Graham Hawkins recently wrote an article in which he pointed out that if salespeople are spending a mere 22% of their time selling, is it any wonder so many of them are missing target? He thinks the 22% figure is the biggest problem in sales right now. While I tend to agree with most of Graham's thoughts, and I certainly did with the rest of his article, that figure got stuck in my head. It's just far too high. To justify my thoughts I decided I had better detail, what I beli

There’s been some huge changes in the way buyers like to buy during the last decade. They want to educate themselves rather than have sales people do it for them. Many prefer buying on-line. They like talking to their peer groups and ‘independents’ about potential purchases. Buying decisions are increasingly made by committee. Buyers prefer to deal with less vendors. This has very effectively taken the transactional power away from the seller and given it to the buyer. It has

The best explanations are always the most simple, and if wrapped in a story, they have a better chance of being remembered. With this in mind I’m going to recount a story I read recently in a post by Noah Goldman that explains Sales perfectly. I happen to believe that everyone in the world should know this story because every single person, almost every day, has to sell or be sold to. The story will, hopefully, remind buyers that done well, sales people can add real value to