Mike Schultz's Blog, page 14

15 Ways to Get Referrals

Referrals are among the top ways sellers get leads and new business, but many struggle with generating them consistently. Often, this is because they haven’t thought about why buyers should refer them. They don’t have a system in place for generating referrals.

We know our buyers rely on colleagues, associates, and friends to recommend providers. So when a prospect comes to us via this route, some of the work is already done for us. Referrals build a seller's trustworthiness and credibility—two cornerstones of effective selling.

What Is Insight-Based Selling?

Insight selling is the process of creating and winning sales opportunities and driving change with ideas that matter. There are two applications of insight selling: interaction insight and opportunity insight.

How Sellers Can Disrupt and Reframe Buyer Thinking [+Toolkit]

The following is an excerpt from our new toolkit for sellers, How to Change the Buyer Conversation with Insight. Click here to access it. >> 

Think about buyers you've worked with who were trying to move an initiative or agenda forward. You probably heard something like: 

"We only need support in these areas from you."

"The team has decided to engage an outside provider to deliver on X."

"We're open to ideas about Y, but don't want to talk about Z."

These buyers are in their comfort zone: either comfortable with what they're trying to accomplish or how they're trying to accomplish it. 

In some cases, there may be a good reason for it. It's possible they've already invested a great deal of time and resources into what they believe the solution should be. 

But many buyers are headed down paths that won’t serve them well. This is because they don’t know what you know or that something better might be possible.

Your job is to help buyers make the best decisions, which often means making different decisions.

Q&A on Sales Management with Harvard Business School's Frank Cespedes

Frank Cespedes, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, discusses his latest book, Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World that Never Stops Changing (Harvard Business Press, 2021) in this Q&A with RAIN Group.

How to Build Rapport in Sales and Connect with People

If you want to be a successful salesperson, you need to get comfortable with skepticism. Why? Because people have doubts about one another. In its Trust and Distrust in America report, Pew Research Center found that 71% of Americans think interpersonal confidence has worsened in the past two decades. Nearly half of Americans think the reason is unreliability.

For salespeople, it’s safe to assume that a certain level of skepticism is the norm.

27 Productivity Tips that Will Change the Way You Live, Work, and Feel

Take a moment to think about a time when you had a period of deep focus in which your work performance and productivity were at a high. Everything clicked. You nailed the deadline. Made the leap. Produced 10X. Everything came into focus.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could have that level of focus and achieve that extreme productivity all the time—or even most of the time?

Sales Call Planning Guide

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.  

- Benjamin Franklin

We acknowledge that sometimes you can't prepare for a sales call or—hallelujah—a buyer calls you out of the blue. It's reasonable to suggest that, on occasion, sales calls are appropriately deemed 'exploratory discussions'; the kind of discussion in which we just talk and 'see where it goes.'

7 Ways to Get Motivated and Crush Your Sales Goals Post-Pandemic

The best sellers understand how important it is to develop the ability to adapt. But how do you continue to adapt and stay motivated over the long haul?

Introducing a New Book from the Leaders of RAIN Group

Not Today is unlike the other books we’ve written and talked about in this space. While it’s certainly applicable to sales and selling—our clients have been benefitting from The Productivity Code and related content for years—it’s not your typical business or self-help book.

Not Today Book Excerpt

Nobody wants to be unproductive. Nobody wants to procrastinate. Nobody wants to fall short of their goals and see their dreams fade away.

Yet, when many people ask themselves, “Am I ready to stop putting off my future, make a plan, and change?” they all too commonly, deep within their psyches, answer, “Not today.”

Why?