Articles that will change your game
How do you define hard work? What is Hard Work? Is your definition solely limited to work that is labeled as “hard”? Have you ever considered the intricacies of this idea? I was pondering this...
Unveiling Your Unique Value: What Makes You Different at What You Do? What do You do for a Living? We all wear different hats and bring something different and unique to the table. Whether it’s a...
Why Focusing on Problems vs Outcomes, Drives Sales Success The Dangers of Outcome Selling If you’ve been tuning in to the Gap Sell Keenans for a while, you’ve surely notice how much Keenan loves to ask,...
All Sales Training Is the Same, Right? Sandler Sales Training has been a staple of the sales training world for decades. What was once a prominent methodology, the Sandler methodology has lost a step or two as...
Harnessing the Power of Self Growth: Moving from Knowing to Doing Breaking the ‘I Know Cycle’ Every day I have a conversation with someone who isn’t where they want to be in their life or...
Your sales strategy needs the latest sales tools. The Importance of Sales Tools For any professional, their tools are the heart and soul of their craft, allowing them to executer their work with precision....
Mastering Sales Reporting: Essential Metrics, KPIs, and Reporting Cadence for Business Success The Importance of Sales Reporting in Driving Business Success A good friend of mine once told me that in business,...
Sales Account Strategy: Aligning Your Goals with Your Customer’s Needs The Importance of Strategies in Account Management Strategy and account management provide a clear window in the process of...
Driving account success with an effective sales cadence. You’ve heard the term sales cadence before. But, do you know how to implement a sales cadence that drives results? Many organizations tend to shy...
One of the first things that’s taught to new sellers is the stages of the sales process. Many new hires walk through the door and the first question they’re asked is what are the 7 stages of the...
The value of trust in sales processes cannot be underestimated. Relationships are a key factor in the business world. The sales world has been captivated by the notion of how relationships affect sales success...
Would you like to take a question test that measures your ability to ask questions and improve your chance to win the sale? Can you have a conversation by only asking questions? Do you think you...
So you want to build a winning sales team? Conventional wisdom probably leads you to believe that you need to go find the best salesperson in your industry and steal them from a competitor. But what if I told...
If the account vision is the compass of account management, then sales strategy plans and account plans are the ship. Sales strategy plans are where the execution happens. It’s the engine to successful account...
If you’re going to become successful at Gap Selling you need to start asking why. Getting to the why in sales is a crucial skill of a talented Gap Seller. Why? Kids are great at asking why. They...
The secret to successful account management lies in developing the account, not just selling to it. At the center of that development is account vision. Unlike hunting and territory management, the...
Do you track everything and make adjustments constantly? You should be. Personal and professional growth increases exponentially when you have specific goals you’re working towards. To reach those goals...
We’re going to be running a series for the next couple of weeks, focusing on account governance. I’ve chosen account governance, as it’s the underlying process to account management. I haven’t...
Does your CRM feel like more of a hindrance than a help when it comes to selling? It’s a common issue, but the problem likely isn’t the CRM itself. It’s probable that you and your...
You should never ask the buyers the impact of their problems. Your job as a seller and as a Gap Seller is to find the value or the Gap for your client or prospect. As humans, we naturally want to get to the...
There is no debate that questions are at the core of selling. There isn’t a sales guru, training, blog or sales video channel that doesn’t espouse the importance of questions in managing a sale. That debate...
Personalization, credibility, and value – probably the 3 most common buzzwords in the sales world today. Being a market expert gives you the ability to accomplish all 3. As a sales rep, your success depends on...
Change is at the center of selling — period! No change, no sale. I’m on the record of saying this a thousand times. There will be no sale without a motivation to change. Therefore, to understand selling and to...
Pushing a demo during discovery is dangerous. As sales professionals we get excited about the products we sell. We want to show people how great they are, that’s a natural feeling. But if you push too...
If you want to sell better, sell more effectively, and close more deals, you need to understand your customer’s business inside and out. This means doing your research on their environment and asking the...
At ASG we have a unique company culture and one of the key characteristics of that culture is what we call the Freedom Box. In short, the Freedom Box is allowing our employees to do their job as they see fit....
