With all your investment in creating a good customer relationship it makes sound financial sense to exploit it by selling as many complementary offerings as possible, it’s good for both customer and seller. This has been the driver for so many companies, of all sizes, to expand their product ranges, sometimes by R&D, often by acquisition.

It’s good theory but in practise the range of offerings can easily extend beyond the capability of the sales teams to understand them all. If there are too many products for them to be comfortable selling they tend to stay in their comfort zone and focus on what they know well, inevitably missing out on many cross selling opportunities.

Fortunately, as salespeople (and buyers) becoming increasingly tablet-enabled, this is an area where technology can help; a few really interesting solutions that dramatically increase cross selling capabilities are emerging.
Continue reading "Don’t allow information overload to prevent..." »

It’s a given that CRM is essential to any sales team these days yet very few seem to meet their expectations – Why? We’re being told that, unless you're an Enterprise class company with tons of resources, it’s just too tough to do.

As an example, a lot has been written about the need to define your sales process before you automate it, which is true but many SME’s find that really difficult, too time consuming or too expensive to get someone else to do it. Mixing metaphors, we’re hearing that what many businesses need is something that works off the shelf, out of the box, that hits the ground running.

We all need more than a basic CRM doing contact management nowadays. Sales forecasting won’t work without planning, challenge and a methodology, there are marketing initiatives to manage and campaigns to do, which basic CRM’s don't offer. And integrating the outcome of lots of trips to the app store is tough, so it doesn't get done well.

We’ve been working with a few key players trying to crack this problem and we think we’re making progress; we’d like to share some ideas and hear what you think.

Continue reading "Why don’t CRM systems work? " »

Nobody enjoys interruption by someone selling something irrelevant that we don’t want, (I can’t be the only one plagued with PPI compensation calls? I’ve never had a PPI policy!) but isn’t that exactly how many marketing teams go about their business?

Most of us will listen to someone that’s taken the trouble to find out what we’re interested in, who can talk meaningfully about a relevant challenge, something we’re trying to address in our own terms; we’re receptive to that.

The difference is simple but rare, research, doing your homework, and it’s becoming increasingly important as business and businesses get ever more complex, the messages multiply and getting through is more difficult.

Making research the foundation of lead generation can transform its effectiveness, click here to see if you could do better. Continue reading "Research, the silver bullet for lead generation? " »

In these testing times we're seeing more and more businesses, technology-based product and service companies, rushing headlong at the challenge of changing the brief of their account management folk, their service delivery team, their consultants, driven by the pressing financial need to explore, expand and exploit their existing client base.

Some very excited major players are addressing their need to stretch their delivery folk, to enable them to have conversations around "what could be" rather than what is, creating opportunities and sustaining a mutually beneficial selling and buying process.

As ever, such change generates interesting questions, notably, what do we mean by account management?

Continue reading "Selling, delivering, and the will to change" »

In the good old days, there were a set of incontrovertible truths, that "our business is unique and our processes are our commercial edge", that "our people have tons of knowledge in their heads, you can't capture all that experience" every t needed crossing and every i dotting (the dot is called a 'tittle' by the way).

IT departments were vast mysterious code-shops,the voice behind the curtain, the eventual deliverers of "just what you asked for" although rarely what was needed when it eventually arrived.

If something was 'out-of-the-box' it was likely to be Pandora's box, a coffer of pain, woe and unmet expectations.

Testing was arduous and expensive, the spec was all, 80/20 was the mantra of cowboys and 'nearly right' was 'really wrong'.

You "never went wrong by buying IBM" and hardware and software suppliers were magnificent, mendacious or malevolent depending on the smoothness of the latest upgrade.

Decades of missed deadlines, stretched budgets, contractual failures later we've a new paradigm in the buying (and therefore the selling) of IT.
Continue reading ""It's buying Jim, but not as we know..." »

The business of selling complex products and services to big (and complicated) organisations is always a challenge, but that’s why we enjoy doing it so much (We do, don’t we?).

It seems counter-intuitive then, that so many people make what they do more complicated than it needs to be. The reality is that it’s tough to make things simple. However, complicated is hard work, expensive and less likely to succeed.

It’s when things are made simple that they work so much better, just look at how successful Apple and Dyson have been. The same applies to sales, it’s easier to make it complicated but simple tends to win.

Take the effort to make things simpler Continue reading "The Huge Advantage of Keeping it Simple" »

We live in a world of sound-bites, tweets, news headlines, short sharp messages, elevator pitches and who has time to read lengthy case studies? When we’re selling, reference stories are essential but so much of what marketing laboriously produce, doesn’t get read, it’s in the wrong format, it says the wrong things, it’s used the wrong way.

Real impact is from a relevant, well-summarised and memorised customer success story, introduced into the conversation at an appropriate moment, to reinforce or demonstrate a point, then followed up with a succinct one-pager later on.

It’s hard work to get meetings with top management, when you do, make sure you can bring the meeting to life with relevant, powerful stories that contribute to the conversation and your relationship.

It only takes a little effort for a greater reward.

Continue reading "Succeeding with Success Stories" »

Many organisations have a substantial delivery team with a privileged relationship with customers, ideally placed to help grow business.
The mantra “we all sell” is oft repeated but what understanding of selling do these service folk really have? It may be an assumption, an expectation, that they’ll work hard to get upgrades and new business but many delivery professionals may see it as, “a conflict of interest”, “someone else’s job” or “unprofessional”

Smart companies are proving that non sales people can make a real contribution to the drive for more business without compromising their values, relationships or professional standing.
Continue reading "“We all Sell” – Really?" »

Perhaps one of the more positive aspects of the recession (there I said it) is that many companies are now finally biting the bullet and thinking seriously about what it is they sell and how they sell it.

