sales professionals

This is the second installment in our December series on Being Proactive. In the first newsletter, we defined proactive as taking responsibility for one’s own life — and all the elements that come with it.
Now, let’s go a little deeper into what it looks like in practice.

We often hear being proactive used interchangeably with taking initiative, which is accurate — even if it’s not the full definition.

Consider the many ways initiative shows up:

• Creating instead of waiting
• Going after what …

This is the first in our December series on Being Proactive. Before we talk about actions, habits, or outreach, it’s helpful to revisit a term that’s become so commonplace — maybe even overused — that we’ve lost some of its power.

Stephen R. Covey introduced “proactive” in Habit 1 of his landmark book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He wrote that human beings are responsible for their own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate fee…

Which skills need more practice?

This is the third article in the BE Series on BEing Skillful.

Since we’ve been exploring this topic for a couple of weeks now, you probably have some evidence of what’s working—and what’s not working as well as you’d hoped. Maybe you set aside time each week to practice. Maybe you even scheduled it. And maybe you thought you’d be further along by now.

As we’ve discussed before, the only thing that produces results is action. And action can be split into two ca…

BE Committed – Not Just in Words, but in Action

For Sales Leaders Everywhere

June’s Sales BE Series focused on one of the most misunderstood and under-practiced concepts in sales: commitment. Not the kind we talk about, but the kind we demonstrate through action—especially when it gets hard.

Commitment Means Doing, Not Just Saying

We’ve all heard the phrases: “Sell yourself,” “The customer is always right,” “They’ll come back if they’re interested.” But do your actions align with the outcome…

Being Intentional with Your Schedule: Create a Rhythm for Sales Success

Consistent actions lead to consistent results. But how do you ensure that your actions are, well, consistent? By being intentional with your schedule.

When you’re intentional about how you plan your time, you gain a broader view of the opportunities available to you. This approach allows you to create a rhythm of activity—a natural flow of actions that builds momentum and drives results. Doesn’t that sound divine?

Why Int…

Salespeople can respond to objections for what they are – objections. Objections indicate that there is some concern about the product, service or process that has not previously been discussed and settled.

The most successful salespeople have a strategy for handling objections, along with an understanding of the most common objections.

Having a strategy prevents responding in a knee jerk way, under pressure from the objection and the reaction to that pressure. There is confidence in being pre…

Salespeople can avoid objections a couple of ways:

1. Knowing the most common objections that buyers typically have about the product, service, process, or experience that they sell.
2. Bringing those areas of possible concern up earlier in the process by asking about them as questions and part of the Discovery process.
   

There are salespeople who believe that if they don’t bring an issue up, then it won’t come up by the customer. Not so.

Or they keep their fingers crossed that there won’t be is…

Buyers object and raise concerns because they have them.

Buyers tend to object because they are uncertain…of what the salesperson is saying, of what the product or service promises, of how to judge either of those to get to the other side of their uncertainty, of conflicting information (what they read online is different from what the salesperson is saying).

Buyers tend to object because they are fearful…of making a mistake that can’t be easily rectified, of spending more money to solve their…

Sometimes luck brings the right person into the showroom at the right time and the process moves quickly and a sale is effortlessly achieved. Sometimes that happens.

It’s more likely that attention and intention are engaged to produce a sale rather than luck from the front door.

It’s more likely that attention and intention are engaged to produce a sale rather than luck from the front door. To stay present and focused, and to be patient and sensitive to the decision-making process of the custo…

Selling is frustrating when all signs point to the sale happening, only to have life throw a curve (spouse got relocated and they are moving, found mold in the basement that will cost $25,000 to fix) and a sale that was expected this month evaporates. Or a great sale gets cancelled because the delivery staff made some errors that couldn’t be rectified quickly. Or a customer thinks that they color they saw on the sample in the showroom was different from the color of the sofa that was delivered, …