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.

Conversion 105

Conversion Gaming Meeting Trust 105

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. We are trying to get our customers to change from the current products or services they are using, to our products and services. It is impossible for us to grow our business.

High impact 120

High impact Service Growth Conversion 120

Partners in Excellence

MAY 16, 2024

According to them, it’s all about random outreach and random calls. It’s focuses on exploiting any list we get, including “Dear occupant or current resident… ” And the act of cold calling is all about pitching a product, not understanding a customer. The wider the reach, the better.

Cold Call 77

Cold Call Technique High impact Pitch 77

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

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 8, 2024

Every quarter there is the inevitable rush to close deals, to hit our numbers. The global economy/turmoil and continued layoffs/reductions, and shuffling of priorities–both within our customers, markets, and within our own organizations. ” But, we shouldn’t be shocked or surprised.

Quota 117

Quota Trust Pitch Up-sell 117

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.

Customers 109

Customers GTM Trust Up-sell 109

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

Martech

MAY 13, 2024

We sat down with their U.K.-based based CMO Amit Kotecha in their New York office for a conversation about recent developments, including the latest delay in cookie deprecation and the new report from the U.K.’s We will work with any partner in the ecosystem. As a technology company, we should create our own solutions.

Conversion 100

Conversion Follow-up Engineering Technology 100

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. ” But what does that mean?

Trust 68

Trust Start-ups Meeting Customers 68

Martech

MAY 15, 2024

We discussed the importance of being able to translate technology and break down silos in organizations, all while never losing sight of the customer. How did this lead you to customer experience? From there, with the background in marketing and digital, I started thinking about how all of it starts to come together.

Healthcare 82

Healthcare Technology Technology Sports 82

Partners in Excellence

MAY 8, 2024

The people that remain are exhausted, not interested in talking more, they just want to escape. Desperately, we try to find someone to talk to, something interesting to talk about, but…… It seems so much of “modern” selling looks like this. But we don’t understand what has happened.

Price 68

Price Up-sell Conversion Presentation 68

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?” But as I reflected on the question, I asked, “What books are your customers reading? But as I reflected on the question, I asked, “What books are your customers reading?

Manufacturing 125

Manufacturing Technique Sell Customers 125

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?

Customers 118

Customers Hospitality Technology Technology 118

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

AI is changing the world (“Wow, what an astute observation, Dave.”). The capabilities of the tools are evolving very quickly, our capabilities in using these tools are evolving much less quickly. It reduces what may have taken hours or even days to seconds. We talked for hours about how a 0.1

Cross-sell 126

Cross-sell Presentation Drivers/motivators Engineering 126

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

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

APRIL 11, 2024

It’s crazy to think that we purposely design our organizations to fail. We are driven to succeed, to over achieve our goals. We constantly talk about winning. If this is true, why do we see year after year of declining performance and results? We see win rates plummeting.

Quota 120

Quota CRM Growth Meeting 120

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. We present our price, the customer’s moral obligation is to object to the price. And we go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Price 77

Price Contract Presentation Consult 77

Martech

MARCH 4, 2024

As a leader, you must be agile enough to pivot as you learn new information about the marketplace, your customers and disruptive new technology. We know with certainty that we’re in uncertain times and what we know today will be different tomorrow. Instead of a year out, think about a quarter out.

Technology 109

Technology Technology Launch Product 109

Martech

APRIL 17, 2024

Here’s what I was looking for: Stop depending on batch-and-blast. Use customer data to inform email programs. 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. But we are still struggling.

Technology 122

Technology Technology Niche Campaign 122

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 25, 2024

I have to start this post with an acknowledgement and a concern about misinterpretation/misapplication of this article. We don’t have a set agenda, we talk about what we are seeing, usually it’s me whining about the state of professional selling.

