Month: July 2016

In her inspiring book Selling with Noble Purpose, sales consultant Lisa McLeod recounts a conversation she had with a top sales rep at a major biotech company. Lisa asked the rep, “What do you think about when you go on sales calls? What’s going on in your head?” Lisa writes that the rep sheepishly admitted…

Here’s a real example of what this kind of story looks like when it’s done well from the perspective of a prospect. In this case, that prospect is Quave Burton, a global procurement executive at Abercrombie & Fitch. In July 2015, Quave attended a strategic sourcing forum in Newport Beach, California. Part of the conference included a…

Procurement people will tell you (like they told me) that competitors in every space are so similar that it’s difficult to tell them apart. They need a “differentiation” story—which means you need a differentiation story. For a good example of what that looks like, I turned to Joanna Martinez, former chief procurement officer at Cushman…

By 1999, Andrew Moorfield had spent a decade in banking and corporate finance for companies like Citibank and Diageo. But the tidal wave of opportunities the dot-com revolution presented was too much for someone with big ideas to resist. And Andrew had big ideas. In June 2000, he left the corporate world and launched bfinance.co.uk,…

The WRONG way: “Well, that’s an interesting question, Bob. You see, it was a warm September morning, and the leaves on the trees outside our Dallas office were finally starting to change color. The smell of lilacs wafting through the lobby was almost strong enough to make us forget about the traffic noise from the…

Depending on the type of product or service offered, many times storytelling can help your existing customers make better decisions about how to use what they’ve already bought from you. And it’s obviously in your best interest to help them do that so they become the most satisfied customers they can be. Here are some…