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    Our Customer’s Buying Journeys are driven by Key Trends and Trigger Events

    Our Customer’s Buying Journeys are driven by Key Trends and Trigger Events

    In the previous article in this series on Outcome-Centric Selling® I addressed the importance of researching, targeting, and engaging the key roles in your ideal customers - and now I want to turn our attention to identifying and targeting the key trends and trigger events ...

    Why did I become interested in selling? (aka The Joy of Sales)

    I have known Dave Brock for ages, and have always enjoyed both his insights and his company. He’s one of the most thoughtful ...

    Profiling the Key Roles in your Ideal Customers

    In the previous article in this series on Outcome-Centric Selling® I addressed the importance of identifying and targeting ...

    A Question of Balance

    This article was first published in the March 2024 edition of Top Sales World Magazine There’s a clear correlation: great ...

    Profiling Your Ideal Customers

    In the previous article in this series on Outcome-Centric Selling® we addressed the importance of identifying and targeting ...

    What should a salesperson expect from their first few days in a new sales role?

    This article was initially published in issue 10.1 of the International Journal of Sales Transformation. I suppose this ...

    Outcome-Centric Selling: it starts with the issues

    This is the first in a series of articles that explores each key building block of Outcome-Centric Selling® - and provides ...

    Why should salespeople focus on their customer's business outcomes?

    In my last article, I suggested that our prospects aren’t really interested in our so-called “solutions” - what they really ...

    Your prospects really aren’t interested in your “solutions”

    “Solution” is possibly both the most over-used and the most misused word in many salespeople’s vocabulary. Hundreds of books ...

    There’s no point in teaching salespeople technique without also teaching them how to think

    An earlier version of this article was initially published on LinkedIn. Most traditional sales training primarily involves ...

    Is your sales training a "body without a soul"?

    The Roman philosopher Cicero believed that “a room without books is like a body without a soul”, and I believe the same can ...

    Which accounts have the greatest growth potential?

    This blog was originally published in the November edition of Top Sales Magazine. You can find a link to their website at ...

    Systematically addressing sales underperformance

    This article was first published (as "Addressing Underperformance" in the October 2023 edition of the always excellent ...

    Finding new business in challenging B2B markets

    This article was originally published in the October 23 edition of Top Sales Magazine ... Finding and winning new business ...

    Asking the Right Questions (and more)

    This article first appeared in the September edition of Top Sales Magazine ... The ability to ask the right questions, in ...

    Navigating the transition from salesperson to sales manager

    A version of article was first published in the September 2023 edition of the International Journal of Sales Transformation ...

    Selling to today’s real decision-makers

    This article was first published in the July 2023 edition of Top Sales Magazine (link below). Salespeople have traditionally ...

    What are tomorrow’s most important sales competencies?

    This article was first published in the latest edition of the International Journal of Sales Transformation under the title ...

    Exploring the Art and Science of Complex Sales

    I was delighted to be asked to contribute to Membrain’s “The Art & Science of Complex Sales Podcast” with Paul Fuller, ...

    B2B Sales Leadership and CRM

    What role should sales leadership play in their organisation’s deployment of CRM? A CRM application lies at the centre of ...

    Why it’s time to stop selling 'solutions' - and start delivering outcomes

    The first wave of B2B selling was product orientated - salespeople were taught and encouraged to think in terms of their ...

    The four pillars of a powerful customer value proposition

    The following article was first published in the March 2023 edition of the always-excellent Top Sales Magazine - there's a ...

    Why should salespeople bother preparing for their customer interactions?

    There’s been a great deal of research into the dynamics of salesperson-customer interaction over the years, and the results ...

    2 things we always need to know about every sales opportunity

    Every competent salesperson recognizes the importance of accurately qualifying every sales opportunity. But I want to ...

    Developing the potential of talented salespeople

    In my previous article - “hiring salespeople with talent” - I explored the challenges involved in making good sales hires. ...

    Hiring salespeople with talent

    In my last article, I shared Gartner’s findings about the current war for talent. In this article - first published in the ...

    Gartner: Building a high-performing sales team is now harder than ever!

    Gartner’s latest guidance for Chief Sales Officers [Leadership Vision 2023: 3 strategic actions for success] contains a ...

