Issue #98 "If You Look Closer, It's Easy To Trace The Tracks of My Tears...." Change Your Mind, Change Your Life Human beings are mostly just a collection of reflexive behaviours, wrapped in skin. Most of our identity is created out of learned responses from our formative years, almost exclusively focused on keeping you safe. Read that again - they keep you safe, not successful, not rich, just out of trouble and alive. We like to think we’re in charge, but we’re just observers as we run on...
10 days ago • 4 min read
Issue #97 "I hope he's not reading my mind", thought Timmy How To Get Answers Without Asking Questions I do love a good question and I’ve written about the ten different types and how to use them, video is here, or click the image. But you don’t always need better questions. Sometimes, you just need to stop sounding like an interrogator. In sales, most intel isn’t hidden. It’s just not offered because you asked the wrong way and they never thought about it. Elicitation is how intelligence...
17 days ago • 3 min read
Issue #96 There is no "I" in TEAM, but there is "MATE" Identity Beats Incentives - How To Create a Sales Gang When I was younger (so much younger than today…) I was in a band. A dozen bands, actually, when you add them all up. I used to slog through sixteen-hour days in a drafty shed that doubled as studio, office and emergency accommodation. There was no pay, because any money went back into the kitty for new equipment, costs and digestive biscuits. Yet every day, including weekends, I...
24 days ago • 3 min read
Issue #95 Come on Fang, just one more proposal get done! Why Is Sales So Tiring? The real reason you (and your team) are drained every day is not because of what you’re doing. It’s not the number of calls. It’s not the pressure. You kicked off your day excited, you had a plan. But six hours later you’re beat and you’ve closed nothing. That sense of fatigue isn’t from selling. It’s the invisible work that’s burning you like a candle. And by not controlling that, you let your energy, the energy...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Issue #94 If a salesperson can't pull, they are beyond training Training the Untrainable: How I Taught Procurement Pros to Sell Ask a procurement professional to sell, and most will resist the idea outright. Quite a few will actually throw up on your shoes. It’s not that they’re incapable, it’s because selling feels unnatural. It runs against their very instincts. They’re trained to question value, not find it. To dismantle a pitch, not build one. When I was asked to train a group of...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Issue #93 I learned about funnels from alien abduction programmes... FIRST a Funnel That Converts When someone enters your business world for the first time, what happens next is critical - it determines whether they stay engaged and buy or move on. A strong funnel guides them through a clear sequence. Each step builds logically on the one before. My mid-funnel process is simple and repeatable. It has five parts: Find, Investigate, Reflect, Secure, Track. I’ll use an example of helping a...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Issue #92 Mindset is what you believe based on the evidence you create through action Enterprise Sales - Mindset Primer Nine thoughts you need to keep in your head, and questions you can ask, for moving high-stakes sales conversations forward. I learnt five of these from a colleague who spent years in British Intelligence, negotiating hostage situations. I can’t say which ones because he would have me disappeared. Piers could be watching me right now... 1. Recognise the emotional pressure...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Issue #91 Doris was glad she'd blown her nose before she started Get A GRIP - Handling High Stress Situations Between all the boring tasks of sales (the research, travelling, preparation and slide making) there are the white knuckle scary bits. The big presentations, the high risk meetings, the money discussions… You can prepare for these, I learned a solid way to do this - the GRIP framework. There’s a downloadable cheat sheet for your phone here: Grip mobile version.pdf It’s a high...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Issue #90 Creating order from chaos is a key part of sales 5 Psychological Power Moves of The Top Enterprise Sellers These are five naturally occurring quirks of human nature that can be used (ethically) to your advantage in selling. I show you when to use them and what to expect when you do - so it is all action oriented and usable on Monday... The 5 Techniques From Behavioural Science 1. Use the “Pratfall Effect” to Build Instant Trust Principle: People trust you more when you admit small...
2 months ago • 2 min read