Understanding the Sales Force

OCTOBER 23, 2023

While most Americans can’t imagine anyone supporting Hamas, there are actually 16% who do. If you agree that people get dug in and don’t want to even consider changing their minds, what happens when a salesperson targets a major account that is your competitor’s good customer who also happens to love that competitor?

Account 203

Account How To Face-to-face Call-back 203

No More Cold Calling

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

Clients tell me it ticks them off when they receive automated requests for referrals on social media. If you don’t know someone well enough to pick up the damn phone and talk to them, you don’t know that person well enough to be asking for referrals. You have no clue about the connection. Get offline to get your referral.

Social Media 194

Social Media Referrals Media Lead Generation 194

Understanding the Sales Force

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

She suggested I ask the owner so I asked him about the bacon and he explained that he prepared the coconut flakes to have the look, taste and texture of bacon. She suggested I ask the owner so I asked him about the bacon and he explained that he prepared the coconut flakes to have the look, taste and texture of bacon. Fake bacon.

Proposal 193

Proposal Sales Training Conversion 193

Understanding the Sales Force

MARCH 13, 2024

Lately, when I talk with people, the most popular topics for discussion are Politics, March Madness, and the movies and TV shows they are streaming. Personally, I substitute Baseball for the middle topic because college baseball is in full swing and we’ve been traveling to watch our son, a college senior, play college baseball.

Decision Maker 193

Decision Maker Data Hiring Proposal 193

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 15, 2024

We got 3 inches. It harkened me back to the good old days before the incredible weather technology we have now. When I say pre-technology, I’m not talking about pre-Doppler radar and computer models. I’m talking pre-satellite, pre-graphics, pre-markers, and pre computers. Excited, but wrong.

Forecasting 203

Forecasting Sales Forecasts Decision Maker Call-back 203

Mr. Inside Sales

JANUARY 14, 2023

NOTE: While this article talks about using this technique as an interview question to determine what kind of sales rep you’re about to hire, it’s also a great technique for managers to use to diagnose what is wrong with reps who may not be hitting quote consistently. Some reps can (and do!) And off they go….

Face-to-face 254

Face-to-face Gatekeeper How To Sales Qualified Lead 254

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 29, 2024

We were talking about his prospecting challenges. ” We talked about some of his strategies. He researched others, understanding their roles and what their companies did, creating personalized emails. He tried to connect what he learned they were doing with his prospecting efforts.

Ideal Customer Profile 127

Ideal Customer Profile Face-to-face Trade Show Prospecting 127

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

What’s in your pipeline? We looked at the sheer amount of data and said, “Wow, that’s a lot of information!” ” Then we looked beyond the data and said, “This won’t work because it’s the wrong data.” What remains is a very small percentage of what we received and reviewed.

Pipeline 170

Pipeline Opportunity Decision Maker Top of Funnel 170

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 12, 2024

I want to accomplish a lot, but I want to do it with minimal effort. As I look at selling, today, it requires far too much effort—far more than I’m willing to do. After all, we have to send 1000s of emails a day, we have to make 100s of calls, we have to spend hours doing outreach in LinkedIn and other channels.

Face-to-face 115

Face-to-face Commission Up-Sell Discount 115

Partners in Excellence

MAY 7, 2024

They started by saying, “We sell solutions… ” “That’s interesting, tell me more. What do your solutions do?” “I’m sorry,” I said, “I meant, what problems do your solutions solve? “What does that mean,” I asked. ” I asked.

Up-Sell 116

Up-Sell Competition Conversion Customer 116

Partners in Excellence

MAY 28, 2024

In some cases, they do the work for us, generating 1000’s of emails. When I look at the most sophisticated users of these tools (not just in selling), I see them not just using a single prompt, but engaging the LLMs in a conversation that drills deeply into the issues. They drill down seeking to better understand each one.

Engineering 112

Engineering Conversion Objections Tools 112

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 22, 2024

Sometimes, I feel like a broken record talking about Customer and Business Acumen. When I talk to leaders about their GTM strategies, the focus is on products and presenting the capabilities of products. Yet these same leaders complain about the ability to connect to prospects and customers. They don’t know.

