Every small business depends on increasing its sales to drive revenue and support a healthy flow of cash. And your sales team is the best chance you have at growing your business and increase its profits. But some other parts of our business also play a significant role in increasing the sales. And regardless of […]
Sales Activities
Should You Focus on Repeat Business or New Customers?
There is an age-old question in marketing of whether it is better to focus resources on existing or new customers. Ideally, you should invest your time and resources into both. However, the reality is that every organization must prioritize. So, you will need to ask and answer this question for your own business. The Value […]
4 Steps to Game the Sales Cycle During & After COVID-19
COVID-19 has disrupted all aspects of our society. The traditional approach to sales has been broken by stay at home orders, social distancing, and widespread uncertainty. Without clarity on when things will normalize we must adapt to grow. The days of primarily face-to-face sales interactions are over for the foreseeable future, so what are you […]
Going Beyond the “What” of Activity Metrics
Activity metrics are receiving lots of attention. Activity metrics can be very useful, at the same time, they can stimulate a lot of, well … wasted activity. Too often, we focus on the wrong things as we put activity metrics in place. We focus on the “what and how many,” for example, “You need to […]
Are You So Busy Selling Your Product That You Won’t Win the Deal?
Don Mulhern published a brilliant post in LinkedIn the other day. I thought I’d expand on his ideas. I spend innumerable hours doing deal reviews. 95% go the same way, they focus on the product the sales person is selling, not what the customer is trying to achieve and how we can help the customer do that. […]
When Less is More!
We have a complexity crisis in our organizations. There is no place where it hits harder than in the sales organization. Just think of what sales people face every day: They have the complexity of working with their customers, each struggling with and managing their own complexity. Multiply that by the number of customers, deals, […]
Is Cold Calling Dead?
In reality, this title is just clickbait. It’s certain to draw all sorts of attention with pundits on either side of the issue. Inevitably each shaping their “pro” or “con” arguments based on what they are trying to sell. And every time we get into this discussion, we immediately dive in taking and defending positions […]
The Importance of Pipelines
I am the world’s worst salesman, therefore, I must make it easy for people to buy. ~F. W. Woolworth An entrepreneur had developed a product, and he was doing incredibly well. He was able to afford a great house and employ his entire family, all at very healthy salaries. His business was doing so well […]
Win Fast, Lose Faster
Inevitably, as I do pipeline and deal reviews, I see sales people hanging onto too many bad deals. The deals are hopeless, the sales person may reluctantly admit it, but stubbornly wants to keep it in their active pipeline. These deals arise for all sorts of reasons, some good, but most bad. There are those […]
Customer Stuck? Not Moving Forward?
It’s a common lament among sales people: “I’m trying to close the customer, I can’t get them to move forward! They’re dragging their feet, they just won’t order!” Last week, with several clients, I was doing pipeline reviews. Too many sales people were saying this, slipping their forecasts, slipping their target close dates another month (one becomes […]
