Guided Selling is not an event, it’s a process whereby every time your go to market strategy or value proposition shifts, or the same for your competitors or customer needs shift, we can quickly get these shifts into the hands of salespeople and have words coming out of their mouths that reflect our shift in strategy.
Read MoreWe win deals when we: “Show customers how we meet their business needs at higher confidence and lower risk than alternatives.”
Winning has become more difficult: close rates are at an all-time low (49.6%), and actually lower than the odds at a craps table!
Why is this?
Read MoreSales reps need to evolve or they will go extinct; some already have. Don’t believe me? Let me tell you a story. It is a bit long, but I promise the payoff is there.
I am confident that most of you reading this have had the “opportunity” to buy a car from a traditional dealership? I needed a gently used 2017 truck. My favorite car to buy is usually less than one year old and has about 5,000 miles on it. Essentially, I am looking for a new car where someone else ate the depreciation.
When I started my search a couple weeks ago, I went to both the local Ford and Dodge dealerships to look at trucks. At both dealerships, I had nearly the exact same experience.
Read MoreDiscovery has long been among, if not the most important selling skill. Gaining access to stakeholders and uncovering needs is key to presenting your value.
However, most discovery looks like this:
" What Keeps You Awake at Night?"
This approach makes it difficult to gain access to execute discovery and makes it harder to uncover areas to add value and differentiate. What is the value to an executive of meeting with you only to tell you what they already know? How are we going to add value when customers, who are more digitally informed than ever, are diagnosing their own needs and prescribing their own solution (many times sub-optimally)? More importantly, it has us following vs. leading.
Read MoreSenior executives know that, beyond mergers and acquisitions, a company’s growth is driven one deal at a time by the way salespeople sell and negotiate. That’s why American companies spend $7.2 billion every year on sales and negotiation methodologies. But beyond proprietary (and perhaps biased) consulting reports and high level-level academic papers on change, there’s little information available on whether those investing are actually achieving a return on their investment.
“More than half of the firms report investing $1500-$7500 annually per sales rep in training…only a ¼ of reps use their company’s methodology more than half of the time”Read More
Are we preparing sales teams to be liked for better personal relationships, or are we preparing them to build better business relationships with clients?
Read MoreSellers are having a reactive negotiation conversation about commercial terms with buyers - separate of the value discussion. These buyers are leveraging sellers to drive deeper discounts and concessions absent of the power of value.
Read MoreWith all the changes happening in the world of buying (B2B Digital Revolution, Committee buys, etc.) how is this impacting the fundamental role of sellers and those who support them?
SHORT ANSWER: It is impacting them in a lot of ways.
LONG ANSWER: Looking across the changes and how they are impacting sellers, one stands out above the rest. A seller today, needs to be able to successfully “change the conversation.” Allow me to explain...
Read MoreBuyers today are more empowered with access to much of the product information that used to be provided by sales, making content king. Whether all content stays within the marketing team or organizations build a sales enablement function, we believe that solid content should meet four criteria.
Read MoreSales enablement and how organizations support sales teams is undergoing significant transformation and it’s an exciting time to be in this field, but this is only adding complexity for those trying to select and make investment decisions.
Read MoreRevenue goals are up, the win rate of sales team is down, way down. These amongst other reasons have created a need and filling it is a relatively new function that is starting to gain momentum: Sales Enablement.
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