So I finally sold out. The week before last I was on a date with a really beautiful, intelligent woman and she asked me exactly what my job was and I wavered.

Up until now I have been adamant that I will always describe my job as “sales” rather than any euphemism designed to artificially glamourise or obscure my role. I think this is important because using a euphemism implies that there is some shame in being a sales person. Take a read of my post on that here.
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Anyone who read my previous post on Getting Things Done, will probably be interested in a fantastic piece of software that can be configured to work perfectly with the methodology. It’s called MyLife Organized.

I won’t reinvent the wheel : take a look at further information here .
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I thought the “close early, close often” approach to sales was well and truly dead and buried. Unfortunately it seems not. Today I was on a mobile phone provider’s website using the chat facilities to talk to their sales staff (an interesting new-ish channel for sales people that I should investigate more). Straight after I typed in “Hello”, the first thing the sales person typed to me was “Hi. Are you looking to buy a contract today?”
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Here are a few of my favourite sales questions for uncovering prospects’ issues. Some more direct than others. Enjoy!
• How have things changed in company/industry in the last few years/ months?
• (If they tell you about a recent project or initiative) What do you think are the biggest “lessons learned” from this project? How would you do things differently? With the benefit of hindsight how would you run such a project again, if you had to?
• What are the biggest developments in the industry? How are you keeping up with that? What do you think that will look like in the future?
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