Karen Meracle

Best in Class sales professionals are active listeners. They realize that the less they talk and the more the prospect talks, the more likely they are to build trust and honest communication.

By investing a little time to do the research, you can increase the temperature of your prospecting calls…and increase your chances of closing sales.

You have an inventory to take, a phone call to make, and a report to write. But instead of diving in and getting the tasks completed, you put them off. “I’ll get to them soon,” you tell yourself. But your definition of “soon” and Webster’s definition have little in common.

If you start with the right people…for the right reasons, deal with potential problems in the early stages of the process, rigorously qualify opportunities, and ensure that you and your prospects are on the same page at each stage of the process, you’ll be able to complete the selling process in a shorter period of time…which in turn means more sales…and more commissions.

Will you be replaced…by a smartphone app? It’s almost impossible to make it through the day without seeing or hearing an advertisement with the tag line, “We’ve got an app for that.” Interestingly, it wasn’t that long ago that the word “smartphone” didn’t exist. And, if you checked the dictionary, “app” was an abbreviation for apparatus, appendix, or applied.

If you’ve been involved in the sales profession (especially in Chicago) for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly heard some form of the saying, “People don’t buy products and services; they buy solutions to problems.” While that’s essentially true, the saying only tells a part of the story.

Do you sometimes struggle to get your message across to a prospective client? You know that what you have to offer is exactly what the prospect needs, but the more you try to make your point, the more you realize that the prospect is tuned to a different wavelength.

Luck has been described as being in the right place at the right time. But, there’s a catch: you also have to know what you want. Otherwise, you might be in the right place at the right time…and never even know it!

How are arson investigators able to sort through the rubble of a burned out building and pinpoint the source of ignition and the path of the fire?

How are National Transportation Safety Board investigators able to examine the vast debris of a plane crash and determine the cause of the crash?

Fulfilling your plan comes down to prioritizing what you can and cannot make time for. Before we can talk about what you might start saying “no” to, let’s talk about what you should be saying “yes” to.