Partners in Excellence

JULY 3, 2013

We’ve been working with a customer, diligently talking about their problems and concerns. They’ve met with us, asked us the right questions, perhaps given some buying signals, but things drag, the deal becomes stuck. The customer isn’t saying no, but they aren’t moving forward.

Customers 94

Customers Price Promote Education 94

Iannarino

MARCH 2, 2023

But by rushing the deal to get to the pain points, you break B2B selling and buying. The bad news is that most salespeople don't address the problems of buying and making change, and failing to do so causes buyers to look elsewhere for help. Your sales champion needs you to help them be One-Up as it pertains to this decision.

B2B 292

B2B Contact Clients Entertainment 292

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 8, 2024

The global economy/turmoil and continued layoffs/reductions, and shuffling of priorities–both within our customers, markets, and within our own organizations. The simultaneous promise/threat of AI, “Will it help me be more efficient or will it make me unnecessary?” For much of their buying, this makes sense.

Quota 108

Quota Trust Pitch Up-sell 108

Iannarino

MARCH 12, 2023

In B2B Sales , the customers are other businesses. All types share the common need to help the client acquire better results or buy something they need. But each type has a different ideal customer. Some salespeople sell to consumers (B2C), while others sell to government entities (B2G).

B2B 287

B2B B2C Government Sales 287

Cerebral Selling

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

Gartner reports that companies that deliver a great buying experience grow two times faster than those that deliver average experiences. Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer report agrees, stating that 80% of customers feel the buying experience a company provides is as important as its products and services.

Sell 130

Sell Transportation Entertainment Up-sell 130

Veloxy

FEBRUARY 15, 2024

These podcasts cover a diverse range of sales topics, including mastering the sales funnel, customer relationship building, sales psychology, leadership, personal growth, and the latest sales trends and innovations. They offer beginner-friendly content aimed at helping novices understand the sales process and develop their skills.

Gaming 233

Gaming Sell GTM Technique 233

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 25, 2024

We know buying cycles are getting longer. It’s easy to find excuses, to blame everyone and everything else about the lengthening sales/buying cycles. How are sellers contributing to the longer buying and sales cycles? We have great experience in working with customers going through the buying processes.

Customers 101

Customers Sales Presentation Start-ups 101

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. You still don’t really know who is buying what.

B2B 87

B2B Drivers/motivators CRM GTM 87

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 121

B2B Up-sell Contract Start-ups 121

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.

Strategize 126

Strategize B2B B2C Trust 126

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. Customers asking us about the product capabilities, drilling deeply into what the products and solutions do. They don’t know how to buy.

Customers 120

Customers Up-sell B2B Trust 120

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Others see the preference of buyers for rep-free buying experiences and digital buying processes as evidence that selling is no longer necessary. Implicit in the thinking that selling is dying would be the concept that buying must be dying. One wonders the economic turmoil that would result if buying died.

Sell 112

Sell Retail Promote Up-sell 112

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 2, 2024

But, as we work in organizations and work with our customers, sometimes this can be the source of a giant disconnect. We know what questions we need the customer to answer to qualify the deal, we know how to present the capabilities of our products, how to handle objections, how to move to close.

Customers 112

Customers Closing Presentation Product 112

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 108

Customers Objectives and Key Results Growth Objection handling 108

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? I won’t bother revisiting all the data we see reinforcing the struggle customers experience in committing to and managing a change process.

Customers 113

Customers Quota Up-sell Conversion 113

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 16, 2024

As a result, the only thing they talk about is the product–it’s features and functions, customers using the solutions, how great their company is, and how the product is better than competition. They don’t understand the customer, as a result, can’t translate what the solutions mean to the customer.

Trust 109

Trust Customers Process Product 109

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 118

Sell Up-sell Start-ups Customers 118

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 110

Price X-functional Presentation Represent 110

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2024

Yes, you and I just want to buy in one click, on a website. Just think about buying a car. The drama, the negotiation, the attempt to get you to buy an $800 CD Player and some rust protection you don’t need or want. That buyer isn’t buying a commodity. I rarely if ever want to talk to a salesperson. This is a gift.

Negotiate 92

Negotiate Sales Contact Process 92

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. We aren’t helping them succeed.

X-functional 118

X-functional Price Presentation Product 118

Sales Gravy

DECEMBER 27, 2012

With the right attitude, the ability to ask questions and truly listen to customers’ answers, and by f A few simple changes like attitude, will bring rewards in terms of performance and can make a significant difference in a dealership’s bottom line.

