Category Archives: Prospecting

Last week whilst conducting a sales strategy and planning workshop to teach selling skills for a multinational chemical company, George, the National Sales Manager asked me a question that I am often asked in my role as a sales strategist. “Ian,” he asked me during a coffee break,” In your experience in working with a vast range of selling organizations, why is it that most people fail at selling?” This is a question that plagues many a thinking sales leader. Is it a question of fit (product or company)? Is it that some people are just not cut out for … Read more

Training Sales People – The impact of the stimulus response effect on salespeople. I have in some way or another been involved in training  sales people and sales managers for close on 25 years.  From my time in the United States working with the famed Tom Hopkins, the author of “How to master the art of selling“, till now coaching sales managers for some of this country’s largest industrial sales organizations, I have always been dismayed as to why training sales people doesn’t work. It seems that, sales training, no matter from which great sales training organization, and there are … Read more

Sales Skills – The Simple Sales Secret That Removes the Stress of Selling Today I really and truly “got it!” There is a single natural sales approach that all sales greats and great marketers get instinctively. Its’s what makes them so good. It’s one of the primary sales skills gives them their edge. This one instinctive and in many cases totally unconscious selling method is what all too often separates the good from the great. I can give you the secret in one quick sentence. You and your people probably already know what it is and yet it as Stephen … Read more

Today more and more business and sales professionals are using social networks to build relationships, meet new contacts, and market themselves. In today’s podcast I interview Raz Chorev, the author of the book the 8 STEPS TO SUCCESS WITH LINKED IN, who is a social media expert living here in Sydney. Raz’s particulart experise is in using Liked In and I finally caught up with him to ask him what all the hype was about and how to use linked in to drive sales. Here’s how…. [audio=http://isegail.dl.hipcast.com/deluge/4d1417d5-6246-6e7b-03b9-11a7aa5c6e09.mp3,,download]

The Keys To The C-Suite What would the impact be on your business if your sales people could all converse appropriately with the members of the C-suite? How many more sales could your sales team make if they truly understood how the products and services affect the financials of your prospects? Imagine your sales people easily gaining access to the CFO or CEO to present your value proposition? Selling to C-Suite Executives is different than selling to middle management. When you listen to this podcast interview I conducted with Gordon Cousins, the CEO of  an international business simulation training organization, … Read more

Evaluating Your Sales Process: How Can You Tell if it’s Really Working? Firstly, do you have s sales process? Whilst this may seem like an obvious question on the surface, in reality, the majority of selling organizations don’t have one that was designed specifically for them. If they have 10 sales people; it is very likely that they have 10 different selling processes happening within their organization. Consider your current sales process – the way in which you and your sales people currently sell: When was your current selling process designed? Who was your current selling process created for? Does … Read more

Solid Sales Process will Increase Sales How do you, as a sales manager, cope with having to write ever-greater volumes of sales revenue, especially in a tough economic environment? How do you get your sales team to generate the greatest amount of revenue, consistently, year after year?” When asked the above questions, most sales managers generally give variations of the following answers: hiring better salespeople being more aggressive apply more pressure on the sales team increasing the level of prospecting and sales activity ensuring that the sales pipeline is constantly full increasing the selling skills and abilities of the sales … Read more