A Framework for Value-Creating Sales Conversations In complex B2B sales environments, customers report that fewer than one in five conversations with salespeople prove to be a valuable use of their time. This harsh reality should concern every B2B sales professional - ...
In my previous article, I outlined the critical distinction between inevitable purchases (where external forces compel the ...
Not all complex B2B purchases are created equal. Yet many B2B sales organisations treat every opportunity the same way, ...
For decades, sales pipelines have been built around the seller’s activities. Familiar stages like discover, qualify, demo, ...
Salespeople are told to “get to the decision-maker.” This is, of course, sensible and obvious advice - but reality is often ...
Why your personal brand is built one conversation at a time This article was first published in Issue 11.4 of the ...
You've invested in training. Your team is (or should be) familiar with SPIN+Cycle questioning frameworks, MEDDPICC+ ...
Far too many sales organisations are still measuring what's easy to measure, rather than what actually matters. Call ...
Find out why Mutual Success Plans are far more effective than "close plans" by registering for my webinar with the Institute ...
For decades, authors of books about selling have sought to promote the perfect methodology – the idea that there is “one ...
If you (or your salespeople) are involved in complex B2B sales, then there is one particularly valuable sales tool that must ...
In sales organizations that still use BANT as their primary qualification framework, salespeople are encouraged to primarily ...
In too many sales environments, performance and productivity are largely seen as endpoints to be optimised through ...
More than two decades ago - in “Good to Great” - Jim Collins spoke about getting the right people on the bus, in the right ...
By their very nature, high-value complex B2B sales typically involve multiple stakeholders, lengthy and frequently ...
I imagine most of us have probably heard the term “value proposition”. It’s widely used in B2C marketing. But how does the ...
In the high-pressure world of complex B2B sales, frontline sales managers often find themselves pulled in multiple ...
Your company is facing an increasingly strong competitor - yet you won’t find them listed in any Google search of the key ...
As many readers of this blog will surely agree, there is no doubt that sales can be an excellent and satisfying career, and ...
There’s nothing more frustrating for a sales leader, a CEO or a Board of Directors than a continued inability to come up ...
Confidence. It's a quality most of us associate with successful salespeople. A confident presence, a persuasive tone, a ...
You might hope that your prospects need to buy your so-called “solutions”. But what they really want to do is to fix an ...
It’s falsely comforting to think of selling as a process in which one step follows logically after another - but this ...
This article was first published in the February 2025 edition of Top Sales Magazine (link below). It’s hard to avoid the ...
This article was originally published in the January 2025 edition of Top Sales Magazine (link below). Traditional wisdom ...
This article originally appeared in Top Sales Magazine (link below). Sales playbooks have come a long way since their early ...
Finding and recruiting good people into any position is hard. Hiring consistently great salespeople is particularly ...
This article was first published in the October 2024 edition of Top Sales Magazine: Recruiting the right new salesperson - ...
According to marketers, every company needs a clear and consistent “value proposition” for every significant offering – and ...
The latest edition of the International Journal of Sales Transformation focuses on a topic that is already having a profound ...
This article was first published in the September 2024 issue of Top Sales Magazine ... Numerous studies have shown that ...
This article was first published on LinkedIn, stimulated by an article by Mark Gibson. The qualification of complex B2B ...
As everybody involved in them knows, complex B2B buying journeys are rarely straightforward or linear. Without strong ...
This article was first published in the May edition of Top Sales Magazine. You can subscribe by clicking the link at the ...
The latest edition of the International Journal of Sales Transformation focuses on the critical role that trust plays in ...
In the previous article in this series on Outcome-Centric Selling® I addressed the importance of researching, targeting, and ...
I have known Dave Brock for ages, and have always enjoyed both his insights and his company. He’s one of the most thoughtful ...
In the previous article in this series on Outcome-Centric Selling® I addressed the importance of identifying and targeting ...
This article was first published in the March 2024 edition of Top Sales World Magazine There’s a clear correlation: great ...
In the previous article in this series on Outcome-Centric Selling® we addressed the importance of identifying and targeting ...
This article was initially published in issue 10.1 of the International Journal of Sales Transformation. I suppose this ...
This is the first in a series of articles that explores each key building block of Outcome-Centric Selling® - and provides ...
In my last article, I suggested that our prospects aren’t really interested in our so-called “solutions” - what they really ...
“Solution” is possibly both the most over-used and the most misused word in many salespeople’s vocabulary. Hundreds of books ...
An earlier version of this article was initially published on LinkedIn. Most traditional sales training primarily involves ...
The Roman philosopher Cicero believed that “a room without books is like a body without a soul”, and I believe the same can ...
This blog was originally published in the November edition of Top Sales Magazine. You can find a link to their website at ...
This article was first published (as "Addressing Underperformance" in the October 2023 edition of the always excellent ...
