...and what this blog ISN'T

08/12/08 23:23
You’ve come to the WRONG place if you’re looking for:
  • Sales Training. Corner Office Conversations is NOT another “sales training” blog. There are a lot of good ones out there, and from time to time I may even refer to a few of them. We won’t be covering “tie-downs,” “overcoming objections,” “takeaways,” and the myriad tricks and tactics of typical sales training. No “SPIN Selling,” “Little Red Books,” or even “Solution Selling.”
  • Presentation Skills. Figure out how to dress for success and create PowerPoint slide animations on your own. It doesn’t matter how charismatic you are or how snazzy your presentation is if I (as a C-level executive) don’t understand what you’re talking about or even worse, couldn’t care less.
  • Decisionmaker Matrices. Yes, in typical sales situations it is sometimes difficult to figure out who really makes the decisions, and ever harder to get to them. In our world, it’s not that difficult. Go about as high in the hierarchy as you can imagine, and that’s where you want to be. We may drop a few hints along the way as to how to get there, but for the most part I’m assuming you can figure that one out.
  • Sales “Tools.” Don’t get me wrong-- I’m a huge believer in leveraging technology and other tools of the information age. And I will point you towards specific resources that support my particular perspective here. But you’re not going to get tips on maximizing the efficiency of your SFA system or implementing solutions for a distributed mobile workforce.
Again, don’t misunderstand me. I am not “anti-sales.” I’ve sold millions of dollars worth of products and services as well as having purchased millions of dollars worth of products and services as a CEO. And one of the key things I’ve learned and witnessed along the way is that understanding the “language of business” is a key to bigger deals, more profitable deals, faster deals, longer deals... and the deals that can launch a previously run-of-the-mill sales person into the upper strata of Sales and Corporate Management.





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