Fatal Sales Failures: Recap #1
Recap of week one of Fatal Sales Failures featuring five great sellers on their worst mistakes and how they learned to avoid them.
Fatal Sales Failures: The Biggest Goof With Hot Prospects
Occasionally my sales fantasies turn into realities. When it happens, it’s so
easy to be seduced by this low-hanging fruit. Outwardly, I try to appear calm, cool and collected – a true professional. But inside, every inch of my body wants to scream out, “Take me! Take me!”
Fatal Sales Failures: Your Opinion Doesn’t Matter
If your perspective is outbound on the customer, you need to change your viewpoint. See and understand the world from the client’s perspective, internalize what they know, observe, and live everyday and you will have potentially earned the right to express your opinion; or, offer your advice. If you have not earned the right, you are wasting everyone’s time.
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Get Out and Stay Out of The Commodity Trap
A lot of The Whale Hunters client companies believe they are playing in a totally price-driven market. They do not see any opportunities to compete other than on price. When they lose a deal, they assume they lost it on price.
The problems with that zero-sum game are that there are always limits to how low the market can drive prices (before vendors abandon the market) and that every vendor is vulnerable to price-cutting by any competitor at any time.
More Ways to Offend Prospects and Ruin Your Business
How you behave when you lose a sale reflects on the character of your business.
How to Offend Your Newest Customer
Tactics that seem to be customer-friendly can really backfire if you imply service that you don't intend to deliver.
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Lean, Mean, Sales Machine – Three steps to a more efficient sales process
Perhaps you know that one of The Whale Hunters key principles is that sales is 90% process and 10% magic, not the other way around. It is true. To help turn that concept into a real tool you can use, here are three steps to a more efficient sales process.
Why I Became a Whale Hunter by Dave Cooke
Nothing is more critical to the sustainable success of a business than its abilities to galvanize the organizational team around their accountabilities for growth. While so many businesses place a high emphasis and dependence upon the functional responsibility of the sales teams for their growth, sustainable businesses recognize that increases in revenues are best accomplished through the retention of existing clients and the efficiency with which their team attracts and converts new clients. Sustainable revenue growth is about focusing on developing and maintaining great relationships that add value to the firm and to the client. That is not a sales function—it is an organizational accountability.
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Re-Post: Can You Deliver What You Sell?
For a long time, I’ve been exhorting clients to be certain that the sales team is selling what the operations or implementation team plans to deliver. In the past couple of weeks, The Whale Hunters team has been on the receiving end of that potential mismatch, which compels me to write about it again. Here’s some context that may resonate with you as a seller (and possibly even as a buyer)!
Shifting Forward – Overcoming the Sales Growth Roadblocks
We are all working at a frenetic pace and when we aren’t reaching sales goals, we panic and work from a place of fear, rather than from a place of power. Instead of focusing on the “target” we tend to toss darts all over the board hoping we land anything, anywhere. The result is a lot of tossing and not a lot of points. In reality we are staying in the same place (or losing ground) and not shifting our business forward. In either case, we are expending a lot of energy for little results. This is especially true in going after bigger deals because of the complexities of the sale and the nuances of the buying decision.
The Sales Graveyard: Cold Calling and Other Retired Tactics
Back in 1995, smiling and dialing was expected. A sales person was supposed to get names from trade shows, Thomas Register, Harris, etc. Then they were supposed to start calling. I swear, salespeople taught buyers to not answer the phone. I honestly believe bad sales tactics had a lot to do with the internet boom. Buyers desperately wanted a way to get product information without a pushy salesperson.
The Sales Fairy Tale: HOW TO FIND YOUR PRINCE CHARMING and live happily ever after!
Once upon a time, businesses everywhere searched high and low for the right big account. They marched through the forest and didn’t see the trees. They scoured the earth and met with saber-toothed tigers and vicious lions that sent them scurrying back to their caves. They set out day after day with great optimism only to return home with little or no luck. Until one day, they looked out across the wide ocean and asked, “How do the ancient traditions of sea-faring nations feed and clothe their families during the long and arduous winters?” And they discovered the key of Whale Hunting!