There are a million excuses why your sales people can't sell today. Here's an entire calendar of funny (yet, not so funny) sales roadblocks.

Can’t sell in January. Between the terrible weather and everyone coming back from vacation, how can you expect someone to focus on buying now? I’ll pound the pavement next month.

Can’t sell in February. More snow and more vacation. Way to go, Washington and Lincoln; thanks for President’s Day! It’s such a short month. No one can make a decision in such a short month. Next month is going to be better.

Can’t sell in March. No one is going to make a decision...Read more at http://www.soldlab.com/news/2011/6/17/cant-sell-today-to-read-more-sales-news-facts-and.html

Although it can often be fluid, maintaining a relationship with your customers can also sometimes get very complicated. For example, if you only have a few employees trying to deal with a growing number of customers, how are you supposed to keep track of all the dialogue and that’s exchanged? Or what those same customers are saying about you online? Or even something as simple as how much money they still owe on their account?

I’m always amazed to hear people talk about master closers. It’s as if their skills are most significant at the END of the cycle. This seems to me to be rather misleading. Are we saying that it doesn’t matter how you handle the prior steps as long as you have some magic at the end?

I believe that ‘closing’ is something that happens naturally once you have successfully navigated all of the prior steps in the sales process. Think about it. If you don’t prospect well, listen well, problem solve well, and create trust well, there’s probably no way you are going to close well.

In essence, if you are masterful at understanding the value of your product or service, identifying your target market and then qualifying prospects within that scope, you should be closing easily. If we break it down into its components, you’ll see that by the time you get to the closing stage, if you’ve done everything else correctly, closing will happen naturally. You’ll come to an agreement with your prospect that...Read more at http://www.soldlab.com/news/2011/6/15/the-magic-of-masterful-closing-to-read-more-sales.html

Because, in the competitive sale, the prospective account has initiated an inquiry, your Influencer has a built-in reason to cooperate with your need for information. While they rarely volunteer details, they are almost always cooperative when asked for them. In fact, the opening situation – that they, by contacting you, have demonstrated interest in a discussion – provides you a gilded invitation to collect information for your initial meeting. This is a huge opportunity if it is handled properly. The key here, given that we have limited time on the phone, is to ask the right questions – in the right order – to learn as much as possible about the current state of the buyer.

Most formal RFPs provide a contact person for questions. Whether responding to an RFP or handling an incoming phone call, the request should be as follows: “to make the best use of your time, do you have a moment to answer a few questions for me?” Because of the pre-established interest of the account, the response you will get is, “sure, what would you like to know?” Once you get this response, follow this seven-question sequence to lay the foundation for your strategy.

Dear customers,

Salesforce.com (CRM) is a cloud-based provider of customer relationship management services. Its applications can be customized and integrated with other software applications and are sold on a subscription basis. The company’s offerings have quickly become a ubiquitous sight at offices around the world, and shares have had no problem reflecting the situation. Now trading at nearly 250X TTM EPS, CRM is among the highest of the high-flyers in today’s market landscape.