This article was originally published in the October 23 edition of Top Sales Magazine ... Finding and winning new business ...
This article first appeared in the September edition of Top Sales Magazine ... The ability to ask the right questions, in ...
A version of article was first published in the September 2023 edition of the International Journal of Sales Transformation ...
This article was first published in the July 2023 edition of Top Sales Magazine (link below). Salespeople have traditionally ...
This article was first published in the latest edition of the International Journal of Sales Transformation under the title ...
I was delighted to be asked to contribute to Membrain’s “The Art & Science of Complex Sales Podcast” with Paul Fuller, ...
What role should sales leadership play in their organisation’s deployment of CRM? A CRM application lies at the centre of ...
The first wave of B2B selling was product orientated - salespeople were taught and encouraged to think in terms of their ...
The following article was first published in the March 2023 edition of the always-excellent Top Sales Magazine - there's a ...
There’s been a great deal of research into the dynamics of salesperson-customer interaction over the years, and the results ...
Every competent salesperson recognizes the importance of accurately qualifying every sales opportunity. But I want to ...
In my previous article - “hiring salespeople with talent” - I explored the challenges involved in making good sales hires. ...
In my last article, I shared Gartner’s findings about the current war for talent. In this article - first published in the ...
Gartner’s latest guidance for Chief Sales Officers [Leadership Vision 2023: 3 strategic actions for success] contains a ...
As Matt Dixon (of Challenger Sale and Challenger Customer fame) points out in his latest book “The Jolt Effect”, B2B ...
This article first appeared in the October 2022 edition of the International Journal of Sales Transformation, and is ...
If your prospective customer is seriously evaluating a new project that involves both a significant investment and a change ...
I recently participated in a webinar with LeveragePoint on the subject of “establishing a value-centric culture in your B2B ...
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 ...
This article was first published in the latest edition (issue 8.1 - January 2022) of the International Journal of Sales ...
I believe that it would be hard to argue that B2B selling hasn't changed significantly in recent times - and equally hard to ...
I was delighted to be asked to contribute the following article to the International Journal of Sales Transformation's ...
Marketers are keen to create what they refer to as “unique selling propositions”. According to Wikipedia, a unique selling ...
This article was first published in the October Edition of Top Sales Magazine. Many of you will be familiar with the idea of ...
At a time when the level of public trust in the UK's elected politicians has never been lower, it's an opportunity to ...
How many stakeholders are involved in the typical complex high-value B2B buying journey? It’s fair to say that the number is ...
I recently recorded a webinar with LeveragePoint (link below) about “making a compelling case for change”. Those of you who ...
This article was first published in issue 7.3 of the International Journal of Sales Transformation, and I'm very pleased to ...
One of the most illuminating elements of Objective Management Group’s sales evaluation methodology is the way in which it ...
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 ...
One of the key things that separates great salespeople from the rest is their commitment to rigorously qualifying every ...
You’d hope, wouldn’t you, that most salespeople understand what their prospective customers want to buy. You’d expect, ...
I recently participated in a fascinating panel discussion facilitated by Jonathan Farrington of Top Sales World on ...
Soon after “The Challenger Sale” was published, you could see a stream of lazy commentators homing in on one percentage ...
This article first appeared in the April 2021 "Supercharging Sales" issue of the International Journal of Sales ...
One of the most unhelpful “rules of thumb” in B2B selling is the long standing and widely quoted myth that the benchmark ...
Whether proactively reaching out to potential future customers or responding to inbound enquiries, salespeople and business ...
Regular readers will know that I have been evangelising the critical importance of customer-specific value stories for a ...
Business customers have become increasingly used to as-a-service models, rather than outright purchase - and many of them ...
I recently had the pleasure of speaking at length with Jan Ropponen, author of “Secrets of Sales Innovators - how ...
I was pleased to be asked to contribute an article to the latest edition of Top Sales Magazine - a regular source of insight ...
I was very pleased to be invited by the International Journal of Sales Transformation to contribute an article to their ...
In a recent article (Advance or disqualify!), I proposed that salespeople - rather than clinging on to lifeless sales ...
In his best-selling sales guidebook “SPIN® Selling”, Neil Rackham identified four potential outcomes from every significant ...
It might seem strange - in a season when we traditionally wish goodwill to all men and women - to take the position that ...
Largely inspired by the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor, and made real by Henry Ford and others, the age of mass production ...
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 ...
I recently made what I hope was a compelling case for creating a customer-specific unique value story for every significant ...
I want to give Dave Kurlan of Objective Management Group the credit for stimulating this article. I’ve added a link to his ...
Generic value propositions, although they might be of some use in persuading potential prospects to make initial contact ...
Everywhere you look, sales organisations of all descriptions are promoting their so-called “solutions”. It’s become such an ...