    B2B Buyers: from Fear of Missing Out to Fear of Messing Up

    As Matt Dixon (of Challenger Sale and Challenger Customer fame) points out in his latest book “The Jolt Effect”, B2B ...

    Top sellers are storytellers

    This article first appeared in the October 2022 edition of the International Journal of Sales Transformation, and is ...

    Answering every new customer's 4 key questions

    If your prospective customer is seriously evaluating a new project that involves both a significant investment and a change ...

    How can anyone sell value without values?

    I recently participated in a webinar with LeveragePoint on the subject of “establishing a value-centric culture in your B2B ...

    The changing face of value in B2B sales

    It's been a while since my last blog, but I'm pleased to be returning to the action with an article that I wrote for the ...

    Coaching - the critical sales management skill?

    This article was first published in the latest edition (issue 8.1 - January 2022) of the International Journal of Sales ...

    The What, Why and How of Outcome-Centric Selling®

    I believe that it would be hard to argue that B2B selling hasn't changed significantly in recent times - and equally hard to ...

    What should B2B sales leaders be prioritising in 2022?

    I was delighted to be asked to contribute the following article to the International Journal of Sales Transformation's ...

    Why a generic “unique selling proposition” isn’t enough...

    Marketers are keen to create what they refer to as “unique selling propositions”. According to Wikipedia, a unique selling ...

    What are Priority Issue Profiles - and why do you need them?

    This article was first published in the October Edition of Top Sales Magazine. Many of you will be familiar with the idea of ...

    The critical role of trust in sales

    At a time when the level of public trust in the UK's elected politicians has never been lower, it's an opportunity to ...

    Identifying, engaging, and assessing our stakeholders

    How many stakeholders are involved in the typical complex high-value B2B buying journey? It’s fair to say that the number is ...

    Webinar: Three Gaps and a Bridge

    I recently recorded a webinar with LeveragePoint (link below) about “making a compelling case for change”. Those of you who ...

    Establishing the foundations of a coaching culture

    This article was first published in issue 7.3 of the International Journal of Sales Transformation, and I'm very pleased to ...

    Is it time to stop allowing the Covid excuse?

    One of the most illuminating elements of Objective Management Group’s sales evaluation methodology is the way in which it ...

    Are your salespeople three whys men (and women)?

    For my latest article for Top Sales Magazine, I’ve decided to explore the power of three whys and a who... When it comes to ...

    Latest webinar: the essentials of sales opportunity qualification

    One of the key things that separates great salespeople from the rest is their commitment to rigorously qualifying every ...

    Why your customers want to buy is as important as what they want to buy

    You’d hope, wouldn’t you, that most salespeople understand what their prospective customers want to buy. You’d expect, ...

    The future of B2B selling is collaborative

    I recently participated in a fascinating panel discussion facilitated by Jonathan Farrington of Top Sales World on ...

    The law of averages does not apply to complex B2B sales

    Soon after “The Challenger Sale” was published, you could see a stream of lazy commentators homing in on one percentage ...

    Supercharging our sales conversations

    This article first appeared in the April 2021 "Supercharging Sales" issue of the International Journal of Sales ...

    Exploding the 3* sales pipeline coverage myth

    One of the most unhelpful “rules of thumb” in B2B selling is the long standing and widely quoted myth that the benchmark ...

    Ditching the 'Itch to Pitch'

    Whether proactively reaching out to potential future customers or responding to inbound enquiries, salespeople and business ...

    Refining our customer’s value story

    Regular readers will know that I have been evangelising the critical importance of customer-specific value stories for a ...

    Profit derives from usage - not initial purchase

    Business customers have become increasingly used to as-a-service models, rather than outright purchase - and many of them ...

    The Secrets of Sales Innovators

    I recently had the pleasure of speaking at length with Jan Ropponen, author of “Secrets of Sales Innovators - how ...

    Contrast is critical to B2B sales success

    I was pleased to be asked to contribute an article to the latest edition of Top Sales Magazine - a regular source of insight ...

    The key issues for B2B sales leaders in 2021

    I was very pleased to be invited by the International Journal of Sales Transformation to contribute an article to their ...

    “Why are you still working that deal?”

