Tag: LBM Sales
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The $4.8 Million Basketball Coach Who Refuses to Use Email
Know someone who’d enjoy The Craft of LBM Sales Newsletter? Forward this to them so they can subscribe here—and never miss a Thursday edition packed with practical sales insights. Imagine, for a minute, you’re a college basketball coach. Just think of all the things you’d need to understand to compete—let alone win—the war for young talent these…
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Is It Loyalty—or Just Friction with a Friendly Face?
Know someone who’d enjoy The Craft of LBM Sales Newsletter? Forward this to them so they can subscribe here—and never miss a Thursday edition packed with practical sales insights. The world is filled with two types of people: Those you worry about and those you don’t. Given the volatility, uncertainty, and complexity within the construction industry today,…
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What the Record-Breaking London Marathon Teaches Us About Selling in a Slow Market.
Know someone who’d enjoy The Craft of LBM Sales Newsletter? Forward this to them so they can subscribe here—and never miss a Thursday edition packed with practical sales insights. You may have heard that Sabastian Sawe became the first human to break the fabled 2-hour marathon mark in London last Sunday. That’s false. Nearly seven years ago,…
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They Know Exactly Why You Lost. They’re Just Not Telling You.
I’m a little slow. It took me way too long to understand why builders don’t tell suppliers the real reason they lost the business. Flashback to October 2010. I was in area purchasing at Pulte Homes, managing a few dozen material and labor accounts across seven markets from Cleveland to Denver. Home starts were down…
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From Old Guard to Young Guns: Leading Sales Succession With Clarity and Standards
Today’s newsletter is my April column in the LBM Journal magazine. The “Point God” was in Purgatory. Well, Atlanta, anyway. Chris Paul, the 12-time All Star point guard for the Los Angeles Clippers, was left by his team at Hartsfield–Jackson International Airport. His coaches and teammates had had enough. In the middle of their East Coast road…
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How a Stroke Taught Me Rejuvenation Is a Skill—and Made Me Better at Sales
Like many of you, the first quarter of the year starts with a flurry of activity. For me, that includes a lot of travel. I won’t list the airports, miles, or nights away from home—because you don’t care, and this isn’t a humblebrag about how hard I’m working. This is about what it reminded me:…
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Three Books Your Buyer Is Using to Negotiate Against You
The economic thrashing that was the Great Recession produced one unexpected upside for me: It scattered talented friends of mine all over the country. PulteGroup, like every other builder that survived that period, cut most of its headcount as it slammed the brakes on production. Many of the people I worked with there ended up…
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What Builders Say About You Once You Leave the Room
Like many good sales lessons, this one started over beers. It eventually became the backbone of my book Behind Your Back: What Purchasing Managers Say Once You Leave the Room—and How to Get Them to Say Yes. Denver, Colorado.March of 2013. I was spending a week with a drywall supply company, helping them attract Hispanic talent…
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From Barrels of Urine to Better AI: The Strange Story That Explains Modern Sales Experimentation
There may be no greater testament to marital tolerance than this: Hennig Brand’s wife once allowed her husband to store hundreds of barrels of urine in their basement. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Brand lived in the 1600s during the transition between alchemy and chemistry. He was obsessed with a single idea: turning base…
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