How to make a million dollars

A couple ways to make a million dollars:
1.) Sell one $1,000,000 product.
2.) Sell 10,000 $100 products.
3.) Sell a million $1 products.
There are other ways, but some thoughts:
A.) Number 1 is the easiest. Selling to a few people with big budgets and lots of problems is the simplest of any scenarios listed above.
B.) Number 2 is [...]

Precedent

In some institutions, what came first is an invaluable guideline. Decisions are based on former decisions. It’s purposely difficult to justify changing course.
Law is probably the best example. Decisions made without precedent are rare and typically left to the highest court to determine… to, y’know, establish precedent.
But too many modern decisions are based on the [...]

What you really sell

When you move to Chicago from elsewhere (like I just did) and have no clue of where to go (again, like me) there’s a company that specializes in helping you find a place.
They’re called Apartment People and they do some amazing things.
They help you find a list of potential apartments and drive you around to [...]

I Need Your Help

Yesterday I was in an all-day sales team meeting. We were discussing our challenges, both internally and externally.
Bitching, really, about how much selling we were having to do internally – about how challenging it is to convince operations of what our clients and the market are demanding. Oh, if only operations would just get the [...]

Skeptical? How about a video referral?

I just read Jeffrey Gitomer’s The Sales Bible.
The title isn’t too far off – it’s full of lots of little nuggets for how to better yourself as a salesperson. It’s chunked up into lots of lists of very practical techniques you can put to practice to improve your results.
In a nutshell, it’s not about quick [...]

Sales tips we can all use

I’m reading Jill Konrath’s Selling to Big Companies. Jill is the woman behind the blog of the same name and has offered sales consulting to the likes of 3M, IBM and GE – so she knows her stuff.
Here’s some tips that I’ve gleaned so far that everyone can benefit from:
1.) Focus.
When Jill first started consulting, [...]