    In a recent article (Advance or disqualify!), I proposed that salespeople - rather than clinging on to lifeless sales ...

    Advance or disqualify!

    In his best-selling sales guidebook “SPIN® Selling”, Neil Rackham identified four potential outcomes from every significant ...

    Why being liked should never be your primary motivation

    It might seem strange - in a season when we traditionally wish goodwill to all men and women - to take the position that ...

    Has role specialisation in B2B selling gone too far?

    Largely inspired by the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor, and made real by Henry Ford and others, the age of mass production ...

    A New Year Resolution: eliminating wasteful sales behaviours

    This is the time of year when most of us would benefit from some quiet reflection on what we’ve learned during 2020, and how ...

    Creating collective value through customised value

    I recently made what I hope was a compelling case for creating a customer-specific unique value story for every significant ...

    Why do so many trials end up as tribulations?

    I want to give Dave Kurlan of Objective Management Group the credit for stimulating this article. I’ve added a link to his ...

    What’s your customer’s unique value story?

    Generic value propositions, although they might be of some use in persuading potential prospects to make initial contact ...

    Your customers don’t care about your so-called “solutions”

    Everywhere you look, sales organisations of all descriptions are promoting their so-called “solutions”. It’s become such an ...

    A brief history of sales opportunity qualification

    The quality and accuracy of opportunity qualification is widely acknowledged to be a key predictor of future sales success - ...

    Why it’s time to focus on outcomes

    Note: This article has been adapted from the latest fully revised and updated version of my “Introduction to Outcome Centric ...

    Today’s 3 Frontline Sales Management Priorities

    Frontline sales managers - the people from whom individual members of the sales organisation take their day-to-day direction ...

    Mutual Success Plans: A Collaborative Approach

    I’ve written before about the persuasive power of a Mutual Success Plan in technology-based B2B sales, and I believe the ...

    The status quo isn’t what it used to be…

    Whenever a purchase is inevitable (the customer must act) your competition tends to be predictable - and it will often be ...

    Never let a good crisis go to waste

    As Winston Churchill was working to establish the United Nations after World War Two, he observed that leaders should “never ...

    The importance of speed-to-outcome

    I recently recorded another conversation with Andy Paul, award winning author, speaker and the host of the Sales Enablement ...

    Answering your customer’s three critical questions

    In today's challenging and uncertain business climate, your customers have good reason to be cautious. They are unlikely to ...

    A New Normal - or a Better Normal?

    It’s become common for commentators to refer to the fast-evolving reality of B2B selling as the “new normal”, and I’ve often ...

    What's Your Customer-Specific Differentiating Value?

    I thoroughly enjoyed talking with Tom Pisello of the Evolved Selling Institute as his guest on the EVOLVERS Podcast on the ...

    Is your 'coach' a mobiliser or an immobiliser?

    Most conventional sales methodologies encourage salespeople to find at least one coach inside the potential customer’s ...

    Should we be selling 'solutions' or outcomes?

    Many sales methodologies - in the interest, no doubt, of selling more books and training courses - claim to have a uniquely ...

    This is why (some) B2B customers are still buying in the current climate...

    There’s no doubt that the vast majority - if not all - of discretionary, could-put-it-off until later B2B purchases are ...

    Sales Enablement - a case of promise unfulfilled?

    As far as the state of sales enablement is concerned, I think it's fair to say (and I hope that sales enablement ...

    10 Reasons Why Coaching Remote Sales Teams Today is Non-Negotiable

    This article is republished with permission from an article that first appeared on the Refract website. With the world ...

    Reprioritising your target accounts

    Having a clearly defined and actively worked new business target account list is a key strategy for anyone who is ...

    Keeping your sales pipeline flowing

    I recently took part in a webinar with Paul Everett of The Marketing Practice - one of the UK’s most respected B2B marketing ...

    Establishing Value in Challenging Times

    There’s no doubt that our customers and our own sales organisations are facing challenging - many would suggest ...

    STOP Killing Deals! (book review)

    Companies around the world are collectively spending billions of dollars/pounds/euros each year on sales training and ...

    Do your customers have a ‘survive’ or a ‘come back stronger’ mindset?

