To me, it seems like many people choose to stay behind their desks all day because they are too proud to call prospects for appointments. That’s a real bad place to be proud. Too proud to pick up the phone and try to make an appointment, too proud to listen to suppliers that want to…
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Buy a mirror. There are two kinds of people in the world. And you can learn a great deal by their responses to handling a misstep. Let’s say you are going on a walk and trip on a crack in the sidewalk. The first kind of person gets critical of the homeowner with the crack…
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What’s your reputation? How can you fix or improve it fast? About 30 years ago, Proforma had a reputation problem. We had been in business for 10 years, and the distributorship was growing fast along with our new franchise business model. Actually, our growth was a little too fast for our capital structure, resulting in…
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In sales, one of the biggest challenges in converting a prospect to a customer, or a customer to a client is getting more “face time” to continuously explain our value proposition. This is where most sales folks fail. Most sales folks, even seasoned professionals, don’t appreciate the importance of creating “excuses” to get back in…
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It’s a new year with new opportunities to make 2019 your most successful year yet, and the first step is to get rid of the “but” in your vocabulary and stop making excuses. Many times I find people give excuses without even knowing it by making statements such as, “Last year my goal was to…
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It’s safe to say that most business professionals should know about customer business reviews. Whether you know a little about what it is or the benefits of doing it, customer business reviews will form the foundation of your business relationships, and help position you as a trusted business advisor and valued partner to your customers.…
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It’s that time of year again when business folks start to think about New Year goals, resolutions and planning. This year I’m suggesting you add another topic to the mix—internal and external account analysis. Let’s start with the importance of internal account analysis. If you have been in this business more than a few years,…
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My blog is titled “Million Dollar Mindset,” and many times I write about ideas to help my readers make more money. But having a million dollar mindset is about much more than just money. Let’s face it, we all know some very wealthy people who don’t seem very happy, right? Clearly money isn’t the only…
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I believe that many businesses have brands that suck. I mean suck away opportunities for sales and profits! Let me explain. First, there are many companies out there with brand names that only indicate they sell printing or promotional products. Names like, “City Printing Company” or “Peoria Promotional Products LLC.” These names suggest the company…
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Sometimes in sales we need to sort out those who are truly interested and qualified from those who are just wasting our time. They aren’t necessarily bad people. Perhaps they just don’t know how to say “no” or how to be fully candid. After 40 years in sales, I have developed a method of sorting…
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