Partners in Excellence

APRIL 25, 2024

We seem to overlook the questions, “How do we know what ‘Top of Funnel’ we need? How do we shift that in our favor?” ” We cannot focus exclusively on Top of Funnel. ” We cannot focus exclusively on Top of Funnel. What if we changed our deal size?

Pipeline 115

Pipeline Prospecting Closing Process 115

Partners in Excellence

MAY 1, 2024

Andy Paul and I were having what I’ve labeled “The Old Fart Conversations About Selling.” ” Neither of us feel we are out of touch with modern selling, the challenges both buyers and sellers face. But every once in a while we get on a call to discuss “What’s happening in selling?”

Technology 117

Technology Technology CRM Pipeline 117

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

Cross-sell 115

Cross-sell Pipeline Meeting Presentation 115

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.

Quota 119

Quota Trust Pitch Up-sell 119

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 18, 2024

Task forces would be in frenzied action trying to figure out why this was happening and what need be done to change that win rate, getting it up to more acceptable levels in the shortest time possible. Sure we don’t want to waste time an resources on things way outside our ICP. ” This one reported on research on win rates.

SQL 119

SQL Quota Presentation Prospecting 119

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 not prepare well, winging it. After all, we’re busy!

CRM 127

CRM Presentation Meeting Closing 127

Martech

MAY 7, 2024

With that sheer growth rate, it is fair to ask yourself and your team: “Do we control our martech, or does our martech control us?” Every year, we publish the Marketing Technology Supergraphic and we hear one question: “Will the Martech market consolidate any time soon? In the same year, we added 3,068 new tools.

Legal 111

Legal Growth Pitch Technology 111

Partners in Excellence

MAY 14, 2024

We were talking about organizational design, performance, and a number of issues. We were talking about this in the context of organizational performance. We were talking about this in the context of organizational performance. ” “What do you mean,” she asked.

GTM 68

GTM Represent Education Presentation 68

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.

Product 81

Product Sales CRM Technology 81

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? We always seem to lead with our products and focus our conversations on those.

Education 131

Education Trust Sell Product 131

Search Engine Land

MAY 9, 2024

And unless you are a computer programmer, we can largely leave that can of worms unopened (for now). But what about information gain in relation to the information foraging theory? As you can see, we have three different meanings for the same term. The new buzzword in SEO is information gain. But there’s a massive problem.

Engineering 93

Engineering Angle UX Trust 93

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 19, 2024

Dave: We were scaling aggressively. We grew ARR tremendously past two years that I’ve been there. Last year we hired and onboarded 80 SDRs and AEs. At the end of the year we had grown to 50 AEs and sales people. We drove the performance of those people, reducing CAC payback by 20%! What am I misunderstanding?

Quota 122

Quota Growth Prospecting Start-ups 122

SaaStr

MAY 13, 2024

And that thing I’ve learned is that you can take two brutally competitive products, that are very similar, give each a booth at SaaStr Annual, Europa or at one of our digital events… or each can try a podcast ad or do a newsletter ad … and one can walk away with more leads than you can follow up on. How is this possible?

Quota 83

Quota Pipeline Follow-up Start-ups 83

Search Engine Land

MAY 6, 2024

Mark would often call me his unpaid PR team, but what he didn’t realize is that he “paid” for it with his warmth, kindness and wit. He invested so much time in helping others hone public speaking chops, as well as how we interact with people. We’ll do what we can to add in those missing pieces.

X-functional 116

X-functional Sports Represent Start-ups 116

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 122

Price X-functional Presentation Represent 122

Martech

MAY 9, 2024

When we spoke, he was driving to an airport in Croatia, but he was still able to address the “trough of disillusionment” that might be just around the corner for some — not all — uses of generative AI. Is that what is going to tip us into the trough of disillusionment ? Q: What about these over-complicated implementations?

Appointment 83

Appointment Technology Technology Follow-up 83

Search Engine Land

MAY 6, 2024

We were expecting the enforcement to begin this week, we posted a reminder last week. Danny Sullivan from Google told me , “we’re only doing manual actions right now. Danny Sullivan from Google told me , “we’re only doing manual actions right now. What is site reputation abuse?

Education 144

Education Launch Trust Closing 144

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 3, 2024

We invest enormous amounts of energy seeking to avoid dong the work. We constantly seek shortcuts, things that enable us to avoid doing the work critical to creating and sustaining performance. Our mindsets aren’t so focused on improving efficiency, rather on avoiding doing the work.

Objection handling 119

Objection handling Construction Technique Drivers/motivators 119

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. Without this, we wander aimlessly, perhaps without understanding what we are trying to achieve. As a result, we have a giant dilemma.

Customers 124

Customers Closing Presentation Product 124

Martech

APRIL 17, 2024

Here’s what I was looking for: Stop depending on batch-and-blast. So here we are, nearly seven years later and we haven’t moved far on complexity. So here we are, nearly seven years later and we haven’t moved far on complexity. That’s what we should be doing (see the second point above).

