Customer Centric Selling

MAY 6, 2015

By John Holland, Chief Content Officer, CustomerCentric Selling® - The Sales Training Company. When managing buying cycles with committees, sellers are often guilty of starting and staying with one person too long. Seats are filling FAST in the July 21 Sales Process Management™ Workshop in D.C. must all be done.

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Buying Cycle How To Negotiation Proposal 40

Customer Centric Selling

OCTOBER 31, 2016

Sellers refer to sales cycles rather than buying cycles. I prefer the term “Buyer Empowerment” to shift the focus from selling to buying. Need some help to increase sales? Take a look at the sales training workshops available to get started and improve sales performance.

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Customer Buying Cycle Promotion Sales Cycle 40

Customer Centric Selling

SEPTEMBER 10, 2014

The second is the phrase “sales cycle.” ” My suggested substitute is “buying cycle.” It also is consistent with the fact that most people prefer to buy rather than being sold. Sales cycles are more about the vendor with the buyer being another notch in the belt.

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Hiring Face-to-face Buying Cycle Sales Cycle 74

Customer Centric Selling

APRIL 2, 2014

Now would be a good time to attend a sales training workshop to learn how you can save the year and make your number. If you are behind halfway into the year, consider the length of average buying cycles and realize the runway is shorter than you might think. Need some help with your sales performance?

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Training Buying Cycle Engineering Sales Cycle 59

Customer Centric Selling

DECEMBER 20, 2016

When sellers proactively initiate buying cycles with Key Players: Sales cycles can be shorter. If there are follow-up steps, the buyer perceives potential value and buying cycles begin. A seller’s entry point into an organization goes a long way toward determining success or failure in buying cycles.

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Customer Centric Selling

MARCH 26, 2014

Sign-up for one of these sales training workshops to learn how to better engage with prospects. Years later as I started in sales, I discovered buyers had a foolproof way to end sales cycles gracefully and abruptly. You''ll be better served not to assume that the buying cycle is moving forward.

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Training Buying Cycle Call-back Sales Cycle 66

Customer Centric Selling

FEBRUARY 26, 2016

If all of these items have been covered, buying should be the logical last step of a sales cycle. Premature closes (when one or more items have not been addressed) can abruptly change buyer relationships as sellers go from consultative sales to high-pressure tactics. In my mind, a buying cycle is much like a play.

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Sales Hacker

APRIL 5, 2019

And last but by no means least, doing something inappropriate, unprofessional or unethical at some point during the sales cycle can earn you a one-way ticket to Ghostville. I once coached a guy transitioning from the customer side of the fence to becoming a sales rep for the first time. That’s all well and good, I hear you say.

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Customer Centric Selling

APRIL 6, 2016

Changes in buying behavior have made a salesperson’s job much more difficult. Pre-Internet, it was common for mid-level managers to work with a seller from a vendor to get far enough into the sales cycle to generate a bid or proposal. Sales cycles will likely be shorter when starting at high levels.

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Customer Centric Selling

SEPTEMBER 17, 2014

A Sales Benchmark Index (SBI) study showed over 50% of sales cycles that end with sellers involved, result in buyers making “no decision.” When trying to justify expenditures, a seller’s challenge in complex sales is to provide an enterprise view of value. Need some help to increase sales?

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Customer Centric Selling

SEPTEMBER 2, 2015

By John Holland, Chief Content Officer, CustomerCentric Selling® - The Sales Training Company. During sales cycles with new accounts sellers that win the business usually gain access to Key Players within organizations that are involved early and late in buying cycles.

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How To Buying Cycle Vendor Sales Cycle 40

Customer Centric Selling

DECEMBER 28, 2015

While more B2B transactions then ever are being initiated by researchers/buyers, sellers/vendors cling to the term sales cycles. It would seem a better term to apply to all would be buying cycles. Do your sellers have the necessary "Sales DNA" to succeed? Need some help to increase sales?

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B2C Margin Buying Cycle Proposal 40

Customer Centric Selling

JULY 3, 2013

This lack of revenue growth flies in the face of technology-assisted B2B buying activity as people leverage the Internet and social networking to research offerings on their own. Studies show that buyers are anywhere from 50-80% through their buying cycles before contacting sellers. Need some help with your sales performance?

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Training Buying Cycle Hiring Vendor 45

Customer Centric Selling

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Marketing organizations by default now own the top of sales funnels. I suggest organizations step back and consider that buying cycles start in one of two ways: 1. Bottom-up" selling is a path to long sales cycles and low win rates. Need some help with your sales performance? A new approach may be needed.

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Top of Funnel Training Lead Rank Lead Scoring 61

Customer Centric Selling

AUGUST 30, 2013

If the sales team was getting better, why did they keep missing quota? The Sales team hadn''t vastly improved. Instead, their buyer was engaging with sales later in their buying cycle. Sales used to know when they''d been eliminated. The software company VP of Sales missed the shift in buyer power.

