In many companies, salespeople essentially are left to their own devices. They walk into complex, business to business selling situations, with multiple decision makers and unclear buying criteria, armed only with their own background research and their own skills....

Some sales calls progress in a logical order, building momentum toward a successful outcome. Many more are poorly planned, unfocused, and a waste of time for everyone involved. Short of customers actually kicking you out of their offices, how do you know if you’re conducting an effective sales cal...

Everyone loves to talk about customer loyalty, but what does that mean, really? I argue that customers are not genuinely loyal to your company until they have stopped shopping among your competitors....

When a price objection surfaces, most salespeople crumble. Or, they take the path of least resistance and match a competitor’s price. Salespeople need to understand that buyers are being professionally trained to ask for price concessions....

We get a lot of gratifying compliments about our first book, “Action Selling ®: How to Sell Like a Professional, Even If You Think You Are One.” But one that we hear over and over comes from readers who are struck by the way the Action Selling ® system functions as a sort of navigational...

In our sales books and elsewhere, the Action Selling ® system is described as a kind of instruction manual that tells you how to win genuine customer loyalty. Genuinely loyal customers are people with whom you have built such a strong relationship that they have stopped shopping among your compe...

Customers expect to be schmoozed by salespeople. They expect that in the course of this schmoozing, the salesperson will at least pretend to take an interest in them as individuals. They expect to be asked a few questions about their situation and their individual needs....

I love to meet with Action Selling ® clients. It’s not just that I want to stay in touch. It’s because they have so much to teach me - for example, Commitment Objectives and my own system....

You’ve kept trying, and the prospect has finally agreed to talk to you. But she made it clear that she can only spare five or 10 minutes in her busy schedule....

The Sales Board’s Price Competition Study was undertaken in an effort to provide hard data to aid in the understanding of a dilemma facing U.S. sales organizations in companies of all sizes and across all industrial categories....