Mike Weinberg > Quotes

“You can bring tremendous value to your business, your customers, and yourself by becoming proficient at bringing in new business.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“we are in a much better position when it was our own proactive sales work that created the opportunity for us to submit a proposal.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“When salespeople lead with their product or service, it is impossible to be perceived as consultants or trusted advisors. It makes it as clear as day that the salesperson believes the relationship and sale are centered on his offering, not the customer and its needs. It’s as if the salesperson is begging the customer to put his offering’s features and price on a spreadsheet to be compared against every competitors’ features and price.”
― Mike Weinberg, Sales Management. Simplified.: The Straight Truth About Getting Exceptional Results from Your Sales Team

“They Are Guilty of a Fake or Pitiful Phone Effort”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“The truth is that there are no secret sales moves. There is no magic bullet. As badly as we all want one, it does not exist.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“Lazy, complacent, excuse-making salespeople with a victim mentality lose. Period.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“The successful individual sales producer wins by being as selfish as possible with her time. The more often the salesperson stays away from team members and distractions, puts her phone on Do Not Disturb (DND), closes her door, or chooses to work for a few hours from the local Panera Bread café, the more productive she’ll likely be. In general, top producers in sales tend to exhibit a characteristic I’ve come to describe as being selfishly productive. The seller who best blocks out the rest of the world, who maintains obsessive control of her calendar, who masters focusing solely on her own highest-value revenue-producing activities, who isn’t known for being a “team player,” and who is not interested in playing good corporate citizen or helping everyone around her, is typically a highly effective seller who ends up on top of the sales rankings. Contrary to popular opinion, being selfish is not bad at all. In fact, for an individual contributor salesperson, it is a highly desirable trait and a survival skill, particularly in today’s crazed corporate environment where everyone is looking to put meetings on your calendar and take you away from your primary responsibilities! Now let’s switch gears and look at the sales manager’s role and responsibilities. How well would it work to have a sales manager who kept her office phone on DND and declined almost every incoming call to her mobile phone? Do we want a sales manager who closes her office door, is concerned only about herself, and is for the most part inaccessible? No, of course not. The successful sales manager doesn’t win on her own; she wins through her people by helping them succeed. Think about other key sales management responsibilities: Leading team meetings. Developing talent. Encouraging hearts. Removing obstacles. Coaching others. Challenging data, false assumptions, wrong attitudes, and complacency. Pushing for more. Putting the needs of your team members ahead of your own. Hmmm. Just reading that list again reminds me why it is often so difficult to transition from being a top producer in sales into a sales management role. Aside from the word sales, there is truly almost nothing similar about the positions. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on corporate responsibilities like participating on the executive committee, dealing with human resources compliance issues, expense management, recruiting, and all the other burdens placed on the sales manager. Again,”
― Mike Weinberg, Sales Management. Simplified.: The Straight Truth About Getting Exceptional Results from Your Sales Team

“My dad continually reminded salespeople that their main job was to help the customer win. When you speak the account’s language and frame the sales story around what is most meaningful to the client, you stand out from the competition. Customers see you differently because the words you choose demonstrate a commitment to their success.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“Salespeople are famous for lack of discipline and losing focus. They attempt to call on an account (once), but don’t get anywhere. Instead of sharpening their weapons and continuing to attack the same strategically selected targets, they turn and pursue a new set of prospects. This constant change of direction becomes their death knell because they never gain traction against the defined target set.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“As I often say, “Sales is a verb.” The dictionary would argue otherwise, but experience shows that the most successful new business salespeople tend to be the most active salespeople. Good things happen when a talented salesperson with a potential solution gets in front of a prospective customer who looks and smells a lot like your other customers.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“namely, that we are there to find pain, potential problems we can solve, and opportunities we can help capture.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“Sales is about action, and analysis-paralysis is not a quality that tends to produce new business development success.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“Only salespeople that dedicate blocks of time on their calendar for prospecting activity consistently succeed at acquiring new business.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“You want the truth? Whether you’re the senior executive or the sales manager or play both roles, hear me clearly as if I was shouting this while turning red with veins bulging from my neck: When you’re blasted with over 200 emails per day; trapped in meetings that keep you from your primary job; constantly handed (or grabbing for) the fire hose to deal with crises; buried either writing, reading, or scrambling for reports; and have almost zero control of your calendar, you are not leading anyone anywhere. Furthermore, you have exactly the sales culture you deserve—the one you’ve created, whether by design or neglect.”
― Mike Weinberg, Sales Management. Simplified.: The Straight Truth About Getting Exceptional Results from Your Sales Team

“Stop talking about yourself and your company and begin leading with the issues, pains, problems, opportunities, and results that are important to your prospect.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“Waiting is a key ingredient in the recipe for new business failure.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“If you’re not excited about what you are selling, how in the world will you get a prospect interested?”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“  Our Sales Story. The story is foundational to everything we do in sales, and we use bits and pieces of it in all of our weapons. By “story” I’m referring to the language or talking points we use when asked what we do or when we tell someone about our business. It’s so critical to our success that the next two chapters are dedicated to helping you create and implement a succinct, powerful, differentiating, customer-focused story.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“New business development success results from creating a sales dialogue, not perfecting a monologue.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“Emotional quotient (EQ) is a measure of your emotional and social intelligence. It involves your ability to manage yourself, your emotions, your relationships, and people’s perceptions of you.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“Many salespeople fail to develop new business because they’re wandering aimlessly. Too often, they’re not locked in on a strategically selected, focused list of target customers or prospects.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“Can you name one really successful person who has a negative outlook on life? I can’t.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“Whether we are rookies or grizzled veterans, let’s put down our guards, check our pride at the door, and try not to be defensive. Transparency and honesty are healthy first steps on the path to performance improvement.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“presenting is not the same thing as selling.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“They Don’t Use and Protect Their Calendar”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“The harsh truth is that those in sales and sales leadership who understand and master the basics thrive, and those who ignore them perpetually struggle.”
― Mike Weinberg, Sales Management. Simplified.: The Straight Truth About Getting Exceptional Results from Your Sales Team

“The pitiful effort comes from salespeople who actually make their calls, but are so nervous and uncomfortable that they’re completely ineffective. Lack of confidence ruins their mental state and their voice tone. They sound like, forgive the pun, they’re just phoning it in, dialing away making calls so that they can say they did it.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“But for some reason, salespeople are excited to go in and get naked without knowing any of the rules.”
― Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

“when did it become acceptable to manage people who manage people and relationships via email? Please reread that last question slowly to truly ponder what I am asking here.”
― Mike Weinberg, Sales Management. Simplified.: The Straight Truth About Getting Exceptional Results from Your Sales Team

“Salespeople regularly fall short of delivering their numbers because Little Effort = Little Results. It’s not that they’re not working. They’re just working on the wrong things.”
― Mike Weinberg, Sales Management. Simplified.: The Straight Truth About Getting Exceptional Results from Your Sales Team