What We Care About vs. What Our Customers Care About

There is a huge chasm between customers and our own sales and marketing initiatives. This is nothing new, yet it’s what keeps us from connecting with our customers and prospects. It’s what causes our customers and prospects to shut down, ignoring our best efforts to engage them and sell them something (you can begin to…

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Shhh, We’re Secret Shopping!

If there’s one marketing tactic that we execute for clients that always yields incredible results, it’s when we secret shop their operation. Without exception, a secret shopping program will: Provide insights that surprise you (good and bad) Spotlight specific areas where your training and communication have failed and you/your employees are hurting your brand Uncover…

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Delivering Insight: What Happens Next?

The CMO and Sales VP were reviewing their latest programs to get their people delivering insight to their customers. They went through a series of provocative issues and insights—each tuned to a specific set of problems and challenges. Each offered a unique point of view, helping the customer think differently about the business. Each was…

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Are You Guilty of Picking Things Apart?

It seems to be human nature to pick things apart. We may be looking at a new prospecting or marketing program, we may be looking at a deal strategy, we may be looking at a new organizational structure. Whatever the level we act, we have a propensity to look for faults, or what could go…

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Increase Sales by 30% Using Your Basic Business Data

The media often highlight companies that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on big data solutions that reveal patterns and trends in customer behavior and interactions. “Big data” is a buzzword, but only large businesses actually have enough data on which to do scientific analysis and apply it to their marketing automation. Meanwhile, small and…

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Customers Aren’t Widgets

I’ve always thought sales is more science than art. I believe selling is a set of disciplined processes, many of which can be “engineered” to optimize our ability to engage the right customers/prospects, with the right conversations, at the right time. Whether it’s a recruiting/onboarding process, talent management/people development, account/territory management, opportunity/deal management, pipeline/forecasting, prospecting,…

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Account Management: The Challenges of Incumbency

Account Based Everything is a huge topic these days. Everyone is account focused, they want to grow their relationships, increase penetration and grow revenue. Developing our accounts is a huge opportunity. There’s huge amounts of data outlining the differences in sales time and cost between growing an existing relationship and acquiring net new logos. Growing…

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Are Your Sales People Organizationally Savvy?

Clearly we live in worlds of increasing complexity. The issues our customers and our own organizations deal with are increasingly complex. The problems and challenges our customers face are not trivial. Our solutions and products are increasing in breadth and scope. The rate of change, both self-generated and externally imposed, seems to be accelerating. It’s…

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6 Types of Testimonials to Boost Sales

Testimonials sell! Often new distributors think that they cannot have testimonials because they have not really experienced the business yet but there are many types of testimonials that anyone can use within their presentation. Examples of the power of testimonials can be seen in infomercials. Whether you are selling a product, your business opportunity or the…

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