I was standing on a ledge, facing a rock wall. The path at Water Canyon ended there; we couldn't go any higher. Looking down over my right shoulder, I saw a bottomless pit. One that I was supposed to descend. My stomach was churning, my head was spinning. Fear owned my body and I was at its mercy.
How do you get a targeted account if all your previous attempts have failed? If you want to catch a big fish, perhaps the sports fishermen of New Zealand can give you some ideas. After all, they face a very difficult, if not insurmountable, challenge that would stop most fisherman entirely.
After spending a day in DC learning about CEB's (now Gartner) latest sales research, I popped over to visit Steve Richard's office, which was just a few blocks away. He's the CEO of ExecVision.io, a new sales coaching app.
Lots of people have been sharing their #firstsevenjobs on Twitter recently, so I thought I'd chip in. I initially started with short stints working as a babysitter (not my thing), helping in a bakery (fattening) and selling snow cones at the state fair (fun).
My sales career really kicked off, however, when I landed a job as a server at Uncle John's Pancake House. Three restaurants and seven years later, I capped off my waitressing career at the Ground Round. (Yes, that's me on the left. It was on the front page of our local newspaper when I was 21 years old.)
The theatre at the Sundance Film Festival was packed. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who felt that NUTS!, the documentary we were about to see, was probably overrated. I feared I’d be soon be squirming in my seat.
Are you one of the 5.4 million sellers* worldwide who suffer from seasonal callergies?
I'm excited to announce that I'll be the 1st Sales Executive in Residence at the Center for Sales Innovation at St. Catherine University (St. Kates) in Minnesota.
Last February I was in serious discussions with Mark Roberge, Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot, about co-authoring a book. At my request, he sent me several lengthy articles he’d written.
The minute I saw them, I realized the man was brilliant – and needed to write a book of his own. And he has – The Sales Acceleration Formula just came out!
Here’s the fascinating part. Mark’s an engineer and MIT grad. He’s never been in sales. Yet HubSpot’s two founders brought him in to develop “scalable, predictable revenue growth.” In just a few short years, this start-up grew to $100 million in revenue.
Mark’s unconventional strategies played a big role in making that happen. Every sales leader and entrepreneur can learn a ton from his approach. I hope you enjoy my interview with him.
On Valentine's Day, everyone's thoughts turn to love. That's why I thought it would be fun to share why I'm so passionate about this crazy profession.
I never expected to like it. It had a bad reputation and I didn’t want to be seen as one of “those kind” of people. I took the job at Xerox so I could learn how to sell. I committed to doing it for one year. It didn’t take me long though to discover that my perception was totally inaccurate.
But love? I can assure you it was not love at first sight.
It was early Tuesday morning. I was triaging my email, quickly deleting everything I could. Irrelevent or boring newsletters were zapped in a flash. Then I hit one from HubSpot: Lights, Cameras, Sales! SNAP, SPIN & Other Popular Sales Methodologies Imagined as Movies.