Sales
The real enemy of salespeople today isn't their archrivals; it's no decision. That's according to the several hundred business-to-business salespeople I conducted recently . What is it that prevents a prospective customer from making a purchase even after they have conducted a lengthy evaluation process? The reasons may surprise you.
Why Customers Don't Buy - Steve W. Martin
What a Great VP Sales Actually Does. Where The Magic Is. And When to Hire One. | saastr
In SaaS, #1 most common mishire, with a bullet, is the VP/head of sales. In fact, there a VC saying that I used to really hate. It goes something like “You’ve Got to Get Past the Carcass of Your First VP of Sales” or “It’s The Second VP of Sales When You Really Start Selling” or variants thereof.
Insight And Challenging Without Outcomes Is Just Dreaming
Our customers want insights–they want to learn more about what they could achieve, how they can improve, why they might change! In my experience, this has always been critical to engaging customers. Today, it’s just as critical, perhaps more so, because if we aren’t providing it, they can find it elsewhere. But Insight and Challenging the customer to think differently is not the goal, it’s only the beginning. Insight helps the customer to understand new possibilities and should instigate change.Discover 32 must have sales tools handpicked by the experts In December 2012, six experts in the B2B Sales industry came together for a webinar to find 32 of the must have sales tools for 2013. That webinar has been transcribed and enriched into this eBook brought together by InsideView.
Free eBook: 32 Sales Tools for 2013
B2B Sellers, Wake Up! Adopt Buyer Experience Management, or Get a Pink Slip from Customer 2.0
The traits in a salesperson that executives find valuable and strategic, namely focusing on solving a problem (13%) and on driving an end result for them (8%), were the least common traits perceived by buyers. —Forrester Research The B2B sales profession is in denial . That's the overwhelming conclusion I've reached after watching the painfully slow response of B2B Sellers to the rise of customer power. Instead of truly engaging as buyers expect, Sellers—the combined marketing and sales organizations—are tweaking 50-year-old selling approaches and loading up technology to optimize internal processes. This inside-out approach is a recipe for failure.
When Anneke Seley joined Oracle as the growing company’s 12 th employee in the early 1980s, the modern concept of Sales 2.0 wasn’t even a glimmer in the B2B technology world’s eye. In fact, for an industry that was largely field-sales focused at the time, executing an inside sales strategy was evolutionary enough. Some leading sales organizations even viewed a phone-based sales approach as a gimmick that wouldn’t last. But Oracle and Seley saw things differently. Unlike some of its competitors, Oracle chose to embrace what it considered a sales paradigm shift, encouraging Seley to design and implement its first inside sales operation, OracleDirect.
Sales 2.0: How Your Business Should Adapt
The annual Buyersphere report from BaseOne , in conjunction with B2B Marketing, Research Now, and McCallum Layton, consists of interviews with B2B buyers who have made actual business purchases in the last 12 months. By asking detailed questions about the actual journey the buyers went through, the report gives what it calls “concrete, reliable findings [that can] be used to convince your clients, persuade your bosses, and defend your decisions”. The full report can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/buyersphere12 . (Note: The report surveys buyers in the UK, France, Germany, and Italy so is obviously focused on European buyers, but I believe the insights below are relevant to all markets.) I was particularly struck by the actual data that showed how buyers are using social media in the process, especially by age.
How B2B Buyers Really Use Social Media: Insights from the 2012 Buyersphere Report
by Keith Ferrazzi | 9:05 AM July 11, 2012 Sales teams that focus on relationships quickly learn the value of providing personal and professional value to clients rather than focusing solely on the sale. The impact of relationship building with your customers may surprise you. Ferrazzi Greenlight's study of 16 Global Account Teams ( PDF ) showed that these strategic, relationship-focused teams grew their accounts at least twice as fast as regular transactionally-focused account teams. This happened despite the fact that the relationship-focused teams worked on the company's largest, most mature accounts — the most difficult to expand rapidly because they were already so large. Why?
How to Turn a Relationship Into a Sale - Keith Ferrazzi
McKinsey: 5 winning strategies of the world’s top sales organisations
McKinsey: 5 winning strategies of the world’s top sales organisations Pär Edin and his colleagues at McKinsey believe they have identified the five winning strategies that distinguish the world’s leading sales organisations from their also-ran competitors. Pär presented their findings at the excellent recent Sales and Marketing 2.0 conference in London - and showed that we all have the potential to emulate the success of these top performers.
Social Selling Tactics that Work
On Demand Live session from May 16, 2012 It's one thing to talk about social selling strategies and tactics.
Jon Ferrara has a passion for social media, but he saw a weakness in it. For sales people building relationships, there wasn't an easy tool to manage those relationships on social media. Ferrara built Nimble , described as a way to combine CRM features with sales teams' social networks so they can leverage their influence for business growth. On this episode of Behind the Brand , he talks about his vision for Nimble with host Bryan Elliott. This is not Ferrara's first rodeo. Ten years ago he built a platform called GoldMine that paved the way for future giants like Salesforce.com.
How One Company Helps Sales Teams Leverage Their Social Influence [VIDEO]
Are you trying to make a sale because you need to? Are you trying to get a job because you need to? Are you trying to get your boss, friends, colleagues, students or anyone to do something because you need them to?
Want to Influence Others- Move to Creation From Need
IBM's Social Selling: The Computer Giant Finds B2B Leads in Social Media
Advertisement <div><a href="//ad.doubleclick.net/N3834/jump/cm.home/b2b/social;pos=180_1;ptype=article;page=/social/ibms-social-selling-computer-giant-finds-b2b-leads-social-media;sz=180x150;tile=1;ord=123456789?" target="_blank"><img src="//ad.doubleclick.net/N3834/ad/cm.home/b2b/social;pos=180_1;ptype=article;page=/social/ibms-social-selling-computer-giant-finds-b2b-leads-social-media;sz=180x150;tile=1;ord=123456789?" border="0" alt="" /></a></div>There’s always a lot of discussion in the Sales 2.0, CRM worlds about compliance. Millions are invested in new systems–supposedly. There’s a great urge to make sure people are using them, so compliance has become a key topic of discussion in lots of places. Basically compliance is measuring, “are people using the system?” Compliance — at least the way it’s commonly used is absolutely worthless! Reporting on who has signed into the system, how many times they’ve logged in and all the related measures are meaningless.
Compliance Is Not The Point Of CRM Systems! | Partners in EXCELLENCE Blog -- Making A Difference
The mistake most companies make is believing that their customer always knows what they need. In an economy where people have access to information on the Internet , the client often feels informed enough to make their own diagnosis and then search for the solution they believe is best. In this case, price becomes the leading differentiator .