Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 2, 2012

In some cases, that’s true, but too often, I think much of the blame rests with us–the sales person. Some sales calls where we are exchanging information with the customer–what they want, what we have, question, answer, ping, pong…… I ask, “What happened in the call?

Process 88

Process Represent Presentation Closing 88

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 17, 2022

Just to put an emphasis on the importance of understanding why we win, why we lose, and how we maximize performance and productivity, let’s go through an example: Let’s assume 3 sales people with exactly the same quotas: $5M. But in reality, I actually find very few sales people and managers spend anytime thinking about this.

Quota 67

Quota Pipeline Prospecting Consult 67

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 30, 2013

” Creating excuses to get back into the customer is nothing but old sales mythology. All this does is lengthen the sales cycle–maybe we’re just postponing the inevitable “No,” but in the least it lengthens the sales cycle. It does nothing to serve us or the customer.

Customers 87

Customers Meeting Sell Process 87

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

Within a year, we moved out of a hyper-low interest rate environment at record-breaking speed, which led to multiple compression and macro uncertainty. Discover Bessemer Venture Partners’s annual State of the Cloud report, going through trends, benchmarks, and metrics that underpin the Cloud economy. What does this mean for Cloud companies?

Growth 98

Growth Negotiate Finance Contract 98

Search Engine Land

MAY 9, 2023

YouTube is not truly social Facebook and Instagram spoiled advertisers by letting them show ads, get clicks, and make sales. The targeting was effective, highly condensing the sales cycle. I see it in advertising all the time – someone who gets excellent results from search struggles with social, and vice versa.

Entertainment 94

Entertainment Campaign Promote Clients 94

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 14, 2013

The funnel/pipeline is a fundamental tool for sales professionals and managers. The problem is, when our funnels start looking a little lean and managers start hammering on sales people for the right coverage model. As a sales person, it’s pretty easy to get my manager off my back on this one.

Gaming 100

Gaming Pipeline Start-ups Prospecting 100

Partners in Excellence

JUNE 14, 2017

Regardless your level, look at your weekly calendar. Unless you are a total dolt, I can guess what it looks like: Your time is completely filled, often with overlaps in meetings, some with multiple things scheduled at the same time. The demands on your time exceed what you can schedule—and you do a lit of shifting/juggling.

Product 74

Product Sales B2C Up-sell 74

Partners in Excellence

JULY 29, 2012

We are talking about “conventional sales wisdom,” (which I would retitle, Stupid Techniques We All Feel For). ” There were all sorts of techniques I recall being taught in my early sales training. ” There were all sorts of techniques I recall being taught in my early sales training.

Customers 87

Customers Technique Meeting Closing 87

Partners in Excellence

SEPTEMBER 8, 2015

We spend a lot of time seeking to increase pipeline velocity, compressing sales cycles, and focusing on sales velocity. In our quest for increasing sales velocity (or sales acceleration) we become separated from our customers. We are constantly driven to move faster. The first is change itself.

Government 92

Government Pipeline Pitch Sales 92

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 28, 2021

If we are meeting with customers, it could be agreeing on actions and next steps they, we, or together we might make in moving them through their buying cycle. We talk to prospects/customers. We meet with managers or our people. We meet with colleagues working deals with us. We meet with partners. Goals, problems they may have.

Territory 60

Territory CRM Meeting Follow-up 60

Highspot

SEPTEMBER 6, 2023

Learn how this sales method builds trust and loyalty while emphasizing value. Key Value Selling Strategies Sales Methodology for Value Selling Benefits of Value Selling How Does Value Selling Compare to Other Methodologies? Incorporating value selling into sales training can help your company stay ahead of the competition.

Sell 59

Sell Profit margin Price Non-Profits 59

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 27, 2013

I’ve been involved in a number of conversations about my positions on Sales Forecast Accuracy recently. The Sales Forecast Is Not The Demand Plan! The demand plan is critical, but it’s not Sales responsibility. The Sales Forecast is an important component of the demand plan, so forecast accuracy is important.

