Sales & Business Development

For most of my career, I have worked somewhere between sales and marketing.  I started in advertising, moved into high-volume new account development, transitioned into outside sales, and eventually expanded into digital marketing and broader marketing strategy.  That experience has convinced me of something I believe strongly today:  Salespeople should understand marketing, and marketers should…

Good sales questions help you understand whether you can offer something useful. They reveal the customer’s objective, constraints, decision process, and expectations before you recommend a product. My sales background has made me cautious about assuming that two businesses in the same category want the same outcome. One may need more inquiries, another may want…

My name is Shawn Strawser, and after more than 20 years working in sales, advertising, business development, and marketing strategy, one principle has remained more important than almost anything else: People do business with people and organizations they trust. Technology has changed. Advertising has changed. The way customers research businesses has changed. Sales tools have…

Follow-up matters because a customer’s decision often involves more than one conversation. The person may need information, approval, time, or a change in circumstances. A dependable process helps you respond to those needs without relying on memory or repeated generic messages. My advertising-sales experience taught me to treat follow-up as a commitment to manage. It…

During a corporate inside-sales role, I brought in more than 300 new accounts within six months. It was an important experience in my advertising career because it showed me how much organized execution matters when you are managing many conversations at once. The account total describes that career milestone. It does not, by itself, explain…