Tony J. Hughes

Buyers are motivated by reasons they themselves discover. The best way to differentiate is with ‘how you sell’ rather than with ‘what you sell’.

Confidence is often a highly desirable trait that employers seek in sales people. Yet ‘confidence as a persona’ can be the paradise of fools. Belief is actually more important and it should be accompanied with positive paranoia.

Trust = (Understanding + Shared Values) x (Capability + Reputation) x Time.

People buy from those the know, like and trust. But how do you build that level of relationship as fast as possible? Nobody cares about you and what you’re selling until they believe they can trust you and that you offer real value.

Practical tips for building a B2B pipeline. Recommended books: Shift, for Trigger Event Selling and The Challenger Sale for creating the reason and framework for early engagement at the most senior levels.

“What’s the price?” This question needs to be handled confidently and without behavior that annoys the person who asked it. But answer in a way that earns the right to ask questions leading to value.

Opening and qualifying is the most important phase of the sale. So how do you ensure you and the prospective customer are not wasting time and resources?

Selling to VITO (Very Important Top Officer), or the CXO as we commonly term the highest buying role, is not easy. We need an approach that cuts through and secures the meeting. How we approach them makes all the difference.

Selling is simply a case of pulling all the concepts together into a sales mash-up you can truly own to dominate the white space.

Most sales people talk about what they do and how they do it but this is a huge mistake. Instead, lead with ‘Why?’ when engaging a senior person you’re seeking to influence. The way we sell is more important than what we sell.

Most of the risk in selling software comes from live demos, reference customers and desperate competitors.

I advocate the importance of selling as high as possible. Yet it is also important to gain consensus to make it easy for the economic buyer to make their decision and go ahead with purchase.

We are now living in the age of personal brands and Social Selling presents issues that every business needs to consider. There are more arguments for and against that this short video raises so ensure you have a social media policy in place.

How is strategic selling defined today and what are the key elements for execution? What’s the role of social selling and tools such as LinkedIn? Tony Hughes answers these questions at a sales leadership conference in November 2014 along with other luminaries of B2B selling including Jason Jordan (Cracking The Sales Management Code) and Joe… Read More

The Seven Sins of Selling. Especially relevant for relationship and transactional selling. Avoid these mistakes for sales success.