Monday, July 26th, 2021
BUYERS’ PERCEPTIONS DIFFER FROM SELLERS’
65% OF SELLERS SAY THEY “ALWAYS” PUT…
Friday, April 23rd, 2021
3 steps to reinventing GTM
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…
Friday, February 26th, 2021
4 key sales reads
Four new books written by distinguished contributors to the Journal offer business leaders, sales professionals, students and academics new insights and guidance as they seek to navigate the complexities of selling and sales leadership today. Each of the authors delivers that rare combination of academic credibility and practical business experience. Sales Management That Works by Frank V Cespedes Rather than moving…
Friday, February 26th, 2021
It’s time to level up!
Four forever changes transforming b2b revenue activities. Sales and marketing leaders, it’s time to level up. Buyers are searching for more information on their own, without talking to a sales rep. That means they are engaging with your content further down the funnel. As a result, your content can’t be just a companion to a sales-led customer conversation; it needs…
Tuesday, November 10th, 2020
Write like a pro
As a sales leader you may be a great talker, but how do you find your written voice? No matter how skilled you are as a practitioner, no matter how you have grown and flourished professionally, if you cannot express yourself with simplicity, in language unencumbered by business jargon, your work counts for little. Nowhere is this more evident than…
Friday, November 6th, 2020
What’s your customer’s unique value story?
Do you have compelling answers to three crucial customer questions: why change, why you, why now? Generic value propositions, while they might be of some use in persuading potential prospects to make initial contact with you as a potential vendor, aren’t very helpful when it comes to setting your customer’s expectations about the specific value that they will derive from…
Thursday, May 28th, 2020
ABM and KAM in tandem
Account-based marketing is increasingly recognised as a highly effective approach to working with key accounts, so is of major interest to key account managers looking for new approaches. November’s KAMBP explored how to use ABM and KAM together. Bev Burgess, Senior Vice President & Practice Lead, and Dave Munn, President and CEO, introduced ITSMA (the Information Technology Services Marketing Association)…
Thursday, May 28th, 2020
2020 Q1 Research Review – edited by Jeremy Noad
The research review aims to help readers keep up to date with recently published research on sales-related topics. The review highlights short abstracts of academically peer-reviewed research. This selection of published research is from a range of academic journals. In this edition, the abstracts include three themes that focus on sales performance, customer management, and sales behavioural studies. Sales Performance…
Tuesday, May 26th, 2020
Cross-cultural sales into China
This study, adapted from a 2018 University of Portsmouth Business School MA Sales Management dissertation, explores the adaptive sales model and its suitability for cross-cultural sales into China. The author was surprised at the lack of cross-cultural awareness and understanding in global sales and communication, with even established exporting enterprises lacking an ability to fully engage and communicate effectively with…
Tuesday, September 10th, 2019
Why seamless is important
Success metrics are refocusing around customer experience….
Wednesday, June 26th, 2019
Acquisition not the same as expansion
The 1st Annual Customer Expansion Marketing and…
Wednesday, June 26th, 2019
Putting personalization to the (field) test
Here we set out to discover what sort of communications personalization actually does drive action. One of the most-quoted lines in movie history comes from the classic film The Godfather. After Michael, the emerging leader of the Corleone crime family, lays out a ruthless plan for revenge against his enemies, he punctuates his strategy with the memorable line: “It’s not…
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
Selling in a sea of sameness
When your competitors are floating in a sea of sameness you need to make sure you are waving not drowning. In the second of a series of articles in which Dr Simon Kelly and Dr Paul Johnston explore customer value and differentiation, they are joined by co-author Stacey Danheiser to ask: are you selling in a sea of sameness? In…
Thursday, March 21st, 2019
Acquisition is not the same as expansion
In sales, acquiring new business and expanding existing relationships is not the same thing – in which case, why do so many companies have the same conversations with prospects as they do with customers? Over the past two years we have undertaken new, original research focused on existing customer conversations. After a decade of hype surrounding the provocative selling approach,…
Thursday, March 21st, 2019
Transitioning from sales training to sales education
As part of a wider professionalisation of the sales function, forward-looking companies are discovering the benefits of sales education as a way to equip their people to thrive in today’s complex and challenging business environment. Today’s business landscape is challenging in multiple ways: it’s super competitive; technology is forcing us to deal with change and adapt our go-to-market models at…
Thursday, March 21st, 2019
Putting the value in value propositions
This is the first of a series of articles in which the authors explore customer value and differentiation. In this article Dr Simon Kelly and Dr Paul Johnston consider the importance of customer value and its criticality in building effective value propositions. They draw together their experience as marketing and sales practitioners, their recent academic and commercial research, and their…
Wednesday, December 19th, 2018
Can one little word change marketing and sales success?
A new study highlights the power of “you” versus “we” phrasing in your messaging. When sending out prospecting messages or presenting solutions to prospects and customers, most marketing and salespeople tend to “we, we, we” all over themselves. No, this article isn’t about losing control of bodily function. It’s about word choice and whether a single word or pronoun-based reference…
Tuesday, December 18th, 2018
Value propositions: the sales and marketing interface
I reviewed two areas of literature before doing the research which covered sales-marketing interface (SMI) and value propositions. Sales-marketing interface SMI literature primarily focused on “The extent to which activities carried out by the two are supportive of each other” (Rouzies, et al. 2005). SMI research has tended to focus on sales and marketing relations as an end in itself….
Friday, December 15th, 2017
Different sales and marketing thought-worlds
Which cross-functional integration mechanisms improve the relationship between sales and marketing functions? The article by Douek on the importance of intra-collaboration between sales teams in complex sales situations in the previous edition of the Journal has highlighted the need to revisit the thorny subject of the internal relationship between sales and marketing functions. Previous research has established that where there…
Saturday, April 22nd, 2017
Transforming sales is not enough
If you’re serious about growth, transform marketing too. A few years ago, I was part of the management team that rapidly grew a mature outsourcing business in just one year, while increasing profitability too. Our strategy was to shift from being a reactive business, waiting for RFPs to arrive, to a proactive one targeting the specific accounts that would deliver…