Sales

What have you learned from your top sales performers?

What is it that your top sales performers do better than anyone else? Part of the explanation may, of course, be simply that they are more naturally talented, or have a greater emotional intelligence when it comes to decoding complex sales relationships. But they will also have accumulated a set of winning habits and behaviours that the rest of your sales team could benefit from. And your ability to leverage that learning could make all the difference when it comes to achieving or exceeding your revenue goals. As Miller Heiman’s 2013 sales best practices report points out, READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Skills|

Protect Your Client Relationships

Increasing Business with Existing Accounts Many companies make the mistake of concentrating too hard on winning new business instead of cultivating additional business with their existing clients. The matrix below explains the notion that selling existing products and services into existing relationships is the easiest sale to make. After all, if your client is familiar and comfortable with your offering, they’re more likely to increase their business with you. Furthermore, selling new products and services into these existing accounts is also a relatively easy sale to make. Strategic investment in existing accounts makes good business sense for a number of reasons: READ MORE ›

By Eddie Smith|Sales|

The real reason sales people struggle to close deals

Alec Baldwin has got a lot to answer for. And, no, I’m not talking about his appearance in “Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat”. I am, of course referring to his role as Blake, the alpha dog motivational salesman in the film “Glengarry Glen Ross”. By the way, you can blame the IMDb website for the “alpha dog motivational salesperson” tag. It’s a laughable description. But it’s somewhat relevant, because the role he plays in that film is, by the standards of effective salesmanagership, completely barking. Blake’s Seven becomes 3 For those of you unfamiliar READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Velocity|

Bridging the gap between marketing messages and sales conversations

I wrote late last year about the idea that “you can create brilliant content marketing and still miss the point”, and I want to develop the thought that there are still far too many dangerous disconnects between the marketing messages propagated by organisations and the conversations their sales people are actually having with prospects. If anything, the issue has been compounded by the elevation of content marketing to a stratospheric pedestal as the latest saviour of B2B marketing. Now, there’s no doubt that compelling content offers a critical underpinning to much of today's most effective business-to-business READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales|

How to turn every sales person into a top story-teller

What sets top sales people apart? What is it that they do better than the rest? There are, of course, a number of factors, but one that we frequently observe is that top sellers are great story-tellers. They put their points across not by pitching their products, but by sharing relevant, situation-specific anecdotes and stories that their prospects can relate to. Your most experienced and effective sales people - and your senior executives - probably have a stock of these stories. Telling them seems perfectly natural. They use their stock of stories to give direction to READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Velocity|

People Buy from People They Like

On the face of it, the strongest solution should always win the new business, regardless of how much the client likes you. However, it’s commonly accepted that personality factors can influence decisions in awarding new business. So to what degree does this happen - if you have the strongest solution, is that enough to get you over the line? Or are decision-makers swayed by how much they like the person behind the solution? The Importance of a Strong Solution Let’s face it – even your staunchest supporters will find it hard to support you if you have READ MORE ›

By Eddie Smith|Sales, Velocity|

Sales people: problem solvers or problem builders?

The conventional view of a successful “solution sales” person is as a problem solver. But that traditional perspective is being questioned in a number of quarters. You see, the fact that you have a solution to your prospect’s “problem” is probably irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, even if what you have to offer is - by whatever questionable criteria you might choose to apply - the “best” solution available. Your prospects can't afford to solve all their problems Given half a chance, your prospects will always be able to identify more problems, issues or opportunities READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Strategy|

Why top sales people focus on priorities – not needs

When I started my sales career, I was taught that I should focus on identifying my prospect’s needs. Later, when I started to work for companies that were selling into early-stage markets, I was taught that I should invest in creating needs that the prospect had not previously recognised they had. But I’ve learned that simply identifying or creating needs isn’t enough. Here’s why… You see, no matter how good you are at identifying needs that your prospects already have, or no matter how good you are at creating needs your prospects didn’t previously know they had, READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Strategy, Velocity|

Social Media: A Team Effort Between Marketing & Sales

Surveys of B2B marketing budgets consistently show that a higher percentage of marketing resources are being invested in content development and social media than ever before. But business social media is too important to be left to the marketing department alone—it needs to be a team effort between marketing, sales and other customer-facing employees. In addition to the obvious advice to make all of your invaluable content social-media friendly and easily shareable, I’d like to suggest 7 simple steps that could help the whole organization to come together to fully realize the potential of business social media. READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Tactics|

Do face-to-face meeting quotas work?

Salespeople have a reputation for avoiding paperwork and administration. They are also traditionally resistant to the idea of working to a meeting quota. But getting busy and recording the results is precisely the path to sales success. Face-to-face sales calls are the preferred method of making a sale. Yet, because they are also seen as expensive, they should ideally be used only when there's a good chance of achieving the outcome. While the marketing department has many tactics that will move the prospect along the buying path, the truth is that many businesses use salespeople when READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Sales|