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Research organization Forrester forecasts that 12% of all B2B sales in the United States will take place online by 2020. Last year, the company caused a few ripples when it predicted that the number of B2B salespeople in the United States would contract by one million over the next five years. In a recent report in the series, The B2B… 

We asked three women for their views… 

Authenticity, cultural fit and solving client problems are just some of keys to selling professional services, reports Chris Alder. Too many people in professional services do too little to understand the business of their clients – let alone clients’ specific issues and concerns. That’s a startling conclusion from a white paper published by sales training specialists Huthwaite International.1 Add in… 

Dr Beth Rogers ask whether the “Internet of Things” is set to transform the sales paradigm yet further. Imagine a future where customers’ needs are met even before the customer has identified them or a salesperson has prompted for them. It is a future where the role of the salesperson is focused on high-profile change projects, rooted in idea generation… 

The rewards for going after a choice piece of business can be huge, but making the right decisions can mean life or death. In today’s fiercely competitive environment the consequences of failure can indeed be career changing – for all the wrong reasons. Qualifying sales opportunities effectively is arguably the most important thing any company large or small will do,… 

What can we discover from research about the best way of dealing with problem salespeople? In the 15 years I have spent working with frontline sales managers, one particular issue has loomed larger than any other. Specifically, when a sales manager is faced with a problem with one or more of their salespeople, how best should they deal with it?… 

Sales organisations in Europe may be facing the prospect of having to pay salespeople without an office base for the time they spend travelling to and from first and last appointments. This follows the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling that journeys from home to work and back should be treated as working time. The EJC ruling could mean some… 

Power imbalances between companies of different types and sizes do not prevent them from establishing successful relationships, as long as both organisations’ business strategies are compatible. The development of trust in business-to-business relationships calls for “goal congruence”, according to a recent University of Eastern Finland and Cranfield University study. Authors, Mika Gabrielsson, Professor of International Business of the University of… 

There are significant opportunities for salespeople to chase as the market opens up and customers search for increased value and innovation from suppliers, not just lower prices. That’s one of the principal findings from a global survey of buyers launched at the UK’s National Sales Conference in Coventry on 8 October. Introduced at the event by managing director Sam North,… 

Profound change is sweeping through the pharmaceutical… 

How can sales survive in a banking sector beset by scandal? Interest rate hedging products where businesses were mis-sold complex insurance deals… tax dodging… manipulation of the London interbank lending rate (LIBOR) to boost profit from trades… money laundering… the manipulation of foreign exchange rates by out-of-control rogue traders – these have been the scandals which for many have come… 

As buying behaviour becomes more sophisticated, presales has emerged as a vital engine in the sales pipeline, argues McKinsey & Co. At a time when CEOs are on a constant quest for growth, there is a promising but often overlooked capability available close to home: presales. Building on our analysis of what drives performance in our book Sales Growth, we… 

If you’re involved in complex sales in a B2B environment, your most significant competitor is almost certainly not another vendor, but the status quo. According to the latest findings from Sirius Decisions, Sales Benchmark Index and many other respected researchers, an increasingly common outcome for even well-qualified sales opportunities is not a win, or a competitive loss, but a decision… 

Development specialist TACK International is set to unveil the findings from the 7th edition of its “Buyers’ Views of Salespeople” study at the National Sales Conference on 8 October. Previous research identified that price is not always a key purchase motivator. A quarter of respondents indicated that a number of factors were ahead of price in determining their buying decisions:… 

When hiring sales executives, over 58% of employers believed that “salespeople should know what they are doing”, according to joint research from the British Institute for Learning & Development (BILD) and the Universal Sales Skills Audit (USSA). Just over 58% of employers also reported that “maybe some [sales executives] aren’t as good as we would like” and only 38% of… 

Oracle’s Christina Lammers triumphed at the inaugural Women in Sales Awards North America event at the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston, Massachusetts on 18 June. She won the Best Woman Sales Manager category and the overall award for Most Distinguished Sales Woman Of The Year. Lammers, Regional Manager Emerging Markets, Oracle, said: “it is an absolute honour that I have… 

Industry leaders are calling for a comprehensive shake-up of the UK’s educational system to reflect the needs of employers. This includes delivering a mix of academic and vocational options for 14-18-year-olds. However, there is no mention of how sales might fit into these plans. In a recent speech at the Sunday Times Festival of Education at Wellington College, John Cridland,… 

We asked business thought-leaders from different sectors… 

Blackdot on the value of sales managers First-line sales managers are drivers of performance for pharma sales representatives, as they are in other industries… The profound and compounding impact sales managers have on their sales teams means that 1 high-performing sales manager is as valuable as a handful of high-performing sales reps. High-performing sales managers manage teams that achieve superior… 

The debate swirling around the controversial “Challenger” approach to selling has raised important questions about the way ahead for the sales profession. Chris Alder investigates. It’s probably fair to say that few books on the art of selling have caused quite so much of a stir as the one published in 2011 entitled The Challenger Sale – Taking Control of…