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Sales methods must change in a post-COVID-19 world. It is often said that people buy from people. Many of the world’s top salespeople have relied on their personality and ability to quickly establish a rapport with customers to become highly successful. While this trend may continue in future, the dynamics of sales have to change dramatically in a post-COVID-19 world…. 

Exploring the surprising benefits of remote selling by video. COVID-19 has suddenly changed the dynamics of selling. Salespeople who normally see prospects and customers in person are scrambling as they explore how to sell remotely. It may be a problem now, but could this be an unforeseen opportunity? Up until nine years ago, we sold our sales consulting services exclusively… 

How to avoid sales training mistakes and create a successful programme. Having trained over 6,000 people in countless workshops over the past five years, I have seen numerous examples of why sales training programmes fail. Since many training initiatives start at the beginning of each new year, I’ve compiled a list of the five most common sales training mistakes and… 

Are we witnessing the rise of account leadership and the fall of sales methodology? I contend that what customers really want today is so far removed from what salespeople are being told to do that we face a stark choice: replace sales methodologies with real leaders of accounts who are co-creative, deserve high trust and who encourage the agile-change buying… 

As selling evolves, how do you make sales enablement work for your company? When listing key company departments, many business leaders will name sales, HR, marketing or even their IT team. Today, however, more and more are adding sales enablement to that list. The rise of sales enablement is materialising. According to recent research from CSO Insights, 61% of businesses… 

Lessons from Birmingham’s new Primark megastore. Primark’s new Birmingham flagship proves that stores still have a vital role to play in shopping journeys. But one store opening – albeit a great one – doesn’t spell the beginning of the end of pressure on the High Street. The discount fashion retailer’s megastore opening drew big crowds in April and demonstrates its… 

To boost productivity it’s vital for companies to embrace an “everybody sells” approach and to harness the “hidden sales force” that is an energised customer service department. The UK is suffering a productivity crisis. Start-up companies and total early-stage entrepreneurial activity are still booming, but the number of high-growth companies in the UK has been steadily declining in the past… 

Pharma needs to transform the way it engages customers if it is to adapt to disruption in the healthcare landscape. For the past 20 years, I have been involved in pharma discussions regarding the need to radically change our sales and engagement model. The pharma industry has shifted from defining its customers as the physicians prescribing to patients to a… 

Techniques passed down the generations in ancient trading centres are still relevant today. Dating back some 5,000 years, Aleppo in Syria is one of the oldest continuously habited cities in the world. It was there that my wife Louise and I met Mohammed, a textile trader, six months before the civil war began in the summer of 2011. Mohammed offered… 

Here’s how both women and men can help sales organizations achieve gender equality to build success. Most industry outsiders I encounter view our industry as a corporate boys’ club. It’s a common misperception that sales has a shortage of women. In fact, the sales industry as a whole is almost evenly split on gender lines, with women making up 49… 

Diversity brings the risk of fragmentation, but the best companies are able to project a single voice by telling a consistently engaging story. Today, an employee base with diverse experiences, skills and perspectives is one of your biggest organizational strengths. But like many good things, a diverse talent pool, for all the brainpower and energy and dynamism it adds to… 

In the current uncertain climate it’s time for UK businesses to sell big, sell global and stay relevant. The pace of technological progression and the impact of globalisation are increasingly disorienting. Society One is one of the world’s fastest-growing lenders, but does not own the money it loans; Google is the world’s largest software vendor but it doesn’t own any… 

The spiral of value leakage starts when organisations fail to focus on the customer and what they value. Instead, businesses should focus on creating “infinite value”. Peter Drucker is famous for making the following observation: “Because the purpose of a business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two (and only two) basic functions: marketing and innovation.” If… 

If you’re serious about growth, transform marketing too. A few years ago, I was part of the management team that rapidly grew a mature outsourcing business in just one year, while increasing profitability too. Our strategy was to shift from being a reactive business, waiting for RFPs to arrive, to a proactive one targeting the specific accounts that would deliver… 

Although social media is becoming the customer services platform of choice for large organisations, many are not getting the basics right. The rise of social media (Facebook, Twitter, Facebook Messenger) is driving change in the way customer-service leaders manage their operation. In today’s digital world, customers are more fickle, delight in sharing their horror stories, and demand an instantaneous response…. 

Introduced in 1898, the traditional purchase funnel no longer applies. Sales needs a lead-generation model for the digital environment. There is one perennial truth in sales and that is, salespeople have to prospect in the places their customers inhabit. This has led salespeople to visit exhibitions and conferences, attend relevant networking events and even knock on the doors at certain… 

Leading modern sales forces requires us to develop synergies between paradoxes that may initially appear irreconcilable. I’m aboard the “Baie de Seine”, the ferry that covers the route Portsmouth–Bilbao. I am sitting at the back of the vessel watching the foamy trace it leaves on the sea and the seagulls that escort the ship, relentlessly defying the winds. It’s a… 

You may have lost the bid but taking the trouble to find out why helps build trust. There’s a growing interest in the value to be gained by conducting detailed Win-Loss analyses: the statistics we shared in the October 2015 edition of the Journal (see page 58) caught the attention of readers and when they were later shared online. However,… 

When it comes to diversity, are we asking the right question? A decade after setting up my business I won a “Women in Business” award. I was intrigued by my reaction: I was delighted to be recognised but uncomfortable with the notion of being singled out because of my gender. I remember a rush of indignation when asked in the… 

Sales should be a core agent of strategy, not just a vehicle for a given selling methodology. In my career, I have attended many strategy meetings. Very few articulate the implications of espoused strategies for Sales. Moreover, the process for introducing new initiatives often exacerbates the separation of the “strategists” from the “doers” in the field. The typical process is…