Research

Introduction As Product Marketing Director of Sony Mobile my daily work entails the creation of propositions for consumers and business customers in Europe based on propositions that are created mainly in Tokyo headquarters. I decided to research how the propositions can be improved and my focus is on the starting point of proposition creation. The aim of this research is… 

Introduction Working most of my career for global companies like PWC, IBM and SAP, I have been confronted with solutions and services of rising complexity, which are sold and delivered to increasingly knowledgeable customers in a competitive and transforming global environment. The daily activities of my sales team in direct relation with its customer are central: they are understanding the… 

Here, we explore why salespeople need help creating urgency with executive decision makers. Stalled proposals and “no decisions” are arguably the biggest threat to your sales pipelines. There’s a good chance you lose more deals here than you lose to your traditional competitors. The big challenge often comes down to how you make your case to an executive buyer. It’s… 

There’s a proper time to provoke the customer – it’s just not when you’re trying to keep them or get them to pay more, research shows. Provoking the customer, challenging the status quo, leading with an unexpected insight: these kinds of message are the lifeblood of the disruption-minded story you need to tell when you’re the outsider intent on convincing… 

Delivering your most effective customer renewal message is your best opportunity to drive profitability. But what should that message be? When I last wrote for this publication, my piece addressed a messaging and skills approach for succeeding in what many B2B salespeople regard as the hardest but most rewarding type of sale: new customer acquisition. The skills approach I outlined… 

This year’s Global Sales Transformation Event at the London Stock Exchange provided the opportunity for the first cohort of Consalia-Middlesex University Masters graduates to present their research findings. Carl Day, Channel Sales Director, Toshiba TEC UK: “Ethics – the DNA for value creation” Opening with the confession that he sells photocopiers, Day articulated his dilemma as being: how to professionalise… 

In today’s ultra-competitive markets it is imperative that salespeople work to continuously sharpen their customer focus. By comparing the new model of personal selling with the marketing process, this article provides an agenda for helping to make it happen. Introduction Despite the rise of online selling, in many markets – especially B2B – personal selling remains a critical component of… 

How a productivity programme for a major bank achieved success through the introduction of a behavioural operating model for branch teams and, most importantly, team managers. Introduction The banking group concerned in this study is a diverse retail and commercial bank with 14,760 branches (more than any other international bank), over 193,000 employees and 102 million customers worldwide. Currently the… 

As part of his Masters programme, SAP’s Brice Faure researched whether a sustainable coaching methodology could support SAP sales managers during the process of transforming the business into the Cloud. The concept of coaching has been much discussed in recent decades and part of my project has been to understand what coaching means and embraces. Too often in my reading,… 

Roger Brooksbank and Zahed Subhan explore how salespeople can help to grow a customer-led organisational culture. Abstract Since salespeople are at the cutting edge of a company’s overall marketing effort it means their knowledge of marketplace dynamics is second to none. High-performing companies understand the value of this knowledge and harness it by involving them in growing a truly customer-led… 

Why does the typical revenue-generation process yield only 2% and how can marginal improvements transform your sales performance? The revenue generation process is typically seen as a series of loosely connected but separate activities by most organisations. When the yields from each step are combined, the resultant efficiency is just 2.1% – see survey results below and page 5 of… 

Is conflict within a business-to-business (B2B) relationship a bad thing? Gargiulo & Ertug (2006) argue that hostility and bitterness resulting from disagreements not being resolved amicably can lead to almost pathological consequences such as relationship dissolution. However, when disputes are resolved amicably, such disagreements can be referred to as functional conflict, because they prevent stagnation, stimulate interest and create curiosity,… 

How do we re-engineer the sales and marketing interface for the benefit of our customers? Just as I sat down to write this article my email pinged. I tried to ignore it as I’d just come back from an excellent “Sales-Mind“ workshop that reminded me of the foolishness of multitasking. Then I saw the title – “Brands failing to align… 

As part of his MSc Professional Practice in Sales Transformation, Sony Mobile’s Russell Keating explores how to unlock more sales through a strategic understanding of his client’s key concerns as well as those of his own organisation. This project relates to work with one of the largest mobile phone operators in Ireland, referred to as the “client” throughout this paper…. 

Researchers from Loughborough University suggest that commercial sales “scripts”, and a great deal of communication training, fail to identify what really works to convert callers to clients and optimize the customer experience. Here, they explore evidence-based training for sales conversations – the Conversation Analytic Role-play Method. How do you know that your telephone sales calls, “recorded for training purposes”, are… 

Tony Douglas investigates the role and relevance of university sales competitions to sales education from the perspective of business school students. Professional or personal selling has not been regarded by academics in general – nor indeed practitioners – as a profession that can be (or should be) taught at university (Douglas, 2011; Rutterford, 2011; McCourt, 2011). Though this may well… 

Much has been talked about the nature of value propositions but how do KAMs go about the act of proposing value? Paul Johnston explores KAM distinctiveness, social context and identity. What makes a key account manager distinctive from other salespeople? Much has been researched and written about KAM best practice (see for example Rackham, 1995; Payne et al, 1998; Ulaga,… 

As businesses start to compete on their ability to perform and deliver results over time, contract terms are becoming the new platform for successful selling, argues the IACCM’s CEO Tim Cummins. Successful selling has never been an easy task. As time passes, it seems to become harder. Buyers are increasingly informed, aggressive and often cynical. Internet search has disrupted the… 

When SAP set out to update its go-to-market approach, sales enablement also embarked on its own journey in support of the process. Axel Ferreyrolles talks about his voyage of discovery. With the advent of “the cloud”, shifting market conditions and changing customer expectations, enterprise application software giant SAP understood that it had to adapt. For Axel Ferreyrolles, head of sales… 

Dr Roy Whitten and Scott Roy discuss how selling can be a catalyst for change and a force for good in the developing world. Selling stuff to poor people – sounds shameful, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t ¬– that is, if you want them to actually use products that can literally change their lives. Sanitary latrines that prevent contamination of…