The Axioms of Selling Blog

You know the feeling. The book is closed on 2018 (or any fiscal year) and regardless of how well you performed last year, you're back to square one in the new year with a new sales target which is no doubt 10% higher (or more) than last year. So that becomes your goal again.

So I’m at church last week visiting with the senior pastor, whom I’ve known for years and always enjoy talking to at length, when he blurts out, “You know what we need more of in this world? We need more thermostats and fewer thermometers.”

After 24 years of working side-by-side with some of the world’s leading sales organizations, I’ve never had a situation where a sales leader didn’t go out of their way to recognize team members for a job well done. Whether it was a well-timed “attaboy” in front of the entire department or saying, “great job on closing that deal” privately near the office water cooler, they’ve all been willing to give feedback and offer encouragement.

I speak with a lot of sales leaders and almost all of them express their frustration in the time it takes to produce a credible, predictable sales pipeline.  This 30-minute on-demand webinar presents two ways to make sales pipelines, and forecasts, more predictable by quickly factoring in the most important variable: the salesperson's level of effectiveness.  

I was asked to explain what meaningful coaching looks like in a win-loss sales review, and I think the best place to start is with what it shouldn’t look like. To illustrate that point, imagine a football coach and his star player sit down to talk about another big win, and the coach asks, “Why do you think we won the game?” The ensuing conversation goes like this: