Insight

Exploring the changing face of value in B2B sales. It seems as if the phrase “sell on value, not on price” must have been around since shortly after the dawn of B2B selling, and it would be hard to argue with the sentiment. But what do we actually mean by value, and perhaps more importantly, how do our customers perceive… 

Three perspectives on enhancing sales skills through sales competitions. What are the challenges of being a sales competition director? Johannes Reiterer: Directors of a sales competition are faced with various challenges. One of the biggest is to establish a realistic and challenging competition case study. The case requires development of a concrete and consistent storyline, generation of briefings for role-play… 

How embedded is coaching in your organisation? Let’s explore the fundamental question first: does coaching work and is it worth investing in a coaching culture? The use of coaching has increased, complementing established learning interventions and the research evidence of its effectiveness is robust. A recent review of quantitative studies concluded that workplace coaching does show a good effect size… 

It’s all about time, skills and mindset. Successful sales managers must master a range of important skills. They need to make sure that they recruit the right people and help them to realise their potential, encourage their teams to follow and contribute to the organisation’s learned best practices, ensure that opportunities are well-qualified, that pipelines are well managed and that… 

Q: What are the top-three new agenda items that sales leaders will be thinking about for 2022? IM: Buying behaviours have evolved tremendously throughout the digital age, seeing the most accelerated growth specifically throughout the pandemic, and sellers must rapidly adapt accordingly. Working and living in the same space caused many people to rethink what is important to them, leading… 

Australian Institute of Sales, New Zealand Institute of Sales – Stuart Edmunds, Director; Association of Professional Sales – Andrew Hough, CEO Q: What will be the top-three agenda items for sales leaders as businesses emerge from the pandemic? SE: 1) Staffing (retention, attraction, development – with the skills shortage). 2) New-customer acquisition and accelerating pipeline. 3) Increasing virtual/remote selling capabilities…. 

Waldemar Adams, Global Senior Vice President, SAP Customer Success COO Office; Grant Van Ulbrich, Director, Sales Transformation – International, Royal Caribbean International Q: What will be the top-three agenda items for sales leaders as businesses emerge from the pandemic? WA: 1) Ensure customer success. 2) Budget achievement and growth plans. 3) Manage their teams successfully, with empathy. GVU: Our focus… 

Mark Davies, Founder, Segment Pulse Limited, Visiting Fellow, Centre for Strategic Marketing and Sales, Cranfield School of Management, and The Advanced Services Group, Aston Business School; Dr Mark Hollyoake, Director, Customer Attuned and Associate Lecturer, University of the West of England; Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer, Corporate Visions; Dr Philip Squire, CEO, Consalia; Philip Styrlund, CEO, The Summit Group Q:… 

Dr Frank Cespedes, senior lecturer, Harvard Business School; Professor Mark Johnston, Professor of Marketing and Ethics, Rollins College; Professor Nick Lee, Warwick Business School; Dr Colin Mackenzie, specialist lecturer, Edinburgh Napier University; Dr Javier Marcos, Associate Professor, Strategic Sales Management and Negotiation, Cranfield School of Management; Dr Beth Rogers, Visiting Fellow, Cranfield School of Management Q: What will be the… 

In the bold new world of sales, a mental shift is required. The pandemic turned the whole world upside down: it made us shift our priorities away from things that we once thought were important to new ways of working and living. As people switch careers and re-evaluate how they spend their time, naturally their behaviours have fundamentally changed. In… 

What should B2B sales leaders be prioritising in 2022? As we head towards 2022, sales organisations are emerging from a tumultuous two years. Across many markets and industries, the sales function has had to cope with transformational changes that have been compressed into a short period of time. Inevitably, some sales organisations have managed to adapt better than others. They… 

Why there needs to be a fresh approach to the personal development of sales executives and their managers. Many readers of this article may already be in superb sales organisations; however, for those in the sales field it will come as no surprise that many small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) have little in the way of formal sales training that could be… 

If we expect our customers to trust us, we need to develop both an internal and an external culture of trust. Trust is an essential foundational element in any sales environment, and it can (and must) take many forms. Perhaps the most obvious manifestation lies in the relationship between the salesperson (and the vendor they represent) and the customer’s decision-making… 

Sales ethics is essential in the new normal. Good business strategy Many companies, even entire industries, struggle to remain open during this ongoing period of challenging economic uncertainty. Business models that were shifting prior to the pandemic, such as the move from instore shopping to e-commerce, have accelerated because of the pandemic. Businesses are adjusting strategies to stay ahead of… 

Perhaps surprisingly, the nature of anxiety means that it offers an inherent opportunity for personal and professional growth. In high-value and complex B2B sales, ambitious sales targets and growth plans are common. Typically, sales professionals are measured on outcomes they can control only to a certain extent. As they mature in their career, many develop ways of managing sales pressure… 

The ability to coach is a key attribute that distinguishes truly effective first-level sales managers from the pack. What’s the one thing that separates truly effective first-level sales managers from the rest? You can make a case for their ability to motivate or to create an environment of responsibility and accountability, but there’s good reason to believe that their ability… 

How businesses must adapt to the new world of virtual selling. When the Coronavirus pandemic swept across the world in 2020, it is safe to say that all industries were dramatically disrupted and forced to reassess their operations and ways of working. However, the sales industry was one of the business sectors that was significantly turned on its head by… 

How top sales innovators are embedding data and technology throughout their organisations to reimagine sales for the “next normal”. Sales has always been a “sensing” organisation, attuned to changes in customer sentiment, shifts in demand, and the requirements of different buying stages. But those senses are being flooded as customers shift to digital engagement, leaving sellers with more channels to cover… 

Selling power comes not from how much conversation we manage to get through, but the quality of the conversation. Supercharging sales is the overall theme of this edition of the International Journal of Sales Transformation, so I thought it might be appropriate to focus on a topic that has long been a focus of mine: how can salespeople supercharge their… 

What you need to know about how sales enablement technology is advancing. As is usual at this time of year, I have spent a lot of time thinking about enablement’s current state. Before I take a journey through sales-enablement technology trends, let’s briefly explore enablement and B2B sales, as both of these topics are influencing the outlook for technology for…