Hamish Knox

The most common complaint we hear from the heads of professional services firms (lawyers, accountants, engineers, marketing or PR agencies) is that their people are technically brilliant, but have a serious aversion to business development. Totally understandable considering the training the majority of professionals receive relates directly to delivering services they provide (e.g. how to conduct a better audit or how to create a crisis communications plan)

David Sandler said, sales is no place to get your needs met, but too often salespeople get their needs met by eagerly jumping through the hoops their prospect puts down, not for the chance at getting an order, but because they want their prospect to like them. Salespeople mistake their prospect liking them for success because they have "I/R confusion." What this means, in simple terms, is they mistake their self-worth or identity (I-Side) with the role (R-Side) they play, like salesperson. When someone confuses their I-Side and their R-Side they exhibit two primary behaviors

As a manager, your most valuable asset is your time. In Part 1 of "An Alternative to Traditional Performance Management" you learned how to get time back in your week by implementing a 3-part performance management system: funnel management, a weekly behavior plan (a.k.a., "cookbook") and a personalized development plan. In Part 2, you'll learn a system for reducing your time spent on, and your team's anxiety about, their performance review

Like a coach in pro sports, your primary function as a manager is to improve the performance of your team. Unfortunately, traditional approaches to performance management may have initial success, but are difficult to sustain. When distilled out of their packaging traditional performance management looks like

Ask most salespeople to describe the purpose of each interaction with a prospect and they'll probably say something like: "close 'em" "build the relationship" "educate them" "solve their problems" All good answers, but the real purpose of every interaction with a prospect is to get to the truth. What's uncomfortable about getting the truth in an interaction with a prospect? Ask any salesperson this question and most of the time their answer will be something like "I might not get their business!"e

When the calendar turns to July and August, most people struggle to prospect because they believe that all of their prospects are on vacation. Often summer is a great time to reach decision makers. They are in the office while their staff is away. As, David Sandler said, "you can't manage anything you can't control," so worrying about the time of year isn't going to help you hit your Q3 quota. Instead, do something about what you can control: your behavior

Prospects like to play games with salespeople. The purpose of games prospects play is to make a salesperson feel not-OK. When a salesperson feels not-OK in front of a prospect, they are more likely to give up their time and information in the hope that their prospect will make them feel OK again. Some of the games prospects play with salespeople are: Why Don't You, Yes But - your prospect rejects every one of your suggestions with some version of "yes, but" (e.g. "we'd love to implement option A, but our budget was cut last week.")

When you get an email from a prospect with one of the following requests, what do you do? Send me a quote for.. Provide us with more information about.. We'd like a proposal.. Forward us a brochure on.. If you thought, "reply by email," you just put your prospect firmly in control of the sales process. How? The reason is found in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)

Even if you're not hiring for the CEO role at a high profile tech company, bad recruiting can negatively affect morale, productivity and customer relationships. Typically, bad recruiting comes down to no real recruiting process, which can be as easy as answering these four questions

Before you choose to answer your prospect's "how much" question, consider if you are unintentionally helping your prospect lower your prices. While a common trick of the amateur salesperson is offering increasing discounts to win business, I haven't met a professional salesperson who uses this tactic. Unfortunately, the professional salesperson can still be guilty of helping their prospect lower their prices by "anchoring" their prospect