Tom Reilly's Sales Bytes

By Tom Reilly, author, How To Sell And Manage In Tough Times And Tough Markets.

Tom Reilly's pioneering work in Value-Added Selling has earned him the global reputation as the foremost authority on the topic. In his first year with Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, he was their top salesman. He then started his own successful chemical company. Tom is president and founder of Tom Reilly Training.

How many of these questions can you answer in-depth?

Added: July 27th, 2010

Why do smart buyers make dumb, price-only buying decisions?
How can I identify viable sales opportunities and pursue them aggressively and successfully?

(read more...)

Dreaming Bigger about Business

Added: July 21st, 2010

How big do you think for and about your customer? This is another way of asking, “Are you thinking about their business or the next order?” (read more...)

Timing Mangement, The Value-Added Way

Added: June 30th, 2010

Long before the U.S. Military created a Green Zone in Bagdad or Old Spice launched a deodorant named Red Zone, we had been working on a new time management paradigm called Red Zone/Green Zone. It follows the value-added philosophy, and its brilliance is its simplicity. (read more...)

Value-Added Selling is Need-Satisfaction Selling

Added: June 29th, 2010

Reducing Value-Added Selling to its fundamental dynamic, it is a need-satisfaction, problem-solving business model. One the one hand, the buyer has a need for a solution, and the salesperson attempts to satisfy this need with his or her product and service. On the other hand, the salesperson has a need to pursue viable sales opportunities. (read more...)

Riding for the Brand

Added: June 17th, 2010

Louis L’Amour, perhaps the most prolific American writer, wrote a short story about it. Cowboy poet extraordinaire Red Steagall scribed a poem about it. (read more...)

The Pareto Principle and Value-Added Selling

Added: May 27th, 2010

At the end of the 19th Century, an Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, was studying the wealth patterns of western Europe and observed a fundamental imbalance—most of the wealth was owned by a small number of people. Pareto, an avid gardener, observed this same imbalance in his garden. Most of the peas he harvested came from a small number of pods. These insights gave birth to a theory that has been called variably the Pareto Law, Pareto Rule, Pareto Principle, 80-20 Law, and 80-20 Principle. (read more...)

Changing Your Customer’s World

Added: May 21st, 2010

In its infancy, Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs, realized he needed a real business person to run his company, "… a respectable face who could sell corporate America." He chose John Sculley, an executive at Pepsi Cola. Why would Sculley leave a plush corporate gig to work for a four-year-old start-up that began in a garage? (read more...)

The Business of Selling

Added: May 19th, 2010

There is the art of selling and the science of selling. How good are you at the “business” of selling? (read more...)

Why We Must Fight This Price War

Added: April 20th, 2010

As a salesperson, you are in a price war, but it’s not just a battle over getting your price—you are defending your right to compete as a for-profit organization. This means you are supposed to make money. (read more...)

Moving On

Added: April 16th, 2010

One problem with a long recession is the mindset that develops throughout the downturn. Survival is primary. (read more...)

Don’t Get Trapped in Time

Added: March 31st, 2010

Your past is not your potential. Today is only one-part yesterday and even less for tomorrow. Your future has more to do with your potential than your history, if you choose to live that way. (read more...)

Defeating Discouragement

Added: March 17th, 2010

Discouragement tastes bitter, feels overwhelming, reeks of quitting, looks like surrender, and sounds like failure. The toughest battles we fight are internal. Our toughest opponents are ourselves. Discouragement is a battle of wills: “Will I quit? Will I press on?” (read more...)

Is This as Good as it Gets?

Added: March 9th, 2010

Recessions may take the wind out of your sails for a while until you gain some momentum, but the Great Recession of 2008-09 has really beached some people and some companies. (read more...)

Cocky or Confident?

Added: March 3rd, 2010

Even though it seems that in sales there is a razor’s edge difference between cocky and confident, it is really a chasm that runs deeper than a label. (read more...)

The Economy-Is-Bad Price Objection

Added: February 22nd, 2010

For price shoppers, this economy offers an excuse for seeking price concessions. After all, everyone knows “how bad” things really are, right? A bad economy is potent negotiating leverage for the buyer if the seller in unprepared to argue his case. (read more...)

Older Sales Bytes are in the archive section.

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