Answering your questions, Secret Sales Guy spills his own beans for a change, instead of everyone else's:

What's your No. 1 tip for making sales?

There is no secret to making sales. The best way to make a sale is to have something that someone wants to buy. If you have something like that and it's priced exactly right, and the person who wants to purchase it has the money to do so, you will make a sale. It's that simple. Even if you are a sleazy soft-brained, scumbag with half a community college education, so long as your product meets the aforementioned criteria, you will succeed.

Of course, most of us don't have the perfect, reasonably-priced product that just happens to be ready exactly when the customer, money in hand, wants to buy it. Therefore, the key to sales is constantly being around so that when this miracle of circumstance happens, you are standing at the bottom of Cash Hill with your catcher's mitt on. That translates to calling a lot of people to remind them that you have something to sell, going to a lot of trade shows, and drinking lots of bad table wine with your prospects.

More secrets revealed about SSG here.