sales Archives - The Grassy Road

Don’t argue in front of your customer!

We've all been there. You're in a meeting with a prospect or customer and someone on your team says the wrong thing. You're infuriated and your knee jerk reaction is to correct your teammate in front of the customer. Or get angry with your teammate. Not a good idea. This can happen when you take a junior engineer into a meeting and she feels she has to tell the customer everything that's wrong with the product. Or a senior executive who commits you to a schedule you know you can't [...]

By Penny Herscher|2019-01-04T09:57:25-08:00December 7, 2018|Leadership|Comments Off

Selling with Silence: How the power of the sale is in the silence you create

What do you think of when you think of being sold to? A salesman? Speed and feed? Talking your ear off with feature function? Closing you with obvious closing questions? Sadly, still today, despite everything we know, many people sell this way. But actually true selling is just the opposite. The sale is made in the silence. There are a thousand B2B sales training classes and self help books you can read but they all basically say the same thing. Do discovery, qualify your customer, understand the org chart, understand [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-14T06:55:29-08:00July 15, 2016|Career Advice|1 Comment

5 Ways to Deal with a Workplace Bully ( Who is Your Customer! )

Customers are usually really fun to work with, but sometimes you run into a difficult one, a classic "tough customer". So what do you do when you have to work with a customer who is a true bully? You know, the customer who throws his weight around, talks over you, raises his voice if you push back, disrespects you and insults you with aggressive behavior. I've dealt with my fair share of bullies over time and learned the following approaches to defusing the bully behavior. Note, all these tips refer [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-03T02:44:22-08:00January 13, 2016|Career Advice|0 Comments

How to Deal with a Horse’s Ass (in your head)

I love my job and I love meeting 90% of the people I have the privilege to meet, but sometimes, just sometimes, I have to spend professional time with someone whom I have a hard time respecting. Of course I don't let on, and of course I am professional and respectful, but I have to find ways to manage myself through my reaction to the behavior. What is the behavior I have to manage my head around you may ask? What I find really hard is the person who has [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T09:45:51-08:00September 12, 2015|Career Advice|0 Comments

Your customer needs more than an email

It's an old saying "people buy from people" but with our dependance on digital communication sometimes salespeople forget and rely too much on email and texting. It feels safer, you can plan and think out what you are going to say and you won't surprise the person you need to communicate with. But it's just not effective, even in a world where we are all fast iPhone typists - as the WSJ wrote last week: Bosses Say "Pick up the Phone". The reality is, despite our growing dependency on text [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T09:52:36-08:00September 4, 2013|Career Advice|0 Comments

Why Stress is Good for Sales People

Published in the Huffington Post earlier today: With so much riding on closing the sale, making quota and generating revenue, sales reps are some of the most stressed out members of the workforce. Yet some stress may actually improve your performance. Recent research found short bursts of intense stress can improve your cognitive functions and make you more productive, even boosting your overall health. While many studies advise workers to reduce their stress for better health, just a bit can help you to improve sales productivity and stay focused. But [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T09:52:47-08:00July 19, 2013|Career Advice|0 Comments

The balance between marketing and hype with a new product

Sometimes it's hard to contain your enthusiasm when you have a new product to market and the temptation is to get carried away and over hype. It's this behavior that can give engineering a bad rap with marketing and marketing a bad rap with sales.Here's the classic typical scenarioR&D truly believes the product is way ahead of where it really it. It's ready, it's fast, all the functionality is basically there, it's usable today etc. This comes from (often justifable) pride in the technology that's been developed. Note technology, not [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:17:32-08:00July 10, 2009|Career Advice|0 Comments

What sales needs to do

As my regular readers will have figured out by now, we hold a sales "kickoff" at the beginning of every quarter. It's a pretty standard agenda:- how the last quarter went - good and bad - by rep- what the targets are for the new quarter- guest speaker - someone inspiring - this time Keith McCullough from Research Edge- what's coming from the product and marketing in the next 90 days- sales process review and training- celebrate!This quarter I took the opportunity to talk with the team on how we [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:24:32-08:00August 19, 2008|Career Advice|0 Comments

The art of closing a quarter

We're closing our quarter today and - as I sit on a conference call waiting for the client to finish debating changes with their lawyer - I am musing on what it takes to get all the business closed.I asked the guys I am sitting with on this end what they've taken away as learnings this time ...- Deadlines are a good way to get focused. As a small company quarters don't matter the way they do in a public company, but we treat them as if they do.- Have [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:24:58-08:00July 31, 2008|Career Advice|0 Comments

How to review a sales team

Sales teams thrive on a balance of structure and freedom. Enough structure that they know what they have to work with and what’s expected of them, enough freedom that they can be creative, run their own territory and make money.I have found that taking a sales team through a territory review process a couple of times a year can help them, and help me, find that balance. I am on my way to New York tonight to participate in one of the team’s reviews tomorrow with my VP Sales, Todd [...]

By Penny Herscher|2017-12-06T17:27:26-08:00May 5, 2008|Leadership|0 Comments