    There probably isn’t a single industry or organisation that isn’t being affected in some way by covid-19. A few sectors - ...

    Why Closing Gambits Don’t Work on Large Sales

    James Muir is the best-selling author of "The Perfect Close" - a book that leverages the latest science to show why applying ...

    'Why do we have to spend this money now?'

    Even before the current crisis, many opportunities that had been confidently forecast by salespeople were failing to close. ...

    When the Status Quo isn’t the Status Quo Anymore

    In most complex B2B sales environments, our most significant and consistent competition typically hasn’t come from another ...

    Getting the right people on your sales bus

    In his widely acclaimed Good to Great, Jim Collins shows that lastingly great organisations pay particular attention to not ...

    Discounting is a sure sign of sales failure

    For many sales organisations, December is both the end of the sales quarter and the end of the sales year. Individual ...

    Stretching your customer's value gap

    Whenever your customer sees little meaningful difference between their current situation and their future potential, they ...

    Understanding your customer's decision journey

    It’s falsely comforting to think of selling as a process in which one step follows logically after another. But although ...

    Understanding B2B Buying Behaviour

    In any high-value complex B2B sales environments involving new projects with multiple stakeholders, the buying behaviours ...

    Avoiding the Value-Added Trap

    An earlier version of this article was first published in the November 2019 edition of Top Sales Magazine. Every sales ...

    Sales people need to act like personal trainers, not bartenders

    In a recent article for the CEB, Andrew Kent posed the question “Are your reps bartenders or personal trainers?” It’s a ...

    Assumptions kill opportunities

    I’ve had the opportunity to sit in on a number of QBRs with my clients, and as an outside observer I’m struck by how common ...

    The why, how, what and who of sales checklists

    When Harvard Medical School Professor (and BBC Reith Lecturer) Atul Gawande published his “Checklist Manifesto” nearly 10 ...

    Sales perfection is impossible!

    There are so many potential variables and unknowns in any complex B2B sales environment that the idea of running a ...

    Please tell me something I don’t already know

    Corporate Visions recently hosted a webinar on how to gain access to business executives. Their findings were based on a ...

    The most important thing a proposal needs to sell

    When your salespeople submit a proposal, it should always represent the natural culmination of a series of value creating ...

    Selling against the status quo

    You’re probably all too well aware of the statistic that the majority of apparently well-qualified complex B2B buying ...

    RFPs: how to avoid being column fodder

    The term “cannon fodder” is used as a somewhat dismissive description for soldiers who were regarded by their generals as ...

    Spotlight on Strategic Selling

    In this, the second of my series of articles for the International Journal of Sales Transformation on today’s leading sales ...

    Helping your customer make sense of complexity

    Making a buying decision has never been more complicated. Your customers have access to an overwhelming amount of ...

    A fresh perspective on the Challenger Sale research

    First published in 2011, “The Challenger Sale” must be one of the most widely-read sales books of the past decade, and with ...

    Who are your ideal customers?

    Most sales organisations - and most of the sales people who work for them - are capable of describing their target market in ...

    Why are so many CRM implementations still failing?

    According to many market analysts, the market for CRM solutions shows no signs of slowing down. It’s increasingly rare to ...

    How likely is your customer to take action?

    One of the most significant mistakes any sales person can make is to assume that their prospective customer is inevitably ...

    Spotlight on Sandler

    I’ve been commissioned by the International Journal of Sales Transformation to write a series of articles comparing and ...

    How does your CRM manage different opportunity types?

    [This article was updated on 9-Jul-2019 to include the renewal opportunity type] Why do so many CRM implementations behave ...

    Video: 3 Key Sales Questions Every CEO Should be Able to Answer

    George Brontén of Membrain is one of the smartest people I know when it comes to the latest trends affecting complex B2B ...

    Video: Key Challenges Facing B2B Sales People

    I had the chance to work with The Marketing Practice at a recent event at Worcester College Oxford and one of the ...

    Podcast: The Foundations of Sales Effectiveness

    I recently recorded a second wide-ranging podcast on the foundations of sales effectiveness with Michael Webb of Sales ...

    Up-front agreements: the key to having productive customer conversations

    Business executives often report that they look back on the initial conversations they have with sales people and regard ...

