Six 2018 New Year’s Resolutions for Sales Managers
The New Year is here…so if you want to sell more you better prepare yourself to sell smart. Take a serious look at how you and your team sold in 2017. Where are the performance gaps? Who are your “under performers” and how are they adjusting their selling strategy? Is your sales funnel overloaded with […]
Seven Fatal Flaws in Qualifying Sales Opportunities
In large measure, the difference between highly productive sales professionals—those who exceed their quota year after year—and those sales representatives who seem destined to underperform lies in a single explanation: the productive seller chases good business and the underperformer chases bad business. For the most part, it’s not how hard they work—it’s how smart they […]
6 Common Complaints of Sales Professionals!
Sales professionals are a rare breed. Most are self-starters, personable, inquisitive, intuitive and passionate about their craft. They enjoy selling and revel when they are in contact with prospects or customers. They thrive on challenges and relish the benefits of being the CEO of their territory. The welcome the freedom to design a formula to […]
Customers Don’t Know What They Don’t Know!
In today’s world of Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blogs, newsletters, news feeds, instant messaging and other sources, information is readily available to buyers whether they are B-C or B-B. With these resources buyers are much more sophisticated and knowledgeable before they engage with a sales professional. In fact, we live in a world where […]
Crafting Good, Better, Best Value Statements
Consider for a moment the “life cycle” of a value proposition for a testing product in the pharmaceutical science area. It began (see the image below) with a very brief technical description. Then the product development group took a stab at writing a description. At the third stage, marketing got involved and the lipstick and […]
Are You RFP Ready?
For many of us the RFP is a way of doing business…but it is not without options. In this blog we will explore keys to developing a successful sales plan in an RFP process and how to connect with the buying organization’s underlying needs. The RFP process may be disruptive for even the most […]
Tools to Help the Seller Close the Complex Sale
There are many stumbling points in completing a complex sale—conducting effective meetings with senior executives, delivering compelling presentations, selling to committees and crafting messages that convey value. It comes as a complete surprise to us that after all the effort, planning and time devoted to the initial stages of the selling process that sellers […]
Lost & Found: Finding Who Cares & Who Pays
As buying processes become more complex, sellers find it increasingly difficult to identify all of the stakeholders and buying influences. There are two over-riding reasons. First, the seller never bothered to “map” the buying process in the target organization. Without that vital information, it’s difficult to appreciate how multi-layered a buying process can become. Often […]
9 Reasons Why Cross-Selling Programs Fail
The Story of Cross-Selling Gone Wrong A couple of years ago, we were working with a company in the medical device industry that had acquired two smaller device manufacturers. Nothing new or unusual about that; it is all part of on-going consolidation in the healthcare sector. What was troublesome was their efforts at building an […]
10 “Best Practices” Sales Representatives Should Consider When Planning That “Big” Presentation
Sales representatives give presentations all the time. They can range from a fifteen-minute Q & A to a multi-hour comprehensive review of a company’s response to an RFP. There are decades of books, programs, videos, articles and chapters on conducting an effective sales presentation. Unfortunately, most sales representatives build a comfort zone around a PowerPoint […]
