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Sales Management

What An MBA Didn’t Teach You About Sales

The sales profession is challenging. You need to work hard at it to succeed. You need to learn from the best. You need to improve your skills continuously. If you think you can sell since you are a hit at parties and have a lot of friends, you may soon find that you are a failure as a salesperson. Blunt truth:

because the sales profession is so hard, you have to focus on doing everything in sales very well, or you will be considered a failure.

I call this blog, Skinned Knees because I try to relate all of the learning that I have done over the past 4+ decades (while skinning my knees in the learning process).

I hope that you learn from my mistakes so that your business will grow!

I Need Leads

“I need leads!!!” Did any salesperson not say those words?

It is even more frequent with a startup or small company.

There are no leads. There are very few references (maybe none). The product is relatively unproven.

It takes a unique customer to buy from a startup or a small or medium-sized company, and it takes a special sales team to work for a small company.

Sure it is exciting to build something from scratch. If it works, it will be incredibly rewarding (hopefully personally and financially). You rolled the dice! You are all in!

But even with all of that excitement, it is still hard work. The leads are not there. There is never enough.

Every day is straightforward even though it is tough. Here are my thoughts that get me through the day.

Read the rest of the article…

Don’t Stop Learning When You Are In Sales

My postings on this topic won’t be on a guaranteed schedule but will be the random thoughts as the outsourced VP of Sales for small and medium-sized companies. This first post will be to give a little bit of background on myself, but more importantly, to offer some advice to salespeople that are just beginning their career in business-to-business or enterprise sales. The software sales industry has evolved dramatically since I first started selling software.… Don’t Stop Learning When You Are In Sales