The quality and accuracy of opportunity qualification is widely acknowledged to be a key predictor of future sales success - ...
Note: This article has been adapted from the latest fully revised and updated version of my “Introduction to Outcome Centric ...
Frontline sales managers - the people from whom individual members of the sales organisation take their day-to-day direction ...
I’ve written before about the persuasive power of a Mutual Success Plan in technology-based B2B sales, and I believe the ...
Whenever a purchase is inevitable (the customer must act) your competition tends to be predictable - and it will often be ...
As Winston Churchill was working to establish the United Nations after World War Two, he observed that leaders should “never ...
I recently recorded another conversation with Andy Paul, award winning author, speaker and the host of the Sales Enablement ...
In today's challenging and uncertain business climate, your customers have good reason to be cautious. They are unlikely to ...
It’s become common for commentators to refer to the fast-evolving reality of B2B selling as the “new normal”, and I’ve often ...
I thoroughly enjoyed talking with Tom Pisello of the Evolved Selling Institute as his guest on the EVOLVERS Podcast on the ...
Most conventional sales methodologies encourage salespeople to find at least one coach inside the potential customer’s ...
Many sales methodologies - in the interest, no doubt, of selling more books and training courses - claim to have a uniquely ...
There’s no doubt that the vast majority - if not all - of discretionary, could-put-it-off until later B2B purchases are ...
As far as the state of sales enablement is concerned, I think it's fair to say (and I hope that sales enablement ...
This article is republished with permission from an article that first appeared on the Refract website. With the world ...
Having a clearly defined and actively worked new business target account list is a key strategy for anyone who is ...
I recently took part in a webinar with Paul Everett of The Marketing Practice - one of the UK’s most respected B2B marketing ...
There’s no doubt that our customers and our own sales organisations are facing challenging - many would suggest ...
Companies around the world are collectively spending billions of dollars/pounds/euros each year on sales training and ...
There probably isn’t a single industry or organisation that isn’t being affected in some way by covid-19. A few sectors - ...
James Muir is the best-selling author of "The Perfect Close" - a book that leverages the latest science to show why applying ...
Even before the current crisis, many opportunities that had been confidently forecast by salespeople were failing to close. ...
In most complex B2B sales environments, our most significant and consistent competition typically hasn’t come from another ...
In his widely acclaimed Good to Great, Jim Collins shows that lastingly great organisations pay particular attention to not ...
For many sales organisations, December is both the end of the sales quarter and the end of the sales year. Individual ...
Whenever your customer sees little meaningful difference between their current situation and their future potential, they ...
It’s falsely comforting to think of selling as a process in which one step follows logically after another. But although ...
In any high-value complex B2B sales environments involving new projects with multiple stakeholders, the buying behaviours ...
An earlier version of this article was first published in the November 2019 edition of Top Sales Magazine. Every sales ...
In a recent article for the CEB, Andrew Kent posed the question “Are your reps bartenders or personal trainers?” It’s a ...
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 ...
When Harvard Medical School Professor (and BBC Reith Lecturer) Atul Gawande published his “Checklist Manifesto” nearly 10 ...
There are so many potential variables and unknowns in any complex B2B sales environment that the idea of running a ...
Corporate Visions recently hosted a webinar on how to gain access to business executives. Their findings were based on a ...
When your salespeople submit a proposal, it should always represent the natural culmination of a series of value creating ...
You’re probably all too well aware of the statistic that the majority of apparently well-qualified complex B2B buying ...
The term “cannon fodder” is used as a somewhat dismissive description for soldiers who were regarded by their generals as ...
In this, the second of my series of articles for the International Journal of Sales Transformation on today’s leading sales ...
Making a buying decision has never been more complicated. Your customers have access to an overwhelming amount of ...
First published in 2011, “The Challenger Sale” must be one of the most widely-read sales books of the past decade, and with ...
Most sales organisations - and most of the sales people who work for them - are capable of describing their target market in ...
According to many market analysts, the market for CRM solutions shows no signs of slowing down. It’s increasingly rare to ...
One of the most significant mistakes any sales person can make is to assume that their prospective customer is inevitably ...
I’ve been commissioned by the International Journal of Sales Transformation to write a series of articles comparing and ...
[This article was updated on 9-Jul-2019 to include the renewal opportunity type] Why do so many CRM implementations behave ...
George Brontén of Membrain is one of the smartest people I know when it comes to the latest trends affecting complex B2B ...
I had the chance to work with The Marketing Practice at a recent event at Worcester College Oxford and one of the ...
I recently recorded a second wide-ranging podcast on the foundations of sales effectiveness with Michael Webb of Sales ...
Business executives often report that they look back on the initial conversations they have with sales people and regard ...
Given the inevitable complications and unique considerations involved in any complex sales environment, it’s hard to imagine ...