    Stop striving for sales perfection!

    Given the inevitable complications and unique considerations involved in any complex sales environment, it’s hard to imagine ...

    What is your Customer’s Minimum Viable Problem?

    The concept of a Minimum Viable Product is common in the start-up community. It is normally regarded as an initial release ...

    Podcast: The Art, Science + Engineering of Sales Management

    I recently recorded a wide-ranging conversation about the art, science and engineering of sales management with Michael Webb ...

    A tale of greed - and reckless disregard for the customer experience [updated]

    I hope you will forgive me this rant, but in addition to allowing me to vent my frustration, I believe the story contains ...

    Why you need a Vision Story and a Value Story

    The best sales people and the best content marketers are often great storytellers. They have the ability to craft compelling ...

    The Persuasive Power of a Mutual Success Plan

    As Gartner and others have frequently pointed out, B2B buying decisions are often complicated. If the problem to be solved ...

    Is your differentiation based on features or outcomes?

    It’s a fundamental principle of value-based selling that whenever a prospective customer is unable to establish any ...

    Hope is not a strategy - and ignorance is no excuse

    Why do apparently promising sales opportunities go wrong so often? Why do close dates speed past, get reset and then repeat ...

    Sales Opportunity Qualification or Qualifiction?

    Accurate opportunity qualification is perhaps the single most important foundation for success in complex B2B sales ...

    Familiar vs. Unfamiliar Purchases

    Sales consultants often make the distinction between transactional and complex sales. Transactional sales - whatever their ...

    Understanding Your Customer's Decision Journey

    It’s falsely comforting to think of selling as a process in which one step follows logically after another. But although ...

    A Progressive Approach to Sales Opportunity Qualification [that isn't BANT]

    Like a growing number of other commentators, I have come to believe that the traditional BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and ...

    Over 40% of projects are ad-hoc: another nail in the coffin of BANT

    It surprises and shocks me how many sales organisations still regard BANT as a practical way of qualifying sales ...

    From Sales Process to Buying Journey

    The idea of a “sales process” has been around since long before I was offered my first sales role. The concept has been ...

    If you really want to shorten your sales cycle, slow down!

    If the conversations I’ve been having with sales leaders recently are anything to go by, our sales pipelines are full of ...

    Successful Selling = Intelligent Choices, not Fixed Formulas

    I’ve just spent a few minutes completing the annual survey from one of the world’s most widely respected sales training ...

    No sales plan survives first contact with the customer

    Military leaders have long recognised the importance of planning. But they have also recognised that it is the act of ...

    The sales methodology that outperforms all others

    Every established sales methodology attracts its own fan base. Some are fans of SPIN®, others Challenger®, Miller-Heiman, ...

    Is your sales pipeline full of fatbergs?

    The sewer systems of of our towns and cities are struggling to cope with a phenomenon known as the “fatberg”. These fatbergs ...

    Selling incremental improvement isn’t enough!

    If you’re involved in complex B2B sales, and if what you are selling is anything other than an absolute “must buy” ...

    Account Based Everything: a foundation for partnership

    Account-Based Marketing (and its all-embracing cousin “Account Based Everything”) has been touted by its promoters as a ...

    The 3* sales pipeline coverage myth

    I’m no great fan of averages, and I’m no great fan of unsupported rules of thumb, either. Perhaps the best (or worst, ...

    Why your pipeline doesn’t need any sales stages

    This is a subject I’ve referred to before, but an excellent article by Don Mulhern has prompted me to promote a concept that ...

    The illusion of the expert buyer

    One of the most dangerous mistakes we can make as sales people is believing that our customer – and particularly the sponsor ...

    When your customers DO want to speak to a sales person

    There’s been a great deal of comment – often from people and organisations who frankly should know better – about how ...

    The keys to engaging our stakeholders

    Our prospective customers are far more likely to want to engage with us if they believe that they are likely to learn ...

    Why early engagement is critical to sales success

    The now increasingly discredited BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe) approach to opportunity qualification ...

    Sales pipeline management: let’s stop confusing progress with probability

    Sales forecasting is hard. For proof, you need look no further than the 2018 CSO Insights Sales Performance study, which ...