If you want to learn how to be a better seller, start here: give a shit! This is the story about a salesman who missed one crucial aspect of selling – he put his needs and wants before his clients....
To be a good salesperson, you need to have a great sales mindset. You need to want to be a great salesperson. If you don’t want something you’re unlikely to be good at it. How many times have you heard some...
Now that we understand our ICP, Business Problems, and we understand that features are not going to win in a recession it’s time to place the final puzzle piece. We need to draw our attention to the most...
Part 3 of the 3 sales environments: The prospect doesn’t know they have a problem and don’t know that anything needs to be solved. There are only 3 sales environments. That’s it. All sales,...
The current economic climate has a created a unique set of challenges for businesses and their sales teams. In a recession, cash flow is king. Companies are looking for ways to optimize their operations and...
Part 2 of the 3 sales environments: The prospect knows they have a problem but doesn’t know how to solve it. There are only 3 sales environments. That’s it. All sales, regardless of product or...
Look, selling in a recession is tough. Every salesperson in the world is looking at their quota and trying to figure out how they’re going to hit their numbers when companies are tightening their budgets....
There are only 3 sales environments. That’s it. All sales, regardless of product or complexity, will fall into one of these three environments. Knowing which environment your selling in is critical. This is a...
Selling in a recession is hard. Period. Companies are becoming extra cost conscious, they’re evaluating every aspect of their business for things to cull. Becoming recession proof requires you to stop...
Learning how to sell in a recession is hard. Unfortunately, when it comes to selling during a recession conventional wisdom is failing most salespeople. Much of the advice is hollow and not useful to achieving...
Do you know what problems your customers might have, probably have or most certainly have? When you reach out to a customer or prospect, do you have a good idea what problems they are challenged with BEFORE...
Sales coaching is the most valuable element of a sales team. If you don’t buy into this, you can stop reading. This post is about getting the most out of coaching your people, why sales coaching is important,...
Last week we talked about why it’s vital to not use LinkedIn as a cold selling platform. A bunch of you didn’t agree and wanted more on the right way to use LinkedIn and social selling to further your sales....
Sales coaching has one purpose and that is to make the salesperson better. It’s that simple. Coaching is about analyzing what a salesperson is doing in order to enhance their skills and improve their...
LinkedIn is a powerful tool to engage with your peers and potential customers. Of all the common LinkedIn mistakes this one can kill your credibility, reputation, and make you seem super needy and desperate....
There is nothing more important than the sales leader when it comes to driving revenue and creating successful sales organizations. Sales teams live and die on the strength and ability of its leaders. There...
I want to talk about something I’ve seen a lot of and I want to set the record straight. Discovery fatigue. The other day I was reading a LinkedIn post where someone was talking about you must...
Let’s talk about sales objections. Part 4 of why the sales culture needs to change. Sales objections are the quintessential sign that you sold it wrong. Let that sink in for a second. If you’re getting...
Gap Selling Lessons From Wolf of Wall Street: At this point most, if not all, of us have seen this scene from Wolf of Wall Street. It’s cheesy, sleazy, gross, manipulative, pick an adjective. But, there...
Part 3 of Why the Sales Culture today sucks. Bad discovery questions are ruining your credibility and discounting the entire profession. We’ve become manipulative talking heads. We need to break free....
I’ve spent a lot of time with a lot of sales people and one of the biggest problems I see is rarely, too rarely, do sales people know when a deal is ready to close. Unfortunately, sales people rely on...
Maximize SaaS Sales Revenue: Your existing customer base is gold, right? We’ve all heard it before, the cost of acquiring a new customer far out weighs keeping an existing one. This is even more true in the...
Gap Selling Testimonial: Closing a 7 Million Dollar Gap In 12 Months. What can a 38% Increase in Bookings, 50% Increase in Conversions, and closing a 29% Growth Gap do for a company? Acquisition by a Fortune...
Part 2 of Why the Sales Culture today sucks. There’s a whole bunch of reasons – selfishness, sales professionals being self-absorbed, everything related to the last 50-75 years of shitty sales culture. ...
This one is real simple – Coaches don’t play. Coaches coach, players play. Back in 2011, the New England Patriots and New York Jets were scheduled to meet in the playoffs. In the week...