The concept of a Minimum Viable Product is common in the start-up community. It is normally regarded as an initial release ...
I recently recorded a wide-ranging conversation about the art, science and engineering of sales management with Michael Webb ...
I hope you will forgive me this rant, but in addition to allowing me to vent my frustration, I believe the story contains ...
The best sales people and the best content marketers are often great storytellers. They have the ability to craft compelling ...
As Gartner and others have frequently pointed out, B2B buying decisions are often complicated. If the problem to be solved ...
It’s a fundamental principle of value-based selling that whenever a prospective customer is unable to establish any ...
Why do apparently promising sales opportunities go wrong so often? Why do close dates speed past, get reset and then repeat ...
Accurate opportunity qualification is perhaps the single most important foundation for success in complex B2B sales ...
Sales consultants often make the distinction between transactional and complex sales. Transactional sales - whatever their ...
It’s falsely comforting to think of selling as a process in which one step follows logically after another. But although ...
Like a growing number of other commentators, I have come to believe that the traditional BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and ...
It surprises and shocks me how many sales organisations still regard BANT as a practical way of qualifying sales ...
The idea of a “sales process” has been around since long before I was offered my first sales role. The concept has been ...
If the conversations I’ve been having with sales leaders recently are anything to go by, our sales pipelines are full of ...
I’ve just spent a few minutes completing the annual survey from one of the world’s most widely respected sales training ...
Military leaders have long recognised the importance of planning. But they have also recognised that it is the act of ...
Every established sales methodology attracts its own fan base. Some are fans of SPIN®, others Challenger®, Miller-Heiman, ...
The sewer systems of of our towns and cities are struggling to cope with a phenomenon known as the “fatberg”. These fatbergs ...
If you’re involved in complex B2B sales, and if what you are selling is anything other than an absolute “must buy” ...
Account-Based Marketing (and its all-embracing cousin “Account Based Everything”) has been touted by its promoters as a ...
I’m no great fan of averages, and I’m no great fan of unsupported rules of thumb, either. Perhaps the best (or worst, ...
This is a subject I’ve referred to before, but an excellent article by Don Mulhern has prompted me to promote a concept that ...
One of the most dangerous mistakes we can make as sales people is believing that our customer – and particularly the sponsor ...
There’s been a great deal of comment – often from people and organisations who frankly should know better – about how ...
Our prospective customers are far more likely to want to engage with us if they believe that they are likely to learn ...
The now increasingly discredited BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe) approach to opportunity qualification ...
Sales forecasting is hard. For proof, you need look no further than the 2018 CSO Insights Sales Performance study, which ...
In complex B2B sales environments - particularly ones that involve multiple stakeholders and lengthy and often complicated ...
Many B2B sales and marketing organisations have an unfortunate habit of wasting huge amounts of time and energy pursuing ...
As anyone who has worked with me or read my articles, I am passionate about ensuring that sales and marketing are aligned in ...
In any high-value complex B2B sales environment involving new projects with multiple stakeholders, the buying behaviours and ...
The primary goal of sales enablement must surely be to increase sales effectiveness by progressively reducing the ...
If you are in a role that tends to attract the attention of other vendors’ business development people, you’ve probably had ...
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, there’s a common recognition that multiple stakeholders are almost always involved in the ...
Jim Burns of Avitage drew the distinction between finding versus creating sales opportunities in an article on LinkedIn a ...
Apparently, someone once offered a definition for the split second as “the time between a customer giving the merest hint ...
I’ve long believed that top sellers are storytellers. They are able to call upon a rich fund of relevant anecdotes that they ...
Many of the clients I’ve been working with over the past few months have been attempting to implement some form of account ...
Most traditional sales methodologies stress the importance of asking good questions, and there’s no doubt that the ability ...
You’ve probably heard some variation of the saying “it matters not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game”. ...
Many analysts claim - and many sales people would agree - that today’s most powerful competitor is not another similar ...
One of the biggest frustrations for today’s sales leaders is their sales peoples’ apparent inability to connect the business ...
If we’re in sales, there are two obvious monetary measures of our success: revenue and margin. Revenue is particularly ...
The art and science of sales leadership is clearly complicated, but the fundamental goals of sales leadership - at least ...
Whenever we attempt break down the key success factors in managing complex B2B sales opportunities, it soon becomes apparent ...
Just as the discovery process is best thought of (and most effective) as a two-way exercise, so is the closely-related ...
My latest contribution has just been published in the June 2018 edition of the always-excellent International Journal of ...
I’ve written before about the critical importance of the discovery process in complex B2B sales. It’s a favourite subject, ...
I imagine we’ve all sat through at least one of these at some stage of our careers: a software demonstration that is nothing ...
If we’re driven by data and interested in statistics, there are a wide range of sales metrics we can choose to monitor. ...
