Partners in Excellence

MARCH 6, 2019

It turns out we are on parallel paths, but don’t know it, consequently we aren’t leveraging each other as effectively as possible. We, also, recognize how difficult it is to buy–at least in complex B2B sales. Our goals are in conflict.

Face-to-face 75

Face-to-face Lead Rank Lead Scoring Survey 75

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 29, 2014

We always tend to associate these with “priced based buying.” ” We tend to think the only value we can create is through pricing actions–discounting. First, price is always a key consideration whether we are involved in a complex or transactional buying/selling process.

Outsourcing Services 89

Outsourcing Services Lead Rank Lead Scoring Education 89

Partners in Excellence

JUNE 28, 2012

We were talking about “THE PRICING DISCUSSION.” If we know this, why do we keep having the same discussion over and over—we know the outcome. If we know this, why do we keep having the same discussion over and over—we know the outcome. We need to change the discussion from PRICE to COST.

Objections 86

Objections Lead Rank Lead Scoring Discount 86

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 13, 2014

I think one of the reasons we obsess over negotiation, is that we have set ourselves up for tough negotiations long before anybody steps up to the table. We leave the customer and ourselves with nothing to talk about but price. We’ve failed to differentiate our offerings from the competition.

Negotiation 93

Negotiation Competition Compensation Positioning 93

Partners in Excellence

MAY 14, 2013

We limit ourselves, we frustrate the customers. We work with lots of organizations whose products have become commodities. As much as sales people try to sell solutions or sell value, too often they fall back on great products. They focus on product, features, functions, feeds and speeds.

Chemicals 95

Chemicals Competition Comparison Face-to-face 95

Partners in Excellence

JULY 19, 2012

Somehow, we think selling to Buying (Procurement and Sourcing) professionals than selling to “end users” or functional departments. Most of the time we look upon the experience with dread. We do everything we can to avoid or go around them. We try to get the end users to override them.

Buyer 88

Buyer Automotive Consultative Selling Vendor 88

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 4, 2013

What’s struck me is we still have very fundamental misunderstandings of value, value propositions, and how we understand, create, communicate and deliver value to our customers. Value Is Defined By The Customer: We cannot define value, only the customer defines value. Recently, we were looking for a new software system.

Education 94

Education Enterprise Enterprise Customer 94

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 12, 2013

If we answer with our price, we’ve immediately transformed the conversation into a pricing discussion. We totally miss the opportunity to really talk about costs when we shift the conversation to pricing. We can use these answers to transform the discussion into a discussion about value.

Penetration 90

Penetration Discount Analysis Competition 90

Partners in Excellence

AUGUST 23, 2013

As sales and marketing professionals, we’re consumed with the change in our professions. Those things we used to do are no longer as impactful. We leverage new technologies, so now we can do things at the speed of light—doesn’t mean they’re the right things, but volumes of activities are up.

Lead Rank 85

Lead Rank Lead Scoring Conference Up-Sell 85

Partners in Excellence

AUGUST 14, 2013

I can hear the cheers already, every sales professional reading this will probably forward it to their favorite–or not so favorite procurement professional. I took this from Remko Van Hoek’s HBR post on The Trouble With Procurement. Professional procurement is changing radically. Professional procurement is changing radically.

Discount 91

Discount Vendor Exercises Sales Operations 91

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 10, 2013

I think it’s an area too many of us assume the customer understands, or we simply fail to demonstrate. To capture the customer’s attention and compete, we know we have to have a powerful value proposition–expressed in terms of what the customer values. Without this, how does the customer decide? (I’m

Customer 91

Customer Commission Software Software 91

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 30, 2023

Software markets have matured to a point that every viable category has multiple solid competitors and any new markets get commoditized quickly. Here’s how we approached answering each of these questions. The first goal of sales at a startup isn’t to bring in revenue — it’s to get customer feedback. So how do you get there?

