Symptoms:
Have you ever been part of a sales call where there seemed to be little structure, where both parties seemed to be on different pages, where expectations were not met, and little was accomplished? Even worse, you expected something positive to occur but simply got a lukewarm response such as, "I need to think it over. Call me in a few days." Opportunities are squandered and the buyer seems to be in control.
"Bulldog" was his nickname and he was proud of it. Guido spent years proving that no one could escape him once he made you a prospect.
Matt is looking at his calendar and doing some planning, knowing that many things he does look too much like random acts of mindless behavior. Looking back on past months, he feels like he was scrambling and playing catch up all the time instead of having that feeling that he had some deliberate control of his actions. He wants to get back that feeling of being on a roll, where it's like running downhill instead of uphill all the time.
Having earned a small commission check last month from her sales job, Marta was doing her best to replace her old refrigerator and had already hit the local appliance stores, as well as a few of the Big Box outlets.
Like many business development people these days, Robin won't be going on her appointments tomorrow by herself. This time she is bringing Rich, and he is the VP of Sales from one of her largest vendors.
Symptoms:
Justin was spending some time off around the holidays thinking about his 25 years in sales. There were many things to be proud of, but after a bit of soul searching, he was forced to admit that he thought he'd be a bit further along financially by now or perhaps have a more prestigious title or even work for a better company, considering the two and a half decades he was reflecting on.
Symptoms:
Jerry never felt compelled to trust or rely on technology. In his opinion nothing beats getting out there and looking someone in the eye or at least picking up the phone and chatting live with a prospect or a customer. No one ever refused to do business with Jerry, and in many of his customers’ locations he had free rein to essentially come and go as he pleased. No way email could be that important as long as Jerry could walk in, pull up a chair and talk about personal “stuff” before staring his pitch. Jerry thought email and all this new “webinar” and virtual selling stuff was just more trouble than it was worth and never going to be as important as that face to face visit. Jerry stuck to his guns and even managed to get one of the inside team to transcribe his emails, so he was not forced to adopt that new-fangled irritation into his sales game. And then Covid-19 arrived, and Jerry was lost.
Chris is concerned about his sales team. They are active, they are selling, and sales are up but margins are way down. The business model allows reps to be flexible in the field and sell at the prices they feel appropriate. But something is missing, and Chris is unsure how to help his field reps get more margin. He doesn't want to kill the ability of his reps to set pricing in the field, but doesn't know what information they need in order to be better at the task.
Charlie had been working with a long-time client and just can’t believe why some meetings could really get under his skin. Charlie left angry with this client’s attitude towards him, the ability to waste time like it was nothing and at times complete disrespect for Charlie and his process. Yet, this client was important to Charlie’s success each year and he was unable to fire them. He opened his stamp book and added a nice bright red anger stamp on this client’s page after the last meeting he had.