Listen up we need to change the sales culture. It’s a complete shit show. I had a dude reach out to me the other day and he said something like “I don’t know you but I’ve been following you,...
Problem finders are everywhere. Finding a problem is easy. Your car won’t start. Yup, you found a problem. Revenue is down, yup another problem. Your advertising isn’t working, yup you found another...
I’ve gotta get this shit of my chest. You’re not an entrepreneur. I fucking love all the opportunity that is out there today. It has NEVER been a better time to start a business, to go out on your...
Your cold sales emails, cold calls, and outreach suck. Here’s why and here’s how to fix it. I’m gonna give you guys some homework to go home with this weekend and you’re gonna...
I want to take a second to talk pricing, price objections, dealing with pushback, and dealing with negotiation on price. Listen, you don’t owe your buyer a price. I know a lot of times buyers come...
Quota attainment is not the end all be all when it comes to measuring sales representative performance. Over analyzing all the data we can collect is also inefficient and useless. We need to find the happy...
I often get asked by people – how do I get better at understanding my buyers? How do I become more problem-centric? How do I become more buyer-centric? How do I get the information that helps me do...
Sales leaders – do you let people fail? How comfortable are you letting failure happen? Are you OK letting your sales manager make a mistake? Are you OK letting the sales rep lose a deal? What do you do...
There is one trait that if a salesperson does not have I will not hire under any circumstances, no exceptions. I say the same thing to my clients, do not hire salespeople who don’t have this skill....
There’s a difference between affordability and budget. To be a good salesperson, sales team, or sales leader you must know the difference. af-ford-a-bil-i-ty – noun — the state of being cheap...
Bad discovery questions can be the difference between gaining your client’s trust or destroying your credibility. This 1 question is destroying your credibility and in turn destroying your...
Email is a critical tool in almost every profession today. Sales and marketing emails are one of, if not the most important touchpoint in the business world. Below are 8 key elements to make sure you’re...
Some salespeople lie. They don’t believe they do but they do. Salespeople lie to make a sale. Salespeople lie to get you to buy what they want you to buy. Salespeople lie to promote their agenda, not...
Good and great salespeople both know their products, they both understand their customers, and they both make their numbers. The difference between good and great salespeople is HOW they do their job. To...
You must learn to sell a must have product to be successful. Nice to have products are not sustainable products for any company. They have high churn rates, low urgency, and long sales cycles. Must have...
The Best Sales Training or Just Sales Training? Sales training has been around for about 75-100 years. In spite of its longevity, the jury is still out, as many organizations wonder does sales training...
I’m going to share with you why salespeople are losing the deals they’re losing, why the deals get stuck, why they can’t overcome objections, and why they don’t close. I’m going to...
Getting your prospect engaged, getting them on the proverbial hook is critical to selling. Prospecting is the holy grail of sales and it get’s a lot of attention as it should. To most of us, finding and...
Change is hard: how Ryan Cannady increased membership 5X, Convincing a customer to change from a competitor to your product or service is a challenge faced by almost every company at one point or...
To be a Problem-Centric™ seller you need to be able to identify and have a deep understanding of the potential prospect’s problems before anything else. Do you know what problems your customers...
300% increase in SaaS value, 20% increase in win rates, increasing employee satisfaction – How Cart.com created a winning sales culture. (Hint: Invest in your employees) Sales training does not...
3 Benefits of Gap Selling – 1. Improve close rates 2. Eliminate budget discussions 3. Gain insights into client problems you didn’t know existed. Mark Cope, has been through Gap Selling Training with 2...
Stagnated salesforce, Misaligned sales team, sales reps just going through the motions? Stop reading sales scripts, stop reacting, and stop trying to establish a formula to make a sale happen. Enhance your...
Is it possible to double your sales records, double your close rates, and push more deals forward? A tall task for some, but as Alec McCullough, Natalie Harbin, and Jeremy Vujnovich of Limble CMMS will tell...
Increased bookings, higher close rates, beat competitors more consistently – the outcomes Matt Gahr, CRO of Emburse achieved after implementing Gap Selling. Emburse had recently completed a number...
Don’t Get Trapped: Solving Business Problem, Not Technical Problems We’re told to go find our customers problems and solve them. Easy enough, right? Well, not exactly. There are a lot different...
