Blog Archive
Crawl, Walk, Run Customer Service
A close cousin of the statement that “doctors make the worst patients” might be that “customer service professionals make the worst customers.” I…
A Factory of Sadness
Years ago, back in our CEB days, we used to share a slide that labeled the contact center a “Factory of Sadness.” It resulted in nervous laughs…
How to avoid the Great Resignation with Good Engagement
In Gartner’s recent 2021 Customer Service Rep Role and Experience Survey, data shows that only one in three reps are actually engaged; the remaining…
Three Steps to Make Good Sales Advice Stick
“To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than to give it.” – American Playwright Wilson Mizner There’s no shortage of good sales advice.…
Commercial Teaching: More Than Just An Early-Stage Strategy
In our most recent Winning the Challenger Sales Webinar, we went deep on "Discovery" calls and shared some tips for how to leverage "high-gain"…
How Do Challengers Negotiate?
“The first step is the hardest”. It’s what we say to encourage each other to get going. The same is true in sales. Shifting the customer’s initial…
Challenger Skills Part 3: Which Skills Are Most Important in 2021?
This post concludes a series we began a few weeks ago: Our first post looked at the distribution of sellers by profile in 2020, using the same…
Challenger Skills Part 2: What has changed in 2020?
Last week, I shared a snapshot of our ongoing Challenger assessment data and how Challengers in 2020, moving into 2021, are disproportionately more…
The Science of Positive Language in Customer Service
Take a second and think about a time when you were trying to make plans with a friend. Let’s say you sent them a text asking if they wanted to get…
Challenger Skills Part 1: Are Challengers still high performers?
2020, it seems safe to say, will be remembered as a year when events conspired to accelerate the digitization of everything. Speaking personally,…
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