Sales

If Alignment is a good thing, why is it so hard to achieve

It would be hard to find anyone prepared to argue against the benefits of sales and marketing alignment. It’s a proven fact (we’ll come on to the results in a moment) that well-aligned organisations grow revenues faster. So, if alignment is such a good thing, why is it so difficult to achieve? I'd like to share some of my conclusions about why alignment often proves difficult - and offer you some ideas that could help you improve it. Why bother getting aligned? According to the Aberdeen Group, the top reasons for improving sales and marketing alignment are READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales|

How to make your strategy more buyer-centric

All businesses strive to recognise the needs of buyers when developing strategies for sales success. Well, at least you should. You research met and unmet needs, teach your salespeople to understand business requirements and take pride in meeting those customer demands. How, though, can you more fully acknowledge buyers when shaping your strategy? Remember that businesses buy products and services, in essence, to solve problems. They may have too much of something that is undesirable, or too little of something that is good. The problem is the gap between where they are now and where they want READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Sales, Strategy|

Are you appealing to budget makers or budget takers?

Are your sales and marketing messages targeted at budget makers or budget takers? In most complex, high-value sales environments, of course, you need to appeal to both. But the marketing messages you need to use - and the sales conversations you need to have - differ dramatically. Budget makers vs. budget takers Here’s the key difference between the two roles: a budget maker has the power and authority to find the money required for a favoured project, even if a budget does not yet exist. Budget takers, on the other hand, need someone else to have created READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales|

3 Key Steps to Building a Stronger Sales Funnel for 2013

We’re already into the last quarter of 2012. If you’re in a complex sales environment with lengthy decision-making processes, this year’s final revenue number is probably going to depend on how effectively you can close the opportunities that are already visible to you in your funnel. But what about next year? What could and should you be doing today to lay the foundations for a stronger sales funnel in 2013? I’d like to suggest 3 simple, effective steps that you can take right now to ensure that you enter 2013 (and maybe even finish 2012) in great READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Velocity|

B2B sales: stop rushing and you’ll sell faster

I’ve been called in by a number of clients who believe that they have a bottom-of-funnel sales problem. Their sales opportunities just seem to be piling up and getting stuck in the later stages of the sales pipeline. They imagine that their sales people need help with their closing techniques. But when you dig into it, the problem is almost always somewhere else... They have been looking in the wrong place. The real problem typically turns out to be not closing techniques, but opening techniques. A careful examination of the evidence often shows that their sales people READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales|

How can sales people prevent premature elaboration?

It’s not a very edifying sight, but it happens way, way too often. A prospect gives the faintest acknowledgement of a potential issue, and the impatient (not to say desperate) sales person simply can’t wait to respond by presenting the features, advantages and benefits of their proposed solution in glorious detail. They may even offer to follow up with a costed proposal. All this before the poor bewildered prospect has even come to terms with whether they need to do anything at all. The sales person has pitched their product way too early. This uncomfortable condition is READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Strategy|

3 critical questions for B2B sales: Why Change? Why Now? Why You?

Your company is facing an increasingly strong competitor - yet you won’t find them listed in any Google search of the key players in your marketplace. But this competitor is playing a powerful and often-undefined role in almost every significant B2B buying decision. And it’s the reason why a growing number of your apparently well-qualified opportunities are ending up with the prospect deciding to “do nothing”. Have you recognised the competitor yet? It’s the status quo - and in today’s increasingly risk-averse decision-making climate, where it may be harder than ever before to get approval for discretionary READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales|

Is your CRM System a Sales Prevention System?

Most sales organisations have some sort of CRM system in place. Many have made significant investments in the system. Yet simply implementing CRM – just like just running a sales training course – offers no “magic wand” for improving sales performance. In fact the energies expended on them are often wasted. Time after time, we come across Customer Relationship Management solutions that bear little or no relation to how a vendors’ most promising prospects actually buy, or what the vendors’ top performing sales people actually do. There are 5 danger signs that indicate that a CRM system READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Alignment, Sales, Tactics, Velocity|

6 Critical Foundations of the new “Solution Selling”

Faced with increasing competition, commoditisation and margin erosion, most B2B vendors have chosen to embrace “solution selling” in one form or another. But, as many have learned to their cost, simply slapping solution lipstick on a product pig tends to be a cost-added, rather than a value-added strategy. Applying solution selling in today’s increasingly well-educated and often justifiably cynical buying environment requires a profound change in mindset and selling (and marketing) behaviour that many companies never manage to properly master - but the ones that do usually reap substantial rewards. Having observed some of the best exponents READ MORE ›

By Bob Apollo|Sales, Skills|

How to really upset your buyers

We live in a world where customer service and satisfaction is everything. Marketers build programs to reward regular customers and to make them feel special, and invest in satisfaction surveys to measure their success. So why are we saying you should upset your customers? We all know that our salespeople are constantly looking for ways to delight their customers Both the sales department and the marketing experts guard the happiness of the buyer jealously, promoting only positive and uplifting messages. They say: Good news travels fast It takes 100 happy customers to overcome the effect of one READ MORE ›

By Hugh Macfarlane|Sales|