Meet, greet, qualify and repeat. Sound about right? This is sequence most sales people use when meeting a buyer for the first time. But Amy O’Connor says, if a buyer is in front of you, talking to you, give them the courtesy of believing that they are a ready, willing and able buyer until you discover otherwise.

How often salespeople talk themselves right over the closing moment? Here’s an idea. Say more by talking less.

We are sales professionals. That means we love those three little letters: Y-E-S. Is there a sweeter sound than hearing a…

As a sales professional it is easy to fall into the discount mentality hoping that a better price will win the sale. But price doesn’t determine the sale, there are many other factors that do. Here are 14 key takeaways about the customer’s purchase decision.

When you think of the typical sales person closing someone, what’s the immediate image that pops into your head? For Ryan Taft, it’s Alec Baldwin and his “coffee is for closers” speech. Or as Ryan calls it, Closing 1.0. But what if closing was something you did for your customer? Wouldn’t that be more effective? Of course, and we call it Closing 2.0.

Whenever you find yourself dealing with poor sales performance, you can self-diagnose your issue by looking at the formula for confidence: BELIEF + MASTERY = CONFIDENCE. Ryan Taft sees belief issues in these four categories on a fairly consistent basis.

Professional athletes watch their performance after the fact to see what they did well and what they could improve upon. I think that salespeople should do the same thing, but we tend to wrap up a sales conversation and immediately go back to our last task or our next assignment. Why not take just 30 seconds to review some game film?

“A self managing sales team? Come on. You gotta be kidding me. Do those really exist? Is it possible for my team to become self managing?” Yes and yes! Amy O’Connor shares with us the three steps to creating a self-managing sales team.

Yielding can keep us alive, or it can also kill our productivity, our creativity, and our relationships. Yielding prevents us from acting when action is necessary. It deters us from making bold decisions and it dramatically, even tragically, limits our potential. But, yielding is a choice, it is a conscious act of the will.

Anyone else besides Ryan Taft believe that the sales process has changed pretty dramatically over the past decade? Silly question, right? We all know that customers research, decide and buy differently today than at any other time in history. But what about this: Have salespeople adapted accordingly? Or are we still using the same old sales tactics we learned years ago?