Shoppers leaving a website without making a purchase is the worst-case scenario for any online seller. Such a loss-making tendency is called shopping cart abandonment. According to statistics by Baymard Institute, nearly 70% of consumers drop their baskets halfway through the checkout, meaning that for every 10 visitors, 7 of them close a page. Let’s […]
Sales Activities
Process is the Foundation for Agility/Nimbleness
We want to be flexible, nimble, able to adapt to the circumstances, leap on an opportunity, respond quickly. We abhor process since that constrains our creativity and ability to innovate. Too often, when I talk to leaders and sales people about process, they cite some of the things outlined above as the reason they don’t […]
Build Your Buying Journey Step by Step
One of the staples of marketing is the ability to understand how a human being goes from never having heard of you to actually buying something from you, time and time again. In simple terms, it can be thought of as a sales funnel. But, that suggests a very linear, logical progression and if there’s […]
Confusing Simplification with Simplistic
Both we, our customers, our markets, our worlds are getting more and more complex. We face rapid change/disruption, overwhelm/overload, risk/uncertainty, turmoil, constantly shifting focus/priorities/agendas. In the face of this, we struggle to respond, whether it’s to fix performance problems, address new opportunities, grow and expand. As leaders and business professionals, we must constantly seek to […]
How Does Your Customer Make Money?
Can you answer the question, “How does you customer make money?” By that, I don’t mean at a superficial level, like, “Well, dugghh, Dave, they sell stuff……” I mean really understanding your customer’s business. It includes things like: Who are their customers/markets? What drives success with them? How are those markets growing? How does your […]
The Art of the Bluff
I was stunned and appalled to read an article sponsored by a major sales publication promoting the “Art of the bluff.” The author was cautious to highlight the negative connotations around bluffing—the feeling of manipulation, the proximity to lying, and the knife edge a “bluffer’ must walk to avoid lying. Trying as hard as I […]
Sales Managers “Closing Business”
I was struggling to meet with a sales manager. He really wanted to talk, we had critical issues he had asked for help in addressing. He kept postponing our calls, “Dave, I’m running all out, I’ve really got to be out in the field closing business for my people…..” We finally had our meeting. I […]
Book Year Round Business!
There is absolutely no reason why you cannot book a year-round business… solid every month! Book Year Round Business! Not any one particular month should have more cancellations than another, except maybe during the blizzard of 2009!! Really though, your attitude is what plays the biggest role in your ability to date a specific month […]
Deal Strategies: Helping the Customer Buy
Recently I wrote, “What If We Kept The Target Close Date Sacred?” It focused on improving our pipeline management, discipline, and integrity. But the way we address these issues is in our deal strategies and how we engage the customer in each deal. Most of the time and too much of our training focus on […]
The Pipeline Review
I was meeting with a client, we were doing the first pipeline review as part of their implementation of the Sales Execution Framework. Pipeline reviews are a great starting point for the process, a good pipeline review helps identify and isolate potential challenges as well as the performance leverage points. The client was a very […]
