inluminent

Bryan Eisenberg just wrote a fantastic article on MakingAdWork about selling online, specifically to introverts:
We must understand and be prepared to sell to introverts the way they want to buy. Typically, introverts require a large amount of information. Questions should be answered systematically, in the order they would arise.
The point of resolution is important. Understanding [...]

I’m reading a book right now (actually I’ve read it, now I’m re-reading it) for tips on opening a sales call.
The book is SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham of Huthwaite, Inc. It’s a good book on making large sales, which is refreshing, as I’m selling larger solutions now than I have done in the [...]

At the office, I’m having to define “Yield Management” as a business model.
I found a few good resources on the web by searching Google, and this Google Answer was a big help.
I found a lot of different definintions, and this is the simplest one I could find:
Yield Management is extracting the maximum amount of revenue [...]

This is how I look at the profession of sales and sales people and life in general:
Everyone on this planet is a sales person.
I firmly believe that this world is driven forward by the actions of good sales people, selling their product, be that product themselves, their ideas, or a tangible product or service. [...]

This post is a follow up to my original Some lessons for the Job Seeker post from August of 2003.
I’ve been interviewing to fill a vacant position in my sales organization over the past few months. The position has been advertised for about two months now. I’ve received about 100 resumes and have [...]

A few links from the month:

ADHD Observations - interesting comments from a parent of children with ADHD.
CSS Dropshadows - from ALA #172.
The Lowering of Loyalty from FastCompany (great first comment).
How Not to Win Customer Loyalty from Business2.0.
Top 25 Cities in the US for Doing Business from Inc.
The Three C’s of Personal Branding from brandchannel.com.
MacRumors [...]

Quoting Jeff Jarvis in full (because the information is that important to me:
The Internet is now bigger than cable, according to eMarketer (via MediaPost and LostRemote).
…eMarketer now estimates U.S. household Internet penetration is about 67.9 percent. That compares with a 65.8 percent U.S. household penetration level for cable, according to an eMarketer analysis of Nielsen [...]

If you’re applying to a job, please keep the email account you’re using to collect responses to your application clean, so you can receive emails from the hiring manager. The fact that I got this message twice from the same candidate’s two different yahoo accounts listed in their resume just took that candidate off [...]

Today was definitely Friday the 13th.
I don’t post about the office on this weblog very often, but today was just one of those days. I’m a sales manager at work, and today, my “star performer” told me she had been offered a job at another company.
That means she’s leaving.
Ugh… can’t tell [...]

The last day of Connections was really just more of the stuff you’ve read in my past two accounts of my experiences at the conference.
I attended fewer sessions on Day Three than I did during the other two days, I think mainly because I realized (or percieved) that I wasn’t really getting anything out of [...]

Hmmm… I have mixed feelings about the second day of the NAA Connections meetings… Where should I start?
I guess I’ll start with the fact that the official NAA blog hasn’t been updated to actually reflect anything happening at the conference on Monday. It jumped from Sunday to an advertisement for the Tuesday session. [...]

San Diego is a beautiful town to fly into. Wow! And it’s gorgeous to walk through the touristy area close to the harbor too!
I spent the first day at NAA’s Connections today. It was fun… but it was also a long day (nothing like boarding a plane early in the morning, then [...]

I just finished reviewing a proposal that one of my sales reps is sending to an agency and here are a few notes that I sent him… simple stuff, but useful. (Sometimes it amazes me how un-polished people’s Office skills are).

Use ‘tabs’ to space things out in Word vs. spacing things out manually using [...]

Confessions of a Car Salesman from edmunds.com.
Great article… long, but hard to stop reading…

If you own or run a company that sells a service to people, then beware of your customer. If they feel like they’re going to get shitty service from you, they’ll probably find someone else to find the service you’re providing for them now. I say this because, if Earthlink is really shipping [...]

On Wednesday, I flew to Minneapolis to meet with potential clients, and I have to say that I was impressed. We met with one of the largest retailers in the country, and they’re finally starting to ‘get it’ when it comes to the importance of the internet, and online marketing.
I’m looking for big things [...]