Ideal Customer Profile 88

Ideal Customer Profile Conversion Marketing Hiring 88

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 17, 2015

” But the focus on transactional selling has blinded us to transactional buying and the real value we can create for those customers that have a transactional buying process. But we never get to “solve that problem,” until we have gone through three very complex buying processes. ” It does!

Vendor 48

Vendor Face-to-face Lead Rank Lead Scoring 48

Partners in Excellence

JUNE 4, 2012

We all dread purchasing. We do everything we can to avoid them or work around them. It’s interesting to me, both sales and purchasing are trying to achieve the same thing for their companies, yet we tend to have such a contentious relationship, filled with distrust (possibly deserved) on each side.

Maximizer 88

Maximizer Negotiation Proposal Vendor 88

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 18, 2013

We talk about creating value for our customers. But we have to remember, value is exchanged between parties. ” We provided products and services that had a value proposition. A pretty straightforward view of value and value exchange and the revenue we get will always be a core part of the value exchange.

Face-to-face 87

Face-to-face Referrals Engineering Revenue 87

Partners in Excellence

MAY 22, 2012

We were trained in: Find a customer that has a problem they want to solve, understand their needs and requirements, propose a solution, make sure the value proposition is differentiated. We see survey after survey stating customers don’t want to see sales people until much later in the process. What is the new paradigm?

Survey 86

Survey Proposal Education Consumer 86

Allego

AUGUST 14, 2019

We needed every wholesaler to be able to articulate the best stories—at the advisor level—for advisors to share with clients. We could share winning stories among wholesalers at the regional level, but doing this across the entire sales force was not possible. And we were facing some headwinds,” said McGlothlin.

Hiring 59

Hiring Insurance Insurance Face-to-face 59

Partners in Excellence

JULY 3, 2012

As sales people, we always are trying to get into our Buyers’ minds. We want to understand what they are thinking, what drives them, how we can position ourselves and our solutions most favorably. We constantly search for some insight about how to connect more effectively. All great things to do.

Buyer 94

Buyer Gatekeeper Automotive Maximizer 94

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

As sales people we have been drilled and drilled in “Value Propositions.” How were we to set ourselve apart? In the past 15-20 years, we have adopted the view that “value is in the eye of the beholder.” In the past 3-5 years, we’ve started seeing the early stages of a much richer approach.

Hiring 94

Hiring Customer eBook Vendor 94

Partners in Excellence

MAY 1, 2013

The price covers manufacturing costs, parts costs, warranty costs, overheads, depreciation, and a whole number of other costs we incur in designing, manufacturing, bringing a product to market and supporting it. Without this, we cannot support the products, sustain the product line or our business. Why are we so far apart on price?

Margin 91

Margin Negotiation Commission Examples 91

Partners in Excellence

AUGUST 18, 2015

To win, we have to create more value than anyone else. From there, things start getting a little fuzzy, because we start wrapping pricing and discounting into the whole concept of value creation. Theoretically, we justify higher prices by creating greater value. And I think this is what we miss in this whole discussion.

Discount 48

Discount Vendor Salary Relationals 48

Tony Hughes

FEBRUARY 22, 2018

When we treat social selling as the next big thing, as if it were a transactional cold call where we can achieve million dollar closing results with one or two calls, we take the sector backwards. It is dangerous to implement basic social selling techniques. A one size fits all approach simply won't work. Let me make my case.

Social Selling 66

Social Selling Call-back Up-Sell Ideal Customer Profile 66

Tony Hughes

MARCH 12, 2018

Psychologically, numerous studies show that when we present a client with the unit economics in a deal, we risk self-commoditization. We often diagnose mere symptoms to underlying problems. We have the ability to literally transform our customers' business, make them look like heroes and help them get promoted.

Social Selling 67

Social Selling Government Top of Funnel Call-back 67

SugarCRM

NOVEMBER 26, 2018

We are able to accomplish this because SugarCloud gives us visibility into data sets and customizations. We are able to accomplish this because SugarCloud gives us visibility into data sets and customizations. Of course, we run our own business on Sugar and our internal production system is the first that gets upgraded.

SugarCRM 30

SugarCRM Scale CRM Engineering 30