Customers 117

Customers Objectives and Key Results Growth Objection handling 117

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 29, 2024

The seller identified an issue he thought was impacting our company. He opened with, “We see this challenge…… impacting organizations like yours. I’d love to learn more about what causes you to say this? What have you seen that tells you we need to improve?”

Start-ups 81

Start-ups Conversion Pitch Prospecting 81

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 17, 2024

Recently, I had a fascinating conversation with Dr. 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.

Manufacturing 117

Manufacturing Represent Clients Education 117

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… ? For example, “CFOs care about these things… ” Well duhhhh!

Gaming 124

Gaming Engineering Presentation Start-ups 124

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

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 12, 2024

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. Who knows what it will be next year! And when we finally do reach someone, they don’t want to talk to us. Today, it’s 1000-1500!

Sell 115

Sell Commission Up-sell Quota 115

Search Engine Land

MARCH 13, 2024

When we turn up to work, we aren’t able to put ourselves into robot corporate mode. We are still that human that was at home in the morning and has many different motivational drivers. When I talk about personas, these personas are created with motivation at the heart rather than demographics.

Drivers/motivators 99

Drivers/motivators B2B B2C Quota 99

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. ” And then there’s the silent majority.

Manufacturing 77

Manufacturing GTM Represent CRM 77

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

One of my favorite songs, as a kid, was Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain… ” It was not only a great song, but provoked decades of discussion about who she was singing about. Fast forwarding to current times, based on how we engage our customers, we demonstrate a similar vanity.

Manufacturing 117

Manufacturing Finance Presentation Technology 117

Partners in Excellence

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

We are constantly making choices based on time. Often they are poor choices, though we usually don’t intend them to be so. Often unconscious, we just stop paying attention. In reality, we should only be making choices, “Is this the best use of my time at this moment?” How do we recognize this?

High impact 118

High impact Meeting Customers Closing 118

Salesforce

MARCH 19, 2024

The company was poised for rapid growth, but it couldn’t train customer service representatives (CSRs) quickly enough to keep up with its expansion. Here’s why: An AI model is only as good as what it’s taught. And we’re not just talking about structured data like a spreadsheet or a relational database.

Trust 122

Trust Represent Start-ups Technology 122

Partners in Excellence

OCTOBER 3, 2023

.” 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. The sellers simply respond to the customers’ questions, trying to prove the superiority of their offerings, getting the customer to buy.

Sell 127

Sell Up-sell Start-ups Customers 127

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 21, 2023

As our conversations often go, we were talking about the state of selling and how we improve. 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? Do we want to provide that help?

Customers 122

Customers Quota Up-sell Conversion 122

Martech

FEBRUARY 20, 2024

Back in January, I was appointed CEO of our email agency. Within a week, I made a mistake that cost our company money. One takeaway is that we are all human and fallible. In email, a mistake can seem like the end of the world because so many people can see where we messed up. Talk about an “oops!”

Objectives and Key Results 115

Objectives and Key Results Retail Campaign Appointment 115

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 19, 2024

We live in worlds of constant interruption. Each morning, our inboxes and feeds are filled. Our attentions are drawn to those, we go through them, dealing with each one. Some one has asked a question, we have to respond with an answer. Someone has raised an issue, we have to address it.

Clients 115

Clients Meeting Conversion Customers 115

Search Engine Land

JANUARY 12, 2024

Google Ads customer service has plummeted to an unacceptable all-time low, according to search marketers. ” “Recently, I posted a job on Upwork that pays a reward of $500 for anyone that can get us access and set up Instant Reserve TV ads for our account. To do this, they would need to talk to their rep.

Engineering 137

Engineering Clients Networking Represent 137

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 30, 2024

Then, too many of us turn around and inflict bad outbound prospecting on our own victims. Can I show you what results you might realize…” Sometimes, the product pitches are thinly veiled by a problem: “Is lead/demand gen a problem for you? Nothing focuses on our priorities and our company.

Product 98

Product Sell Pitch B2B 98