Partners in Excellence

JULY 21, 2023

I, and others, cite data about customers. Several years ago, Gartner started publishing data on customer preferring “Rep-free” buying experiences. Several years ago, Gartner started publishing data on customer preferring “Rep-free” buying experiences. Customers are and need to buy!

Prospecting 75

Prospecting Customers Cold Call Commission 75

Partners in Excellence

MAY 10, 2023

One morning I was meeting with him, he had just returned from a trip, calling on customers and meeting with people in the branch offices in Boston. It was from a very important customer and was toughly competed. ” But the question George was asking was about what the customer was trying to do.

Customers 86

Customers Manufacturing Finance Meeting 86

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 83

Customers Manufacturing CRM Contact 83

Partners in Excellence

MAY 8, 2022

A key element is content from our customers. It’s usually case studies about how fantastic our products are. Usually we see them sprinkled through web sites, a picture of a customer or a company logo, with a pithy comment about how wonderful our company is, or how great our solutions are.

Customers 85

Customers Represent Meeting Prospecting 85

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 10, 2023

Not quoting Brent directly, he raised an issue of: Why are we so obsessed about what customers think of us and our products? In some ways it’s very natural, as human beings we tend to be self centered, we are driven by our own interests, self interests. And in our companies. It’s a fascinating question.

Customers 101

Customers Closing Product 101

David Meerman Scott

MARCH 5, 2024

Don’t these companies realize that they’re annoying the customers they say they value? Many companies automatically send a survey after every transaction.

Customers 57

Customers Service Sales 57

Highspot

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

In 2023, we spent lots of time listening to our customers, from our customer advisory board to the thousands of 1:1 conversations we have every day within our Customer Success teams. Your feedback is driving both our innovation roadmap and our approach to serving you.

Customers 64

Customers GTM Account management Government 64

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 107

Customers Objectives and Key Results Growth Objection handling 107

Partners in Excellence

JULY 21, 2020

We are focused on hitting our numbers–our performance, often our compensation is based on whether we are hitting our numbers. As a result, we and our managers are intensely focused. We focus on getting the PO, getting the order so that we achieve our goals. And through that, we achieve ours.

Customers 105

Customers Quota Gaming Conversion 105

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 12, 2023

What we fail to recognize in all these conversations is our customers are quietly changing how they buy faster than we are changing how we sell. And customers have quickly recognized these and adapted, not responding to our clever outreaches, multichannel, multitouch. Win rates are plummeting. Sales cycles are extending.

Assembly Line 85

Assembly Line Customers Tradeshows Manufacturing 85

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 1, 2021

It’s always a structured approach to engaging the customer, working with them to make a buying decision. The process has always reminded me of critical things I should be considering, to maximize my impact in working with the customer. I’d try to get the customer to consider those issues. What gives???”

Process 91

Process Sell Customers Up-sell 91

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 14, 2022

What sellers do is drive customers to change. But why should we expect them to change, particularly when sellers have failed, so miserably, to change the things we do in creating value with our customers? His focus in that book and his others was around helping the customer identify and solve problems.

Customers 119

Customers Consult B2B Sell 119

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. If we and they do our jobs effectively, then we are likely to win.

Process 79

Process Customers Negotiate Sales 79

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 19, 2022

Since my earliest days of selling, I have been taught, to create real value and differentiation, I have to know more than my customers. As a result, I’ve always done a lot of research into both my customers and target customers. I could hold my own in any conversation, at any level within my banking customers.

Customers 97

Customers High impact Prospecting Conversion 97

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 20, 2021

” It’s an important concept, focused on helping our customers make higher quality decisions, with greater confidence. One of the most important things Brent discusses is how customers tend to cope when faced so much high quality information. It impacts each of our people, and, even, leaders.

Customers 102

Customers Process Sales 102

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 22, 2022

We read all the time that we are supposed to be helpful to our customers. We have to help them understand new opportunities, the challenges/risks of change, how to reach consensus…… According to all the experts, we have to do all of this stuff to help our customers succeed.

Customers 74

Customers Commission Promote Quota 74

Membrain

MAY 23, 2021

Buying is complicated—we see all sorts of research confirming this. Whether it’s the fact the majority of buying efforts end in no decision made, the high level of of “High Regret Decisions,” increasing uncertainty on decision confidence; more data points to how buyers struggle during and after the buying journey.

Customers 128

Customers Sales 128

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 18, 2022

” Restarting it, I want to talk about our Ideal Customers–or our ICP (Ideal Customer Profile.) If someone has visited our website, if they are on a procured mailing list, if they fog a mirror, we try to engage them. If our pipelines are lean, we cast a wider net. How do we figure out our ICP?

