Posts by Ian Altman
How to Plan the rest of 2021 into 2022
Prefer to listen? Click here! 00:04 Ian Hi, it’s Ian Altman. Welcome to the Same Side Selling podcast, your source for integrity-based sales and marketing guidance to help grow your business. I am joined once again, by the talented Meridith Elliott Powell, Meridith can you give people a little bit of your background? By now…
Read MoreReducing Costs or Prices Could HELP or HURT Your Business. Here’s How to Know.
Coming out of the pandemic, it’s easy to consider cutting costs. Or, you might think that in order to attract clients, you need to reduce prices. Deciding to cut costs is never an easy decision, but it can be done for many good reasons. Maybe you are hoping to improve your financial performance, serve your…
Read MoreIs price the real reason your proposal wasn’t accepted?
A question I’m often asked is, “What do we do when a customer comes back saying that we were not selected because our price was too high?” It’s fairly common for clients to cite price as a reason for picking one vendor over another, but what you may not realize is that, more often than…
Read MoreSubject Matter Experts Become Superhuman When They Master This Skill
To become a subject matter expert (SME) you need to have specific knowledge that makes you important and useful to an organization. To clarify the role of an SME, consider three common selling personas: an order taker, a salesperson, and a subject matter expert. An order taker will simply provide the customer with the price,…
Read MoreWhy Sales is Not A Numbers Game
We have all heard the notion that sales is a numbers game. But, is it? A Sales Formula of the Past In the past, the formula for sales went like this: You called 100 people and of those 100 people, 20 of them agreed to talk to you. Of those 20, 10 agreed to have…
Read MoreWhat does it mean for a client to say “I Don’t Know”?
One of the most frequent questions I hear is how to decide if a business opportunity is real or not. When I cover this, I give the audience several helpful questions they can ask to determine if this opportunity is one they should pursue. After all, fact-finding during the discovery phase is a critical element of…
Read MoreThe Ultimate Guide to B2B Selling in 2021
Over the last year, our lives have changed in ways we couldn’t have imagined. The Coronavirus Pandemic has affected us in nearly every aspect of our lives -including our businesses and the way we sell products and services. Networking events, conferences, in-person meetings, and other ways of attracting customers aren’t available anymore. This means that some…
Read MoreThe Biggest Mistakes in Pricing Professional Services
One of the things a lot of businesses struggle with is creating pricing that is both fair and attractive. This is particularly difficult when a business sells services – those intangible things. There are three main pricing models: Fixed-Fee Contracts, Time and Materials, and Time and Materials, Not to Exceed. Today I’ll talk about some…
Read MoreHow to develop and mentor your remote sales team
A question I get asked frequently is, “How do I manage and mentor my remote sales team?” First, recognize that managing your sales force is like managing any other adult. As someone with two college-age children, I know that while I’d love to constantly monitor them, all I can do is provide a framework where…
Read MoreHow to Find — And Keep — an Irreplaceable Employee
Both employees and employers have an idea of what attributes make a great employee. Employers are always hoping to find that individual who is so good that they seem irreplaceable, while employees aim to be the person their team can’t live without. At a meeting of CEOs, Michael Gottlieb, founding partner of Momentum Law Group…
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