Ever since Xerox Corporation spun off its excellent internal sales group into a separate business peddling "needs satisfaction" sales training, it has been entirely de rigueur to talk up sales that somehow, magically, sell themselves. In fact I've written up this approach in this very blog, for e...

Effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) requires a "not too tight, not too loose" approach. Customer opinions, of course, are important, but be sure to handle findings with discretion. Discretion, in my CRM context, requires that customer realities (including their opinions) be filed sep...

There is a science to sales. Despite rumors to the contrary, sales is really not magic. True, certain personality types have a proclivity to sales, but no, personality types alone will not determine the success or failure of sales efforts. From the perspective of a business owner, or a head of sa...

For purposes of this discussion there are three types of contacts at top account prospects: Pioneers on the outer periphery of the opportunity and Referrers who know the prospect well enough to point you in the right direction and to validate your assumptions about pioneers & patrons and Patrons ...