Kevin Graham

There are many great sales organizations. In fact, several leading publications rank them each year, such as Selling Power Magazine’s annual list of Best Companies to Sell For Now.

The best sales company ever, in my humble opinion, was US Robotics. US Robotics was a little company out of Chicago that grew to a point that 3COM Corporation acquired USR for over six billion dollars.

But that’s not what made them the best sales company ever. For that, let me share a story with you about my first day on the job. Upon relocating my family back to California, our daughter was sixteen months old and our son was due any week. My family safe at the in-laws while we found our next home, I was boarding a plane to Chicago to start my new job. I was National Manager Business Development, responsible for the western half of the United States for their systems integration business. My counterpart on the east, was Mike Ditka Jr., the senior Ditka’s third son. Having grown up in...

Sales training is an important element to sales success. Yet, any sales strategy should be complimented by systems and resources that empower your customers to buy.

Years ago, employers would talk about hiring entrepreneurial skills; today, companies are not looking for entrepreneurial skills. The days of world class CEO Jerre Stead proclaiming: “people are our only sustainable competitive advantage,” are long gone. Today, organizations don’t put as much of a premium on individual greatness; at least not the large companies.

The enterprises of today are looking to deploy great systems and good people. Great people have an indispensable quality that can prove too costly. Whereby systems are easier to manage, upgrade and throw away.

The term disintermediation entered the vernacular of the business world nearly 15 years ago, meaning the removal of the middleman. Since then, many industries have been decimated; falling victim to technology, the internet and the...

Sales is a very simple discipline, although few professionals ultimately emerge as true super stars. While some sales cycles are complex (the saying: “this stuff’s chess, not checkers” comes to mind), the ideas and principles behind successful selling are fairly simple. A long time ago, I discovered one of these simple concepts, labeled E + E = E.

Simply stated, Expertise plus Excitement equals the Enemy. Like many people, sales professionals love to talk. They’re typically passionate about their product or service, because that’s Rule #1 in Sales: You Gotta Drink the Kool-Aid (if you’re not passionate and excited about what it is you’re selling, how in the world will the customer ever get excited enough to make a positive decision and take action?). But, here’s the rub. Sales is about listening – two ears, one mouth; use them in that proportion.

But E + E = E is more than just listening. It’s at the core of many issues that sales representatives face in their...

As tribute to James Q. Wilson, who passed away this month at the age of 80, this article attempts to highlight some of the genius behind this political scientist’s Broken Windows Theory brought out in the early 1980’s.

I’m no expert on the theory, but like many, I read it and it just made sense. Wilson introduced the theory as a means to augment community policing. The suggestion was that one single broken window is a suggestion that no one cares… so breaking more windows costs nothing.

The argument made sense and police agencies and politicians responded with tactical changes to support the local communities, especially in urban areas.

To me, the theory goes well beyond crime and...