Articles by Gil Cargill

  1. 9 Ways The CEO Screws Up Sales 10/26/2015

    In many of the consulting engagements that I’ve had over the past 39 years, the real sales productivity obstacle is the CEO. Now, I don’t pretend for a minute to say that CEOs and/or business owners are deliberately sabotaging themselves. But, nonetheless, their actions contribute to persistent underperformance of the salesforce.

  2. Time For A Speed Test 10/14/2015

    Recent studies show that your probability of closing business drops considerably when the delay of responding to an inquiry is as little as a few minutes. As a matter of fact, some studies show that your probability of success will reduce by 700 percent if you delay responding to an inquiry by five minutes.

  3. Managing The Aging Salesforce 10/14/2015

    I believe that senior sales representatives, in many cases, are looking for recognition and acknowledgement of their prior contributions. That's great, they deserve it, and you should do that. But, none of us can live in the past. The senior sales rep must be held accountable for doing his/her job based on today's realities. 

  4. Solutions Providers: Whatever You Do, Don't Do This 2/27/2015

    The “this” that I’m talking about is the practice that I’ve seen MSPs (managed services providers) and IT consultants repeat many times.  Tragically, each repetition costs the MSP and/or IT consultant a ton of cash.  The behavior that I’m talking about is the result of success that the MSP has had. Ironically, the more successful small MSPs are, the more rapidly they want to grow, hire more engineers, and enjoy more recurring revenue.

  5. Why To Use The “New Math Of Sales Excellence” 2/6/2015

    The purpose of this report is to explain why the typical sales organization that believes that sales is a numbers game is correct, but not accurate.  I know my words may be a little confusing, but bear with me for just a moment.  As always, sales is a numbers/activity game, but the numbers have changed.

  6. Vital Steps For Sales Success In 2015 1/5/2015

    This article is going to address some numbers that most salespeople and business owners overlook. But, these are truly the vital numbers, or metrics, that will spell tremendous success for you and/or your team in 2015. Most of us recall the old mantra of “calls plus demos equals sales.” And, that’s true, but it is not as effective a philosophy today as it was back in the last century.

  7. Stop Training Your Sales Team! 11/25/2014

    The headline of this article may sound like blasphemy from a sales trainer who has more than 38 years of experience training salespeople, but it is a heartfelt suggestion. When many CEOs and business owners see revenue problems, they default to a statement like, “Let's get some sales training going.” Whereas, in reality, I believe the same CEO will realize a far greater improvement when he/she trains their company to sell.

  8. The Needle Is In The Haystack … Find It! 10/7/2014

    I think the headline of this article accurately reflects the hope of most prospecting efforts. Regardless of what you and your team sell, if you’re engaged in prospecting as it has been taught for decades, then you are directing your team to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.

  9. Sales Is Still A Numbers Game 8/21/2014

    But, the numbers that you need to monitor and measure have changed dramatically, and I do mean dramatically. Back in my early days of selling for IBM, one of our management's mantra was “calls plus presentations equals sales,” and that worked.