Nigel Edelshain

Cover the bases…or you’re out!

In my last two posts (this one and this one) I described a framework for progressing larger sales opportunities that I have had a lot of success with. It is a process described in Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman’s book “Strategic Selling” (now called New Strategic Selling.) In this framework there are four types of people involved in a sale.

The economic buyer
The users
The gatekeepers
The coach

I described these four types of people and gave you some tips on how to find the fourth type of person a “coach”. The “coach” is the one type of person you don’t get for “free”. Having a coach is one of the most important factors in winning bigger deals.

Knowing how to sell to a “buying committee” like this is becoming more important as getting in the door gets harder and every opportunity more critical.

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No coach can mean no deal

by Nigel Edelshain

Getting in the door is getting harder and harder, so making the most of every time you do get through the door is becoming more and more important.

Over the years, I have seen many salespeople and business owners taking big risks with important deals by talking to only one person in the prospect company. A common outcome of this kind of “single threading” is “radio silence” after a proposal is submitted—no returned calls or emails, and ultimately no deal.

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Making the most of every opportunity

by Nigel Edelshain

Getting in the door is getting harder and harder, so making the most of every time you do get through the door is becoming more and more important.

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Getting in the door in an AI world

by Nigel Edelshain

The #1 challenge for most salespeople, and small business owners, is getting enough meetings with prospects for their product or service.

Getting through the door to have conversations that may lead to business opportunities seems to be getting harder every day. Today’s big disruptor, AI, may potentially make this situation even worse (hard to believe as the situation seems so tough already!)

For many companies selling a high-end product or service, a meeting is a prerequisite to a sale. A lack of meetings means a lack of sales opportunities, which means a lack of sales and revenue.

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An “uncool” way to get sales meetings

by Nigel Edelshain

In this post I am going to talk about an “uncool” way to get sales meetings…ground mail.

Getting meetings with potential prospects is frequently rated as the top challenge for most salespeople and business owners. If you don’t get enough meeting with prospects, then your sales will inevitably be weak–not enough coming in the top of your sales funnel always means not enough coming out the bottom.

When faced with the challenge of getting more sales meetings, some salespeople assume all you can do is send dozens more cold emails or (if they’re the rarer type that likes to call) make several more cold calls.

Although these methods do work, there’s an increasing need to use “multimedia prospecting”, approaching people over multiple channels until you hit upon a method that works for that prospect.

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Multimedia prospecting

by Nigel Edelshain

As we’ve introduced more ways to communicate, we (and more importantly our customers) have spread our communication over many channels, leaving less concentration on any one channel.

When we only had a desk telephone, you could reach more people on it, as that was the primary channel for communication. Your prospects picked up the phone when it rang, as it might be their customer or family on the other end.

Then we got cell phones. Now you could give your cell number to just the important people and not let others know your secret cell number. Once you’ve given the important people your cell number, you don’t have to pay as much attention to your desk phone.

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