Customers 40

Customers Sell 40

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 6, 2024

Just as selling has evolved, buying has evolved–but differently. We don’t help them by repeating what they already know. Likewise, they don’t need our “glamour list,” all the great logos and customers. What do our customers need? What don’t buyers need from sellers? These are different.

Education 120

Education Trust Sell Product 120

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 9, 2024

What if we tried simplifying, for ourselves, our people, our organizations, and our customers? Define, as Hank Barnes suggests, your UCP ( Unacceptable Customer Profile ) and banish them from all outreach and pipelines. Define and execute a selling process aligned with your customer buying process. Be prepared!

CRM 117

CRM Technology Technology Pipeline 117

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 30, 2024

But unless the prospect is very late in their buying process, product/solution focused prospecting is unlikely to catch their attention. We talk about the problems our products and solutions solve… ” But this isn’t the issue many customers face. We’ve seen this in their buying processes.

Product 93

Product Sell Pitch B2B 93

Force Management

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

Externally, marketplace dynamics have shifted and buyers have redefined why and how they buy. Start with a buyer-focused messaging framework that’s proven to help revenue teams align behind company goals and support front-line sales success. Strategies for growth and evolution should drive alignment across all your revenue teams.

Growth 144

Growth GTM Cross-sell Drivers/motivators 144

Martech

APRIL 24, 2024

Insufficient customer groundwork to amplify technology’s business value. This will allow teams to see the pain points that technology can alleviate and understand how it can help improve processes themselves. Consider aspects like customer activation and conversion optimization, which could all benefit from such alignment.

Process 79

Process Technology Technology Government 79

Search Engine Land

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

They want customers to continue buying. Here are six marketing strategies to help you grow your sales on Amazon in 2024. Continuously analyze your keywords and focus on relevancy Amazon’s algorithm may be focused on customers buying products, which is similar to saying Google’s algorithm is focused on providing the best answers.

Profit margin 126

Profit margin Promote Campaign Price 126

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 30, 2024

All credit for this post goes to Scott Gillum and his fantastic post: Why Relying on AI Won’t Improve Customer Experience. Without a doubt, AI will have a huge impact on both how we manage/lead our organizations and on how we effectively and efficiently engage our customers in their buying process.

Represent 73

Represent Presentation Up-sell Start-ups 73

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 111

Growth Pipeline Represent Closing 111

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 110

High impact Service Growth Conversion 110

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. That’s how my obsession to provide customer value was borne.

Customers 103

Customers Contract Consult Electrical Engineering 103

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 1, 2024

We tend to spend the bulk of our time responding to people who are looking to buy. We go through nominal discovery, schedule the demo, then say, “If you buy by month end, we can do a deal… ” What we fail to realize is that we are only dealing with the smallest part of the market. How can you help us address this?

Manufacturing 77

Manufacturing GTM Represent CRM 77

Martech

APRIL 19, 2024

But big-ticket purchases in B2C and B2B will help marketers see ROI with a small number of wins, which pushes some marketers toward quality. And social media is a good place to start if you’re looking for consumers who are thinking about researching and buying products. Since then, we’ve invested in helping our customers with quality.”

B2C 108

B2C Lead generation B2B Campaign 108

Search Engine Land

OCTOBER 25, 2023

This article provides an overview of why SEO differs for B2B companies and four tips to help you drive success from B2B SEO. You are not just trying to capture one searcher but a collection of searchers called a “buying committee” that has the influence and power to buy your product or service. What is B2B SEO?

B2B 115

B2B B2C Non-Profits Education 115

Martech

MARCH 7, 2024

Salesforce’s Spring 2024 release brings new features to help brands elevate performance built on the foundation of data, AI, CRM and trust. It includes a plethora of enhancements designed to empower businesses, streamline processes, and enhance customer experiences. Now, businesses can cater to diverse customer needs seamlessly.

User Experience 103

User Experience Promote Trust CRM 103

Partners in Excellence

MAY 1, 2024

Each of us talk to thousands of sellers and customers every year, and Andy’s podcasts reach 10s to 100s of thousands more. We can analyze every word our people and our customers speak on phone or Zoom calls. They don’t know how to buy, wander, and most often fail.

Technology 73

Technology Technology CRM Pipeline 73

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!

Customers 106

Customers Pitch Meeting Sell 106