Your solution matches the buyer’s need perfectly. You like them, they like you, you’ve had coffee/a meal/a powerful meeting or two. They talk about implementation and how they need to add your other product next year. And then they buy from someone else. Or not at all.
What happened? Are they stupid? Did they lie to [...]

When I hear sellers say that buyers have ‘pain’ I ask how long it would take them to get to the hospital with a broken arm. “Immediately.” Why? Because they’re in pain.

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 [...]

How many of you know the exact percentage of sales you close?

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 friend sent me the Harvard Business Review article written by my hero Geoffrey Moore and two of his colleagues – Todd Hewlin and Philip Lay - titled “In a Downturn, Provoke Your Customers.”
REALLY? BUYERS BUY BECAUSE THEY ARE IN PAIN? REALLY?
I found the article ruefully humorous. Here are some of the smartest business minds in [...]