Customers want to buy, not to be sold to Don’t always be too quick to close. As low-hanging as the fruit may be, resist the temptation to pluck it. For all you know, it could be bait. Salespeople are primed to close the sale. Their very success depends on it. So much so that I…
Continue readingBe discerning of whom to sell to
This inability to identify the types of buyers present, can lose one a job at an interview or a pitch to a panel. If you don’t prospect, you (professionally) die. Prospecting is the never-ending search for potential buyers for your product. But it first starts by identifying who that buyer is. And it can get…
Continue readingRetain trust by first understanding the work
The experienced seller first fully scopes before making price commitments because changing it raises eyebrows likely losing you the sale. And why? Trust is broken. Understand the scope of work before pricing it. The more if you are In the B2B (Business-to-Business) industry, where tip-of-the iceberg symptoms are verbalized as the iceberg problem by the…
Continue readingProcurement officials are selling too
Officials in the procurement function repeatedly engage in the selling process, with suppliers. But, they refrain from admitting that they are selling-preferring instead to call it negotiation. In my view, they can keep the procurement label, but should be trained in selling skills. Here’s why? I once had such a team, from a Tier 1…
Continue readingOnly calendar changed; targets didn’t
“Rainmakers don’t have excuses. You either made the sale or you didn’t; no-one wants to hear why you didn’t bring in the sale” “Don’t get too excited about this New Year stuff. Only the calendar has changed. The spouse, the job, the targets remain the same.” And since this is a sales, not relationship, column,…
Continue readingWhy 2021 is a gambling year
Your guess is a s good as mine as to what the BBI referendum, coupled with campaigns for 2022 general elections going into full throttle, will mean for selling. 21 is considered a lucky number by gamblers. Aptly so given the unique selling environment 2021 presents. First, we are coming from a spiralling 2020, so…
Continue readingMy three other lessons from 2020
It’s been an unprecedented year. It started off on a high note with 2020 being pronounced with an American accent; as you’ve likely just silently done. 2020 looked so bright we’d need to don ‘shades’ (dark glasses) a wit advised. Then just hours before unlucky day Friday 13th came the announcement in March that we…
Continue readingMy 6 lessons from ‘Corona’
Do you suppose the quest for this alignment could be why some believe that some pharmaceutical giant can wantonly release a deadly virus just to trigger sales of their vaccine? Here are three of six lessons I gleaned this year. I’ll share the other three next Thursday. “Corona ilikuja tuache maringo” I stole this quote…
Continue readingWill new school calendar change December shopping?
You wouldn’t be Kenyan enough if you did not fight tooth and nail through December Will Kenyans’ incomprehensible December spending (I mean, buying) spree, be different this time? Will the change in the school calendar affect spending? I’m not so sure about spending being affected by the sick ‘Corona-economy’. After all, logic has never fit,…
Continue reading“Because of Corona…” is fading to an excuse
“Corona, after all, is no longer “imported” but “locally produced” If you’re thinking it, they’ll ask it. So instead of wishing it away, or resigning to fate, address it instead. Think of an appropriate response, dwell on it, experiment with it, iterating it to perfection with every attempt. The result is a liberating experience and…
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