In good times it’s easier to succeed with a product-led sale, setting out your stall and letting customers buy from you. In tough times, buyers are scarce and investment is limited, no-one buys ‘nice to have’ and this can easily lead to commoditisation and loss of control as the initiative moves from supply to demand.

The term “solutions” has certainly lost much of it’s meaning with just about everyone using it for just about everything. That doesn’t negate the fact that there is, for many, the opportunity to regain control of their destiny by changing focus from, “what we’ve always sold” to “solving a real customer need”.

If you’re spending much of the time struggling to make the numbers it’s tough to come up with a coherent plan to make this happen and deliver results, but there are some ideas that have worked for others and may be right for you…

Continue reading "Moving the spotlight from products to customers " »

So, autumn approaches and your sales force and many of your clients have enjoyed their well-deserved holidays soaking up the sunshine, tearing up the golf courses, broiling on the beaches and delivering record-breaking deals.  So now, as you’re spending your weekends checking your boilers, lagging the pipes, clearing the gutters and stocking up on winter fuel you’re probably spending at least part of the working week thinking…

“What’s going to keep the sun shining on us? The market’s out there, the orders are being won, we’re closing the year now, what’s the next looking like, what’s in our pipeline, is my business fit for a hard driving, hard working, order-winning winter?”

Continue reading "An ounce of preparation versus a ton of pain " »

In good times or in bad times it’s a priority to build up a solid pipeline of opportunities so that the sales team can work efficiently on the best opportunities, but that’s not what happens.

Recent research shows that most sales organisations spend twice as much time closing deals as they do developing opportunities in the early stages of the pipeline. That’s not surprising, it’s much more satisfying to be close to the winning tape.

Perhaps that’s why the pipeline of active conversations and early stage opportunities is so weak for so many organisations. The people who could do it well, just don’t.

The temptation to “get marketing to kick off some lead-gen” is powerful. Pipeline development is too important to be left to marketing or fitted in when you’re not busy.

There’s no magic lead-gen wand, in world class organisations both sales and marketing have to work hard, together, to build a consistent (and that’s the key word) process that delivers well-developed, qualified opportunities.

It’s obviously a challenge, but well worth it if you give it the time it deserves and follow a well-thought plan.

Continue reading "Pipeline Development or the same old, same..." »

It’s convenient, and practical, to segment sales teams into three groups, the top performers, the bottom performers and those in the middle. Whether it’s a 20/60/20 split or a 30/40/30 is of little concern, what matters is that each have differing needs and need different support.

As a manager, it’s great working with the top performers, the ones winning deals. It’s often satisfying working with the middle group but naturally, the problem children don’t get the attention they deserve; it’s not fun and it’s not easy so it gets put off.

It’s well known that the cost of poor performers is high but how often do they languish at the bottom of the league table for far too long? The (still very common) tradition of simply getting rid of the bottom performers is rarely simple. It’s invariably time consuming, difficult, wasteful and in these litigious times, often risky.

Few managers like to admit failure, whether of recruiting, management or training but this is an area where, ‘step one is admitting you have a problem’ and step two, a proactive approach to fixing the problem can really pay dividends.

Continue reading "The hidden costs of the bottom 10% ,20% or 30%,..." »

 Selling is all about having meaningful conversations; leadgen is the first step in the sales process so having quality conversations to get interest is of critical importance. Realistically that takes careful thought and serious preparation but many marketing folk prefer to get straight on with the calling to show how dynamic they are, forgetting the real objective of the exercise.

Short-cuts will short-change conversation quality and lead to disappointment. The way to get results is relatively well understood but actually doing it well is where it gets more difficult.

We’ve developed 10 measures based on best practise, the things that we’ve found make the difference between an indifferent initiative and one that gets results.

Continue reading "How does your Leadgen measure up ?" »

Unless you’re a hermit you’ll have encountered the unsociable face of networking in the form of the evangelist who thinks that there’s nothing else in life apart from Linked-In, Facebook and Twitter. They’re usually from marketing, they tell you that life has fundamentallychanged,that everything in business must now revolve around social networking and are often a complete bore. Social Networking is not the answer to life, the universe and everything in it. It is increasingly important in B2B but it’s just a part of the mix of activities we need to be successful.

We’re all victims of our monkey ancestry (and resultant curiosity), it’s new,it’s a learning experience and there’s a bandwagon, it’s so tempting to just jump on board and have a play rather than working out what’s right for the business. Sure it’s a great alternative to writing a high-quality case study, playing with Facebook and Twitter but such activity in a business needs to pass the test of demonstrating a measureable sales outcome that justifies the investment of time.

Continue reading "Who should own Social Networking ?" »

A common reaction to the recession has been to increase the remit of the purchasing or procurement function to intervene and, in theory at least, reduce costs. We’re often hearing how deals have been lost to the  ‘business inhibitors’ or “it’s all down to price now”
It’s not new, just more evident and it’s probably something we’re going to have to live with for a while. It’s certainly a challenge to our sales skills and processes but it’s one we have to step up to, it’s about avoiding the ‘commodity trap’
Some salespeople don’t let purchasing get in the way, read on to find out how they do it. Continue reading "Don’t blame procurement, do something about it!" »