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Training Buying Cycle Collateral Software 45

Customer Centric Selling

JUNE 12, 2013

Those that perform at high levels realize they shouldn''t waste time with opportunities and buyers that have low probabilities of resulting in orders within a reasonable time frame (an average buying cycle). Early in my career, I spent time with buyers that were willing to meet on an ongoing basis, but had no intention of buying.

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Trade Show Training Demographics Face-to-face 53

Customer Centric Selling

JULY 22, 2015

At a high level, one of the primary responsibilities of first level sales managers is ensuring that sellers work on opportunities that have a high probability of closing. Statistics show about half of sales cycles end with prospects making no decision. Mark your calendar and save your seat now!

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Customer Centric Selling

DECEMBER 20, 2016

It can be minimized - even eliminated - once you understand the obstacles that are preventing a prospect from making an informed selection decision after a long and expensive sales cycle. You ARE going to correct an underperforming sales team. Dramatically shorten the sales cycle. Need some help to increase sales?

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Decision Maker Sales Cycle Negotiation Sales Qualified Lead 40

Customer Centric Selling

AUGUST 28, 2013

When trying to initiate sales cycles, B and C Players flock toward buyers at or near user levels. This "bottom-up" approach in the absolute best case will result in long buying cycles that ultimately close. Even if sellers gain traction early, most of these sales cycles collapse under their own weight.

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Outsourcing Services Training Buying Cycle Hiring 45

Customer Centric Selling

MARCH 4, 2016

For example, capturing historical close rates and applying them to current pipelines can allow sellers to project a sales cycle to determine if they have enough activity to be ahead of quota year-to-date. This amounts to creating roadmaps of how sales cycles should progress. Need some help to increase sales?

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Customer Centric Selling

DECEMBER 26, 2012

Adding to the uncertainty for sales organizations are the well-documented changes in buying behavior that the Internet and social networking have fueled. There seem to be far more evaluations initiated and controlled by mid to low level buyers than sales cycles. Most vendors are seeing a trend of shorter product cycles.

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The ROI Guy

FEBRUARY 14, 2011

In the face of frugal buyer sentiment, a majority of B2B vendors are now requiring more leads to generate the same amount of sales and are reporting a substantial increase in buying cycle time. Alinean's research revealed that new sales enablement strategies and investments are required to fight Frugalnomics.

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Research Buying Cycle Webinar Metrics Sales Enablement 40

Customer Centric Selling

SEPTEMBER 16, 2015

Starting sales cycles with people that can’t buy means talking with layers of people that can’t say “yes” but can say no. In most cases website visitors are doing product evaluations, not starting buying cycles. Listen to Social Selling evangelist, Jill Rowley, in Episode 20 of Sales Rehab!

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Top of Funnel Sales Qualified Lead Trade Show Telecommunications 40

Customer Centric Selling

MARCH 7, 2016

At a high level, one of the primary responsibilities of first level sales managers is ensuring that sellers work on opportunities with a strong probability of closing. Statistics show about half of sales cycles end with prospects making no decision. Need some help to increase sales? Your Roadmap to Revenue Growth® awaits!

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Customer Centric Selling

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Marketing should be viewed as the beginning of sales cycles (interest and lead generation) through programs and the Internet rather than where products are handed off so that product launches can be designed. Having Marketing at the start of buying cycles should allow them to provide better input on requirements for new offerings.

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Training Collateral Sales Qualified Lead Buying Cycle 58

The ROI Guy

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

CFO Control Drives Frugalnomics Further This centralization of power to financial chiefs has important implications for the way the buying cycle is managed, and how B2B sales and marketing groups must navigate these more complex waters.

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The ROI Guy

DECEMBER 6, 2010

At the same time, B2B buyers are taking advantage of the wealth of information available via the Internet and social media to become more empowered, taking charge of the buying cycle. These two market drivers will have important implications into 2011 and beyond for B2B sales enablement and marketing strategies and budgets.

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The ROI Guy

JANUARY 17, 2011

As today’s buyers are empowered by the Internet to do their own research and drive their own purchasing due diligence – engaging sales later than ever, or not at all – easy to use versions of these diagnostic tools need to be on-line, readily available, interactive and personalized to empower self-service research.

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ROI Lead Rank Lead Scoring Tools 45

Pipeliner

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

The buying cycle in virtual selling is complex as most of the sales conversations happen between the buyers and sellers are located at different physical locations! Are There Any Perks Of Retaining A Remote Sales Team? The specific length and different stages of your sales cycle.

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Strategy Top of Funnel Face-to-face Hiring 98

Costello

JANUARY 15, 2019

“At Resolute , we’ve been working to tie our marketing and sales initiatives closer together and have seen some very promising results including gaining more focused opportunities that are a fit for our business, a busier deals pipeline, and shorter sales cycles,” says Colton De Vos. The impact has been a well-oiled machine.

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Lead Rank Revenue Top of Funnel Lead Scoring 105

Customer Centric Selling

OCTOBER 25, 2016

For years, CCS® has espoused viewing sales cycles as buying cycles to provide better buying experiences. It sounds trite but buying decisions should be a win for sellers (orders) as well as buyers (value/payback). Need some help to increase sales? It makes sense for both parties to do so.

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