Jerry Stapleton

I was in Vancouver recently working with Kris, the regional vice president of sales for the eastern region for a client company. Kris and I met for the better part of a day to work on integrating a qualification process into her team's everyday thinking and language. In short, the qualification process has two basic buckets: potential value (if we win), and winnability.

One sure way to get a unanimous non-show of hands from a group of salespeople is to ask this question: "Let's see a show of hands. How many of you, when you set your objectives for a customer meeting, have at the top of the list: 'I want to come across to the customer like every other salesperson that customer met with in the last week?'

Many managers like to point out to their salespeople the difference between motion and activity as a way of keeping them focused on meaningful work.

You've got a customer. In fact, it's a very profitable, long-standing customer that pays its bills and is just generally great to work with.

Some time ago, I offered up in these pages a few guidelines to follow when attempting to gain access to executives. The gist of that piece was that you'll have more luck if you think about executive access in terms of "confirming alignment" more than "making the decision."

I've often pointed to the handful of dirty little secrets that exist within most sales teams.

Well, sales leaders have a few secrets of their own.

Ever have a sales situation where you've come to realize, usually quite late in the game, that you're going to lose? And to make matters worse, it appears the customer is about to buy from someone he or she will later regret buying from? Frustrating, isn't it?

Dale had just come out of a four-day sales training program his company had sponsored for its top performers. This was heady stuff. He'd learned how to apply Sun Tzu's "Art of War" – about ancient Chinese warfare – to modern day competitive engagement in selling.

This column has always been about shedding traditional ways of selling. More specifically, I have encouraged salespeople to reinvent themselves by adopting what I call a "business resource mindset."

A few decades ago the nascent computer age produced a few new acronyms for our lexicon. "GIGO" was among the more popular: garbage in, garbage out!