Kensei Partners

Make time to think

As sales professionals with quotas, prospects, clients, meetings, admin work, follow up activities and so on, we rarely get a chance (or take the chance) to stop and think about what we’re doing. If we did we’d realize some of what we’re doing could be done a lot better and some shouldn’t be done at [...]

CATCHING YOR SALES GROOVE

Have you ever seen the movie Tommy Boy? If not go see it. If it’s been a while – see it again. It’s one of the best sales movies of all time. There’s a scene in Tommy Boy that stands out and highlights what I call “catching your sales groove.” Here's the scene:

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WILL SOMEONE PLEASE CLOSE ME?!?!?!

I’m here at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce walking the trade show floor and noticing for the first time (since it’s been a while since I’ve been to a trade show) how ineffective most sales reps are who work the booths. I’m here not only for networking and business development purposes but I’m also evaluating different learning platforms [...]

Dear buyers – it’s ok to tell us NO

It’s actually the second best answer a sales rep can hear besides the obvious yes. The worst sin in sales is not for a sales rep to lose a deal, it’s to take a long time to lose a deal. So, the faster you can figure out a solution is not the right fit and [...]

Selling to pleasure versus pain

We’re all taught to dig for, find and sell to pain. There’s nothing wrong with this approach other than the fact that sometimes we don’t pick our head up and realize sometimes (a lot of times) people buy for pleasure reasons as well. The main reason most of us are stuck in the world of [...]

STOP TOUCHING BASE AND CHECKING IN!!!!!

These are two of the most meaningless phrases in Sales and yet 99.99% of us do it all day long. We call a client who has agreed to move forward on a proposal by a specific date and instead of directly asking for the order we “touch base” with them to see how everything is [...]

Practice Sales Everywhere You Go

Sales is the best profession in the world for multiple reasons. One of them is that we can (and do) practice it all the time and everywhere we go. The trick is to actively think about practicing it and pay attention. If you have kids you negotiate all the time (“you want to stay up [...]

New Blogs… Coming Soon

Thanks for your patience!

Always Be Closing. Really?

Yes! As brutal as Blake (Alec Baldwin) was in his Glenngary Glen Ross speech he was right. You should always be closing. The question is how and for what? When most people think about closing they think about asking for the order. This is obvious although you’d be amazed at how often we see even [...]

To role play or not to role play?

Any time I hear the words "role play" my skin crawls as I remember the countless sales trainings I've been through where the instructor sets up this 'real world' scenario and proceeds to embarrass people in front of their peers. As I reflect back on those situations and what I hated about them [...]