Manufacturing 99

Manufacturing Sales Process Conversion 99

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 2, 2015

Our companies spend millions in the best sales training and tools, but we don’t use them. We know our sales process represents our best practice at maximizing our ability to win, compress our sales cycle, maximize deal value and margin, but we don’t use it. So why choose mediocrity?

Represent 93

Represent Pipeline Trust Meeting 93

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 20, 2019

We have to increase our win rates, increase our average deal size, compress our sales cycles, improve our prospecting, improve how we engage our customers, create great value in every interaction. I wrote, “Tilting The Numbers In Our Favor, The Tyranny Of More.” I’d like to extend that discussion.

Pipeline 85

Pipeline Territory Manufacturing Referrals 85

Partners in Excellence

JULY 5, 2012

For those of you with a background in Lean, TAKT Time is a familiar concept for manufacturing, but what’s the application to sales and marketing? TAKT actually comes from the German word, Taktzeit, which refers to the cycle time, beat or rhythm. Too often, sales people seem unconscious of this.

Manufacturing 89

Manufacturing Pipeline Sales Meeting 89

Partners in Excellence

AUGUST 11, 2015

” When I speak to groups of sales people about this, the response that always comes up is, “Well, if I do this, then my customer will know what I’m trying to accomplish! But add it up, we’ve already extended the buying/sales cycle at least a couple of weeks. Let’s break this down a little.

Customers 90

Customers Follow-up Meeting Up-sell 90

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 29, 2015

” It’s really important, both from an account prioritization (think of all your account based marketing/sales strategies) and to make sure you are prospecting/qualifying the right deals. I’ve written quite a bit about the importance of defining our “sweet spots.” But any of these are huge.

Manufacturing 91

Manufacturing Cross-sell Territory Finance 91

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 26, 2016

We’ve done our homework, we have content, marketing, and sales programs aligned to these segments. We need to align our marketing and sales strategies around the customer maturity within their segment. We are treating customers as a homogenous group, we are segmenting our customers based on industry and markets.

Customers 91

Customers Minimum Viable Product Cross-sell Launch 91

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 19, 2012

A strong sales process is critical to our effectiveness as sales professionals. As much as has been written about sales processes, I am constantly amazed by the number of organization that either have no process in place, their process is hopelessly outdated, or the sales people and managers don’t use the process.

Process 93

Process Sales Price High impact 93

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 21, 2013

” We get the answer then we got through the arrange a meeting time cycle. But our sales cycle has been lengthened by weeks. Go through this cycle a few times with a few people at the customer, all of a sudden our sales cycles are lengthened by months. Time is money! How do we manage this?

Objectives and Key Results 91

Objectives and Key Results Meeting Contact Start-ups 91

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 18, 2012

I sit in lot of reviews, managers and sales people are focused on deals at the bottom of the funnel. “How do we close this deal, what do we have to do to win, how do we get it this month? . “How do we close this deal, what do we have to do to win, how do we get it this month?”

Closing 92

Closing Process Meeting Customers 92

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 31, 2013

Pipeline reviews and reporting are constant sources of contention between management and sales people. From a sales person’s perspective, they get no value from it, but managers need it to make sure the business in control. At it’s worst, sales people view it as a “Big Brother Is Watching Exercise.”

Pipeline 95

Pipeline Territory Start-ups Represent 95

Partners in Excellence

AUGUST 27, 2012

Or I talk about sales call planning, spending time thinking about what you want to achieve so you can execute high impact sales calls. Or I talk about sales call planning, spending time thinking about what you want to achieve so you can execute high impact sales calls. What are you stopping? Do you have a cadence?

Quota 93

Quota High impact Strategize Closing 93

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 30, 2019

But we do need to meet, since we are sales people/managers, we get things done through and with other people. Sometimes when I talk to sales people about this, they are aghast, “We can’t tell our customers what we intend to accomplish… ” Wrong! We have meetings to talk about new programs or initiatives.

Territory 48

Territory Follow-up Meeting CRM 48

Partners in Excellence

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

Too often, we take for granted that people understand these. We toss the words around, assuming people understand what we are talking about, what it means, and how it works. In reality, people don’t understand. The link to the series is here. I’ll be adding more over the coming weeks. Today, I’m focusing on qualifying.

