The commitment gap is the massive distance between yes and maybe

The ability to close sales effectively has never been confined to the last few moments of the conversation.

If customers don't trust you to help them at the beginning of the sales process, they certainly won't trust you with their money at the end of it.

Earning the Right is a commitment to be the sales professional that your customer really needs

Why do customers {and that includes you and me} find it so difficult to recall more than a couple of occasions when they felt that they were treated exceptionally by the salespeople who dealt with...

Customers get exactly what they need, while you hit your sales targets and become incredibly successful – fair deal.

Great selling involves helping people to make great buying decisions.

Ignore the people who say that the sales industry needs to become professionalised: it already has.

For all salespeople - Driving around and talking to people for a living, with no recognisable return for the time or money spent by your employer - is a job description that belongs in the past.

If you sound like a contestant from The Apprentice or if the customer believes that they are being sold AT, you have already failed.

Salespeople need to "Earn the right" to become suppliers more than they ever did before.

In this wonderful modern age, if you know what you want, you can just reach out and, with the click of a mouse, take complete control of your entire buying and shopping experience.

I can't and won't promise you magic sales fairy dust or the Jedi Mind Trick for salespeople – they simply don't exist.

When your pipeline is full – with business coming out of your ears – the notion of people asking for a discount will sound hilarious, because you'll already be at capacity

We all need salespeople with humility, honesty, integrity, empathy and an old-fashioned work ethic that ensures the job gets done.

If you don't earn their trust at the beginning, they sure as hell won't trust you with their money at the end.

We all desperately need brilliant sales professionals far more than ever before – to help us, guide us, keep us informed and stop us from making diabolically stupid buying decisions.

If what you sell doesn't help me then why are you knocking on my door?

Remember: when you walk into a DIY store to buy a drill, you don't want the drill. Your end goal is to make a hole and, in order to achieve this, you have to buy the drill.

We all need salespeople who understand the problem and can deliver a solution that works brilliantly for both sides.

In many instances, the words sell and influence are completely interchangeable.

Earn the Right - Ensure you put this chunk of Sales Tetris in place first and all the other pieces just take their own positions naturally.

Executing the solution means gaining customer commitment and delivering on your promises

Asking the appropriate questions means understanding exactly what your customer is trying to achieve

22% of current business-to-business salespeople will be replaced by search engines within the next five years.

Salespeople who think that it's all about price aren't required: If it can be sold on the internet at the lowest price, you can take the huge cost of a sales team out of the equation.

The salesperson you'd ideally like to be and the salesperson you'd like to encounter as a customer should roughly be the same, shouldn't they?

Your target market are more bothered about whether what you sell will get them promoted, sacked, recognised, accepted, praised or laid.

We all need salespeople who deliver value that wasn't there before they arrived.

Focusing on Earning the Right will have an incredible effect on the success of every single sales call that you will make from this day on.