In sales there are order takers and order makers. Order takers are reactive. They listen and respond to customers requests. They respond to RFP’s. They give the customer what they ask for. Order...
Sales myths and catch phrases are thrown around in trainings and casual conversations constantly. If another person marches out the tired old sales myth “people buy from people they like.” I’m going to...
Best Sales Books Whether you’re new in your sales career or in search of fresh content to up your game, picking a solid sales book can be just the thing to get you back on track. Since there are endless...
It’s a sales manager’s job to know whether or not a salesperson is going to make quota. Part of that process is understanding what deals are real and will close, and which won’t. Deal reviews...
I’m going to flip the script today. This blog normally helps sales people and sales leaders be better. This post is gonna go a different route. Today, I’m gonna help the buyer be a good buyer....
There is nothing more frustrating to a sales person than when a client goes dark. Your last conversation was killer, you both agreed that your solution made sense. The prospect said they needed to share it...
Salespeople: Where Is It? If you’re a salesperson, take a look at all the opportunities in your CRM. If you’re a sales manager, or the CRO, or even the CEO, go look at the opportunities your...
What do your sales pipeline stages look like? How many do you have? Are they working, and does your pipeline tell you what you need to know? If you’re like most sales organizations, your pipeline stages...
How to Choose the Best Sales Training for Your Team So you’re looking for sales training for your team. There are literally decades of sales trainings and methodologies to choose from, each with its own...
Do You Have Time to Fill Your Pipeline? When it comes to making quota, there are a number of critical success factors, but the most critical and often undervalued is time. Time is without a doubt one of the...
We’re often asked, what’s the difference between Gap Selling Sales Training and MEDDIC Sales Training. In many cases when comparing two different methodologies or approaches it can be pretty...
So many salespeople think there is no difference between booking and revenue. Many may not even have heard the word “bookings.” For most transactions, there is no difference. Bookings and revenue...
Gap Selling Tip #3: Concept: Ensuring decision criteria aligns with solving the problem you discover Why? “The point of (aligning decision criteria & what you learn in discovery) is...
Selling products vs services: What’s the difference? I get this question a lot. Here’s the answer and I’ll make it as simple and as clear as possible. I think it’s important,...
As a sales leader, what do you do when one of your sales people loses a big deal? Do you kick the shit out of them by calling out everything they did wrong? Do you play Monday morning quarterback and point out...
If you’re going to become successful at Gap Selling you need to start asking why. Why? Kids are great at asking why. They accept the fact that they don’t know very much, so they just...
Experience and Expertise There is a real difference between these two. Too many of us confuse the two, and they are not the same. Experience simply marks the time we’ve been doing...
Growth is what it’s all about in the world of business, especially in SaaS and technology. But growing effectively is key to successfully scale a sales team. We all want to get big. We all want to...
A lot has changed in the sales world in the last 13 years. Inside sales, inbound, outbound, Account Based Marketing, lead generation, buyers journey, etc. are just a few of the new terms that have penetrated...
Here’s the deal. When you’re prospecting, leads can be demanding, They will ask for a lot, but it doesn’t mean you have to say yes every time. Can you tell your customer or prospect...
The Habits of Great Salespeople: What They Don’t Do There always seems to be lots of ideas and discussion around what great salespeople do. I think it’s just human nature to evaluate success and...
Cold outreach is hard. But when you utilize problem-centric Gap Selling, things get a lot easier. Welcome to Gap Selling In Practice, Tip #2. Me again, with a simple question – When you think of...
Executing the best sales discovery. You don’t define everything. That’s the number one problem doing discoveries. Everybody thinks they do a discovery but defining everything is the most...
The Problem with Traditional Sales Training for Cyber Security & Insurance When it comes to problem-centric sales training for cyber security and insurance, traditional sales training methods and companies...
Today, I want to talk to you about is learning. Just to cut to the chase – not enough time is spent on breaking down the skill of learning. Yes, learning is a skill. If you think learning happens...
You are not the customer’s bitch. You are a great sales person. A great sales person isn’t a go-fer, they are keenly in-tune to a customer’s problems and how to solve them. A great...