Customer 109

Customer Face-to-face Enterprise Enterprise 109

Partners in Excellence

MAY 13, 2024

It seems like everything I read about sales productivity is focused on doing more. But it’s interesting how we fill the time we theoretically gain. It seems we fill the time doing more of that same stuff, rather than doing other things that may be neglected, or for which we have not enough time.

Sage 116

Sage Collateral Proposal Maximizer 116

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 18, 2024

One of the sellers asked a question about dealing with customer questions and queries about the products, particularly deeply technical questions. As we spoke, it struck me how we revel in these questions. Customers asking us about the product capabilities, drilling deeply into what the products and solutions do.

Customer 129

Customer Revelation Buying Cycle Lead Rank 129

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 26, 2024

We obsess about how we succeed. We develop strategies, contingency plans, prep and rehearse. We are driven to succeed for those big things. We treat the little things differently. We may skip them, thinking they aren’t important. We may skip them, thinking they aren’t important.

CRM 125

CRM Research Meeting Closing 125

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 27, 2024

We were prepping for a very difficult customer meeting this afternoon. As we discussed the situation, he described the difficulties this customer had created in the past, he talked about how unreasonable they had been, how they weren’t meeting commitments they had made to him. We only win when our customers succeed.

Conversion 105

Conversion Call-back Positioning Meeting 105

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 26, 2024

During the Q&A, a salesperson asked me, “What are your favorite books on sales? What should we be reading?” While the basic principles at the core of high performance selling are the same, each book has a slightly different perspective on how to implement them. Where do your customers go to learn?

Journal 125

Journal Banking Influencer Strategy 125

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 8, 2024

And other data showing 1000-1400 touches per opportunity (Thank goodness we can solve this with AI, easily hitting 1000s of touches a day…… tongue firmly planted in cheek.) ” But, we shouldn’t be shocked or surprised. We’ve created the majority of circumstances surrounding this.

Top of Funnel 117

Top of Funnel Face-to-face Data Buying Cycle 117

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 19, 2023

As sellers, we always talk about the importance of our “Unique Value Proposition.” ” For decades, we have thought about our value proposition in the context of our products/solutions. And we focused on our differentiation to determine our uniqueness.

Face-to-face 127

Face-to-face Report ROI Research 127

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 1, 2024

We tend to spend the bulk of our time responding to people who are looking to buy. They have gone through the work of defining the problem, defining what they want to achieve, getting funding, identifying the risks, looking for solutions… And then they talk to us. Alternatively, they actually reach out, asking to talk.

Trade Show 77

Trade Show Conference Segment Groups 77

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

AI is changing the world (“Wow, what an astute observation, Dave.”). It reduces what may have taken hours or even days to seconds. There were a few times in my selling career, I’d have to do deep research to begin to understand trends, challenges and issues facing my customers. ” Let me dive into this.

Face-to-face 126

Face-to-face Journal Research Tools 126

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 20, 2024

Our feeds are filled with hacks, prompts, “cheat sheets” offering things like, “What are key decision maker roles for this… ? What are qualifying questions… ? What are trends… ? How do I handle objections… ?” ” I take these hacks, trying them out myself.

Ideal Customer Profile 124

Ideal Customer Profile Revelation Decision Maker Face-to-face 124

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 16, 2024

We spend 100’s of millions on SKO speakers, books, and training–all focused on doing the things that drive business, sales and marketing performance. We are inspired by thousands of articles, podcasts, and videos–each offering the same answers to what we have to do to be successful. (I

Top of Funnel 113

Top of Funnel Funnel Pipeline Exercises 113

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 20, 2023

What this means is to find a single opportunity, there are 1000-1400 touches across many potential customers. As we think about this, with average win rates, in SaaS trending below 20%, to close a single opportunity, we have to qualify at least 5 deals, meaning 5000-7000 touches. To make quota, imagine what we have to do!

Account Based Marketing 125

Account Based Marketing Outbound Inbound Cold Calling 125

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 29, 2024

He opened with, “We see this challenge…… impacting organizations like yours. We think you can be doing better……” Intrigued, it was an important issue (it always is for small businesses), I responded, “What causes you to say we face that issue and can do better?”

