Tuesday, September 5th, 2023
GenAI for sales messaging
Gartner has devised its Generative Value Messaging…
Tuesday, September 5th, 2023
Opening a conversation
Continuing our new series of sales tips, Bob Apollo discusses five things to bear in mind when preparing for your next significant sales conversation. How we plan and prepare for a sales conversation has a huge impact on the outcome. Preparation: +
Friday, September 30th, 2022
Focus on storytelling
When a group of non-native English speakers wanted to hone their English writing and speaking skills, they joined a programme exploring a range of literary genres via the work of a cross-section of authors. We set these business leaders the task of recounting their most memorable sales experiences in the Journal. In this special feature, we explore the rationale behind…
Thursday, September 29th, 2022
Top sellers are storytellers
Every salesperson has the potential to improve their storytelling skills. As human beings, we have evolved over the generations to use stories to communicate. Moreover, one of the key factors that sets today’s most effective salespeople apart from the rest is their ability to share compelling, relevant anecdotes – typically the experiences of other existing customers – that resonate with…
Thursday, September 29th, 2022
Why is storytelling so powerful?
Stories are not only enduring; they help drive business. Telling stories is what humans do; it is fundamental to the human experience. We’ve been telling stories for tens of millennia: 30,000 years at least. Cave paintings in the Grotte Chauvet-Pont d’Arc, located in the Auvergne district of France, date back 30,000 years and represent the oldest known storyboard to be…
Thursday, September 29th, 2022
Personalisation drives growth Infographic
PERSONALISATION IS IMPORTANT TO CONSUMERS: COVID HAS…
Tuesday, September 28th, 2021
Avoid the parity trap
Differentiating your solutions in highly competitive categories. Are you struggling to create a truly unique value proposition that sets you apart from your competition? You’re not alone. In fact, 88 percent of marketers and sellers surveyed by B2B DecisionLabs aren’t confident their buyers understand what makes their solution unique or valuable. In well-defined categories, many companies can solve the same…
Friday, April 23rd, 2021
Supercharging our sales conversations
Selling power comes not from how much conversation we manage to get through, but the quality of the conversation. Supercharging sales is the overall theme of this edition of the International Journal of Sales Transformation, so I thought it might be appropriate to focus on a topic that has long been a focus of mine: how can salespeople supercharge their…
Friday, April 23rd, 2021
Omnichannel here to stay for B2B sales
Covid-19 has cemented omnichannel interactions as the…
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…
Monday, November 9th, 2020
Improved leadership communication
How storytelling can help bridge the gap between management and teams. Even as we are communicating all the time, even if we are surrounded by communication all day, it is neither easy nor simple: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place,” according to Whyte (1950). From my experience, I believe he is right….
Thursday, May 28th, 2020
A (Virtual) Reality Check: Mastering remote selling
How to make virtual sales presentations more engaging, more memorable and more effective. In an instant, the number of salespeople delivering remote presentations has reached 100%. But how do they feel about virtual sales calls, versus in-person meetings? Not good, according to our recent industry survey of over 500 B2B salespeople. Over 70% of salespeople believe that remote selling is…
Tuesday, September 10th, 2019
Gaining executive access
The approach advocated by so many executive access strategies finished dead last. Original research explores messaging approaches for gaining access to senior execs… and which approach works best. Getting meetings with senior executives has never been more important, but any salesperson you ask will say that it’s now harder than ever. The conventional wisdom is that, if you want to…
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…
Friday, March 22nd, 2019
Should sorry be the hardest word?
New research reveals a formula for communicating an apology that generates greater customer satisfaction and loyalty after a service failure. Service recovery paradox Have you ever had a service problem with a customer and worried about the negative impact it would have on your relationship and long-term revenue prospects? Maybe they won’t renew. Maybe they won’t buy more. And, worse,…
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,…
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
The “Fourth Value Conversation”
What is the “Fourth Value Conversation”? We asked Tim Riesterer, author of The Three Value Conversations. Q: What is the “Fourth Value Conversation” and why is there a need for it now? We’re calling it “Expand Value”. It’s that part of the customer conversation lifecycle where you’re looking to ensure more renewals, communicate price increases and generate upsells and cross-sells…