When you think about your numbers (closing percentages, total calls, etc.), and consider the objections, the price issues, the delayed sales cycles, the excuses, and those who just, well, disappear, don’t you realize these same problems have been cropping up, um, forever? And that whatever you seem to be doing to ‘correct’ the issue doesn’t seem to [...]

This article has been selected for DeFinis Communications’ “Sales Coaching: Top Tips for Increased Productivity” Blog Carnival.
Sales has been around since the Serpent convinced Eve to eat the apple. And, unfortunately, the goals have remained pretty much the same ever since.
The sales model was designed for a different time in history, when there were [...]

A recent client is an international B2B company with a very non-optimal – but not unusual – way of compensating their sales folks.
They split the sales team into an Inside Sales group that makes appointments, and Corporate and Field Sales teams to close them. The structure, as well as the compensation, promotes failure: Inside Sales is paid per appointment (with a tendency to [...]

In order for any change to occur – whether it’s a decision to purchase a product, or an implementation to add new technology - whatever touches the ultimate solution must buy-in to the change.
Often our focus is on getting the end-result we think we want. We forget that without buy-in from the necessary  people and policies that maintain the status quo, we face the [...]

A term the larger marketing automation firms are trying to promote is dubbed ‘revenue performance management.’ What does this mean? Who’s performance are they hoping to monetize?
It’s been fascinating to me that the major players in the field insist they ‘know’ the buyer’s decision path.

Because sales operates in needs assessment/solution placement terms, and not on the buying decision paths, we don’t consider that there is an actual system to how buyers buy. But there is. And it’s scalable.
BUYING DECISIONS ARE BASED ON SYSTEMS AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT
We live in systems (My book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell [...]