    8 steps to positioning your strategic business value

    In complex B2B sales environments - particularly ones that involve multiple stakeholders and lengthy and often complicated ...

    Targeting your most valuable sales opportunities

    Many B2B sales and marketing organisations have an unfortunate habit of wasting huge amounts of time and energy pursuing ...

    Avoiding death by stovepipes [guest post]

    As anyone who has worked with me or read my articles, I am passionate about ensuring that sales and marketing are aligned in ...

    4 key factors influencing B2B buying behaviour

    In any high-value complex B2B sales environment involving new projects with multiple stakeholders, the buying behaviours and ...

    Sales enablement and the performance gap

    The primary goal of sales enablement must surely be to increase sales effectiveness by progressively reducing the ...

    Is your BDRs' outreach pertinent or impertinent?

    If you are in a role that tends to attract the attention of other vendors’ business development people, you’ve probably had ...

    The non-linear world of B2B buying

    It’s falsely comforting to think of selling as a process in which one step follows logically after another. But although ...

    In complex B2B sales, stakeholders have more than one dimension

    In complex B2B sales, there’s a common recognition that multiple stakeholders are almost always involved in the ...

    Responding to, Reframing or Creating Sales Opportunities?

    Jim Burns of Avitage drew the distinction between finding versus creating sales opportunities in an article on LinkedIn a ...

    Avoiding the curse of premature elaboration

    Apparently, someone once offered a definition for the split second as “the time between a customer giving the merest hint ...

    The 7 storytelling secrets of successful salespeople

    I’ve long believed that top sellers are storytellers. They are able to call upon a rich fund of relevant anecdotes that they ...

    The Problem with Account Plans...

    Many of the clients I’ve been working with over the past few months have been attempting to implement some form of account ...

    Asking good questions isn’t enough...

    Most traditional sales methodologies stress the importance of asking good questions, and there’s no doubt that the ability ...

    Of course it matters whether you won or lost...

    You’ve probably heard some variation of the saying “it matters not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game”. ...

    B2B Sales: Contrast Drives Change

    Many analysts claim - and many sales people would agree - that today’s most powerful competitor is not another similar ...

    B2B sales: six steps to value

    One of the biggest frustrations for today’s sales leaders is their sales peoples’ apparent inability to connect the business ...

    B2B sales: what should we be measuring?

    If we’re in sales, there are two obvious monetary measures of our success: revenue and margin. Revenue is particularly ...

    3 fundamental goals of sales leadership

    The art and science of sales leadership is clearly complicated, but the fundamental goals of sales leadership - at least ...

    14 critical activities every sales person needs to master

    Whenever we attempt break down the key success factors in managing complex B2B sales opportunities, it soon becomes apparent ...

    Our prospects are qualifying us, too...

    Just as the discovery process is best thought of (and most effective) as a two-way exercise, so is the closely-related ...

    Opportunity Coaching for Fun and Profit

    My latest contribution has just been published in the June 2018 edition of the always-excellent International Journal of ...

    Why our sales discovery process must always be two-way

    I’ve written before about the critical importance of the discovery process in complex B2B sales. It’s a favourite subject, ...

    Why your salespeople should never do product demonstrations

    I imagine we’ve all sat through at least one of these at some stage of our careers: a software demonstration that is nothing ...

    Is this the most counterproductive sales metric?

    If we’re driven by data and interested in statistics, there are a wide range of sales metrics we can choose to monitor. ...

    Is sales “process” really the right metaphor?

    The term “sales process” has become an almost universal cliché (and yes, I have been as guilty as the rest). Research is ...

    How do you create value for your customers?

    With relatively few exceptions, most companies want to be seen to be focused on value, rather than price. You can understand ...

    Is scope creep suffocating your opportunities?

    Most sales organisations would agree that increasing average deal values is a positive objective, along with shortening ...

    12 key sales qualifiers

    Early, accurate qualification is critical to success in complex B2B sales. It allows us to identify the opportunities that ...

    We’re NOT Average

    Mark Twain is said to have popularised the phrase “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics". In an ...

    Shaping our customer's "why"...

    I recently shared my thoughts about applying Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why” concept (also known as The Golden Circle) to the ...