Technology 124

Technology Technology Niche Campaign 124

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 18, 2024

We have become masters at describing our “how.” ” That is, we present all the capabilities of our products and solutions, the “how” of achieving a goal or solving the problem. We provide endless content, demos, and discussions focused on the capabilities of our products. Who does this issue impact?

Presentation 126

Presentation Closing Product Customers 126

Search Engine Land

APRIL 11, 2024

Google hasn’t been “10 blue links” for a long time, Pichai said, adding: “When mobile came, we knew Google Search had to evolve a lot. We call it featured snippets, but for almost 10 years now you go to Google for many questions we kind of use AI to answer them. We call it web answers internally.

Electricity 112

Electricity Government Technology Technology 112

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

We’ve been taught we have to create value with our customers. Assuring we help the customers solve their problems. …… But what about the reciprocal, what value do our customers create for us? Usually, we think of that in terms of the revenue the opportunity will generate for us.

Customers 132

Customers Referrals Clients Strategize 132

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. How do you know if he cares?

Pitch 129

Pitch Prospecting Start-ups Conversion 129

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

Every day I think we have reached bottom with the level of stupid advice I see in my social feeds. Every day, I’m surprised that we can find new depths of stupidity. And there is are endless opinions about what we do as a result of this fundamental “truth” about how tough things are.

Consult 126

Consult Clients Follow-up Up-sell 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.

Gaming 126

Gaming Engineering Presentation Start-ups 126

Martech

APRIL 15, 2024

What will customers remember after they have experienced your website, product, service or people? What will they tell their friends or colleagues about their experience — will they even mention it? Do you think customers will talk about how they were “wowed” by their AI experience? The next day, at breakfast, we met Lincoln.

Customers 120

Customers Hospitality Technology Technology 120

Search Engine Land

APRIL 26, 2024

A Google spokesperson told us, “As the web and spam tactics continue to evolve, we’ll continue to work to reduce low quality, unoriginal content in Search. As always, we appreciate and encourage feedback from users and site owners alike.” 45% reduction. Well, Now Google said it ended up being closer to 45%.

Engineering 144

Engineering User Experience Launch Start-ups 144

Search Engine Land

MAY 9, 2024

We get to leverage both sides of our brains: The right brain when it comes to on-page, content and even link building campaigns. We lean into technical know-how and keyword optimization. Logically, we react to what the numbers are telling us and decide the next steps accordingly. What about their intent?

A/B testing 88

A/B testing Entertainment Engineering Campaign 88

Martech

APRIL 11, 2024

But in our zeal to harness technology, operations and automation, we fail to accomplish marketing. Higher-ups want us to do more with less (efficiency). We are really good at solving their urgent problems in this sphere. Creating a preference for our brand, even as we strive to be the best. Here’s why.

B2B 124

B2B Manufacturing Technology Technology 124

Martech

MAY 7, 2024

We were in a meeting, and I said something like, “Alex, I think it would be helpful if we could cut the data in a different way to figure out what’s really happening.” So Alex didn’t do it. He said, “Justin, if you don’t specifically ask someone to do something, you can’t expect them to do it.”

X-functional 92

X-functional Follow-up Meeting Strategize 92

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 15, 2024

The key opportunity we sellers face is our customers posing a question to themselves, “Should we do things differently?” ” This is the critical question that initiates a change process, creating opportunities that we can pursue. These get the customer thinking, “Should we do things differently?”

Consult 111

Consult Meeting Customers Process 111

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 22, 2024

But what does this really mean, particularly when we have so much competing for our attention, and when we invest so much in getting the attention of others? Too often, it seems we focus more on the mechanics of what we do. By paying close attention to those we engage.

Drivers/motivators 118

Drivers/motivators Closing Customers Sales 118

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

“Discovery” has been an important part of the sales process ever since I started selling (Yes, that was back when we had first chipped a wheel out of stone.) In all our training, we’ve gotten playbooks, done role plays, and learned how to conduct discovery and what questions we should be asking the customer.

Technique 111

Technique B2B Start-ups Up-sell 111

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.

Territory 144

Territory Growth Presentation Meeting 144

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 25, 2024

We know buying cycles are getting longer. Or we have other excuses. But perhaps we should look inwardly. Is there anything we can change to reduce these? And if we could, what would it mean? We focus on the things important to us, presenting our solutions and getting the buyer to choose us.

Customers 111

Customers Sales Presentation Start-ups 111

Search Engine Land

APRIL 30, 2024

The Google interface we know today will be gone in less than three years. Let’s say you have all kinds of questions about the world: Do I need to wear a jacket out today? What’s the best sushi restaurant near here? At the time, we all decried it as a land grab from Google. What will it be called next? Is SEO dead?

User Experience 110

User Experience Niche Service Closing 110