Partners in Excellence

MARCH 6, 2024

Just as selling has evolved, buying has evolved–but differently. Too often, there is an alignment challenge between what buyers need and what sellers do. What don’t buyers need from sellers? They don’t need a lot of education about our products. But they don’t need this.

Education 129

Education Trust Sell Product 129

SaaStr

MAY 17, 2024

As Product leaders, you have to build trust with CEOs and founders, align on vision and strategy, stay focused on the customer’s problem, and effectively navigate misalignment to ensure your product has the greatest chances of success right out of the gate. But how do you tactically achieve all of that? It’s obvious, but how do you do this?

Product 93

Product GTM Trust Growth 93

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 25, 2024

In this post, I’m going to make the argument, that based on what I see in too many selling initiatives, is that we, as a community, have migrated from focusing on helping customers solve their problems to just beating the competition. While we claim to want to help the customer solve their problems, we aren’t.

Customers 117

Customers Objectives and Key Results Growth Objection handling 117

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 2, 2024

” Covey writes about the importance of having a destination or a goal, Knowing what we are trying to achieve forces us to focus on the things critical to achieving the goal. But, as we work in organizations and work with our customers, sometimes this can be the source of a giant disconnect. As a result, we have a giant dilemma.

Customers 122

Customers Closing Presentation Product 122

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 7, 2023

Ever since I started selling–you know back in the old days when phones were still attached to cords–I’ve been taught, “Buyers have a structured buying process.” ” I’d see all sorts of block diagrams, showing how the buying process always, coincidentally, aligned with the customer buying process.

B2B 130

B2B Up-sell Contract Start-ups 130

Martech

MAY 14, 2024

However, they do not focus on or do not know how to market internally. For most marketing functions there are two primary roadblocks to effective internal promotion and to developing ROI measures that the CFO and CEO can buy into. Why is putting a figure on marketing ROI still a problem? Many marketers believe these metrics are ROI.

Click Through Rate 107

Click Through Rate Promote Finance Technology 107

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 30, 2024

Let us show you how our product solves this problem… ” “You need more in your pipeline, let us show you how we solve that problem… ” Every prospecting message I see focuses on the sender, their products, and their companies. What would happen if we changed our outreach strategies to focus on problems?

Product 98

Product Sell Pitch B2B 98

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 1, 2024

“Value” is a critical concept in everything we do, but particularly when we are engaging customers, hoping to present a solution they will buy. Yet too often, we and our customers misunderstand the elements around “value,” as a result, we fail to leverage value to it’s greatest impact.

Price 120

Price X-functional Presentation Represent 120

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 14, 2024

Slowdowns are impacting many sectors of the economy. We see a lot of uncertainty. Massive layoffs are still happening. Businesses, industries and markets are being restructured, profoundly. Overlay this with disruptions being caused by technologies like AI, global climate changes, and the global political challenges. Time to face reality.

Objectives and Key Results 121

Objectives and Key Results Clients Drivers/motivators Start-ups 121

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 31, 2024

Summarized, at any point in time, as we look at B2B companies (To help us understand it, let’s imagine the total market size is 1000 companies): At any point in time, 3-4% of companies in an industry are actively engaged in a buying effort. That’s roughly 40 companies actively engaged in buying.

Growth 120

Growth Pipeline Represent Closing 120

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 21, 2023

The conversation got me thinking about the issue: “Our customers desperately need help, but do we want to be helpful, do we know how to be helpful? Often, we involve more people–we need differing points of view, differing expertise to address these challenges. The core issue is our customers are struggling.

Customers 122

Customers Quota Up-sell Conversion 122

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 4, 2023

We were talking, loosely, around the advantages of being customer focused and what that means. His research showed those being customer focused outperformed those being more product focused by more than 2-1. The customer/problem focused sellers always out perform the product focused sellers—enormously! So why change?

Customers 115

Customers Pitch Meeting Sell 115

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

Fast forwarding to current times, based on how we engage our customers, we demonstrate a similar vanity. We think our customer care about us–they obsess about our companies, our products, and how great we are. Sellers obsessed in understanding what our prospects and customers think about us, our companies, and our solutions.

