The Outcome-Centric Selling Blog - from Inflexion-Point

Contrast is critical to B2B sales success

The key issues for B2B sales leaders in 2021

“Why are you still working that deal?”

Advance or disqualify!

Why being liked should never be your primary motivation

Has role specialisation in B2B selling gone too far?

A New Year Resolution: eliminating wasteful sales behaviours

Creating collective value through customised value

Why do so many trials end up as tribulations?

What’s your customer’s unique value story?

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

A brief history of sales opportunity qualification

Why it’s time to focus on outcomes

Today’s 3 Frontline Sales Management Priorities

Mutual Success Plans: A Collaborative Approach

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

Never let a good crisis go to waste

The importance of speed-to-outcome

Answering your customer’s three critical questions

A New Normal - or a Better Normal?

What's Your Customer-Specific Differentiating Value?

Is your 'coach' a mobiliser or an immobiliser?

Should we be selling 'solutions' or outcomes?

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

Sales Enablement - a case of promise unfulfilled?

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

Reprioritising your target accounts

Keeping your sales pipeline flowing

Establishing Value in Challenging Times

STOP Killing Deals! (book review)

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

Why Closing Gambits Don’t Work on Large Sales

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

When the Status Quo isn’t the Status Quo Anymore

Getting the right people on your sales bus

Discounting is a sure sign of sales failure

Stretching your customer's value gap

Understanding your customer's decision journey

Understanding B2B Buying Behaviour

Avoiding the Value-Added Trap

Sales people need to act like personal trainers, not bartenders

Assumptions kill opportunities

The why, how, what and who of sales checklists

Sales perfection is impossible!

Please tell me something I don’t already know

The most important thing a proposal needs to sell

Selling against the status quo

RFPs: how to avoid being column fodder

Spotlight on Strategic Selling

Helping your customer make sense of complexity

A fresh perspective on the Challenger Sale research

Who are your ideal customers?

Why are so many CRM implementations still failing?

How likely is your customer to take action?

Spotlight on Sandler

How does your CRM manage different opportunity types?

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

Video: Key Challenges Facing B2B Sales People

Podcast: The Foundations of Sales Effectiveness

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

Stop striving for sales perfection!

What is your Customer’s Minimum Viable Problem?

Podcast: The Art, Science + Engineering of Sales Management

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

Why you need a Vision Story and a Value Story

The Persuasive Power of a Mutual Success Plan

Is your differentiation based on features or outcomes?

Hope is not a strategy - and ignorance is no excuse

Sales Opportunity Qualification or Qualifiction?

Familiar vs. Unfamiliar Purchases

Understanding Your Customer's Decision Journey

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

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

From Sales Process to Buying Journey

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

Successful Selling = Intelligent Choices, not Fixed Formulas

No sales plan survives first contact with the customer

The sales methodology that outperforms all others

Is your sales pipeline full of fatbergs?

Selling incremental improvement isn’t enough!

Account Based Everything: a foundation for partnership

The 3* sales pipeline coverage myth

Why your pipeline doesn’t need any sales stages

The illusion of the expert buyer

When your customers DO want to speak to a sales person

The keys to engaging our stakeholders

Why early engagement is critical to sales success

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

8 steps to positioning your strategic business value

Targeting your most valuable sales opportunities

Avoiding death by stovepipes [guest post]

4 key factors influencing B2B buying behaviour

Sales enablement and the performance gap

Is your BDRs' outreach pertinent or impertinent?

The non-linear world of B2B buying

In complex B2B sales, stakeholders have more than one dimension

Responding to, Reframing or Creating Sales Opportunities?

Avoiding the curse of premature elaboration

The 7 storytelling secrets of successful salespeople

The Problem with Account Plans...

Asking good questions isn’t enough...

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

B2B Sales: Contrast Drives Change

B2B sales: six steps to value

B2B sales: what should we be measuring?

