John Henley, on August 27, 2012
It's frustrating, isn't it! You know you can help, you know they are an ideal prospect and yet you can't even get a serious conversation started. What's going on? Salespeople are too consumed with trying to demonstrate the value of their product. It's ok to communicate some product attributes with a prospect, but the key to getting momentum is demonstrating that you can be trusted and could be a source of value.
John Henley, on August 14, 2012
Too often salespeople are looking for a fast answer and end up getting a NO. You don't want a fast answer, you want a fast YES. When you ask for the business too fast, you are often relying entirely on a product pitch.
John Henley, on July 18, 2012
If you sell media, buy media or run a business, you should read the The Face-to-Face Book, by Ed Keller and Brad Fay. Here are some highlights from the book.
John Henley, on June 25, 2012
When we have success in any area of life—from making a big sale to raising a child with great character—we will find clues that led to that success if we look backwards. It’s easy (especially in 2012) to be moving so fast we don’t stop and look at the clues. I encourage you to stop down sometime in the next few days and look back at one of your recent successful sales and look for the clues that were most important in that success. Then look forward, and apply those lessons on your most promising current Target Account.
You already know the answer, don’t you? It’s both. But, I suggest as you try to do both, start by focusing on smarter… and then build in harder. If you do it the other way, you might end up making a lot of noise but not making a lot of progress (like a race car revving its engine while the wheels are not on the ground).
John Henley, on May 22, 2012
It is a safe and generally smart practice for a salesperson to under-promise and shoot to over-deliver. So why would you ever want to vary from this “under-promise” strategy? If you want to keep growing personally and discover new ways to help clients, once in a while you need to stretch a little and promise something you don’t normally deliver, but feel quite confident you can get done. There is risk involved in this, but if you get it right, you’ll delight the client and add a new capability to your tool kit.
John Henley, on May 15, 2012
Get the power of unity and diversity working for you! To build a great sales team, you need to hire a talented and diverse team… and then unify them with a common purpose.
John Henley, on April 12, 2012
In most areas of life, we are faced with the choice of the Pain of Discipline vs. the Pain of Regret. If you exercise regularly, you are choosing the Pain of Discipline over the Pain of Regret. If you make mostly good food choices you are choosing the Pain of Discipline over the Pain of Regret.
John Henley, on March 1, 2012
Our company’s reason for being is to help our clients turn talent into performance, and I spend most of my time making sure we have everything operating in such a way that we can delight customers. I don’t get to sell that often, but recently I found myself in conversations with a friend who runs his own business. After a few conversations and a meeting with a few key managers, I presented the owner with a pre-proposal and asked him to review it with his management team.
John Henley, on January 12, 2012
Good sales people and sales managers like to talk about their sales performance, and it’s this time of year that many sales organizations stop to honor those who had the best year as the calendar starts a fresh countdown. I support that idea and have a suggestion to add. What if every salesperson in your organization picked one client who had a good 2011 and asked that client to share two things:
