Laird Comber Toronto

In the highly people-focused sales profession, does artificial intelligence have a role? After attending a remarkable presentation in December on the topic, my answer is a definite yes. In fact, skeptics run the risk of being out-maneuvered and out-sold by early AI adopters. Frankly, this is something that few imagined back when I first started my sales career. Sales was a professional choice for outgoing people who enjoyed lively conversations and deep personal interaction. There was nothing robotic or contrived about the best sales pros. But AI has reached the point where it brings a unique machine-based skillset to the table. One of these skills is its ability to imitate. It doesn’t simply parrot what it sees or perceives, but it imitates, learns, adjusts and refines the way it replicates a particular skill or behaviour. The December AI session was hosted by two powerhouse presenters, Leslie Hughes, the unstoppable CEO of Punch Media, and Robert J. Weese, the Jedi Master of Sales Tr...

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it’s often said. Imitation is also the key to effective sales strategies. Sales people become great by analyzing the techniques, traits and innovations of the masters. At the pinnacle are the GOATs — the sales legends who are widely viewed as the Greatest Of All Time. There are many lists of these stand-out sales icons, and recently CRM software developer Pipeline shared one of the most intriguing compilations. The roster includes a creative mind well known to anyone who has ever sold, shipped or written copy for a direct marketing or advertising firm: David Ogilvy. He began his career at street-level, selling stoves door to door. It wasn’t just instinct or intuition that made him a success. He understood the importance of cultivating the prospective customer, and realized that a hard sell could be counterproductive. His approach was so effective, and so well anchored in a broad understanding of human nature, that he wrote a sales manual ba...

You’ve heard the expression, “born salesman.” The phrase resonates because most of us intuitively believe it to be true. After all, it takes an outgoing personality to engage people, the gift of sincerity to win their trust, and an instinct for both savvy negotiating and fair dealing to become a sales great, right? Yet experience shows it’s not always in the DNA. Many professional sales people can tell you stories about colleagues who started with personality traits that seemed incompatible with sales success, and ended up becoming masters of their craft.  It wasn’t a case of applying the ironic George Burns quip — “The key to success is sincerity; if you can fake that you've got it made” — rather, these stellar sales pros studied winning techniques and practiced them over many months and years. Like Johnny Carson, who was remote and disengaged when the cameras were off, and famously brilliant when they were on, these sales “unnaturals” learned to project the qualities necessary to...