Dave Stein's Blog for Sales Leaders

Geoffrey James writes a great blog.  I enjoy reading it, plus I most often learn something. 

Although it’s more targeted to sales people than sales leaders, Geoffrey knows a lot about selling, is very well informed about a lot of things, and is a really good writer.

Last week he wrote a seriously gutsy post about whether the U.S. should bail out of Iraq.  A comment was posted: 

“Stick to sales rather than politics.
Not what I come here to read (I have other political blogs for that purpose).” 

I cringed. 

Geoffrey’s response: 

“Politics=Sales The two are the same thing, a point I’ve made repeatedly in this blog.” 

Yes!

I didn’t get an opportunity to defend Geoffrey then, so I’ll do it now (not that he isn’t very capable of defending himself).  He is absolutely right on the money about politics and selling. 

If you saw the Clinton/Obama debate last night and listened to what was said, you can’t come away thinking this wasn’t just another in a long series of bake-offs between two sales people struggling to earn our “business.” 

There are so many parallels between sales and politics that sales thought leaders like Lan Koerner, Rick Page, Steve Andersen, and Jim Holden have incorporated significant content about politics into their IP. The TAS Group gets into it deeply as well.

There is no doubt in my mind that sales people who accel in leveraging the politics within their customers’ companies (that’s every company, for the record) win more business. 

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