The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

You've done a great job in your first appointment with the client. You've exposed lots of areas where they'd like to see improvement. You've also eliminated areas of focus that aren't important. You've asked the client’s help in narrowing down which challenge or challenges they'd like your help with. And that challenge may sound something like this:

Why, oh why, as salespeople, do we put ourselves in a position without access to the person who actually makes decisions on where dollars will be spent? Maybe it's important to look at why we aren't invited to the big kids’ table. It's because there are lots of people around us who have bad manners. They don't set agendas for meetings. They don't contract for next steps. They have nothing relevant to talk about, so they are perceived as time wasters (and they probably chew with their mouths open).