3 fundamental goals of sales leadership

14 critical activities every sales person needs to master

Our prospects are qualifying us, too...

Opportunity Coaching for Fun and Profit

Why our sales discovery process must always be two-way

Why your salespeople should never do product demonstrations

Is this the most counterproductive sales metric?

Is sales “process” really the right metaphor?

How do you create value for your customers?

Is scope creep suffocating your opportunities?

12 key sales qualifiers

We’re NOT Average

Shaping our customer's "why"...

Starting with “Why”

Is your thought leadership really “thought followership”?

Why should your customers migrate to your new solution?

In search of the perfect sale...

The compelling case for hastening slowly

Establishing (& amplifying) our customer’s value gap

Are your sales people suffering from value vagueness?

The many dimensions of diversity in B2B sales

Sales training: should we emphasise technique or thinking?

The issue with generic "unique value propositions"

The sorry state of sales due diligence

Discovery - the foundation of B2B sales success

Are your sales people leading with gain or pain?

Targeting prospects who are “trying but struggling”

Encouraging our sales people to think...

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

Situational awareness - a critical factor in B2B sales

Decoding your prospect's buying decision mode

Guest Article: Sales Process or Sales Methodology?

Harnessing the power of hindsight...

Creating a new axis for SPIN® Selling

Self-awareness and self-honesty in complex B2B sales

We need to collectively develop sales competencies!

Where is your prospect in their buying journey?

10 of the best from 2017...

12 keys to value selling success for 2018

Critical to B2B sales success - stakeholder assessments

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

Thinking about what could go wrong…

Book review: Digital Sales Transformation

The Enduring Relevance of "Crossing the Chasm"

Opportunity qualification is a continuous process

Why little commitments can be better than big closes

Revisiting the Buyers Journey

Sell the Difference!

Selling in the Age of Analytics

Contrast drives change

Drilling into the need beyond the need

Stop confusing “objections” with concerns

Transforming the future by reflecting on the past

Are your sales people hitting the accelerator too hard?

4 things you need to know about B2B buying decisions

Who is our Primary Project Sponsor?

B2B Sales: what level are we talking at?

Sales conversation frameworks must be skeletons, not cages

Is your prime customer contact a budget maker, shaper, taker or faker?

Never mind your prospect’s current situation - what about their future direction?

Visualising the Value Gap

McKinsey: It’s time to treat our sales people like customers

Why we chose to partner with Membrain

Why mastering value selling has never been more important...

A prospect meeting can have only two valuable outcomes...

Filling the Value Vacuum

Would you prefer your sales people to be heroes or pragmatists?

Stop trying to sell to the wrong organisations!

Competing against "do nothing" and "do something completely different"

The essence of successful positioning

What causes your prospects to start searching for solutions?

In Complex B2B Sales there are 3 key stakeholder groups

Targeting Change Agents

Identifying your Ideal Customers

The Case for Focusing on Critical Problems

Striving for Mutually Meaningful Value

It’s time to reverse engineer our concept of “Thought Leadership”

In complex B2B sales, you face 3 types of competition

Size isn’t everything: why more revenue often flows from smaller pipelines

Why every sales opportunity needs a regular risk assessment

Eliminating Valueless Sales Activity

The best sales presentations are designed from the inside out

What is your organisation going to do differently in 2017?

Where did that close date come from? (and where is it going to?)

10 Critical Components of any B2B Sales Playbook

Closing the gap between your best sales people and the rest

10 Tell-Tale Signs Your Sales Process Needs Attention

Sales Organisations: from Good to Great

The Trust Gap [Aaron Ross]

10 Ways to Improve Sales Prospecting and Pipeline Management

Latest Guide: Identifying Your Ideal Customers

What if all our candidates are imperfect?

Bridging the sales performance gap

When demographics aren’t enough: how to identify your ideal customers

Lessons from Chess: why sales people need to think ahead

All posts