Challenger® Selling: “Courageous Questions” Differ from “Grenades” Many sales leaders are urging their salespeople to adopt CEB’s Challenger Selling™ model to ask “challenging” questions to have effective sales meetings with prospects and clients. The intent is to be more provocative, create differentiation in a crowded market, provide insight, and hopefully add more value to the conversation. Read More Read More

Cross-selling Effectively into the Crosswinds of Financial Services It is said that oak trees grow strong in contrary winds. In the crosswinds of deregulation and re-regulation, financial institutions have gotten bigger, more complex, and more attuned to risk. As they turn up the pressure to drive revenue, cross-selling effectively takes on new levels of urgency Read More Read More

For Experts that Sell, A Surprising Key to an Effective Sales Meeting Experts, whether they like to or not, must sell today.  Are you a portfolio manager, consultant, lawyer, investment banker, engineer, architect, or estate planner?  As an expert, you are highly educated and credentialed and have deep industry and subject matter knowledge.  Though not Read More Read More

Leadership Do’s and Don’ts for Maximizing Sales Training ROI: Where do you Stand? In the movie “Father of the Bride,” there is a memorable scene in which the father (George Banks), unsure where to stand during the bouquet throw, misses important moments at his daughter’s wedding. Similarly, many sales leaders confidently invest in sales training Read More Read More

Coaching for Sales Teams: Less Superman, More Clark Kent You know the picture mild-mannered sales manager has one-on-one meeting with ordinary sales citizen, they discuss an issue, and WHAM, the sales manager makes a beeline to the phone booth (yes, they still exist) and out comes Superman or Wonder Woman, complete with red cape. Read More Read More

Presence: 80% of success -The role presence plays in “showing up” to an effective sales meeting Woody Allen has been quoted as saying that 80% of success is showing up.  The accuracy of the 80% notwithstanding, my focus here is to break down what “showing up” means in the context of an effective sales meeting. Read More Read More