Conversion 81

Conversion Microsoft Face-to-face Google 81

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 9, 2023

I had no prepared materials, it was a Q&A about how to connect with prospects more effectively. It was such a fun conversation, we focused on how we increase our effectiveness and impact through deeper understanding of our customers/prospects. We’ve developed a tool they are leveraging, The Brock Questionert.*

Ideal Customer Profile 116

Ideal Customer Profile Customer Scale Face-to-face 116

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 6, 2024

Too often, there is an alignment challenge between what buyers need and what sellers do. We seem to be on diverging paths, and this creates problems for both buyers and sellers. What don’t buyers need from sellers? They don’t need a lot of education about our products. What do our customers need?

Buyer 129

Buyer Incentives Incentive Discount 129

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

Sometimes our success limits our thinking about what we could be achieving. We think we are doing well, but we really should be doing so much more. I’ve written, often, about how we “settle” for win rates of 15-20% and are happy achieving our growth goals.

Scale 142

Scale Hiring Call-back Revenue 142

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

Endless discussion on “the numbers” and the challenges of achieving them. We see them leading team meetings, but usually these are fairly one way discussions, “You aren’t hitting the numbers, you need to do more!” I talk to them about it. We talk about pipelines.

Coaching 111

Coaching Lead Rank Pipeline Data 111

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 8, 2024

In reading an article about the latest hints and tips in using AI for prospecting, a sentence stood out to me. It talked about how “mundane” outbound is. And, perhaps, it is this mindset that underlies the poor results we get from our prospecting. We see this in our own personal experiences, every day.

Outbound 114

Outbound Customer Service Prospecting Customer 114

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 17, 2024

Howard Dover about some programs he and Becc Holland are conducting with his students. We talked about some fascinating concepts: Mis-diagnosis and Missed-diagnosis. Both concepts are hugely important, so I need to separate writing about them. The sister article about Mis-diagnosis, be sure to read that.

Face-to-face 117

Face-to-face Opportunity Education Customer 117

SalesProInsider

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

But “personal” — or a lack of it — is what I see as a barrier to higher conversions for advisors who provide a very personal service. The Dangers of Depersonalization in Sales Conversations What do I mean? When we personalize the conversation, we allow them to be more connected to what you’re saying.

Conversion 126

Conversion Prospecting Compensation Examples 126

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

I read a fascinating article about the response rates for a variety of outbound email prospecting techniques. The argument the author was making was the technique that produced 1.25% was the best approach (which aligned with what they sold). What troubled me was the view that these levels of response rates were acceptable.

Scale 115

Scale Outbound Sales Cycle Up-Sell 115

Partners in Excellence

MAY 8, 2024

The people that remain are exhausted, not interested in talking more, they just want to escape. The people that remain are exhausted, not interested in talking more, they just want to escape. But we don’t understand what has happened. We don’t understand how/why they have gotten to the point that they have.

Buying Cycle 68

Buying Cycle Maximizer Call-back Sales Cycle 68

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 17, 2024

As much as we tire talking about the constancy of change, our jobs as sellers only exist because of change. As much as we tire talking about the constancy of change, our jobs as sellers only exist because of change. Without some sort of change, we never get a purchase order.

Lead Rank 120

Lead Rank Analysis Incentives Incentive 120

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 1, 2024

“Selling Bad Breath” repulses the people we are trying to reach. Somehow when we open our mouths or send an email or do an outreach, all it accomplishes is driving our prospects and customers away. Prospects and customers can always sniff it out, regardless how we try to cover it up.

Ideal Customer Profile 73

Ideal Customer Profile Face-to-face Social Media Up-Sell 73

SalesProInsider

APRIL 30, 2024

Sorry to hear about the Packer’s loss last weekend, what was your highlight of the season?” “How What do you think about those questions? Maybe you’re thinking, “Oh, the dreaded small talk!” Well, “small talk” is only small if you make it so. Instead talk smart. Make it about them, not you.

Sports 62

Sports Conversion Networking Travel 62