Archives - July 2016

Salesforce.com released interesting data on the quality of leads and how fast they convert to deals. The data shows that leads coming from referrals have the shortest sales cycle and the highest percentage to close. Social media referrals/leads came in 2nd. Surprisingly, leads coming from tradeshow events and marketing and advertising were low on the …

In the book Achieve Sales Excellence Howard Stevens developed the seven rules of the customer from conducting 80,000 customer interviews over 14 years. This research also included 7,500 sales reps.  Neil Rackham’s research with Xerox, IBM, and other companies with over 1500 sales transactions, agrees with Steven’s research. From my own anecdotal experience: (Being a …

Selling is a beauty contest, not a race. Unfortunately, the majority sales reps and sales leaders focus on their goals, their quota and making the numbers in the forecasted time frame, thus creating the sense of a race. This race approach is very seller centric, not customer centric. According to a recent Salesforce.com study, 82% …

Customer Aligned Selling Customer Aligned Selling is focuses on aligning your sales process with how the customer wants to buy. It includes understanding how they think, understanding and adjusting to where they are in the buying process. Customer Aligned Sellling is being a buyer’s agent helping them through the buying process, not selling. Customer Aligned …

Is your selling strategy based upon building solid relationships through the sales rep’s likeability factor? If so, you are getting a declining return on the sales rep’s ability to get new business or even maintain existing customers. Most sales reps are very high in the red or relationship quadrant. (Whole Brain Thinking) (Herrmann) They have good people skills …

Busyness does not necessarily equate to productivity. John Lee, writes in his blog Lessons Learned from the Least Busiest People that real productivity comes from a free mind, not a busy mind. I love his example of the surgeon running from one meeting to another while also trying to stay focused to operate on a person, …

Productivity in Selling Tim Ferriss does an excellent job in addressing the habits or “to dos’ that we do that kill one’s productivity. In sales, the temptation is that if you are not answering emails, then you are not being customer focused. Unfortunately, that is not true. Emails start controlling you  and you lose focus, …