Sales and Marketing

What If You Could Give Your Sales Team A Magic Pill?  John Monroe    Imagine if you could give your sales team a drug that would make them superhuman selling machines for the day. If this were possible, would you take the risk and give it to your team?   I was watching Project Power, a new movie on Netflix, and my mind started racing. When your salespeople reported to the conference room each day for the morning sales meeting, what if you handed them a cappuccino and a magic pill? But you had no idea what superpower would be unleashed until they took the pill for the first time. One person might become the ultimate closer that no customer could say no to; another might have the skill of always finding the decision maker on the first call; yet another might be the ultimate salesperson with the power to turn every job into a million-dollar deal. Of course, there would always be the risk that they take the pill and become the nightmare salesperson who is afraid to get out of bed and won’t talk to anyone, so they just send emails by the hundreds. Would it be worth the risk?   Thankfully, you do not need a magical pill to turn your sales team into superhuman selling machines … although I can’t promise that your team won’t need a shot of cappuccino to get their brains working in the morning!    In this pandemic world we currently live social

Are You Running in the Right Direction?  John Monroe    “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.” Author unknown  You know how images can become so engraved in your brain that you never forget them? I have one such image. While traveling as a sales manager for a Fortune 500 floorcovering manufacturer I had the opportunity to visit the corporate office of a big box retailer. When I exited the elevator onto the executive level there was a large picture of a lion chasing a gazelle and under it was the quote above. What made the visual even more extraordinary was the fact that this big box retailer was publicly stating its goal to put local hardware stores out of business. Next to the picture was a list of the local stores that had closed because of this retailer entering their market.   During shelter in place, many of us in the sales profession watched the sun come up every day and struggled with the question of how can we run if we are locked in a cage (our home)? Just like the big box retailer, sales teams must discover new ways to outsmart their competition.    The bad news.  Shelter in place is