If there is one guy I’d hire based on something I’ve read that he wrote, it’d be Chris Heisel. I’d hire Chris Heisel to be an online advertising sales person, because he gets it. Example:
Heisel: Beyond the click-through.
Well written article about branding and online advertising and its long term effects… The article is [...]

From Iuncture: Sales templates support personalization with consistency
Your customers want to be treated as individuals with every interaction– but how are you know what works to build strong buying relationships?Ý If every customer interaction is different it can be very difficult to discover best practices without some form of strategy.
Use models or templates [...]

“Confidence is contagious.”
Vince Lombardi (1913-1970)
Hall of Fame football coach

“Opportunity is missed by most people, because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
– Thomas Edison (1847-1931)
Don’t miss out on an opportunity because it looks like work.

From Iunctura Daily, preserved here, because their archives are protected by a member’s only access prompt, and there’s no obvious way to register:
Even before your sales presentation or first customer interaction, you need to know exactly what prospects expect to receive from your product or service. Ý It is naive to assume your sales people [...]

Inc.com: Pricing New Products
The subhead gives it away on this article: “Companies habitually charge less than they could for new offerings. It’s a terrible habit.”
I did that this week, I’m sure. It’s sad, but it’s easy to do. As a Sales Manager and Product Development guy, I build a product, and then want [...]

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been interviewing candidates for an open position in my organization. I’ve learned a lot as this is my first time to really hire someone into an organization. Here are a few thoughts and suggestions for those looking for a job and interviewing right now:
1. Make sure [...]

I saw an ad for Tinderbox on the sidebar of my website as I was re-reading an article I wrote. I clicked the ad and just downloaded the application (again - I played with it once for about 10 minutes before I got tired of it the first time). (So, AdWords has worked [...]

Looks like there’s a new read from XPlane today:
Selling to the VP of NO: Secrets of the Selling Stars.
In a highly visual book that can be read under an hour, Dave Gray, founder of XPLANE, constructs a simple road map to selling success. Far from rocket science, it contains simple, proven methods to help you [...]

“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” –Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Good point to remember if you’re in sales or a leadership/management role.

I read an article today about Amazon’s new RSS feeds, and quickly moved to investigate the PR. I added a bunch of feeds to NetNewsWire. I’m thinking this could be dangerous (feel free to grab these feeds for your own use):
Books:
Computers & Internet
Science Fiction and Fantasy
Science Fiction
Fantasy

DVDs:
Science Fiction and Fantasy DVDs
Today’s Deals in [...]

For the past week I’ve been pretty busy… here are a few things I’ve read recently and needed to blogmark:
MT Medic [via Pat Berry]
Interesting graph on SARS
Let’s Make a Cell-Phone Deal - I’ve done this. It works. More from ArsTechnica.
Working with Forms in PHP, Part 1 and Part 2. Great information on [...]

Street Smarts: The Sales Commission Dilemma
Need to read that this weekend.

A Friend recommended this movie to me as the ‘ultimate sales movie’:
Glengarry Glen Ross
Anyone ever seen it? Got any feedback on it?
Also see the unofficial Glengary Glenn Ross site

I’ve been researching some material for a segment of a class I’m giving tomorrow at work. The audience is a great audience, and I’m aiming at having an interactive talking session. I’m speaking to 25 or so employees that are primarily print advertising sales people about managing their customer’s expectations about online advertising.
I’ve [...]

Lesson #1: When spending two days out of town meeting with a client about something new that you have to offer them, make sure that the right decision maker is going to be in the room when you make he presentation.

Throwing a hearty thanks back to XPLANE for the thanks they gave to MarketingFix (have you gotten your FIX today?) in the latest update to their bblog, I’d like to point out this article:
The Internal Impact of External Branding
for two reasons:
1) it’s a great read for anyone looking at the idea of ‘branding’ and
2) it’s [...]

