Category Archives: Sales Relationships

Showing Clients the Love on Valentine’s Day

Love and Selling Book Icon

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, which for a lot of people means an opportunity to refocus on loved ones and show the love in a special way.  Doesn’t V-Day hold the same opportunity for sellers? Why not take a moment this week and show your customers and prospects the love? Taking the advice of the World’s […]

Sales is NOT a Battlefield

I disagree with Pat Benetar. I’m going to just presume that you know who Pat Benetar is, but if you don’t, here’s her Wikipedia page. Full Disclosure:  Here are several true facts (not alternative facts!) about the relationship between Pat Benetar and me: There is no actual relationship between Pat Benetar and me.  We have […]

Prospect…or Suspect? Prospecting with the Lens of Love

True story:  I once knew a girl who was in love with a boy.  She was in love with him because he was perfect in almost every way:  Smart, funny, responsible, sensitive, considerate, good fashion sense.  She loved him because he was perfect for her in almost every way: Same values, same hopes and dreams, […]

Customer-Centric Selling is Not Enough!

It’s been real popular over the years for sellers to define themselves as “customer-centric.”  A search for the term on Amazon yields more than 3,000 book results!  There’s everything from customer-centric selling to marketing to service culture…and I think it’s wrong. What’s wrong with all the focus on customer-centricity?  Being focused on customers is a […]

Getting REAL With Leads Gone Cold

Remember that one prospect?  The one who seemed so promising at first? You hit it off immediately.  They were looking for someone like you.  Your timing was right.  You had a great first meeting, then perhaps another, and then…. Nothing.  Nada.  Zilch. ** crickets chirping ** Now, if this was a real-life, love relationship, what […]

The Myth of the Extroverted Closer

When I started hiring and training salespeople twenty years ago, the profile was salespeople with “drive,” “closers.” “Go-getters” who are “aggressive.” Then the psychologists got involved and replaced those dinosaur words with more evolved, academic terms like extroversion, ego drive, and perseverance. I have just worked with a client whose hiring profile included these very […]

Can You Really “Build Walls” Around Your Customers?

#2 in a series: From “Love and Selling”: In business, love is often thicker than water. When customers love their sellers, personal loyalty often trumps loyalty to a product or service. They justify emotional decisions with logic and data. They even put vendors through empty RFP processes where the decision has already been made . […]

The World’s Most Underrated Sales Expert

The World’s Most Underrated Sales Expert | Dan Smaida | Pulse | LinkedIn Here’s an excerpt from my book “Love and Selling” and a topic I’m passionate about – how to make relationships work better in sales.  In the book, I go deeper into how to apply Chapman’s work to your own selling…and all your […]

Why Women are Better at Listening in Sales

In honor of International Women’s Day, let’s take 500 words or so to look more closely at a commonly-held belief about gender differences in selling… Over the years, I’ve been in a dozens of sales workshops when a discussion of gender breaks out, most often on the topic of listening.  The prevailing view, in my […]

Make 2017 the Year of Intimacy

Hold on – I didn’t mean it THAT way! Here’s what the almighty Google says I mean by “intimacy”: Close familiarity or friendship Closeness Select synonyms: closeness, togetherness, affinity, rapport, attachment, familiarity, friendliness, friendship, warmth, confidence – Yes, there are other definitions, but we’ll stop there – this is LinkedIn, not Facebook! Sales Relationship Checklist […]