Customers 48

Customers Pipeline Territory Up-sell 48

Partners in Excellence

JULY 26, 2022

As sellers, we seem to think the most important thing to our customers is learning about our products, services, and solutions. The list of things our customers struggle to learn includes: Why change, what’s driving the need to change, what happens if they don’t, what are the risks to that change?

Customers 74

Customers B2B Service Presentation 74

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 17, 2023

I know it’s an absurd concept–selling the way our customers want to buy. Afterall, we have our quotas. We have our cadences, sequences, we have to reach out to hundreds or thousands of people a day, we have to constantly be pitching. We have our process, we have to execute it, we have to produce results!

Customers 80

Customers Quota Pitch Technique 80

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 23, 2020

We–our people, our own organizations, our customers, our suppliers, our communities–are being forced to adapt and change. Our customers are facing issues they have never faced and may not have the tools, knowledge or expertise to face. As a result, our competition changes.

Customers 107

Customers Territory Growth Sell 107

Partners in Excellence

AUGUST 7, 2020

They were talking about how to align their selling process with the customer buying process. Just as we have always thought about a linear sales process (prospect, qualify, discover, propose, close); we tend to think customers have a similar process. Customers start them with the intent of addressing an issue and solving a problem.

Customers 116

Customers B2B Up-sell Process 116

Highspot

MAY 20, 2021

With Highspot Training & Coaching , customers can build onboarding programs in less than half the time previously required and reduce time-to-first-sale by up to 75%. The web conference meeting with a customer has become the way sales works today. Practice Pitches to Improve Rep Performance and Participation.

Customers 97

Customers GTM Pitch Customer Relationship Management 97

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 17, 2023

In listening to their weekly webcast, for a few moments, Brent was whining about the issue of “Why do we think our customers know what they are doing?” It’s an important opportunity for sellers to be truly helpful with customers. Yet, we expect our customers to be experts at doing this.

Customers 74

Customers Closing Process Product 74

Partners in Excellence

MAY 15, 2022

As sales people we learn about the importance of developing relationships with our customers. Once, my team was making a $5M purchase of PCs for our sales people. Rather than working with my team, he focused on our personal relationship and our past working relationship. Are you building real relationships?

Customers 110

Customers Trust Drivers/motivators Meeting 110

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 8, 2018

Stories provide contexts to teach our customers and help them learn. They provide a basis for helping our customers understand how we might help them. They help customer learn through understanding the stories of people and organizations who have faced similar issues. Stories engage our customers hearts and minds.

Customers 86

Customers Technique Closing Sales 86

Partners in Excellence

SEPTEMBER 21, 2021

Coaching is one of the most important things in driving high impact performance improvement with our people. Now let’s shift gears a little, let’s think about our customers and their development. Customers need help. Where do our customers turn to get coached? Where does this break down?

Customers 56

Customers High impact Territory Pitch 56

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 1, 2022

As leaders, when we think about developing our people, helping them overcome performance challenges, helping them grow; we know we can’t “fix” them—as much as we are tempted to try. We know that our people have to choose to “fix” themselves. Who's Coaching Our Customers?

Customers 52

Customers Service Product Sales 52

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 15, 2021

Recently, I’ve been reading a series of discussions debating the concept, “Can we really be driven by helping our customers while still focused on selling?” Moreover, doing this maximizes the value we create with our customers and maximizes our own performance. Sadly, too many do this.

Sell 80

Sell Customers Represent Quota 80

Membrain

DECEMBER 5, 2021

It’s always a structured approach to engaging the customer, working with them to make a buying decision. From my earliest days as a salesperson, I’ve been taught the “sales process,” and have tried to execute that process as effectively as possible.

Process 75

Process Customers Sell Sales 75

Partners in Excellence

MAY 13, 2021

One would think this is an ideal scenario for sales people to create great value helping their customers develop navigate their buying journey, enabling them to make a decision where they feel they have chosen well. Customers are seeking to reduce sales involvement in their buying process.

Customers 59

Customers Drivers/motivators Territory Clients 59

Membrain

AUGUST 9, 2020

They were talking about how to align their selling process with the customer buying process. Recently, I was in a discussion with a group of outstanding sales people.

Customers 158

Customers Process Sell Sales 158

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2021

Q: Dear SaaStr: Should We Over-Charge or Under-Charge our First Customers? Overcharge if the customer is big , i.e., >$50k-$100k a year or so in ACV. Undercharge if the customer is small by revenue. Charge a super cheap price early to take friction out of sales, and to get to 100, 200, 500+ customers fast.

Customers 105

Customers Price Gaming Up-sell 105