Gil Cargill

The New Reality Of Prospecting

During the course of my sales and sales coaching careers, I've seen traditional prospecting strategies — canvassing, networking, cold-calling, et cetera — become increasingly less effective. As a matter of fact, most salespeople do their best to avoid prospecting because they know, based on their experience, it does not produce the desired effect: more first meetings. By Gil Cargill, Sales Acceleration Coach

How To Hire Your First Sales Rep … Profitably!

At some point in the growth of all MSPs, IT consultants, VARs, and/or software salesforces, the need to hire the first salesperson becomes apparent. Typically, this is stimulated by one of several factors. By Gil Cargill, Sales Acceleration Coach

Consideration Rate — The Missing Metric

Perhaps the most important and frequently overlooked metric, as it pertains to business-to-business marketing, is consideration rate. Simply stated, consideration rate is the percentage of desirable sales opportunities that, at minimum, consider you. By Gil Cargill, Sales Acceleration Coach

Your Feet Are Too Small

No, this isn't an article about buying or selling shoes. Rather, the reference I make in the title is to the size of your marketing footprint. In today's very crowded, very competitive sales arena, the team that has the biggest and best marketing footprint is, more often than not, the team that gets the majority of new leads.

Selling Versus Telling

There seems to be an age-old debate regarding the differences between selling and telling. When I make sales calls with my clients’ salespeople, I’ve noted an increase in the number of sales calls which are inappropriately identified as selling. More often than not, these people are telling.

There Is No Magic

One of the benefits of having been in the sales coaching, consulting, and training business for the past 40 years is that I've had an opportunity to see a lot of so-called magical solutions come through our industry. There have been training programs with hypnotic closes associated with the program. There have been all kinds of gadgets and devices intended to help salespeople sell more.

Sales Compensation With Consequences: The Missing Link For Predictable Performance

Countless hours, dollars, and efforts have been put into creating and recreating sales compensation plans. Management frequently says things like, “If I worked for me, I’d be making a ton of money!” We mistakenly feel that creating a comp plan that rewards sales success is the best way to produce a behavior change.

IT Solutions Providers: Forget Your ABCs (Always Be Closing)

The title of this article refers to a cliché from the old school of selling. “Always Be Closing” was actually made famous in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). As a sales strategy, it worked very well at one point in time. But, those times have come and gone.

IT Solutions Providers: It’s Training Time Again

Historically, many companies embrace sales training strategies during the first quarter of most years. This is a great way to kick off the New Year, re-motivate the team, as well as put in place some sound principles to help the team sell more by selling more effectively. Following, find a checklist for you to use as you put your training program together.

IT Solutions Providers Sales Reps: What’s Your Plan, Stan?

It is that time of year when salespeople need to start developing a plan for the next year. Unfortunately, and I probably should say tragically, this is the time of year when salespeople realize they either won’t make their goal for this year and/or can’t make their goal for this year.