New Series: Sales, The Endless Frontier

The endless frontier? I have to admit this seems weird even to me. I’ve spent 25 years in sales successfully selling products, services, companies and assets. For me, sales is the endless frontier because of its complexity and because it is the ultimate test of a company’s viability. It’s also an endless test of the viability of the sales person, team and sales management.

However, many of my friends and colleagues constantly ask me, “How does selling really work? How do you excel at it?” I’ve tried referring them to various books, courses and pundits. That wasn’t very effective and, in fact, it was mostly dribble. The truth is there is very little out there worth reading, let alone worth applying in the real world. Nothing compares to hard-earned experience, thoughtfulness and results.

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Social Media, Sales and a Contact Sport

A good friend of mine, Aaron Howard, asked me to write some thoughts down on Sales and Sale Management.  I have known Aaron for some 20 years and have to say it’s never boring around him. I owe him a lot.

For the past 25 years I have been in sales.  Mostly helping small businesses (companies with annual revenue under $25 million) with financing their operations. As a sales person, on the line, and later as a sale manager, the goal has always been to contact more prospects and close more deals!  As some like to say, “Sales is a contact sport!” and they would be correct. (more…)