Think back to when you last visited your doctor. If we watch how our doctor uncovers our need, we can learn a lot. As a patient, you are your doctor’s prospect. You suffer from pain. You’re willing to talk to your doctor because you want to resolve the pain, solve the problem. But you do not yet know or realize the specific nature of…
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Transforming B2B Sales
Trusted Advisors Lead with Perspective
Helping prospects begins with awareness. What’s their unique situation? What’s the context of their business, the industry environment? What’s their vision of what they want to change? Invariably, salespeople lead presentations with their who-we-are-what-we-do-why-us pitch. Then they offer solutions without any (or little) situational awareness. Clueless pitches end up viewed as commodities or, worse yet, the offending salesperson loses outright to the competition or…
To Sell Implied vs. Explicit Needs: Why Care?
Recently, I sat down and re-read (for the tenth time) my old copy of SPIN Selling. It was yellow highlighted and red underlined in key areas I wanted to remember and refer to later. SPIN Selling is one of those books that’s still relevant today. Author Neil Rackman’s sequential questioning process is central to our ability to sell the prospect on the problem and…
What Are You Really Selling?
At last, you meet your target prospect. You build rapport. When you think the time’s right, you launch into describing your new-to-the-market product, packed with great features no competitor can beat. Awesome. You’re on your way to a sale, right? Wrong! Don’t talk product right off the bat. It’s a classic mistake of newbie salespeople, sometimes even veterans. First, discuss the business issues the…
8 Reasons Why Sales Reps Miss Quotas
And What You Can Do About It In a coin toss, at least you’ve got a 50 percent chance of landing on heads your call. For salespeople trying to make quota, the odds are worse. No matter what study you read nowadays, more than half of sales reps miss sales quotas. With all the tools available today through sales enablement, this number is unsettling.…
Why Relationships Matter Most in B2B Sales
To move a large, complex B2B sale forward, you need two power sources: Specific knowledge of the prospect’s business, industry, and his pain points. And the foundational elements for a longer-term relationship. Why? Today’s more sophisticated B2B buyer expects an expert in his or her salesperson. Company and industry knowledge and sensitivity to his pain points are the prices of entry into his world.…
Your 2017 Booster Shot for Revenue Growth: A Sales Enablement Team
Sales Enablement. Buzzword or breakthrough? A few years back, sales enablement quietly rolled onto the scene and caught many of us by surprise. Today? It’s blown well past buzzword and breakthrough status. Sales enablement teams now operate in 60 percent of those companies surveyed by CSO Insights in its 2017 Sales Enablement Optimization Study, up from 19 percent in 2013, tripling its growth. What is…
Winning RFPs: Don’t Make These 5 Mistakes
Most companies hate RFPs, the dreaded Request for Proposal. However, in certain industries and for certain products, RFPs grant the only access to the sales arena. In this post, I want to share insights on how to make a winning presentation. Like many of you, I, too, play RFP roulette to land these golden wins for our company. Because companies vigorously pursue greater operational efficiency and standardization today,…
Vault Over No-Decisions to More Revenue
Sales is not an exact science. The unpredictable, even irrational, human factor element makes sales more art than science, despite the massive amount of data at our fingertips. That’s why so many CEOs and sales leaders become frustrated when forecasting pipeline accuracy because they must depend on the claims of their salespeople. Let’s say the CFO wants accurate revenue projections for the quarter. Knowing…
Is the 80:20 Rule Zapping Your Sales Revenue?
Who’s booking the bulk of your revenue? If you’re paying attention to your monthly sales reports, you know the answer. Sales leaders often find a large percentage of new business comes from a small number of salespeople. Each quarter, as you measure your sales team on how they performed against quota, more than likely you face the universal 80:20 rule: 20 percent of your…
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