Blog | P.S.I. Selling

Great Negotiations are Months in the Making

The most expensive negotiation mistake happens months before price discussions begin. Great negotiators don't wait until quarter's...

2 min read

Strategy Questions Should be Part of Your Hiring Process

Want to know why most sales teams struggle to be consultative? They're not hiring for it. Too many companies hire sales reps based on...

1 min read

Action-Focused Onboarding

The traditional startup sales onboarding process can be summarized in three words: sink or swim. I saw this up close in my first few...

Guerrilla Sales Enablement

“When I got here, nobody showed me how to do my job. That’s a fact.” So said a colleague of mine a while back. And he was right, he’d had to figure things out on his own. My colleague was a badass: He could make it happen. But he’d have been a lot more productive a lot sooner if he’d had access to the right enablement. What’s worse, there are plenty of perfectly good employees who won't figure it out if they aren’t properly enabled. This creates an enablement doom loop: Sale

The Affirm - Ask - Benefit Framework for Mid-Funnel Emails

It’s always nice when a member of your sales team reminds you to use one of your own frameworks! During a 1:1 with a top-performer on my...

5 min read

How to Have a Creative Negotiation

It was the start of a critical negotiation. The other side responded to our proposal with a counteroffer that was insanely low. I could...

3 min read

Annual Revenue Planning

One mistake you can’t unmake is being too late to start your annual planning cycle. This series will show you how to identify your major...

1 min read

Selling to Business Needs

We’re sucker-punching our AEs: We tell them that they need to know how to sell to business needs but we don’t give them any tools to...

1 min read

Setting Your VP of Sales Up to Succeed

Most early-stage startups are setting their VPs of Sales up to fail by putting them in a hole before they even start. That burns time and...

1 min read

Call Preparation: Getting Ready for an Update Call

I was feeling anxious. It was right before a call with a prospect. They were going to update us on their decision and my manager was joining the call. I knew I should prepare but I didn't know exactly what to do. Luckily, my manager, the illustrious Paul Cebulak, knew exactly what advice to give me. He told me to ask myself three questions: 1. What if they say yes? 2. What if they say no? 3. What if they say maybe? This is a killer way to prep if you have limited time. Let’s

3 min read

A Great Line For Negotiating: I'm Just Brainstorming

Years ago, I accidentally came up with a great line for negotiating: “I’m just brainstorming.” It’s perfect for situations where you want...

2 min read

Discovery: What Did We Learn?

Early in my startup sales career, my manager asked me a chilling question after he sat in on one of my calls: “What did we learn?” I thought… and I thought… and I realized that we hadn’t learned much at all. My manager was making an important point in a nice way: I’d done hardly any discovery. In other words, I'd done little to investigate the prospective customer's situation so that we could sell specifically to their needs. I was irritated at myself afterwards … I KNEW tha