In lean manufacturing, waste is any expense or effort that is expended but which does not transform raw materials into an item the customer is willing to pay for. By optimizing process steps and eliminating waste, only true value is added at each phase of production. This concept applies directly to sales as well. And Read more

Why do so many salespeople act like there is some unwritten law that requires them to acquiesce to all the buyer’s demands? Do they think scoring “obedience points” will put them in good favor and help them win deals? I suppose they believe they’re being “customer focused” and “responsive”, which are inherently “goodness”. Or maybe Read more

My last two posts describe the importance of thorough discovery and what good discovery looks like. See them here and here. I spend a lot of time with sales teams helping them develop the skills and processes to conduct effective discovery. While it can be a rather complex undertaking, to boil it down (at the risk of over-simplifying) Read more

In my last post I discussed why thorough discovery is critical to effective selling (more so than “closing”). In this post I dig into what good discovery looks like and dispel a few misperceptions along the way. Discovery, an early stage in all good sales processes, is often short-changed or even completely overlooked by many sellers (and Read more

Sales leaders often look at pipelines and see lots of deals in the late stages of their sales process either “stuck” or close dates repeatedly pushed out to the future and conclude they have a “closing problem”. Their corollary problem is win rates are well below an acceptable level. So they seek coaching and training Read more

We all have goals and objectives for our jobs. In Sales that usually means we have a quota and perhaps other targets for things like new business or product and service mix. Yet in our day to day activity, these goals often get too little attention? Why? We get consumed by all the “stuff” that comes Read more

Although he is a surgeon by trade, Atul Gawande’s book, “A Checklist Manifesto“, offers many lessons for those of us in the sales profession. I was reminded of this by a recent outstanding post by Bob Apollo. I’ll delve into a different aspect of the book as it applies to sales here. Gawande states: “All learned occupations have Read more

An outstanding post by Dave Brock inspired me to add this perspective. So much of what salespeople typically focus on is about them…their need to “close the deal”, “bring it in this month”, “overcome objections” and so on. Not that these things aren’t relevant, but too often the customer perspective is isn’t even part of the thought Read more

You may have clicked on this article thinking: “What is Don talking about? Is he crazy? I’m trying to win every deal I can! I have to make my number!” But here’s what I mean…Of course, we should always be striving to win deals. And yes, that’s how we make our quota (really important!). But the Read more