Shawn Karol Sandy

For years, to become better at sales and selling, sales people and business owners have focused on closing techniques or perfecting their pitch and offers. With the big flip in control of the sales process transferring to the buyer, in order to become better at selling now, we must study

What is audience development and how do you know if you need to turn your focus and resources there? Audiences are people whom you’ve captivated or engaged for some span of time with some interesting thing, offer or thoughts. When you focus on providing value and being useful in your

Is it hot in here? Or maybe that’s the heat of competition you’re feeling. You’re sweating at the cheaper, faster, bigger or slicker new kids on the block, trying to eat away at your market share and customers, clients or donors. Almost all our clients bring up “the competition” in

Buckle up, cowboys and cowgirls. If you’re still selling like it’s 1979 or even 1999, you’re in for a rough ride. There is a new sheriff in town. Her name is the buyer and she’s got bigger guns and is quicker on the draw, dropping sellers with old tired sales

Sellers have traditionally focused on buyers’ price and budget as their biggest obstacles. Guess what? Your First (And Sometimes Biggest) Hurdle Is Time On any given day, the average person makes thousand of decisions—both consciously and in “auto-pilot” mode. We make over 200 decisions every day just about food! (Pancakes,

With several Sales Kick Off meetings on the books for this first quarter, we have a lot of “selling” talk going on in our office as we develop content, slides and breakout sessions. The one thing we’re not talking about in our Sales Kick Off meetings: Sales Techniques. Selling has

Next year is just a few weeks away. Right about now, you’re decking the halls and putting on party pants to spend special time with friends and family but don’t throw away the rest of this year yet! Now is a great time to lay out your strategy so you

In my experience working with businesses in all different industries at different stages—from small businesses, to mid sized business and even enterprise organizations, I’ve found one particular place where most businesses and sales professionals are lacking: a real, actionable Sales Strategy to grow their business. Business Development is usually the

As you get busy putting the finishing touches on this year and planning for the next, it’s easy to get lost in the numbers. Yes, it’s critical to measure wins, losses, margins and profits so you can build budgets and projections, but don’t forget to spend some time planning the

Today’s blog tackles the last of the 4 Tenets of Modern Consumers: Collaboration. It didn’t take much to find a relevant example of why we demand this in our partnerships. This story is from this just past week: Alright, STOP. Collaborate and Listen . . . (If you chuckled here,