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Friday, November 6th, 2020
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
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)…
Friday, May 22nd, 2020
Bob Apollo on Sales Methodologies In recent articles in this series, I’ve taken a look at some of today’s most widely adopted B2B sales methodologies. Many sales methodologies (in the interest, no doubt, of selling more books and training courses) claim to have a uniquely effective approach. Yet, and perhaps inevitably, each methodology has its strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots….
Tuesday, September 10th, 2019
Following up on our previous article in last issue of IJST, we continue the discussion on how to best work with your strategic customers to help create joint solutions for growth. What do the best do differently to create joint solutions? Leading companies that excel at collaboratively creating value with their customers are not trying to do a thousand things…
Tuesday, September 10th, 2019
In the previous edition of the International Journal of Sales Transformation, I summarised some of the key aspects of the Sandler Selling System. In the second of my series of articles on today’s leading sales methodologies, I want to turn to another long-established approach: Strategic Selling® from the Miller Heiman Group. The Strategic Selling methodology is particularly effective in complex…
Tuesday, September 10th, 2019
Context is important in sales meetings. Successful approaches vary according to the level and function of the executive you are speaking to and how far along the buying journey they may be. Writing in Harvard Business Review, Journal contributor Dr Frank Cespedes and Tracy DeCicco warn of the negative consequences of choosing the wrong sales approach for the circumstances, such…
Tuesday, September 10th, 2019
Some 24% of inside sellers are actively looking for a new job, with the three most common reasons being dissatisfaction with the competitiveness of compensation package, manager quality, and the degree of respect the organisation shows employees. That’s according to findings from Gartner’s Global Labor Market Survey. The survey also highlights factors that would pull sales representatives to similar jobs…
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
How to work with strategic customers to create joint solutions for growth. Article summary Persistent, disruptive forces impacting profitable growth are intensifying, and as a result, companies in many industries face slower growth and accelerating commoditization of product and service margins. Given marketplace complexity and dynamic shifts in how customers buy, traditional business models are threatened and new strategies and…
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
In this, the first of a series of articles on sales methodologies, I want to turn the spotlight onto Sandler Selling. Introduced by the late David Sandler in 1967 as an antidote to conventional product-centric, hard-sales tactics, the approach aims to achieve a more equitable balance of power between the buyer and the seller. By emphasising rapport-building and empathy, and…
Thursday, March 21st, 2019
Alliances between organisations can be marriages made in heaven, or they can go horribly wrong…. When organisations are first formed, whether in garages in Silicon Valley or back bedrooms in Bangalore, the original founders use the first-generation sales model to grow the business. That is, they “sell to” people. They sell to fellow enthusiasts to convince them to join the…
Thursday, March 21st, 2019
There is a general recognition – backed by the latest research from CSO Insights and others – that sales organisations that have adopted a structured approach to selling consistently and often dramatically outperform their less-effective competitors. One of the key foundations of a structured approach to selling involves the adoption of an appropriate sales methodology. You might think of these…
Tuesday, December 18th, 2018
In this series of articles we look at some of the most popular sales methodologies. What’s the difference between a methodology and a process? In sales, the methodology is the application of general – possibly universal – principles to the way we approach a component of the sales cycle albeit that it may also be contextual. A process, in contrast,…
Tuesday, December 18th, 2018
Pharma needs to transform the way it engages customers if it is to adapt to disruption in the healthcare landscape. For the past 20 years, I have been involved in pharma discussions regarding the need to radically change our sales and engagement model. The pharma industry has shifted from defining its customers as the physicians prescribing to patients to a…
Monday, March 12th, 2018
Why the three topics of coaching, change management and stakeholder engagement should be considered more seriously in the development of sales managers and sales professionals identified as high performers. Introduction I identified three topics I considered to be important to sales that were not usually taught or self-selected by salespeople, and that I believed would help outperformance in the long…
Thursday, September 21st, 2017
Almost six years on since the publication of The Challenger Sale by CEB authors, we consider the principles of the wider disruptive selling approach and discuss their application in the field and what the future holds for provocative selling. In a 2012 Harvard Business Review article titled “The End of Solution Sales”, authors Brent Adamson and Matt Dixon identified a…
Sunday, January 29th, 2017
Joe Morone, Karen Benjamin and Marty Smith This book is aimed at CEOs and sales leaders who feel their organisations have not yet won their fair share of their potential market. Co-author Joe Morone tells readers: “You have great products and services. You’ve amassed a dedicated team. You have loyal clients realising tangible success with your offerings. But improving sales…
Tuesday, November 29th, 2016
Introduced in 1898, the traditional purchase funnel no longer applies. Sales needs a lead-generation model for the digital environment. There is one perennial truth in sales and that is, salespeople have to prospect in the places their customers inhabit. This has led salespeople to visit exhibitions and conferences, attend relevant networking events and even knock on the doors at certain…
Saturday, January 30th, 2016
Insight Selling: How to sell value & differentiate your product with Insight Scenarios by Michael David Harris, paperback, 6 January 2014 How does a salesperson deliver insight so that it challenges the customer’s thinking without challenging the customer? That’s the question that this book will answer. Part one of this book examines why “Insight Selling” will help you sell value…
Saturday, January 30th, 2016
The Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource, Jeffrey Gitomer The new softbound edition of global sales authority Jeffrey Gitomer’s bestselling classic, The Sales Bible, has been updated and appended to include social media answers, and claims to offer the ultimate sales methods and strategies that really work every day, in real-world selling situations. +
Saturday, January 30th, 2016
Brilliant Selling: What the Best Salespeople Know, Do and Say (Brilliant Business) by Jeremy Cassell and Tom Bird, Pearson paperback, 31 May 2012 Written by MD of performance improvement consultancy RTP (Release the Potential) Jeremy Cassell and RTP director Tom Bird, this book starts with the premise that you can sell anything you want and targets are always achievable. Whether…
