Practical Wisdom from Kahle Way Sales Systems

Over the decades that I've been involved in sales, I've worked with tens of thousands of sales people. Certain negative tendencies -- mistakes that sales people make -- keep surfacing. Here is number two of my top five. See to what degree you (or your sales force) may be guilty of them.-- Mistake Number Two: Lack of thoughtfulness

Business to business sales people often make the same mistakes. Most are not even aware of them. In this series, I'm going to describe the five most common mistakes sales people make, and provide a step-by-step format for overcoming them.

The idea of entertaining your customers is often a after-thought for many sales people. From my experience, strategically entertaining your customers is one of the best things you do. Join me to unpack this issue, and gain several 'how-to- tips.

We all know it -- customers have less time to see salespeople today than ever before. They have too much to do and not enough time in which to do it. That makes the job of the field sales person much more difficult. That's why the 'value-added sales call' is so important. Dig into this new challenge with me.

How do you sell when the competition has exactly the same product? Are you reduced to being the low price? Unfortunately, many sales people have never thought deeply about how to effectively sell commodities, and resort to discounting. Here's a proven, effective approach.

The heart of sales is the sales opportunity. Increasing the number of sales opportunities bring greater sales. Let's dig into this issue together.

This is one of those nuances that the very best sales people grasp, but the bulk of sales people never catch ~ positioning yourself in the mind of the customer to viewed as someone of competence and integrity. Join with me to dig into it.

Here's my response to this question:

Help! I'm so frustrated. I just attended a "sales training" program that never addressed the real issues that I have to deal with every day. What causes me problems is not my lack of sales ability, it is my company's back orders, the lack of responsiveness and competence in my customer service people, and the mistakes in delivery by the warehouse. Those are the real issues. What can I do about those things?

There are some fundamental principles and practices of negotiations that every B2B salesperson should master.

Every B2B sales person has to deal with the unpleasant task of communicating price increases to the customer. Here's one big issue to keep in mind.