I am frankly embarrassed to work in an industry whose products have a 90 percent failure rate. Yes, that is the approximate percentage of sales training programs that fail to produce meaningful, long-term gains in sales performance in the field....

This white paper is going to explain some things about the nature of learning and behavior, and why those things matter desperately to salespeople and the companies that employ them....

In any major sale, a prospect makes a predictable series of buying decisions that lead up to the final purchasing decision. The first and most important of these is: "Do I 'buy' the salesperson?"...

In any major sale, a prospect makes a predictable series of buying decisions that lead up to the final purchasing decision. The first and most important of these is: "Do I 'buy' the salesperson?"...

Three-quarters of the secret to professional, strategic selling boils down to asking the Best Questions and listening carefully to the answers. Most of the Best Questions have to do with uncovering the crucial, underlying needs your products or services might serve....

Companies spend about $1 billion a year to deliver training to their salespeople. Ninety percent of that sales training fails to produce meaningful, long-term gains in performance....

In prospecting, your objective most often is to persuade a new customer to agree to meet with you face-to-face. To gain that commitment, you must convince the prospect that you are someone worth meeting....

Sales training consumes time and costs money. If training does not produce meaningful, long-term performance gains in a sales force, then it’s hard to see why any company would bother with it....

Salespeople are commonly told to sell "solutions" and "value" rather than just product features. But when the time comes to present their products, they fall back on generic scripts with no direct connection to any specific needs the customer has revealed....

That is the question on every customer’s mind. It is the final determiner of every buying decision. Unless you are talking to the owner of a company, nobody cares deeply about dollars saved or productivity improvements....