From the latest XPLANE|EXTRA!:
How to choose an upselling strategy
Customers don’t always know what’s best for themselves. Sell them the right solution in a way that suits their needs and helps them reach their goals. Always begin by establishing their goals and sizing up their personalities before selecting your upselling strategy.
Go there for the actual [...]

From the Business Development Network: Sales & Marketing Tribe of Ryze:
Sales Technique of the Week
I run a web/graphic design and marketing company.
I went to Office Max and bought a pack of inkjet iron-ons. When I go to meet with a big potential client, I make sure to leave their office with something containing their company [...]

I got the XPLANE|EXTRA! email newsletter today, and was surprised to read the title “How to manage the disorganized sales manager” especially after the request for ‘sales manager links‘ earlier in the week from a colleague.
The XPLANE newsletter includes links to two ‘visual xplanations’ which are quite good at getting the point across about disorganized [...]

A colleague on a mailing list I participate in today asked me for “any sales websites, online newsletters, or training (people or companies) for sales managers” that I could recommend.
I honestly haven’t ever found any ‘great’ sales (or sales management) related websites (thus the reason I started writing about sales) and have generally been frustated [...]

Adam Kalsey has a good article on why small businesses need websites. I’ve never really paid close attention to the ‘local’ market until here recently as I’m traditionally a national advertising sales person, but my new job has forced me into focusing on the local market, and one of the objections I’m hearing to [...]

So, I’ve been struggling with a completely manual sales CRM solution at work for about a month now, and I’m seeing a lot of inefficiency that could be greatly improved with something that helped tie all of the sales persons, clients, and the whole process together.
I’ve been trying to find time to investigate SalesForce.com’s solutions [...]

I’m busier than hell at work planning a strategy for our online advertising sales teams. It’s tough work, honestly, mainly because I’m one of those guys that has to figure out where he’s coming from to know where he’s going. I like to look at the history of things, so that I know [...]

On the plane today, I finally got around to reading The Persuaders from the November 2002 issue of Business 2.0.
It’s a great read that quickly profiles 5 great sales persons in easy to read and easy to share storylets (not a real story, but more like a few paragraphs with lots of depth).
When I get [...]

The hard sale can always be an interesting way to try and close new business, but it’s always a tactic that should be used sparingly, in my opinion. This post at IntricatePlot is an example of barely treading the fine line between smart and dumb ass in the sales business. I actually think it’s a [...]

Anyone that sells by phone has heard of Art Sobczak, and if they haven’t they need to learn about him.
Art runs a company called Business By Phone. He’s probably one of the best tele-sales trainers and speakers in the world, and is a fantastic resource. Art published a weekly email newsletter [...]

I read this article in the print version of FastCompany a while back, but just re-read it online. the article is just a bunch of quick snippets of sales advice from some of the leaders in the field. I love this line:
… being in front of the customer doesn’t help if you do [...]

From Be Your Sales Team’s CIO:
Pick up the phone and call one of your salespeople today. Review customer data, competitive data, reports, and customer feedback. Figure out where you can help one other. Join her on a sales call. There’s nothing like meeting a customer in person to help you understand what your sales force [...]

Q: When should a salesperson just ’shut up’ and tell the customer what he wants to hear?
A: Never, and always.
You see, a customer might ask you question A, but in reality, they’re asking this question to answer quesion B (which they probably haven’t thought of yet). It’s your job as a salesperson to answer [...]

So, at work this morning, I got a call from some guy at RealKeywords (they’re trying to do what RealNames was doing before Microsoft fucked them over). I let him take 5 or 10 minutes (of my not really listening) to give me his schpiel and then he stopped (to breathe I guess) and [...]

Rick Bruner’s Executive Summary points to a case study by the San Francisco Chronicle about Salesforce.com and how good the solution is for CRM use. Interesting read, considering that my current employer considered an ASP CRM solution for about 10 seconds, and decided to bring a CRM solution in house… sometimes I sure wish [...]