4 Things Tokyo Taught Me About Sales Discipline
I was in Tokyo for the first time recently. My son and I went there for a little vacation, and I was struck by how clean and orderly everything is. In a region of 38 million people, I expected a lot more noise, chaos, and pollution. We found none of that.
The Most Overlooked Lever For Improving Sales Growth
When we talk about sales improvement, we often focus on one of these big three: Payroll and compensation, training and enablement, and the tech stack. But in many cases, there is a bigger drain–and a bigger opportunity– that most companies aren’t even using: Workflows.
Think Like a Sales Practitioner with Robert Herbst
In this episode of The Art and Science of Complex Sales, our guest Robert Herbst, CEO of Spire Selling shares why great selling starts with identity, honesty, and a genuine desire to help people.
Drawing on more than 40 years in sales and the life-changing mountaineering accident that led him to start his company, Rob explains why sales is not about pushing products, but about uncovering problems and helping customers see value they cannot yet see.
He explores why salespeople should think of themselves as practitioners, how identity shapes confidence and persistence, and why real human conversation matters more than ever in a world shaped by digital convenience.
“We Are Competing To Lose 80-85% Of Our Deals!”
Imagine a CRO presenting to the exec or investor team. This CRO is presenting their GTM strategy, and a key statement in that strategy is, “We are competing and hoping to lose 80-85% of the deals we invest in!”
We Just Updated and Expanded Our Most-Referenced Article: Here’s What Changed
In 2017, I wrote a piece about complex sales that soon became one of our most-referenced resources on the Membrain website. The piece, titled “What is a complex sale?” strove to provide a clean, compact, useful definition to help us, as a profession, understand the difference between complex and transactional sales.
You Can’t Scale What You Don’t Practice: The Case for AI Role Play
Very few sales professionals like role-playing. And very few actually do it. Nor do managers, for that matter. It’s embarrassing, time-consuming, and often feels pointless. After all, your people know what to do, why can’t they just do it?
