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strategy

Sell it or Schedule it: Train it and Coach it.

Now that you know the elements of Sell it or Schedule it, what are the skills to develop to train it or to coach your sales associates?

If you need to increase the team close ratio, what are the actions in the sales process that will accomplish that? Which steps in Sell it or Schedule it will raise their success rate? How are you going to do that?

And once you train a selling skill, how are going to coach it - formally and Informally?
How will you structure your observations on the floor to wa…

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June is…the beginning of a new season.

It’s summer…and summer traffic is often unpredictable, and customers/clients can be distracted by vacation plans and being away from home.
You might have vacation plans scheduled, too…which means you need to make goal in LESS time.
What? Yes. 
And as we discussed in an earlier post, it’s about the strategy…what is the number you have to hit? How many sales do you have to make at what average sale? And what actions are needed to achieve those sales?
You do this by taking the actions that incr…

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June is…the end of the first half of the year.

Here we are…halfway through the year. At the completion of June, it’s a good time to review performance for the first six months and see what worked and what didn’t work… or was missing from your strategy. 

Since the first half of this year has been different from the first half of last year, what has changed that you need to adapt to? The trend that is driving this year is different from last year – and we can adapt and build a new strategy or we can complain and bemoan the changes. The choice…

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The Final PR Word

P R
For Sales Professionals, everywhere…..
This is the last of four blogs in the series on PR words. How did the last blog about the buyer’s PRocess impact what you know about where your client/customer is in their decision making…and what you are able to complete and achieve with them today? Our final P R word is….

PRoduct(s)
  • Based on what we have learned about their problem, what matters most to them, and where they are in their process, what are the best product solutions for them?
  • H…

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Organizing Actions in Time

“Time Management” is a misnomer because you cannot manage time. You can, however, manage ACTIONS in time.
Begin with your targets – what you WANT to accomplish. And working back from them, identify the actions that need to happen to achieve them. Start small and plan the actions at the best time to execute them and to achieve the result.

Plan a week at a time and support the week with a daily to-do list...but expand your perspective beyond one day…don’t rely on a daily list to manage a week …

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Identifying Pitfalls and Traps

Are you good for the first three days into a new initiative and then start to slip?
When do you stop doing the actions that you committed to?
Do you start to tell yourself: “It’s not that bad” or “It’s not that important?”

Rather than avoiding these natural tendencies, include them in your goals. Consider them BEFORE they happen so that when they pop up, you will be prepared for them.

For example, if you know that you start the month strong, make your first week goals and miss your thi…

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Guardrails #2

To continue with the guardrail conversation… setting boundaries.
A boundary that helps guide the conversation is the ability to say “No.”

Say NO when the client/customer asks for things that cannot be done – either within the current budget or timeframe.
Say NO when the client/customer asks for additions without adding to what they are paying for it. 
Say NO when the client/customer asks you to ‘take it out of your commission’.
Say NO when the client/customer asks you to do something that you know is…

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Practice – the resistance

There are times when I am writing or teaching or coaching that I need to check my “Imposter Syndrome.” Maybe it’s the syndrome or maybe it’s that I really don’t do what I am preaching at the level that my communication would indicate.

That’s how it is for me with practice. I must recognize my resistance and manage it, which includes accepting it as part of MY process of practice. Even when I want something, my ego will resist the actions needed to achieve what I want. And it’s sneaky.

I s…

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Why Summarize?

Summarizing is a fairly new concept for me to work with, so bear with me as I share my initial and inchoate understanding of this valuable tool…so enjoy and use what I know now and please stay tuned for more as I continue to learn what this tool will create and accomplish.

What does summarizing and recapping bring to the sales interaction? Why should we do this?

For both the salesperson and the client/customer it manages distractions. It’s easy to go off on a tangent or to start adding mo…

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Cold call, warm call, hot call…what is it? Go with the easy ones first

Outreach occurs on an ominous note because we collapse outreach with cold calls…which many salespeople fear and despise…and consequently, aren’t very good at…so the cycle never gets broken and the perspective continues.
If you see the relevance and value of outreach but don’t have much experience with it, the fear and resistance are understandable. So, let’s start with the easy stuff…hot and warm calls.

Hot calls are those customers who are actively looking, and you happened to connect wit…

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