Martech

MAY 15, 2024

Alicia Arnold is the founder of a consulting company, AK Arnold, and draws on 20 years of experience working with Fortune 500 companies to help them transform digitally. We discussed the importance of being able to translate technology and break down silos in organizations, all while never losing sight of the customer.

Healthcare 89

Healthcare Technology Technology Sports 89

Partners in Excellence

MAY 17, 2024

As individual contributors, we are conditioned to think about what we owe our managers and leaders. Are we getting all our tasks done–making the calls, doing the outreach, meeting with customers, progressing deals, keeping our reporting updated. What do we “owe” our people?

Trust 77

Trust Start-ups Meeting Customers 77

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. It was so easy to talk about how amazing Mark was when he was standing right there…but now all the words feel like shadows to the bright light he represented to me and so many who knew and loved him.

X-functional 114

X-functional Sports Represent Start-ups 114

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 12, 2024

I want to accomplish a lot, but I want to do it with minimal effort. As I look at selling, today, it requires far too much effort—far more than I’m willing to do. After all, we have to send 1000s of emails a day, we have to make 100s of calls, we have to spend hours doing outreach in LinkedIn and other channels.

Sell 115

Sell Commission Up-sell Quota 115

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 skip them, thinking they aren’t important.

CRM 125

CRM Presentation Meeting Closing 125

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 27, 2024

We were prepping for a very difficult customer meeting this afternoon. As we discussed the situation, he described the difficulties this customer had created in the past, he talked about how unreasonable they had been, how they weren’t meeting commitments they had made to him. We only win when our customers succeed.

Conversion 105

Conversion Gaming Meeting Trust 105

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 22, 2024

Sometimes, I feel like a broken record talking about Customer and Business Acumen. When I talk to leaders about their GTM strategies, the focus is on products and presenting the capabilities of products. Yet these same leaders complain about the ability to connect to prospects and customers. They don’t know.

Customers 109

Customers GTM Trust Up-sell 109

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. As we spoke, it struck me how we revel in these questions. Customers asking us about the product capabilities, drilling deeply into what the products and solutions do.

Customers 129

Customers Up-sell B2B Trust 129

Search Engine Land

MAY 13, 2024

There’s been much talk about core updates , helpful content , reputation abuse , etc. Whenever a new change happens, I first try to understand what the search engines are doing and why they’re trying to accomplish it. If you aren’t thinking about user needs, personas and intent, you’re already failing.

Engineering 133

Engineering Legal Start-ups Trust 133

Search Engine Land

MAY 16, 2024

Yes, in the same week that OpenAI basically created Samantha, the AI virtual assistant from the movie “ Her ,” Google’s tagline became “Let Google do the Googling for you.” Watch this: What did you notice was missing? Former Google CEO said Google is not about blue links. We knew this was coming.

Gambling 109

Gambling Launch Follow-up Engineering 109

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 117

Quota Trust Pitch Up-sell 117

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

AI is changing the world (“Wow, what an astute observation, Dave.”). It reduces what may have taken hours or even days to seconds. There were a few times in my selling career, I’d have to do deep research to begin to understand trends, challenges and issues facing my customers. ” Let me dive into this.

Cross-sell 126

Cross-sell Presentation Drivers/motivators Engineering 126

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 26, 2024

During the Q&A, a salesperson asked me, “What are your favorite books on sales? What should we be reading?” While the basic principles at the core of high performance selling are the same, each book has a slightly different perspective on how to implement them. Where do your customers go to learn?

Manufacturing 125

Manufacturing Technique Sell Customers 125

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 113

Cross-sell Pipeline Meeting Presentation 113

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 19, 2023

As sellers, we always talk about the importance of our “Unique Value Proposition.” ” For decades, we have thought about our value proposition in the context of our products/solutions. And we focused on our differentiation to determine our uniqueness.

X-functional 127

X-functional Price Presentation Product 127

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 124

Gaming Engineering Presentation Start-ups 124

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 1, 2024

We tend to spend the bulk of our time responding to people who are looking to buy. They have gone through the work of defining the problem, defining what they want to achieve, getting funding, identifying the risks, looking for solutions… And then they talk to us. Alternatively, they actually reach out, asking to talk.

Manufacturing 77

Manufacturing GTM Represent CRM 77

Search Engine Land

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

For the longest time, I’ve avoided writing or talking about E-E-A-T. Having been a Google quality rater myself (almost a decade ago now), I quickly realized what E-E-A-T was: human language to describe the ultimate goal of the algorithm so raters without access to Google data can evaluate algorithms.

Engineering 123

Engineering Contact Start-ups Launch 123

Partners in Excellence

MAY 8, 2024

The people that remain are exhausted, not interested in talking more, they just want to escape. The people that remain are exhausted, not interested in talking more, they just want to escape. But we don’t understand what has happened. We don’t understand how/why they have gotten to the point that they have.

