As the manager of your sales team, you might have more sales expertise, business savvy and (maybe) even more street smarts than any of the reps on your team. If you are an experienced manager, this might be true. (Even worse – if you are an inexperienced manager, you probably think this is true.) One trap…
How Can Paying Attention To History Help You Sell More?
When I took Snickers on her morning walk today, we ran into someone I’d never met before walking his dog down the street. After our dogs finished sniffing each others butts, the man surprised me (no, he did not sniff my butt). He said, I’m Dave. I used to live in your house.
When Should Sales Managers Update Their Resume and LinkedIn?
I’m not a recruiter, but because I stay in touch with good headhunters and All Stars within my network, they often contact me when they are hiring sales managers, directors and VPs. If I know someone who might be a good match, I’ll connect him to the headhunter and let the two of them take…
How Sales Taught Me To Face My Fears By Taking Action
On my 2nd day of work as “Technical Sales Guy” at the advertising agency, my boss and I arrived at our client’s office and were escorted into a huge boardroom full of VP’s who had flown in from all over the country for this meeting. When all 30 people turned to stare at us, I wanted to…
What Are Your Stock Options Really Worth?
A few years ago I was working a trade show in New Orleans and decided to visit the casino since I’d never been in one before. I know how to play Blackjack so I stepped up to play at a $5 per hand table. Within 30 seconds I had lost $20. (Apparently I am not like everybody…
What Would Happen If You Lowered Everyone’s Quota?
In high school, I set a personal goal to graduate as Valedictorian. Our class ranking was based on GPA. I set my sights on attaining a perfect 4.0 GPA. But alas, I was not very athletic nor artistic. In my first 2 years, I earned a couple of B’s in Gym and Art. I graduated as Valedictorian…
What Do You Really Want From Your VP of Sales?
2 years ago, I signed up for an online training program from GMB Fitness. At the time, I had no plans to change my high-intensity crossfit training routine. I just wanted to learn how to do handstand pushups and to move a bit more fluidly. When I signed up for the course, GMB surprised me by…
Save $300K …You Don’t Need to Hire a VP of Sales
Before I launched Inside Sales Dude almost a year ago, I was contacted by a CEO who wanted to hire me as his VP of Sales. We had an in-depth discussion about his business, his need for a structured sales organization and his revenue projections. Although we had an interesting discussion, at the end of…
How Easy Is It to Contact You?
Late yesterday afternoon I was mowing the lawn when suddenly I was surrounded by 2 giant dogs. One flopped onto my foot so I would scratch his belly while to other jumped up to put his paws on my shoulders and lick my face. I herded the dogs into my garage so I could check…
Use the Ben Franklin Close to Sell Anything
When I was in grade school, we had fundraisers which required each kid to sell a minimum allotment of stuff in order to fund field trips, school programs, and clubs. Usually we had to sell candy bars. I was terrible at this. I’d trudge from house-to-house after school, knocking on doors and asking people to buy….