You’re about to see how to use the “Good Cop Bad Cop” technique to get things done and handle uncomfortable situations. In business, you’re bound to encounter confrontation which can put a strain on a relationship: “Hey can you get me that check that was due last month?” “I noticed that you didn’t link back [...]
Tag Archives | Sales
Strategies and Tactics to Close the Deal
This post is about strategies I’ve used to close the deal. One of the biggest challenges in sales and business development can be inspiring urgency to get a deal done. Just because someone perceives value in your offering, doesn’t mean they’ll make it a priority. There are a number of tactics I’ve used to push [...]
Guerilla Tactics: How to Find A Decision Maker Part 2
In the first part of this post, I shared how calling for a former employee can help you find a decision maker. Here’s a few other strategies to isolate the right contact at a large company. Use Implicit Data on LinkedIn Let’s revert back to the conundrum of there being 12 people in the marketing [...]
Guerilla Tactics: How to Find A Decision Maker Part 1
Awhile back I wrote a post called Less Obvious Ways to Find A Decision Maker. I’ve discovered a few additional tactics since then that thought I’d share in a multi part post: Call For Someone Who No Longer Works There Calling into an 1000+ person company and asking the operator who manages a particular [...]
How to Ask Someone if They’re A Decision Maker
One of the first mistakes I made when I initially started doing BD was how’d I’d ask if someone if they were the decision maker. “So X, would you say that you’re the decision maker for this.” “Yes” was the answer I received 95% of the time. I’d say the number of actual decision makers [...]
What Not To Do When Cold Calling
Last week I found myself doing a bunch of cold calling into 1,000+ person companies so I thought I’d share some quick tips specifically on what not do when cold calling. What Not to Do When Cold Calling from Scott Britton A few key takeaways from this presentation: The goal of a cold call is [...]
Storytelling in Sales and How to Do It
One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned over the past year is how powerful storytelling in sales can be. I always try to incorporate stories when I’m describing a product for a few reasons: Humanizing Myself When I’m communicating with a new acquaintance (especially when I’m pitching), I try to humanize myself as much as possible. [...]
One Mistake that Can Crush (BD) Pipeline Dreams
Prior to SinglePlatform, one of my biggest business development mistakes was failing to include a measure within my hitlist that allowed me to prioritize opportunities. For those foreign to the concept, a hitlist (or pipeline) comprises of all of the companies that you could potentially partner with, sell to etc. It’s essentially a list of [...]
Why I Make Fun of My Life When I Pitch
Every time I’m pitching someone, I always try to make fun of my life in some way. In fact, I intentionally seek out opportunities to do this. A lot of business development and sales is about likability. Given two equal products, buyers will purchase from the seller they like more. Hence, by making myself [...]
How to Follow Up to an Unanswered Email
One of the biggest fallacies I see amongst professionals who write cold emails is their failure to follow up. Knowing how to write an effective follow up email effectively is probably the easiest way to increase your response rate if you aren’t already doing it. Make It Easy The optimal way to follow up to [...]
Business Development 101: Silence Can Be Your Friend
In the business development world, the world silence usually has a negative connotation, but when you’re pitching it can be a good thing. People are naturally uncomfortable with silence during a phone conversation with a new acquaintance. When they encounter it, they don’t know what to do…so they just start talking. Often there are valuable [...]
BD 101: Acknowledging the Language Barrier
One mistake people make in BD and sales is they assume prospects speak their language. “We provide a free API….” “It’s the simplest CMS on the market…” These are presumptuous statements. I’d like to think that the prospects I reach out to know what an API or CMS is, but it’s just not always the [...]
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