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Monday, September 30th, 2024
Good governance and a thought-through approach are essential if we are to use AI responsibly I was seven years old when I made my first sale. The family business provided musical education concerts for children, so in the school holidays I was press-ganged in to help. I quickly found that being front-of-house selling merchandise was much more fun than being…
Thursday, September 19th, 2024
Why safe, responsible, and compliant AI is key to enabling the adoption of AI for sales and marketing. Since the advent of transformer architectures in 2017 and powerful models like GPT-3 in 2023, artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly evolved into a transformative force across industries. Sales and marketing, in particular, can benefit immensely from AI’s ability to revolutionise customer engagement,…
Thursday, September 19th, 2024
Is AI ready to transform sales? From AI-assisted Raybans that can initiate a call (look cool while you’re phoning clients from the beach) to email subject line generators (fill your prospect’s inbox with annoyingly zany emails), AI has been top of the hype charts ever since Chat GPT broke onto the scene almost two years ago (November 2022). Since then,…
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024
Rethink your selling strategy and shift it to a value-based KAM business model. We all know that we are operating in an increasingly complex and competitive marketplace. As such, it is imperative for suppliers to adapt their sales strategies to maintain relevance in order to drive growth. The traditional sales models that once fuelled success are rapidly becoming obsolete. Today,…
Monday, April 22nd, 2024
B2B trust research: what’s next? Abstract New academic research on trust will build on insights generated through Mark Hollyoake’s 2020 doctoral thesis (see previous article). They aim to dig deeper into the role of the “Boundary Spanner in relational trust development”, based on eight years of academic research through the University of Southampton. The original research Boundary spanners: What are…
Monday, February 19th, 2024
2024 is going to be challenging, so what are the significant issues for KAMs this year? We asked some respected commentators. What a decade it has been so far: a global pandemic, war in Europe and the Mediterranean, increasing geopolitical uncertainty and uncoupling of global supply chains, the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (for good and ill), recession in major…
Wednesday, October 11th, 2023
Five negative effects of sales efficiency. Efficiency in the sales process is a good thing, right? Well, it all depends on what you mean by “efficiency”. The definition of “efficient” is: “achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense.” In parentheses, the Google dictionary notes, “(especially of a system or machine).” And it’s that last part, I want to…
Tuesday, September 5th, 2023
Anticipating the future puts you ahead of the game. Here is an innovative guide to driving change. Part I: We couldn’t possibly do that! How the “future readiness movement” began. It was the midst of the pandemic, and it was my first team meeting as I embarked in my new role as the Chief Operating Officer for SAP Asia Pacific…
Tuesday, September 5th, 2023
Senior sales leaders from around the globe gathered in London on 7 July to celebrate the forthcoming launch of a unique new book they have created. Leadership Narratives: Reflective Journeys of Sales Professionals is due to be published by leading academic publisher Routledge in December 2023. The sales leaders flew in from as far afield as Nevada and Dubai and…
Monday, September 4th, 2023
Product-led growth seeks to place the product at the epicentre of customer acquisition, retention, and expansion to achieve “lower sales costs, greater product virality, and higher net retention”. As such, the product itself plays a critical role in acquiring, growing, and retaining customers. This approach has traditionally been seen as a more effective way to engage SME businesses, while a…
Wednesday, July 5th, 2023
Some 35% of chief revenue officers (CROs) will establish a generative AI operations team within their go-to market (GTM) organization by 2025, according to a June statement from Gartner. The focus on generative AI will democratize, accelerate and enable the production of buyer-centric messaging and content, the technology research and consulting firm claims. “There is a great burden on sellers…
Thursday, April 20th, 2023
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 four themes that focus on sales performance, customer management, and behavioural studies. Sales performance Salesperson…
Tuesday, February 14th, 2023
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…
Tuesday, February 14th, 2023
Sales operations are having a golden era. Organizations that understand this will come out winners in the years to come. Tomorrow is happening now – like, now now! From forecasting to demand management, sales operations is moving from an enabler to a player, but the move must be intentional; it will not happen by coincidence. Here’s why. The business of…
Tuesday, February 14th, 2023
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 four themes that focus on sales performance, customer management, behavioural studies, and systems and tools….
Tuesday, February 14th, 2023
Tackling obstacles to transformational leadership in corporations. As middle managers, we sit at the intersection of the executives who have power and the employees who can create momentum. However, corporations are collections of people scattered across multiple departments with many hierarchies. While the organisation may appear to be united in reaching its ultimate objective, behaviour appears to be independent and…
Monday, February 13th, 2023
The way that pharmaceutical and medical device companies market and sell their products is on the cusp of major change, according to a paper from industry consultancy Impatient Health. Significant cuts are expected across commercial departments in 2023. “By the end of the year we will see 20% trimmed in commercial roles, at both HQ and country level,” the authors…
Monday, February 13th, 2023
As buyers become ever more demanding, companies…
Friday, September 30th, 2022
“Putting the customer at the heart” by Mark Bailey Rolls-Royce plc is a company that deals with power and propulsion and should not be confused with the motor-car company, which is entirely separate. Rolls-Royce plc provides power and propulsion systems for land, sea, and air, including nuclear submarines, military and civil aircraft, and major data centres. All of its systems…
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022
Value First, Then Price: Building Value-Based Pricing Strategies, edited by Andreas Hinterhuber and Todd C Snelgrove, is the definitive book on value selling. To celebrate the publication of the second edition we have interpreted some of the main points in one of the key chapters of the book: “Quantifying your value so customers are willing and able to pay for…
