An Alternative to Traditional Performance Management, Part 1

Like a coach in pro sports, your primary function as a manager is to improve the performance of your team. Unfortunately, traditional approaches to performance management may have initial success, but are difficult to sustain. When distilled out of their packaging traditional performance management looks like: What did the manager before me do? – AKA the “hope […]

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The Three Truths in Every Sales Call

Ask most salespeople to describe the purpose of each interaction with a prospect and they’ll probably say something like: “close ‘em” “build the relationship” “educate them” “solve their problems” All good answers, but the real purpose of every interaction with a prospect is to get to the truth. What’s uncomfortable about getting the truth in […]

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Why Do Prospects and Salespeople Play Games?

Have you ever given thought to how people decide to buy a product or service? Consider yourself in this analogy – do you employ any of these strategies? We believe we have a need or we determine that we have a need for a product or service. With the Internet at our fingertips we immediately do some research on whatever we are in […]

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Are Your Customers Buying from Your Company or Your Salesperson?

The good and bad of relationship-based sales. The Good Relationship-based sales methods are ideal. Most of the time those relationships are the only thing protecting you from competing solely on price. In sales training, we have a saying: “All things being equal, people buy from people they like. All things being unequal, people still buy […]

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