Shawn Karol Sandy

As progressive sales practitioners we work hard to get our clients focus on articulating and demonstrating their value to earn more sales. Recently, a business owner I’ve met several times, let’s call him Mr. Discouraged, approached me at an event and he said to me, “Look, I read your blogs

“Just the facts, ma’am” – is the iconic line parodying detective Joe Friday from the old show Dragnet. Meant to demonstrate the character’s dry approach to interviewing witnesses, sometimes I feel like I’m meeting a live “Joe Friday” when I’m approached by someone trying to sell me a product. No

If you’re looking for great competitive advantage in your selling efforts, this practice will help you convert more prospects to customers and attract your ideal buyers: Sell to real people, not robots. Seems kind of obvious, right? But in our zeal to mechanize the sale process so we can pave

This week marks the start of the last quarter of the year for most businesses. There are holidays, parties, vacations and lots of fun to be had between now and 2016 but don’t think that letting off the gas now and coasting is going to get set you up to

When did you experience your first or most impressive blow of rejection? Was it being picked last for kickball? Denied by your crush for a date to prom? Not getting into your first choice college? Or losing a job to a more qualified candidate? Most of us have complicated and

We have come to expect a certain level of value when we surrender our email address to a company and expect some unwritten (and also written) rules to be followed and a significant exchange of something worthwhile to us in response to handing over our email address. Email marketing is

In getting to the business promise land– profit and growth—success isn’t always a perfectly pristine theory translated into a formula. Success is tough and dirty work, sometimes even ugly. This week, I had to share a fascinating series of books (and short but insightful blogs) by Roy Osing: BE DiFFERENT

This week marks my 100th blog post. Whew. That is a lot of blood, sweat, tears and dedication to writing to and for our core audience of entrepreneurs, sales pros and leaders. Sharing insights, experiences and perspectives has been the best and most important strategy I have implemented in my

We spend a lot of time and energy writing and discussing how to attract and sell to customers. Our focus is primarily on the top of the funnel – generating “at bats” for our customers and readers because if you bring the right product to the right people at the

We work with a lot of small and not-so-small businesses from many different industries and markets— data management, accounting, freight and logistics, restaurants, technology, oil drilling, commercial construction—a pretty diverse group. But they all have one thing in common: Most of these great businesses have tried, started or reached for