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Do you have a passion for understanding shoppers, brands and customers? Do you feel confident enough to make the tough calls? Are you a true team player? if so, a [...]

Many people think that salespeople are the lowest of the low--the unprincipled people who trick their victims into parting with their money. Everyone knows the stereotype of the used car […]

The choice of positive or negative feedback from a sales manager has a significant effect on the success of a salesperson.

Mention the word salesperson and you evoke in most people an instant stereotype: a glad-handing, back-slapping, joke-telling, velvety manipulator. His motto: I could sell snow to Eskimos. You might still [...]

High Probability Inc., a Philadelphia area sales training and consulting firm completed a survey of over 500 business professionals. Based on that information, the firm compiled a list of what […]

Pittsburgh -- Success in sales is not about pressure. It's all about performance. In the eyes of sales consultant Drew Cameron, president of HVAC Sellutions, top performance comes from executing [...]

Selling is a harsh discipline. Of all the activities that combine to make a business, I guess the performances of salesmen are the most readily measured with the juxtaposition of [...]

A useful technique to find out what a company's problems are is to ask its managers and employees a deceptively simple question: 'If I had a magic wand with me [...]

The canonical seven steps of selling are reviewed, and the changes over time that have transformed each step are examined and presented along with the newly evolved seven-step process currently followed. The emphasis on pure selling has given way to a focus on relationship selling that concentrates on securing, building and maintaining a long-term relationship with profitable customers.

In the distance-selling business, the temptation to burden customers with postage, packaging and delivery charges must be great. But customers may not be so willing to take these extra costs [...]

Dion, Paul A. (2000), 'Comparisons of Alternative Perceptions of Sales Performance,' Industrial Marketing Management, 29 (May) 3, 263-270. This article examines perceptions of salesperson performance from the perspective of sales [...]

Selling can be one of the most rewarding professions. After all, how many other professions offer you the ability to make money in direct proportion to your efforts? For me, [...]

Og Mandino once said that sales is one of the 'loneliest professions in the world.' He went from being a down-and-out insurance salesman early in life to an internationally known [...]

Do you ever dream of the day when your customer roster includes companies like GE, Wal-Mart or IBM instead of Ma & Pa Inc.? If you've ever made attempts to [...]

A YEAR AGO, my financial advisor started bugging me relentlessly to buy something. I mean he was all over me on this. It was like Chinese water torture. At least [...]

WHEN I BEGAN MY BUSINESS CAREER, I was trained as a salesman. Salesmanship was the end game. Don't get me wrong, I love selling and I have never had a [...]

Selling is an art as well as a science. The effective sales process has several moving parts. Your ability to identify and then master each of the key result areas [...]

The experience of using the services provided by personal shoppers is described by four people who were made to visit a department store twice where the first visit was for them to choose an outfit by themselves and the second with the help of a personal shopper. All four of them agreed that personal shopper made clothes shopping easier and more enjoyable.

With effusive CEO testimonials and countless articles and books describing how companies have transformed themselves into tightly focused, totally energized commerce machines, it would seem that change should be easy. [...]

In the past, academic research on sales force performance has used either objective performance data or subjective managerial ratings to measure sales performance. Consistent with corporate practices, objective and subjective performance measures were used in this research project. The relationships among three components of performance: specific task behaviors, specific goal achievement and overall performance were examined. A casual analysis suggests that managerial evaluations of overall sales performance are influenced by their perceptions of specific selling behaviors and the degree to which sales people attain specified performance goals. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

The study findings suggest that prior expectations about salespeople affect how consumers process information in a selling situation. When the salesperson is seen as typical, product evaluations are unaffected by the quality of the product arguments cited. Thought listing and recall data provide additional support for the notion that analytical processing of information occurs only when the salesperson is discrepant from expectations. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

On Average Only 20% Of All Sales Leads are Followed Up... Improve The Average And Watch Your Business Grow Did you know that on a national average, of all the [...]

The first 20 years of my career were spent interrupting business people at their doorsteps and through their phone lines. My hope for success depended on my prospects' moods at [...]

When I asked a new client this week to explain their sales process, I was told that they didn't like the idea of 'selling.' This is not an unusual statement. [...]

Stephan Schitfman is president of D.E.I. Management Group Inc., a sales training and consulting company based in New York City. He is the author of several books including "Cold Calling […]

No matter what you do for a living--you're in sales. We're all in sales--all the time. Everything is a sales pitch. When you give your opinion on a conference call, [...]

Nothing happens until someone sells something. I mean, nothing. I'm not referring solely to the selling of products and services; I'm talking about selling yourself--your ideas, opinions, values, desires and [...]

Sales whining is at an all-time high. The CDC in Atlanta has put it on the "Watch" list as complaining by salespeople (particularly in the print industry) nears epidemic proportions. […]

Design an ideal customer profile. Start with your top 10 accounts. Record standard data, such as demographics, budgets, and size. Add qualitative data and the warning signs of poor prospects […]

Someone asked me this question at a recent seminar: 'Marketing or selling--so what's the difference?' It concerned the responsibility for developing leads or new prospects for outside salespeople. The group [...]

The fact that many state and IT officials are guilty of selling the seemingly immediate benefits of technology to improve their governments, are discussed. Overselling a project can have unfortunate consequences, among them is earning the distrust of legislators.

With the brutal Chicago winter approaching, I recently found myself restocking my wardrobe with the cold weather essentials. Upon receiving my order from Brooksbrothers.com, I was shocked by what I [...]

Sales representatives should make sales calls rather than do office work. Their job is to bring in more business to the company by following up leads which can be converted into customers. A well-trained staff can accept telephone inquiries and determine customer needs. Although hiring new staff increases labor cost, revenue will rise as sales representatives are freed from office work and go about their main business of selling., More and more salespeople, in my opinion, are making fewer and fewer sales calls. It seems that I keep running into property sales managers who really don't like the idea [...]

Studios new to dealing direct with Wal-Mart are learning to share some of the chores of retailing - and some of the cost. Columbia TriStar Home Video, Twentieth Century Fox [...]

A personal experience is recounted to debunk such marketingmyths as 'People don't want to be sold' and 'Tell, don't sell.' Despite the high-tech trends in database marketing which enable marketers to offer the right product to the right person using the right medium, the creative art of selling isstill a prime ingredient for success in the business. Creative marketing also involves the ability to improve the wants and needs of clients., 'IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME.' - FIELD OF DREAMS This piece is being written on a United Airlines DC-10 at 35,000 feet on an Apple PowerBook 150. It [...]