There is No Change Without Credibility

By Kelly Riggs | Sales + Leadership

A strange, but true, fact in selling is that customers will often tolerate less-than-ideal performance from an entrenched competitor simply because of the hassles associated with changing suppliers. Make no mistake, most people do not like change. In fact, until a prospect is convinced that the benefits of making a change outweighs the problems associated with it, a sale will almost never happen. The critical aspect of convincing a prospect to change hinges upon your ability to build credibility. Without credibility, trust will not follow, and a prospect will not even remotely consider a change until and unless they trust you.

Continue reading

The Remedy for the Workplace Tyrant

By Kelly Riggs | Sales + Leadership

While not every manager guilty of abusive behavior is a bad person, even well-meaning managers can be guilty of repeatedly harsh criticism, ostracism, and even public humiliation. The cost to the organization is more than significant. Since there is clear and compelling evidence that this management style costs companies enormous amounts of money, companies should be more than enthusiastic about making changes.

Continue reading

Misleading Sales Metrics and the Impact on Management

By Kelly Riggs | Sales + Leadership

In many cases, a sales manager will simply decide that a salesperson just isn’t a “born salesperson” and start looking for a replacement. The challenge is correlating random data to sales performance, and I’ve seen sales managers with dozens of reports at their fingertips fail to understand the specific challenges for any particular salesperson, although they think they can.

Continue reading

Your Sales Presentation is Very Average

By Kelly Riggs | Sales + Leadership

The reality is that most sales presentations are boring, lifeless, and completely unpersuasive. Worse, if you use PowerPoint to enhance your presentation, the odds of it being forgettable increase exponentially. PowerPoint is typically used as a one-sided, sit-and-take-notes, no-comments-allowed, listen-while-I-read-my-slides tool. Your sales presentation, on the other hand, should be an engaging, create-a-productive-dialogue, prospect engagement tool

Continue reading