Tag: LBM Sales
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Your Sales Team Is in Drop Shock
The Hartmanns of Elgin, Illinois were not a camping clan. That changed exactly once—May 25th, 1988—when my father came home and announced, “There’s a tent in the back of the van. Drag it into the backyard. We’re sleeping outside tonight.” My brother, sister, and I sprinted to the driveway.For non-camping kids like us, this was…
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5 Lessons Learned From Tagging a Top Sales Shark for 30 Days
Imagine a Toyota Sequoia. It’s like a 4Runner on steroids—seventeen feet long, nearly seven feet wide, weighing 5,600 pounds, and as tall as an NBA point guard. Now imagine something bigger.Faster. A predator shaped by millions of years of evolution, slicing through saltwater at speeds that would embarrass Usain Bolt. What I’m asking you to…
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Why Nobody Wants to Read Your/My Sh*t—and What LBM Sales Pros Must Do to Win New Sales Prospecting
In Episode 36 of The Craft of LBM Sales Podcast, I shared a few insights from one of my mentors-from-afar: Steven Pressfield. His book The War of Art has been a reference guide for me throughout my sales career—which is why we recently shipped 100 copies as our Sales Fundamentals Workshop book of the quarter. If The War of Art is…
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The Jerry Jones Problem: Why Sales Managers Who Still Sell Suppress Team Performance
Today’s newsletter is my January column in the LBM Journal magazine. Jerry Jones isn’t a cowboy; he’s a salesman. He’s a dealmaker, a gambler, and a showman. He’s the only NFL owner with a weekly radio show—just one aspect of his omnichannel approach to staying in the spotlight. As he once put it: “The Cowboys are a…
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How We Lost a Deal Before It Ever Started
One risk of writing a newsletter like this is trying to share insight without sounding like a blowhard who has the sales game all figured out. Because I don’t. I make poor decisions.I pursue deals I shouldn’t. I waste valuable time—mine and my team’s—more often than I’d like. What follows is a deconstruction of a…
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How Smart Sales Managers Replace Gossip With Growth Using the GOST Framework
Sales Manager Question: We sent part of our sales team to a regional LBM show in December, expecting the usual shot of energy and ideas. Instead, they came back with a bunch of pessimism, negativity, and gossip from the event floor. Add in the recent Venezuela headlines and uncertainty, and this negativity seems to be sticking.…
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The $37 Insult I Still Think About Every December
In 2002, I was a 24-year-old construction superintendent in Algonquin, Illinois. The market was hot. Our “new home consultants” were two salesmen my age. Good smiles.Spiky hair.Brooks Brothers suits.$350 Allen Edmonds shoes. They weren’t selling so much as taking orders. It was a fish-in-a-barrel situation, and they showed up at 10 a.m. every day and…
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Dark December: The Month That Separates Sales Amateurs From the Pros
We called it the “Fourth Quarter Push.” That’s the homebuilding equivalent of describing the final stages of procreation as “labor.” Oh, it’s that—and a whole lot more.And sometimes, it nearly kills you. My boss, the VP of Construction for our Chicago division, called me on the afternoon of Monday, October 6, 2006. We were on…
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Listener Mailbag! Builders Too Busy to Even Listen to My Value Prop.
From Chuck in the Great North:My sales team and I struggle to have builders even consider our proposal / value proposition. I agree we need to “deliver value first,” but to articulate that value, you at least need 15 minutes of quality time with a prospect. Our problem is that builders have no available time.…
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Ask for what you want.
Too often we’re afraid to ask for what we want. We’re afraid of being judged. We’re afraid of hearing the word no. We’re afraid of pure indifference. This is hard-wired into human nature and it’s part of why selling is so hard. But if you firmly believe in what you’re selling AND you’ve delivered value first, then there’s no reason…
The Craft of LBM Sales 