I recently had a great text conversation with an outstanding sales manager. The time zones worked out–it was evening his time, so he had the time to be a little philosophical, it was morning my time, I was desperate to find something to write about. We were talking about general approaches to engaging customers more […]
Are You So Busy Chasing Small Deals, You Are Missing The Important Deals?
I’m often amazed looking at the pipeline profiles of a lot of enterprise focused sales organizations. There is, often, a feeling the average deal size is significantly higher than it actually is. Usually, the average deal size, when you analyze the data, is significantly smaller than they think it is. A recent, somewhat extreme example […]
Your Customers Don’t Know What They Don’t Know
Recently, I was in a discussion with a group of outstanding sales people. They were talking about how to align their selling process with the customer buying process. One of the sales people asked, “How do we learn their buying process?” Some readers may think, “Isn’t this obvious?” After all, classically, we know we have […]
Are You Engaging the Real Customers?
I was doing a series of deal reviews–not unlike most of the deal reviews I do. We were talking about the people involved in the buying process. What struck me in each discussion was how few people were being engaged at the customer — and that the right people weren’t being engaged, even by the […]
What Defines Leadership In a Crisis?
The past weeks and month have been, interesting. (If ever there was an understatement). In times of crises, we all look for leadership. We seek understanding, caring, answers, support, direction. As usual, in times of crises, it’s amazing and truly heartening to see how leaders and leadership emerge. So often, it’s from the most unexpected […]
Are You Managing The Process Or Is It Managing You?
Deal review after deal review, I see the same thing. Sales people don’t seem to be managing the process, they are responding to what the customer is doing (or not doing). This is particularly frightening, when one recognizes customers don’t know how to buy, they wander through the buying process, going back and forth, starting […]
“I’m Selling As Hard As I Can, Why Aren’t You Buying?”
The universal lament of sales people is, “Why aren’t my customers buying? I’m busting my ass selling to them?” We make dozens of prospecting calls, send hundreds of emails. We find customers with some level of interest, then do everything we can to convince the customers to buy our products. We train ourselves about our […]
Worst Question to Ask a Customer: How Can I Help?
One of my sources for blog topics is my friend, Brent Adamson. The other evening, Brent and I were trying to solve the problems of the sales world. I actually think he was trying to escape the “shelter in place” lifestyle we have adopted. One of his daughters was downstairs exercising, the rest of the […]
Doing What Works in Troubled Times
Everyone is struggling to understand what they should be doing in these very difficult times. We are struggling to understand what works, whether it’s how we lead our people, how we work on a daily basis, how we engage our customers, how we move forward. The crisis has created a heightened sense of urgency around […]
Should We Be Selling During the COVID-19 Crisis?
The COVID 19 and related issues have brought about a plethora of “Should We Be Selling” articles. I’ve made my position clear in previous posts. But I saw a headline that caught my attention. Should we be selling? The answer is simply, “no”. We should be humanizing. I was struck by this, not for what […]
