Monday, September 29th, 2025
Buyers need human salespeople as guides in complex B2B environments to escape preconceptions
In today’s B2B landscape, buyers conduct significant research and vendor comparisons prior to ever contacting a salesperson. At the same time, vendors assume that buyers are likely to be confident in understanding the problems they are trying to solve, which can lead to sellers failing to conduct a robust discovery process once they do get involved. More paradoxically, however, buyers…
Monday, September 29th, 2025
Buyers prefer self-service, but choose sellers for key tasks
Buyers favour online self-service tools over sellers when searching for general information and learning new things. However, for buying tasks requiring contextual intelligence, such as determining whether a product or service fits their company’s needs, buyers prefer to seek seller input. That’s according to Alice Walmesley, Director Analyst in the Gartner Sales Practice. “Instead of offering generic information that buyers…
Monday, September 29th, 2025
Most B2B buyers will prefer human interaction to AI by 2030 – Gartner
While AI-driven solutions offer speed, efficiency, and convenience, especially in the early stages of the sales process, recent analysis suggests that the demand for genuine human engagement is far from diminishing. In fact, by 2030, Gartner predicts that 75% of B2B buyers will prefer sales experiences that prioritise human interaction over AI, prompting organisations to rethink how they structure their…
Monday, July 7th, 2025
Customer experience continues to wane – Forrester
Ongoing challenges that drove last year’s decline in customer experience (CX) quality – weaker employee experience, waning customer obsession, disappointing tech implementations, and economic volatility – continue to impact how consumers perceive CX quality, according to Forrester’s global Customer Experience Index rankings for 2025 which were unveiled on 24 June. Moreover, the disparity between the customer experience that brands intend…
Tuesday, April 8th, 2025
81% of buyers dissatisfied with chosen suppliers – Forrester
Tight budgets, AI’s influence in buying and selling, negative buying experiences, and long purchase cycles are further complicating the B2B buying process and frustrating buyers and sellers alike. According to Forrester’s The State Of Business Buying, 2024 report, 86% of B2B purchases stall during the buying process and 81% of buyers express dissatisfaction with their chosen providers. While buyers rely…
Monday, April 7th, 2025
How do customers want to be sold to in 2025?
What core values should underpin sales from a customer perspective in 2025 and beyond? Back in 2009 a seminal doctoral thesis helped to usher in a new approach to sales: How can a client-centric values approach to selling lead to the co-creation of a new global selling mindset? Dr Philip Squire, who conducted the original research, is looking to run…
Monday, April 7th, 2025
Gartner spells out top commercial threats facing sales leaders in 2025
Chief sales officers must evolve with rapid market changes and emerging technological influences to succeed. That’s the message from research and advisory firm, Gartner. As the global marketplace evolves at an unprecedented pace, Gartner says it has identified the top seven commercial threats facing sales leaders in 2025. “There is increasing pressure on leaders to enhance performance amidst macroeconomic fluctuations,”…
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024
B2B e-commerce unseats in-person sales for second year running
Business-to-business suppliers are under pressure to respond to “consumer-like” purchasing demands as buyers continue to shift the way they make purchases, a new global survey released on 12 September reveals. At the same time, buyers feel more comfortable with remote and selfserve spending on big-ticket items this year than they did in 2022, according to consultants McKinsey & Co. “E-commerce,…
Wednesday, April 24th, 2024
5 essential steps for targeting customers
Researching prospects can be a time-consuming activity but is essential to success. Used judiciously, AI can help streamline the process. Then it’s time to make contact… See Sales Tips 101 “Opening a conversation” +
Wednesday, April 24th, 2024
How to establish trust with customers
Trust plays a major role in our prospective customer’s decision-making. Here are a few of the most important ways in which salespeople can establish trust: +
Wednesday, October 11th, 2023
Electric superbike company appoints legendary CRO
Electric superbike manufacturer Verge Motorcycles has appointed business and retail visionary George Blankenship as its new Chief Revenue Officer. With a career spanning more than 40 years, Blankenship is known for developing acclaimed retail strategies for world renowned brands such as software and computer maker Apple and electric car manufacturer Tesla. “Motorcycles have been manufactured with the same underlying format…
Wednesday, October 11th, 2023
Trust unlocks online sales
A new report from “trust platform for digital commerce” Forter has found “alarming rates of false declines, cart abandonment, and trust issues” in online shopping. The 2023 Consumer Trust Premium Report explores the relationship between consumer shopping habits and brand trust. Over 73% of UK consumers have had a negative online shopping experience, with high rates of false declines (14%),…
Thursday, July 6th, 2023
Build deeper connections
Understanding best practices for a buyer-centric sales approach. A buyer-centric approach to selling is table stakes in today’s competitive business landscape – and yet, buyer-centric approaches across companies and industries seem to be vastly different. It begs the question: How do sales leaders and sales representatives interpret buyer-centricity and are they aligned on its crucial components? To further explore this…
Thursday, April 20th, 2023
Salespeople and leaders differ on key aspects of buyer centricity
Recent research highlights differences in how sales leaders and sellers view the best ways to engage with prospects, but the majority agree that buyer centricity is the right approach overall – that’s according to a study conducted by sales training specialist ValueSelling Associates and L&D publication Training Industry. A significant majority of sales leaders (61%) believe it makes sense to…
Thursday, April 20th, 2023
Does your organisation have buyer-centric sales skills?
Fewer than half of sales leaders and…
Monday, February 13th, 2023
Customers are demanding much more
As buyers become ever more demanding, companies…
Friday, September 30th, 2022
Cranfield KAM Forum (Reports from Q2 2022)
Cranfield KAM Forum has now restarted face-to-face sessions in parallel with its online seminars. The success and popularity of the online seminars has demonstrated that there is benefit from them continuing in parallel with the face-to-face sessions. As always, the speakers and subject were chosen to be particularly relevant to key account managers building and maintaining business in the current…
Tuesday, January 11th, 2022
Cranfield KAM Forum online
Reports from the Q2 and Q3 sessions While things are slowly returning to normal, the Cranfield KAM Forum seminars are continuing to complement the regular face-to face meetings that will resume when it is safe to do so. The webinars continue to address both strategic and operational themes and personal development topics of interest for key account managers. In this…
Friday, November 26th, 2021
Looking to 2025
Way ahead 50% of chief sales officers…
Friday, November 26th, 2021
Technology
Rod Barthet, CEO, Kyocera Document Solutions UK; Iain Masson, RVP UK & Nordics, Showpad 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…
