Thursday, January 9th, 2025
Omnichannel, AI and the future of B2B sales
How are B2B buyer expectations changing and where is B2B sales headed? In the previous edition of the Journal, we ran a story on McKinsey’s ninth global B2B Pulse report (released 12 September), which questioned 4,000 B2B decision-makers across eight major industries. This identified how B2B suppliers are responding to “consumer-like” purchasing demands from buyers. Here we talk to the…
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: +
Tuesday, February 14th, 2023
Sustainable sales
What does it mean, and does it add value to businesses? In a world where sustainability is the new buzzword, is “sustainable sales” just greenwashing or can it genuinely support the creation of a company’s unique selling proposition? Academic concepts sometimes languish through lack of action as they cannot be translated into professional practice; however, this article defines sustainable sales…
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…
Wednesday, December 19th, 2018
Understanding procurement and negotiation
How should KAM teams create impact and…
Monday, September 24th, 2018
Do we understand what buyers want?
How customer-centric are our salespeople? Numerous authors down the years have drawn attention to the fact that only a small percentage of salespeople exceed customer expectations. Is this because salespeople tend not to have the competencies that customers are looking for or are buyer expectations unreasonably high? Here we look at the actual data: three studies that have charted buyers’…
Sunday, April 23rd, 2017
Understanding the buying mind-set
Three easy-to-remember quotes from buyers will help get you on their wavelength. Let’s be honest: nobody likes being “sold to”. We like to think that we are controlling the buying cycle, whether it’s a personal purchase or a corporate procurement. If we experience “blatant” or “clumsy” sales tactics, then we react badly; but, if we feel the salesperson is contributing…