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Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
Intelligent platforms that integrate sales enablement and communications tools reduce salespeople’s admin burden and make the 18% of the time they spend in CRM more effective, according to a white paper from consultants Strategy to Revenue that quotes statistics from a 2018 Forbes article “Why Sales Reps Spend Less Than 36% Of Time Selling (And Less Than 18% In CRM)”….
Tuesday, June 25th, 2019
Elementary sales jobs are among those at high risk of automation in England, according to recent analysis by Office for National Statistics (ONS). Around 1.5 million jobs (7.4%) in England are at high risk of some of their duties and tasks being automated in the future. “When considering the overall risk of automation, the three occupations with the highest probability…
Wednesday, March 27th, 2019
This report from Cranfield’s KAM and Strategic…
Thursday, March 21st, 2019
It’s easy to make schoolboy errors when you start selling, but ten-year-old Joe Beales is already well on the way to mastering telephone sales, thanks to his dad Kevin, the founder of Newcastle based start-up, Refract, a sales coaching platform. Beales junior has become an internet sensation – with approaching 100,000 views on LinkedIn – after his dad posted a…
Thursday, March 21st, 2019
The surprising thing I learnt from giving a 20-minute nonsense presentation to a well-known tech company. The greatest thing I ever wrote, something I’ve jokingly referred to as my magnum opus, was a 20-minute lecture on innovation for the executive team of a major US corporation. As they do not come out all that well in this story, I won’t…
Tuesday, December 18th, 2018
Membrain’s Content Hub claims to solve the problem of salespeople having difficulty finding the right type of content when they need it, or worse, using outdated content stored on their desktops. It also addresses the issue of marketing not knowing which content is being used, and what is most effective in increasing sales effectiveness. In contrast to most sales enablement…
Tuesday, December 18th, 2018
Decision-makers now tend to view the IT department as a supportive enabler of technology purchases, rather than the “roadblock” it was seen as previously – that’s according to a survey of how technology attitudes are changing in large organisations in the US and UK. Vanson Bourne, a UK-based market research organisation specialising in enterprise technology trends, unveiled its third annual…
Tuesday, December 18th, 2018
Consultancy firm McKinsey is advocating using advanced analytics and machine learning to help institutions combat conduct risk – for example, in sales environments – as part of a more comprehensive and cost-effective solution. The approach would help “connect the dots” across individual and team activities by integrating customer and other data. The consultants argue that connections are often hidden in…
Friday, May 18th, 2018
Research by IT marketplace Probrand.co.uk indicates that a major gap exists between what buyers expect and what is currently being delivered by IT suppliers. It highlights the trend away from engaging salespeople early in the buying cycle but also highlights significant differences between buying products and services. The survey reveals that more than half of B2B buyers (53%) now like…
Thursday, May 17th, 2018
Last time around, I wrote about artificial intelligence (AI) and sales. More specifically, I speculated on the possible impact of one type of AI – deep learning – on sales as we know it today. I explained that many features of more routinised sales jobs might be amenable to replacement by deep-learning methods, and also that perhaps this might not…
Thursday, May 17th, 2018
Successful B2B sales teams need to strike a balance between digital and human sales – that’s the conclusion of May 2018 paper The secret to making it in the digital sales world: The human touch from consultants McKinsey. B2B sales leaders using digital effectively enjoy five times the growth of their peers who are not at the cutting edge of…
Thursday, May 17th, 2018
Organisations understand the power of coaching and the importance of data to inform this activity. But could it lead to a zombie sales force? What is the difference between coaching and training? This is often poorly understood. As a starter, we might consider that training is about transferring knowledge while coaching is about enhancing that knowledge and developing people and…
Thursday, May 17th, 2018
Sales talent analytics can drive competitive advantage and unlock new sources of corporate wealth. Pretty much everyone these days has heard of “big data”, but how many firms are actually using it to unlock new sources of corporate wealth in connection with their talent? Let’s start at the beginning: what is big data? Google defines it as: “Extremely large data…
Wednesday, December 13th, 2017
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is building its strategy around the proposition that the right mix of private cloud, public cloud, managed cloud and traditional IT infrastructure will play a pivotal role in speeding innovation and growth. HPE is currently in the midst of transforming itself, reflecting the IT industry’s evolution from selling standardized hardware and software to providing more flexible,…
Friday, September 22nd, 2017
Is artificial intelligence set to free salespeople from the most tedious aspects of their jobs? We talked to Miller Heiman president and CEO Byron Matthews. It will come as no surprise that, today, salespeople spend only around a third of their time on core selling activities in front of a customer trying to understand their needs, according to Byron Matthews,…
Thursday, September 21st, 2017
While inside sales has long been no stranger to automation, it is now poised to take another leap forward as AI-assisted sales acceleration technology and gamification help prioritise the most promising opportunities and energise the sales floor. As customers seize the balance of power and more aspects of the sales process migrate online, leading B2B sales organisations find they must…
Thursday, September 21st, 2017
Digital is set to disrupt every aspect of life including business. So what’s on the horizon for sales and what’s already here? One day in the not too far distant future, a wave of technological innovation will transform society: for instance, brain-computer interfaces will replace keyboards; there will be intention-decoding algorithms; communications devices will be embedded in humans; and we…
Thursday, September 21st, 2017
Salespeople make on average four attempts per lead to contact a prospective customer, a recent survey has found. Email and phone calls are still the most common touchpoints for sales teams: the most common pattern was a single email – 32% of respondents used that method, accounting for 61% of first contacts – while the second most common cadence is…
Thursday, September 21st, 2017
It would be hard to argue against the idea that we’re living in an age of analytics. For many large organisations selling to the public through B2C channels, analytics has become a critical competitive weapon, whether it’s our favourite online shopping site tempting us to make another related purchase, or our local supermarket ensuring that they don’t run out of…
Saturday, April 22nd, 2017
“Empowered customers are on the move: 40%…