Manufacturing 117

Manufacturing Finance Presentation Technology 117

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Some focus on PLG types of approaches, where the product sells itself–at least until one wants to scale that to the enterprise level. Others see the preference of buyers for rep-free buying experiences and digital buying processes as evidence that selling is no longer necessary. How would they survive if buying died?

Sell 122

Sell Retail Promote Up-sell 122

Martech

MARCH 1, 2024

Customer retention is becoming more of a priority for B2B marketers lately. As buying shifts online and marketing takes on some traditional sales roles, retaining existing customers is essential for driving growth and profits. Sagefrog’s 2023 report , amazingly, listed customer retention as B2B marketers’ number two priority. (It

B2B 115

B2B Cross-sell Pharmaceutical Account management 115

Sales Gravy

MARCH 24, 2024

On this episode of the Sales Gravy Podcast, Jeb Blount, the author of People Love You: The Real Secret to Delivering a Legendary Customer Experience, sits down with Talroo's Vice President of Success and Enablement Barry Klein to discuss why a focus on customer retention is crucial for revenue growth.

Growth 80

Growth Customers Strategize Technology 80

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 3, 2023

My friend, Hank Barnes, is rethinking the buying process with a fascinating concept he calls The Advantage Factor. ” It’s related to much of what I’ve written about Inciting Customers To Change. Too often, sellers catch customers who are very late in their buying cycle. What’s it take to do this?

Sell 127

Sell Up-sell Start-ups Customers 127

Search Engine Land

APRIL 9, 2024

Awareness stage Top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) campaigns are focused on consumers in the awareness stage, when they haven’t yet entered the market for your product or identified a problem that needs solving. People don’t need insurance often, but when they do, it sure helps that the Geico gecko is one of the first things you think of.

A/B testing 107

A/B testing Campaign Click Through Rate Promote 107

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 19, 2023

“We have these features and functions, no other alternative has those… ” Each of us would be presenting our unique list, thinking those would have an impact on our customers. Any of the alternatives customers consider will help them address their problem.

X-functional 127

X-functional Price Presentation Product 127

Martech

MAY 2, 2024

Understanding and engaging the buying group is critical for B2B success. When companies need to make major purchases, they typically assemble an internal team — known as the buying group, buying committee or buying center — to evaluate options and make the decision. Influencers Make my job easier.

B2B 115

B2B Drivers/motivators CRM GTM 115

Heinz Marketing

MARCH 15, 2024

By Maria Geokezas , Chief Operating Officer at Heinz Marketing B2B purchases are complex, involving multiple decision-makers, each with specific needs. The days of extracting short-term value from customers are over, and those outdated growth hacking strategies of yesterday won’t cut it today.

Growth 110

Growth Customers Objectives and Key Results Teamwork 110

Partners in Excellence

MAY 7, 2024

” “They help improve our customers’ productivity and efficiency… ” one of the sellers said. We’ve helped some customers improve productivity by over 20%,” a seller stated. “What’s that mean to the customer? Why do they need to get it done so quickly?”

Start-ups 116

Start-ups Up-sell Conversion Product 116

Partners in Excellence

AUGUST 9, 2023

As is typical of most sales processes I look at, this process described all the things they needed to do to the customer to persuade them to buy their solutions. The thinking is that if we do those things well, we are highly likely to get them to do what we want, buy our products.

Process 96

Process Sell Customers Trust 96

Partners in Excellence

MAY 30, 2023

We may have “invented” a customer buying process that aligns with our desired process–Defining Problems, Identifying Alternatives, Identifying Needs, Assessing Alternatives, Choosing A Vendor. It hasn’t changed since I started selling, despite all the data showing us customers don’t buy that way.

Objection handling 114

Objection handling Quota Entertainment Up-sell 114

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 16, 2024

We know what we have to do, and, for the most part, each of us is well intended–we really want to do the things that cause us, our customers, and our companies to be successful. We’ve got to be customer focused. We’ve got to retain and grow our customers. I contribute my fair share to the clutter.)

