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. Why is this happening?

Quota 120

Quota CRM Growth Meeting 120

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 125

Presentation Closing Product Customers 125

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

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. Win rates are based on qualified deals only.

SQL 117

SQL Quota Presentation Prospecting 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… ? How do I handle objections… ?” Why don’t these people already know this?”

Gaming 124

Gaming Engineering Presentation Start-ups 124

Search Engine Land

MAY 7, 2024

Why we care. While Schmidt is no longer in a leadership role at Google, he knows better than most what Google is likely to look like in the next few years. Schmidt believes Google will be able to monetize AI answers and AI will improve advertising: “What better tool than the arrival of AI to do that better?

132

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 127

Pitch Prospecting Start-ups Conversion 127

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 25, 2024

I think what draws me to Keenan and his perspectives is his obsessive focus on the customer. What are their problems, how do we help them better understand them? How do we identify the GAP between where they are and where they need to be? How do we help them close that gap, achieving their goals.

Sell 118

Sell Up-sell Consult Drivers/motivators 118

Martech

APRIL 11, 2024

Here’s why. 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.

B2B 120

B2B Manufacturing Technology Technology 120

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 6, 2024

We have all sorts of technologies that give us the “answers.” Where years ago, we struggled to find answers, now they are abundant. But we have some new challenges, “Do we understand what the answers mean and can we apply them to the specific situation? What does it mean?

Presentation 119

Presentation Technology Technology Conversion 119

Partners in Excellence

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

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. But in what world do we consider that acceptable? It’s like so much other data we see.

Manufacturing 115

Manufacturing Technique Pitch Up-sell 115

Partners in Excellence

MAY 16, 2024

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. But the only people we target are people in the dead center of our ICP. The wider the reach, the better. It is alive and thriving.

Cold Call 77

Cold Call Technique High impact Pitch 77

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 18, 2024

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. These are the discussions we strive to get since it is all about us and what we sell. But are they asking us the right questions?

Customers 129

Customers Up-sell B2B Trust 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 124

Consult Clients Follow-up Up-sell 124

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? We knew this was coming. What’s the situation down on the planet?”)

Gambling 109

Gambling Launch Follow-up Engineering 109

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 9, 2024

“How do I avoid or minimize objections?” ” “How do I best handle them?” ” “Should I do everything I can to avoid them?” We look at alternatives, evaluate the pros and cons of a change and solutions. When we encounter objections, we should listen deeply.

Conversion 116

Conversion Customers Sell Sales 116

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 109

Consult Meeting Customers Process 109

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 25, 2024

We know buying cycles are getting longer. Or we have other excuses. And then there is always VUCA, a great yet abstract excuse around why things are getting more difficult. And then there is always VUCA, a great yet abstract excuse around why things are getting more difficult. But perhaps we should look inwardly.

Customers 109

Customers Sales Presentation Start-ups 109

Search Engine Land

MAY 17, 2024

Here’s what advertisers told Search Engine Land: Manipulation and deceptive practices Sarah Stemen (Paid Search Specialist and Founder): “Their willingness to rewrite help desk documents, frankly, feels shocking after such revelations.” Spoiler alert: it’s not good.

Trust 134

Trust Price Consult Clients 134

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 8, 2024

” Why I’m Interested in Selling — Shari Levitin I grew up with a father, mother, and brother who seized every chance to read and teach themselves something new, playing “quiz time” every Sunday night. I had no idea in the 80s that I would make great money in sales and eventually teach tens of thousands of people to do the same.

Sell 127

Sell Up-sell Pitch Education 127

Partners in Excellence

NOVEMBER 29, 2023

I’ve noticed a huge gap in how we equip and train our sellers, how we help them engage our customers in high impact conversations that focus on them and their problems, not pitching our projects. This gap became bigger with Challenger, as we equipped our people to provide “Insights.”

High impact 123

High impact Pitch Conversion Prospecting 123

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 2, 2024

There seems to be no passion for what sellers do. Selling is one of the toughest things to do well. We fail frequently, despite doing the best we can do. We fail frequently, despite doing the best we can do. We are constantly driven (or drive ourselves) to do more.

Sell 111

Sell Clients Sales 111

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 11, 2024

I try some prompt engineering beyond what’s recommended (I’ve gotten pretty good at that) and the result is MEH. We know how they work and shouldn’t have an expectation of much more–at least used in these ways. For those roles, we understand the responsibilities of their jobs, how they are measured, etc.

Healthcare 117

Healthcare Drivers/motivators Engineering Presentation 117

Search Engine Land

MARCH 22, 2024

I know, because not long ago we were in that garage. The next Google won’t do what Google does, just as Google didn’t do what AOL did. Why we care. Here’s what Altman had to say about Google, search, LLMs and more in an interview with Lex Fridman, released this week. A better way.

Engineering 119

Engineering Launch Product Market share 119

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

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 114

X-functional Sports Represent Start-ups 114

Partners in Excellence

DECEMBER 26, 2023

We never have enough. And regardless what we do, we never will. Whatever time we tend free up, is immediately filled with something else and we become time poor, once again. We have endless tools and technologies, increasingly assisted by AI, enabling us to accomplish more in each hour.

Follow-up 135

Follow-up Prospecting Conversion Technology 135

Partners in Excellence

MARCH 5, 2024

Some of you may be reading my series, “ Why I’m So Interested In Selling.” At the same time, they are viciously focused on doing the work. They recognize they are working with human beings struggling not only with their day jobs, but making changes they have little experience in doing. Not a bad mindset!

Territory 117

Territory Sports Technique Represent 117

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. Reading it caused me to start reflecting on how much we misunderstand about AI and how we leverage it in selling. AI can help us see things about our people and customers that we haven’t seen.

Represent 99

Represent Presentation Up-sell Start-ups 99

Search Engine Land

APRIL 30, 2024

What is low activity? Why we care. We’ve seen documentation from the DOJ trial highlighting an account Quality Score – what do you think having hundreds/thousands of zero impression keywords does to the account? Why the change. ” Unpausing paused keywords.

Campaign 98

Campaign 98

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 109

Technique B2B Start-ups Up-sell 109

SaaStr

MAY 17, 2024

But how do you tactically achieve all of that? Building Trust as a New CPO As a CPO, the most important thing you have to do is build trust with your CEO or founder. Building Trust as a New CPO As a CPO, the most important thing you have to do is build trust with your CEO or founder. It’s obvious, but how do you do this?

Product 92

Product GTM Trust Growth 92

Search Engine Land

APRIL 15, 2024

Then, you must create what Google calls “ helpful, reliable, people-first content.” In this article, I will outline a process that shows you exactly how to do that and provide a simple template you can fill out to take your content to the next level. Step 1: Goals What is your goal for this content?

Process 113

Process Objectives and Key Results Angle Follow-up 113

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 110

Electricity Government Technology Technology 110

Search Engine Land

APRIL 5, 2024

My comment got a lot of engagement, so the idea for this article was born: There are good arguments why you could say that audits are indeed a waste of time, but this cannot be generalized. It’s more an issue of both doing the audit and selling it the wrong way, which is the root cause of the perception that “SEO audits are a waste of time.”

Hospitality 95

Hospitality Consult Clients Construction 95

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?

User Experience 108

User Experience Niche Service Closing 108

Partners in Excellence

JANUARY 15, 2024

Sign onto Amazon or any other shopping site, and we are pummeled with recommendations, all based on what we’ve bought and recent searches we may have made. Many of our news feeds present content based on that which we have read and consumed in the past. And we know the problem with these algorithms.

Represent 125

Represent Presentation Up-sell Clients 125