How The Psychology of Rewards Impacts Our Success In Sales

According to behavioral psychologists, rewards are more attractive to us the closer we are to receiving them. Further, humans have a tendency to “discount” equal or even greater rewards when not available until the distant future. Why does this make sales hard? Because especially in many instances we are asking our prospects for immediate sacrifices, …

Want To Close More Deals? Make Your Numbers Count.

After reading the title of this post you might be thinking, “Sounds easy” or “I already do that”. Present some impressive sounding numbers about ROI or COI so the people making the decision can understand the value, right? Wrong! According to the Karla Starr and Chip Heath, authors of “Making Numbers Count”, simply sharing numbers …

How to Close More Deals, According to 3 Recent Books On Enterprise Selling

After starting a new B2B enterprise sales role I was pleased to discover three great new books on the topic. “Selling Above and Below the Line” by Skip Miller, “Selling Is Hard. Buying Is Harder.” by Garin Hess, and “Mega Deal Secrets” by Jamal Reimer each take a different approach to navigating a modern enterprise …

The Powerful Sales Lesson in Katy Milkman’s new book “How To Change”

I am full believer that salespeople, more than anything, help facilitate change. For this reason, I was greatly interested in Katy Milkman’s new book, “How To Change, The Science of Getting From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be”. Happily, I was not disappointed. It did not take long to find an incredibly …

4 Powerful Traits of Truly Charismatic Leaders

In his recent work “Charisma, The Microsociology of Power and Influence”, sociologist Randal Collins provides a fascinating analysis of what makes someone truly charismatic.

New episode on the Negotiate Anything Podcast: “How To Win More Through Emotional Intelligence”

I’m excited to share this new interview with Kwame Christian on Negotiate Anything, the top Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Podcast in the world, also ranked #6 among all management-related shows on Apple Podcasts.

How To Create a Strong Negotiation Culture Within Your Sales Team

It’s easy for management to blame salespeople when negotiations conclude with value left on the table.  But what they often fail to realize is that selling and negotiating are fundamentally different skill sets requiring fundamentally different behaviors.

Five years ago today I became a Sales Manager. Here are 3 things I’ve learned…

Love your people. Always avoid taking yourself too seriously and never rely on your title for influence. Be yourself, let your guard down, and focus first on connecting with your people, even if it means being silly or putting work aside for a brief moment. It’s a simple truth that people don’t care how much …