […]
Seven Character Traits Of A Top Notch Salesperson
Searching for greatness Yes, I now that the world of sales is more difficult today than ever before. We all know that the competition is stiffer, and that it is much harder to get a prospects’ attention than ever before. But there is hope. There are things that never change, and that is the type […]
Using LinkedIn To Find New Customers
In last week’s column we talked about getting prospects to call you and I cited a case study by my associate, LinkedIn expert Bruce Johnston. At the end of that column I promised that this week we would talk about how he did get prospects to want to talk to the client, a metal fabricator […]
How To Attract Great Reps
Look we all know that this is one of our industry’s greatest challenges. For a number of reasons not the least being that many board shops have screwed many reps over the years, it is getting more and more difficult to get good reps to represent us. I know that of all the services I […]
Get Prospects To Want To See You!
I come bearing good news. From everything I have heard, one of the hardest things for a salesperson to do these days is make appointments. We have talked about this often in this column, so many times in fact that I have made it my business to try to find a solution to this problem. […]
A Few Thoughts On Selling High Tech PCBs
Selling high technology is not always an easy thing for sales people. First, there is a credibility issue, when people see the word “sales” on your business card you can lose credibility. Listen, you could have been a director of engineering in your previous position before moving into sales; you could have been a full-blown […]
Tools For Managing Your Sales Team
Nothing happens by accident anymore, especially when it comes to sales. It used to be so much simpler; you’d buy a good directory, circle those companies that would make good prospects, call them, set up a meeting, go see them and if you did a pretty good job in that meeting you’d get a quote […]