Inflexion-Points: Smart Ideas for Accelerating Revenue Growth

What are the factors that separate many of today’s top-performing B2B sales and marketing organisations from the rest? Having outstanding products and services that are truly relevant to a well-defined target audience is clearly important. But when you look at the factors that truly separate the fastest growing vendors from the rest, it’s often their ability to execute that really impresses. They have the ability to align their entire sales and marketing organisation around a common set of winning strategies and tactics.

Most of us are used to thinking of managing our sales pipeline through a series of sales stages. But this approach presents a real danger of confusing sales activity with genuine progress in the prospect’s buying decision process. There are compelling reasons why sales pipelines should track the key steps in the buying decision process - and why sales managers should insist on observable evidence of the prospect’s progress before allowing opportunities to be advanced to the next stage…

How healthy is your sales pipeline right now? And what steps are you taking to progressively improve its fitness? Just as your own doctor might measure your body temperature, heart rate and blood pressure before putting you on a personal fitness regime, a pipeline doctor would want to understand your qualified pipeline value, average sales velocity and average sales win rate - and how these factors had changed over time - before coming up with their diagnosis. Here’s why these three measures are so important…

I’ve lost count of the number of organisations who, facing increased competition in their core markets, have ambitions to transform themselves from a product-driven to a solution-led sales approach. They invest in putting their salespeople through “solution selling” training. And then, all too often, they end up disappointed with the results. Here’s why…

When I ask many B2B marketing departments how their success is measured, the most common answer is “the number of leads generated”. But if you’re involved in selling high-value products or services with a lengthy and complex buying process, this is a metric that could lead you to make entirely the wrong resource allocation decisions. Here’s why…

Regrettably, the situation I’m about to describe is still far too common in many B2B sales and marketing organisations. Marketing is busy generating leads that the sales team never seem to bother following up. Sales complain that they never have enough of the right sort of opportunities. Budgets, time and effort are wasted. Targets are missed. Relationships between sales and marketing are strained. But it doesn’t have to be this way - and you can fix it…

Sir Christopher Wren, architect of London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, is celebrated in a simple black marble inscription under the magnificent dome of his masterpiece with the message: Si Monumentum Requiris Circumspice. If You Want To See His Monument - Look Around You. In Steve Jobs we have just lost another remarkable visionary. To any of us who have become Apple fans over the years, the monuments to his achievements lie all around us. They have changed the way we work and play. But perhaps the best way to honour his memory lies in the simple question “what would Steve expect”?

I’m going to be speaking at Econsultancy’s FUNNEL 2011 conference on 1st November in London.  The event focuses on a question that is close to the hearts of all B2B sales and marketing leaders: how to attract more of the right sort of prospects and covert them into customers. I wanted to give a handful of readers the chance to get one of my few remaining free tickets - but you’ll need to act quickly.

It’s October already, the 4^th quarter has arrived, and the end of the year will soon be upon us. If your organisation is involved in high-value complex sales cycles with multiple stakeholders, there’s precious little time left to ensure that you end the year on a high having beaten your sales targets and set yourself up in the best possible shape to carry the momentum forward to 2012. I’d like to suggest 4 things that you could be doing now if you’re to maximise your Q4 revenues…