Hiring “A” players is without a doubt a critical element in building and maintaining successful sales teams. We all want the absolute best talent we can get. However, in the end, our job when...
I love the success stories I get from people who’ve read Gap Selling. It’s a blast to read when people share their own personal success stories about how Gap Selling has changed their career,...
All Sales Training Is the Same, Right? You’ve experienced it. It’s the same old tired approaches to the same old sales challenges, with each company attempting to add their own little...
As a person in sales leadership, do you have the guts to lead from the bottom up? Does your sales team feel safe coming to you with product problems, market concerns, and competitive challenges? Do you...
Continuing Your Gap Selling Journey with Execution In celebration of over 50,000 copies of Gap Selling sold, I wanted to take a moment and highlight other books that influenced my perception or help expand on...
Gap Selling is hard. Like really hard. But when you do it right, it’s extremely powerful. I hear all the time “It’s easy to understand the concepts, but hard to master.” But that’s kind of...
Why should I talk to you? Before any sale can begin, the target of your efforts has to talk to you. They have to engage. Enter prospecting. I know, this is the most remedial concept in theory, but in practice,...
Do You Ever Feel Like You’re Just Another Salesperson? Looking around at the state of the sales industry today, I get the sense that everyone’s methods are exactly the same. I think too many sales...
LinkedIn is a great tool for selling and prospecting, but most salespeople are using it wrong. They’re treating it it’s a phone call or an email and spamming people. We’ve all gotten them...
The ‘If’ Trap: How it’s Sabotaging Your Sales Demos Do you want a telltale sign that your sales demos aren’t very good? Listen to how many times you say “if.” Every...
Sales is suffering from 9 brutal ills: The Bro Culture Lack of Coaching Too Product-Centric and Not Problem Centric Not enough salespeople understand the game/rules of sales Too much reliance on sales tools....
The Sales world is desperate for an upgrade. We’ve been holding on to way too many outmoded approaches, ideas, tropes, and concepts. It’s time sales let’s go of the tired and ineffective belief systems...
A Sales Guy is the leading 21st Century Sales Management Consulting Company....
As Gap Selling has crossed the milestone of 50,000 copies sold, we are highlighting some of our favorite books to compliment your Gap Selling journey. Today’s book highlight goes to The End of...
The Importance of Effective Sales Discovery Questions Too many salespeople fail at sales discovery meetings. A sales discovery meeting is by far the most important part of a sales process. There is no more...
How is Gap Selling different than Solution Selling? It’s hard to believe that Gap Selling has already been out for a couple of years now. Since it’s release, I’ve had countless conversations...
Sales is suffering from 9 brutal ills: The Bro Culture Lack of Coaching Too Product-Centric and Not Problem Centric Not enough salespeople understand the game/rules of sales Too much reliance on selling tools....
Lucidchart and A Sales Growth Company teamed up to help layout the Gap Selling process and make it easier to leverage with your sales team. Using Lucidchart’s amazing tool, it’ even easier to...
Sales is suffering from 9 brutal ills: The Bro Culture Lack of Coaching Too Product-Centric and Not Problem Centric Not enough salespeople understand the game/rules of sales Too much reliance on selling tools....
Selling today and for the majority of the history of sales has been product-centric. In other words, the sales process, our sales conversations, our sales engagement has been focused on the product and what...
Sales is suffering from 9 brutal ills: Bro Culture Lack of Sales Coaching Product-Centric Selling Not enough salespeople understand the game/rules of sales Too much reliance on selling tools. Not enough...
Enough with the Sales Bro Culture Sales is suffering from 9 brutal ills: The Sales Bro Culture Lack of Coaching Too Product-Centric and Not Problem Centric Not enough salespeople understand the...
Stop being focused on your product (product-centric) and start focusing on solving your customer’s problems (problem-centric). For years, I mean for most of modern-day sales, we have been...
Why you need to be Problem-Centric Selling now. You don’t need to be liked to sell. You don’t need to be liked to have credibility. Watch this talk from INBOUND 2018 and learn why. Put yourself in the...
It’s not uncommon for revenue to slide. It happens to all sales organizations at one time or another. Revenue being down isn’t the most difficult problem. Knowing why revenue is down and where to...
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