Business Operations

Overcoming objections is the highest level of technical sales skills. Most sellers don’t ask for the order in the first place, so they never have to overcome objections. Just asking for the order puts us in the top 10% of sellers. Overcoming objections will put us in the top 1%!

The building materials sector has so much to offer working professionals but, sometimes, figuring out where exactly you’re meant to be is half the journey.

There are many reasons that people don’t succeed in sales. The number one reason by a large margin is the lack of work ethic.

I had no experience even remotely related to the wood industry; but when friends of my mom and dad came calling about a potential receptionist job at a hardwood lumber company, I jumped at the opportunity.

“Contractor Buys Lumberyards,” the headline in this magazine’s June issue announced. Is this as newsworthy as the proverbial “Man Bites Dog”? Nah—but almost as unlikely. So, this reporter couldn’t wait to find out how, and why.

In the B2B world, the relationship between the customer and the vendor—and more specifically the vendor’s salesperson—can be of utmost importance. It doesn’t take long in the business to understand that if the customer dislikes you, he is rarely going to see you. And if he does know you and trust you, he is more likely to do business with you. Creating positive business relationships is, then, a fundamental step in the path toward success for any B2B salesperson.

When we start out in any industry, we have to learn our product. Our employer will give us some orientation and may send us to outside seminars to give us the basic knowledge we need to do this. We also have to learn how to sell.

In an effort to make online education more dynamic, the Western Wood Preservers Institute has released a new narrated version of its preserved wood training course.

As we speed into the winter months, summer memories are still fresh even while the end of the year and all that it brings draws closer. And so, it is impossible to escape that there are only a few selling weeks left in 2019.