Price 68

Price Up-sell Conversion Presentation 68

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 20, 2023

What this means is to find a single opportunity, there are 1000-1400 touches across many potential customers. As we think about this, with average win rates, in SaaS trending below 20%, to close a single opportunity, we have to qualify at least 5 deals, meaning 5000-7000 touches. To make quota, imagine what we have to do!

Cold Call 125

Cold Call Quota Prospecting Represent 125

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 29, 2024

He opened with, “We see this challenge…… impacting organizations like yours. We think you can be doing better……” Intrigued, it was an important issue (it always is for small businesses), I responded, “What causes you to say we face that issue and can do better?”

Start-ups 81

Start-ups Conversion Pitch Prospecting 81

Partners in Excellence

MAY 1, 2024

For my entire career, “we” are addicted to busyness. We seem to measure our worth by how we fill our calendars and that pleasant feeling of exhaustion at 10PM when we have finished a busy day. We revel in our ability to multitask, even though the data shows that multitasking makes us accomplish less.

Meeting 113

Meeting Quota Technology Technology 113

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 17, 2024

As much as we tire talking about the constancy of change, our jobs as sellers only exist because of change. As much as we tire talking about the constancy of change, our jobs as sellers only exist because of change. Without some sort of change, we never get a purchase order.

High impact 120

High impact Service Growth Conversion 120

SalesProInsider

APRIL 30, 2024

Sorry to hear about the Packer’s loss last weekend, what was your highlight of the season?” “How What do you think about those questions? Maybe you’re thinking, “Oh, the dreaded small talk!” Well, “small talk” is only small if you make it so. Instead talk smart. Make it about them, not you.

Sports 62

Sports Conversion Networking Pitch 62

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? They don’t need a lot of education about our products. What do our customers need?

Education 129

Education Trust Sell Product 129

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 9, 2023

I had no prepared materials, it was a Q&A about how to connect with prospects more effectively. It was such a fun conversation, we focused on how we increase our effectiveness and impact through deeper understanding of our customers/prospects. We’ve developed a tool they are leveraging, The Brock Questionert.*

Customers 116

Customers Prospecting Clients Up-sell 116

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. Yes, we have made incremental gains, and yes, some dramatic leaps in innovation. That’s what we should be doing (see the second point above).

Technology 120

Technology Technology Niche Campaign 120

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 8, 2024

In reading an article about the latest hints and tips in using AI for prospecting, a sentence stood out to me. It talked about how “mundane” outbound is. And, perhaps, it is this mindset that underlies the poor results we get from our prospecting. We see this in our own personal experiences, every day.

Prospecting 114

Prospecting Service Customers 114

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 142

Territory Growth Presentation Meeting 142

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

Endless discussion on “the numbers” and the challenges of achieving them. We see them leading team meetings, but usually these are fairly one way discussions, “You aren’t hitting the numbers, you need to do more!” I talk to them about it. We talk about pipelines.

Pipeline 111

Pipeline Meeting Technology Technology 111

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 17, 2024

Howard Dover about some programs he and Becc Holland are conducting with his students. We talked about some fascinating concepts: Mis-diagnosis and Missed-diagnosis. Both concepts are hugely important, so I need to separate writing about them. The sister article about Mis-diagnosis, be sure to read that.

Manufacturing 117

Manufacturing Represent Clients Education 117

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

I’m fascinating to learn more about selling, different approaches, different tools, things others do to succeed. I see so much that we can and should do to drive our and our customer success. When others ask me this question, I reply, “I get up every morning and do my hobby!

Sell 105

Sell Up-sell Start-ups Follow-up 105

SalesProInsider

OCTOBER 18, 2023

“ You get what you’re looking for.” We do get what we’re looking for in many life circumstances, and in sales efforts. What are the too-common concerns or objections where advisors might lack conviction? So, what can we do? Whatever they are, make note of them.

Conversion 139

Conversion Sales Pitch Clients 139

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

I read a fascinating article about the response rates for a variety of outbound email prospecting techniques. The argument the author was making was the technique that produced 1.25% was the best approach (which aligned with what they sold). What troubled me was the view that these levels of response rates were acceptable.

Manufacturing 115

Manufacturing Technique Pitch Up-sell 115

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 1, 2024

“Selling Bad Breath” repulses the people we are trying to reach. Somehow when we open our mouths or send an email or do an outreach, all it accomplishes is driving our prospects and customers away. Prospects and customers can always sniff it out, regardless how we try to cover it up.

Sell 73

Sell Pitch Quota Up-sell 73

SalesProInsider

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

But “personal” — or a lack of it — is what I see as a barrier to higher conversions for advisors who provide a very personal service. The Dangers of Depersonalization in Sales Conversations What do I mean? When we personalize the conversation, we allow them to be more connected to what you’re saying.

Conversion 126

Conversion Prospecting Pitch Clients 126

Search Engine Land

MAY 9, 2024

In this article, you’ll learn about information gain and how to use it to your advantage. And unless you are a computer programmer, we can largely leave that can of worms unopened (for now). When SEOs talk about information gain, they mainly refer to the Google patent. Google Patent. Information foraging theory.

Engineering 91

Engineering Angle UX Trust 91