Pipeline 68

Pipeline Technique Angle Process 68

Partners in Excellence

JUNE 13, 2012

Too often, they consume too much time of front line sales people and managers–who should be increasing the time they spend with customers. Too often, they consume too much time of front line sales people and managers–who should be increasing the time they spend with customers. Clean the funnel!

Pipeline 87

Pipeline Meeting Start-ups Follow-up 87

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 14, 2018

Sometimes, I think selling, and all the things sales people must do to be successful, is something like a jigsaw puzzle. Overlaid on this is the endless administrivia, CRM updates, dealing with all the latest sales enablement or marketing programs that are supposed to be helpful.

Territory 68

Territory Pipeline Sales Meeting 68

Partners in Excellence

JUNE 12, 2014

As sales people and managers start assessing the gap, usually what happens is they crank up the activity levels–they double the prospecting emails, they double the calls, meetings with the thinking, “More activity produces more results.” Can we compress our sales cycle? Are our close rates too low?

Quota 99

Quota Meeting Represent Pipeline 99

Partners in Excellence

JUNE 24, 2014

It’s important, but misunderstood aspect of sales effectiveness. One of the things I’ve discovered as a result of my diatribes, is many sales managers really don’t know how to reinforce the sales process in their coaching and development of their sales teams.

Process 95

Process Objectives and Key Results Sales CRM 95

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

One of the biggest problems sales people face is their deals slipping. We forecast a certain close date, then it slips, and slips, and slips, and …… Things keep coming up, we push the close date out, then more things come up and we get into this seemingly endless cycle until the deal closes. Here’s what happens.

Closing 90

Closing Process Up-sell Meeting 90

Partners in Excellence

SEPTEMBER 28, 2016

It seems Dreamforce has become the magnet for all the sales and marketing automation suppliers to trot out their shiny new toys and releases, enticing us to buy. I have dozens of people reaching out, wanting to introduce me to their latest greatest technologies oriented at helping sales and marketing professionals.

Technology 87

Technology Technology CRM Territory 87

Partners in Excellence

AUGUST 19, 2014

An article I wrote several years ago, The Most Used, Useless Metric In Sales has been republished in several venues–creating some discussion. Great forecasts start with several things: A sales process that each person uses rigorously in executing their deal strategies. Let me dive into each in a little more detail.

Pipeline 98

Pipeline CRM Closing Process 98

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 13, 2014

This process repeats itself through the buying/selling cycle. I think the record was a review I did a few years ago–the client had roughly a 145 day sales cycle, this one deal had been in the pipeline for over 1200 days. I want to focus Deal Slippage. We all know about deal slippage. We update the CRM.

Pipeline 91

Pipeline CRM Closing Meeting 91

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 12, 2012

The sales process is the cornerstone to driving the highest levels of sales performance. There’s so much data supporting this, one would think discussing sales process should be a non issue—-every organization should continually be strengthening their process, sales people should be executing them with precision.

Process 92

Process Non-Profits Cross-sell Sales 92

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 24, 2012

If it’s a sales call, they are focused on accomplishing as much as possible–compressing their sales cycle. If it’s a manager hiring a new sales person, they have a profile of the ideal candidate, they look for those that best match that profile. Do you know where you are going?

Territory 89

Territory Quota High impact Process 89

Partners in Excellence

AUGUST 12, 2013

Maximizing sales success, market penetration, and growth requires knowing your “sweet spot.” The biggest drain on sales performance is selling outside the sweet spot—trying to get customers whose problems we aren’t the best in the world at solving to buy. What problems do you solve better than anyone else?

Launch 101

Launch Growth Prospecting Gaming 101

Partners in Excellence

JUNE 5, 2016

Over the past years, sales people have become a prime target for “help.” ” It’s no wonder, sales people are key to the organization’s growth and revenue performance. But sales hasn’t been performing, the data around quota performance for sales people and organizations is appalling.

Territory 50

Territory Quota CRM Up-sell 50