What kind of a commitment do you get from your prospect at the end of your prospecting call?  If you’re like most sales reps, the answer is, ah, none.  Or, it’s an undefined, “Well, I’ll follow up with you next week…”
If this sounds familiar – or if you’re a manager and it sounds like your [...]

Many sales reps send me emails asking the same thing, “How can I sell against my competition and win the deal?” They tell me it gets more and more difficult as there is always someone who has a similar product for less money, or who can offer their kind of service with more bells and [...]

I talk a lot about the techniques that separate the Top 20% of the money earners from the other 80%. As you know, my Ezine is dedicated to providing you, often word for word, with the exact tools, tips and strategies that you can use to become a Top 20% producer. And today I’m going [...]

Whenever the subject of scripts comes up, people usually have definite opinions – they either love them or hate them.
Those who wouldn’t be caught dead using scripts like to point to those pesky telemarketers will call at night that sound stilted and computer like. ?I hang right up on them,? they say. ?I’d never read [...]

There are all kinds of questions a sales rep can ask — closed-ended, open-ended, directive, etc. — but none are more valuable than the assumption question.
While 80% of your competition use closed ended questions ? ?Are you the decision maker on this?" only the Top 20% use and understand the proper use of the assumptive [...]

For the past 26 years I?ve worked on the phones as a qualifier, broker, sales associate, sales manager, director of sales, V.P. of sales, owner of various inside sales companies, consultant ? you get the idea.
I?ve worked with, monitored and heard thousands of sales reps over the years, and I?ve heard it all ? the [...]

I hear over and over again how important the first few seconds of a phone call are to make a connection and grab interest, and my question to you is — are you still opening your calls with the standard, “How are you today?”  If so, then you’ve just turned off about half of your [...]

Have you ever been in a closing situation that seems to have stalled, where your prospect isn’t really objecting, but they sure aren’t going where you want them to go? Sometimes during a close you’ll find it necessary to sort of re-open the close, to keep your prospect talking, and to find out exactly what [...]

First, for those of you who have seen me live, you know that I am big on questioning your prospects during the qualification stage. As I’ve said – your prospects have all the answers as to why they will buy or not buy, and it is your job to get them to reveal this [...]

Because you only have a few precious seconds to make a connection and establish interest, you’d better have a good opening prepared in advance. Besides being very busy, your prospects probably get a lot of sales calls every week, and many of them from your direct competition. So why would they want to talk to [...]