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If there’s one skill—one single skill—that can take you from mediocre to magnificent in rural sales, it’s the art of asking great questions. Not just any questions. Powerful questions. The kind [...]

When I hear rural businesses utter these words I know they are living in La La Land. Your potential customers don’t ignore your competition so why would you? Saying you don’t focus on your [...]

People say “sales is about numbers”. It is but you need to focus on the right numbers not the wrong ones. At a basic level you should focus on the number of leads you have. But unless [...]

I often hear this veiled cry of desperation from rural marketing departments or uneducated sales people. My challenge is always: awareness of what? The question is designed to get you to think [...]

The problem with problems is they are public, whereas pains are private. We have to get past problems to get to pains because when something pains us, it is specific and sensitive to us. And when [...]

What’s the first thing that goes through your mind when someone rings you who you don’t know? “They’re going to try and sell me something I don’t need” Rural [...]

Let’s assume you’re making the same top-line revenue you did last year and the year before that. Your margins and costs are getting tighter and you can’t pass on or raise your [...]

Choosing to be liked or respected is a conundrum for many of us. Like cognitive dissonance creates that battle in your brain, you are left with the question of which one you [...]

The hardest decisions are always the right decisions. Some businesses right now will be facing them thick and fast. Taking the easy path is always easy. Taking the path no one has [...]

Rural reps often regard your customers as their own, referring to them as “my customers” which is a telling choice of language. Book-buying only reinforces this fact. We see this [...]