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Comments

S. Anthony Iannarino

Great post, Jill. That's an unforgivable sin nowadays, with the Internet and tools like LinkedIn. Why make selling any harder than it is? I always recommend reading the prospect's website, and if they are public their annual report (it's always shocking though, that your prospects will rarely have read their own annual report).

Arun Sadhashivan

Guilty as charged Jill. I've made a similar mistake myself, and asked all the "dumb" questions too.. and learned selling by making one mistake after another..

But do you have any tips on what you should do if you're going to a convention..? There are just sooo many companies there.

Nick Rice

That is amazing to me. It wouldn't take 15 good minutes to find out her name, email, and product/service highlights.

A lot of salespeople don't get it. You have to earn the right to sell to executives. Sr. managers/execs are too busy to deal with others that cannot add value (ie. stop a pain) immediately - especially with outsiders but it also applies to inside staffers too.

If you're not seen as a peer, you won't get the big business.

Paul Swenson

When I started in sales we were taught to ask people about their business because people love talking about themselves and it was a way to open them up.

That's all changed. Time is too critical on a sales call to try and butter potential clients up and besides most people see this as a sales "technique" and people resent that.

Greg Sanders

Why sales people are not utilizing internet concerns such as Jigsaw just shows how they really need to update there training. Its time that we get away from the old school thinking of dialing for dollars and started to concentrate on what is the best use of our time and money.

Gavin Ingham

Jill,

It's frightening but true... It doesn't seem to matter how many tools are available, salespeople can't help themselves and keep on blagging it! A bit of thought and some simple research would save them making these kinds of misteaks (whoops!) over and over again!

Great selling is about doing the simple stuff really, really well.

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