    Starting with “Why”

    In September 2009, Simon Sinek took the stage at a TEDx event and delivered an 18-minute presentation that has now been ...

    Is your thought leadership really “thought followership”?

    It seems as if everybody wants to be a thought leader nowadays, and to publish insights that are going to somehow ...

    Why should your customers migrate to your new solution?

    If - like many of the clients I work with - you are an established enterprise software company, it’s likely that your ...

    In search of the perfect sale...

    Is there such a thing as a “perfect sale”? A sale in which we got the highest possible price in the shortest possible sales ...

    The compelling case for hastening slowly

    In “The Tortoise and the Hare” Aesop describes a race between a slow-moving tortoise and a fast-moving over-confident hare. ...

    Establishing (& amplifying) our customer’s value gap

    If we boil it down to the basics, there is one over-riding reason why our customers accept the need for change rather than ...

    Are your sales people suffering from value vagueness?

    Whether they are involved in winning new business or seeking to retain or expand existing business relationships, one of the ...

    The many dimensions of diversity in B2B sales

    If - as many scale-ups are - you are on a mission to challenge the status quo and get your prospective customers to think ...

    Sales training: should we emphasise technique or thinking?

    I’ve been talking about the long-term impact of conventional sales training programmes with clients, and their experience ...

    The issue with generic "unique value propositions"

    If you were foolish enough to listen to some B2B marketers and agencies, you might conclude that the simple act of ...

    The sorry state of sales due diligence

    Successful start-ups tend to follow a predictable pattern: they identify a problem that needs solving, develop an innovative ...

    Discovery - the foundation of B2B sales success

    What’s the single most important stage in any complex B2B sales process? Is it the “close”? The commercial negotiation? The ...

    Are your sales people leading with gain or pain?

    Most B2B-focused sales people have been taught that it’s more effective to promote the projected “benefits” of their ...

    Targeting prospects who are “trying but struggling”

    An uninformed and superficial review of the principles of “challenger®️ selling” might lead some people to conclude that it ...

    Encouraging our sales people to think...

    One of the primary benefits of a traditional university education used to be, as well as educating you in one or a number of ...

    Are you selling "me-too" or "breakthrough"?

    Have you ever wondered why so many apparently promising B2B sales opportunities end with the prospect deciding to either ...

    Situational awareness - a critical factor in B2B sales

    As regular readers will know, I’ve been a long-standing advocate of establishing repeatable sales processes, but please bear ...

    Decoding your prospect's buying decision mode

    Are your prospects Satisfied with the Status Quo, Painting by Numbers, Pursuing a Vision, Busy Going Nowhere or Searching ...

    Guest Article: Sales Process or Sales Methodology?

    I've had a number of new clients approach me trying to get their heads around the difference between a sales process and a ...

    Harnessing the power of hindsight...

    Sales opportunities can go so wrong in so many different ways. Sometimes, they go wrong due to events or circumstances that ...

    Creating a new axis for SPIN® Selling

    Like many people of my generation, I was brought up on SPIN® Selling. It’s a little chastening to reflect on the fact that ...

    Self-awareness and self-honesty in complex B2B sales

    Other than an appropriate level of product knowledge, what are the key attributes of a good B2B sales person? Interpersonal ...

    We need to collectively develop sales competencies!

    I’m not sure that what you might describe as the “traditional” approach to sales skills development - sending sales people ...

    Where is your prospect in their buying journey?

    One of the main reasons why apparently well-qualified sales opportunities fail to close or move forward is that the sales ...

    10 of the best from 2017...

    As you reflect on 2017, and as your thoughts turn to what you seek to achieve for yourself and for your organisation in ...

    12 keys to value selling success for 2018

    If you’re like most of the B2B CEOs or sales leaders we talk to, no matter how well your organisation has done in 2017, ...

    Critical to B2B sales success - stakeholder assessments

    One of the most common reasons why apparently promising B2B sales opportunities get derailed - often at a late stage in our ...

    Why having a budget isn’t always a positive qualifier …

    John Holland of CustomerCentric Selling® makes an interesting point in a blog article. Many sales people who have been ...

    Thinking about what could go wrong…

    Let’s face it, many (maybe most) “average” sales people seem to be incorrigible optimists. When assessing their chances of ...