Finding great partners to work with is hardly an easy task. Great partners are not found over night, the truly great ones have been developed over time through communication, training and support. The hardest part of identifying new channel partners is who do you start with. Instead of going after every channel partner that fits your general demographic, get more specific by creating an Ideal Partner Profile.

Example:
Gold Partner:

Size: >50 employees
# of Sales people: 10
# of Technical people: 20
Company Revenue: $20M
Certifications: Microsoft, VMware, Symantec, IBM, Vizioncore, …

If you have not had the opportunity to see The Matrix, you should go rent it and watch it a few times. Besides being just another sci-fi flick, The Matrix has a deeper meaning that can be directly applied to sales. I had a Matrix moment at work today.

Photo: ThomasThomas
Take the Red Pill.
Do you believe you are a better than average sales person? Have you just been waiting for that moment to present itself to be a superstar? Stop waiting. Anyone that tells you that ‘opportunity knocks’ is lying …

Finding new customers every month is just the name of the game in sales. One of the best ways to go about this is understanding trigger events and how they apply to your industry. Trigger events are specific events in a company that are key drivers for buying or not buying products and services. By asking the right questions you should know fairly quickly if you have an opportunity or not. Now getting a sale is another story but at least you know that if a company meets specific criteria …

Although having a successful business sounds great, it is not for everyone. Some people lack the necessary traits to run their own business. You don’t have to be particularly smart to have your own business, but you need certain other qualities. Following is a list of the 7 traits of success that most business owners possess.

photo credit: shlomp-a-plompa
1. Motivation.
You have to be motivated to be successful. Most successful individuals are driven to succeed and make money. They feel a need to do more and become better.
2. Competitive Nature.
Almost all …

When you have a serious target to hit you need to use some serious sales techniques. My strategies are designed to be low cost and high return methods.

photo credit: guiguis
1) Qualify - they qualify again - so if you want to hit your targets make sure you qualify the price straight away - no point in going in to sell a $100,000 solution to a client with a $1,000 budget.
2) Find out what they want - don’t tell them what what you want to sell. The most frequent mistake …

 
As important and essential is the implementation and use of Six Sigma to the livelihood of any business organization, the certification process for an individual to become Six Sigma qualified is rather obscure.

photo credit: gothick_matt
Basically, there is no formal list or specific amounts of training and knowledge that one must have in order to obtain the various levels of technical and organizational expertise.
However, there are three specific certification levels to Six Sigma leaders: Green belts, Black Belts and Master Black Belts.
Green Belts
Green Belts are proficiency team leaders that are …

Being a better salesperson is more than learning new skills and techniques. Here are my top ten ways to become a better salesperson.
1. Smile and Walk Tall
Changing your physiology is a great way to feel better about everything going around you.
I want you to try an experiment. I want you to think and act as if you are totally depressed. Come on do this with me. Stand up and act like you’re totally depressed. Notice how you are standing. Your shoulders are slumped. Your head is down. Your face is …

Does that title sound like a gimmick? It’s not. It’s about the numbers. If you truly want to double your sales, you simply need to double a key aspect of your sales performance, asserts Stephan Schiffman, sales trainer and prolific author, in his newest book, Sales Essentials (Adams Media, 2008). His advice is rooted in the theory that when you measure and focus on a certain area, you’ll see improvement in that area. Here, he says, are five ways you can double your sales:
If you enjoyed this post, make sure …

I come from a high-tech background and though that industry is enormous, finding qualified leads are still difficult. There are older industries out there that are much larger and the lead pools are just as hard to swim through. From telecommunications to construction and even networking equipment. If you are a sales professional in any of these areas you need a qualified list of growing companies that have some money to spend on your products.
This brings me to Sales Leads Inc. who has been specializing in providing businesses leads in …

It’s Q1 and if you’re in sales you are starting with a clean slate. Well unless you were that bad in 2007 then you need to make up for a bad Q4. For most of us though January is a great time of the year and when all the stress for the year comes back to a mild simmer. Sales executives take the first couple of weeks to put together the annual plans for the group and you should be trying to close out all the opportunities that slipped from …