Leadership

Selling@Zero Distance What If Your Sales Results Aren’t Your Performance? Published on the day of my keynote at the Global Marketing Summit, Istanbul. For those who were in the room, and for those who weren’t. Scotland, 1983. Cup final. Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen has just won. Trophy in hand. Cameras rolling. And Ferguson is furious. Not […]

Selling@Zero Distance You Didn’t Hire a Sales Director. You Hired a Forecast. Every Friday, same room, same hour, same meeting. Years ago I was on a sales team that met its director every Friday morning. The agenda never changed. What’s the forecast. What are the risks on the forecast. What are the potential upsides. Then, […]

Selling@Zero Distance You Can’t Teach Curiosity Every sales leader I meet wants the same thing. Almost none of them can tell me how to get it. “I need my people to be more curious. Listen to the customer. Stop talking so much.” I get it. If I had to keep one skill for selling and […]

Whether you are a business owner or a sales leader in a larger organization, you already know what you should be doing. You should spend more time with your team. Visit more customers with them. Coach them more. Understand what is really happening in their conversations, not just the numbers they report back. At the […]

Whether you own your own business or you are operating in a large organization in a sales leadership role — VP, Sales Director, even CEO — the moment you are accountable for sales results, you are a sales leader. And you feel the pressure. The pressure from numbers. From general management. From investors. From financial […]

Arcane Technologies’ leadership meeting lasted three hours. Impeccable slides. Clear ambition. New premium positioning: exit the small, time-consuming accounts, focus on high-value enterprise clients. Margins would improve. Growth would accelerate. Everyone nodded. The meeting notes were sent. The new strategy was officially launched. Three months later, nothing had changed in the field. Leadership talked about […]

Sofia sent a perfect proposal. Technically flawless. Well presented. Within budget. Addressed exactly to the needs expressed in the last meeting. Three weeks later: silence. She followed up. A polite acknowledgment. “We’re looking at it, we’ll get back to you.” Two more weeks. Nothing. She followed up again. This time, no reply at all. Sofia […]

Your experts aren’t resistant to selling. They’re resistant to becoming something they don’t respect. That’s a very different problem. And confusing the two is why most sales transformation efforts in expert-led organizations fail before they’ve really started. Here’s what I hear regularly from commercial leaders: “Our team is full of experts. Brilliant people. But they’re […]

You’ve been in that meeting. The one where someone presents a training program, a new methodology, a coaching approach — and before the slide is even finished, someone in the room says it. “This is all well and good. But where are the numbers?” Maybe you said it. Maybe it was said to you. Either […]