Cross-sell 113

Cross-sell Pipeline Meeting Presentation 113

Martech

FEBRUARY 20, 2024

B2B content marketing is the creation and distribution of content, in all its forms, related to your business and relevant to customers. Increasingly, B2B customers depend on self-guided research on digital channels to find out more about business products and services and reach buying decisions. What is B2B content marketing?

Strategize 124

Strategize B2B B2C Trust 124

Partners in Excellence

JULY 31, 2023

Most of the time, as sellers, we focus on our self interests. As a result we spend a lot of time looking at our selling process and the things we want to do to our customers. We focus on the things that drive our success, perhaps not really understanding what the customer is trying to achieve and their success.

Customers 93

Customers Manufacturing CRM Contact 93

Martech

APRIL 19, 2024

As social media platforms combine their vast collections of first-party data with artificial intelligence and machine learning, they’re enhancing their offerings for marketers looking to connect with those ideal customers in a buying mood. Since then, we’ve invested in helping our customers with quality.” Meta saw 16.6%

B2C 105

B2C Lead generation B2B Campaign 105

Martech

JANUARY 26, 2024

Focusing deeply on the customers you serve. Satisfied customers don’t just come for more, they’ll spread the word about you. This is where an ideal customer profile (ICP) comes in. This is where an ideal customer profile (ICP) comes in. This means you need to take into account all of them.

B2B 113

B2B Customers Appointment Objectives and Key Results 113

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 17, 2024

We are trying to get our customers to change from the current products or services they are using, to our products and services. We want the customer to change how they are approaching a certain function in their business–so they can buy our solutions. What about tools to help us and our customers manage the process?

High impact 120

High impact Service Growth Conversion 120

Partners in Excellence

JULY 28, 2023

But one of the most fundamental problems I see is these sales processes are internally focused, always looking at the things we Do To Our Customers. There are all sorts of activities, separated by stages, focusing on what we inflict on our customers. Discover their needs. Focus on identifying the key decision maker.

Process 88

Process Customers Negotiate Sales 88

Partners in Excellence

SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

Unfortunately, too many are driven by wishful thinking and random walks through the customer engagement process. But I’m confused, where is the customer in their buying process?” Didn’t we just describe all the activities we are conducting with the customer?”

Process 116

Process Sales Up-sell Meeting 116

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

The commonality between the two of us is the obsession around helping customers solve complex problems and create great value. My obsession to provide Customer Value Written by Christian Maure r Dave, thank you very much for picking up the challenge. Christian has provided a fascinating perspective. I also never “carried a quota”.

Customers 113

Customers Contract Consult Electrical Engineering 113

Search Engine Land

FEBRUARY 20, 2024

This article explores how SEO can strategically influence user activation, retention, and community building to drive long-term growth and customer loyalty. To successfully activate, users need their expectations to be met by the product or service delivery. However, the role of SEO can extend far beyond just acquisition.

Construction 95

Construction Growth Engineering Service 95

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 24, 2024

Whether it’s the initial purchase, or the renewal/extension, we and our customers waste too much time in p **g contests about price. Whether it’s the initial purchase, or the renewal/extension, we and our customers waste too much time in p **g contests about price. It’s the pricing/cost discussion.

Price 77

Price Contract Presentation Consult 77

Search Engine Land

MARCH 13, 2024

The naming conventions B2B and B2C have forced us to think that each need a completely different approach, but often they don’t. Be clear on who the content is for and what motivates them Knowing your customer goes back to the basics of marketing, but often when we get into a rhythm of delivering website content for SEO, it can be forgotten.

Drivers/motivators 98

Drivers/motivators B2B B2C Quota 98

SalesLoft

APRIL 18, 2024

That’s why Salesloft’s partner ecosystem has all the tools you need for selling, in one single pane of glass. Revenue teams, it’s time to ditch a disjointed workflow and start working more efficiently to deliver relevant buying experiences across the full customer lifecycle.

GTM 98

GTM CRM Up-sell Technology 98