Sales Process, Step 4: A wild ride down the funnel
Been doing this series recently on the sales process: from the introductory phase (“Who the hell are you, anyway?”) to the discovery phase (“OK, I’ll kick some tires”) to the opportunity phase, where the deal starts to get closed. We heard from a client partner who said something like “This is all very nice, but […]
Sales Process, Step 3: The opportunity phase
First when you’re working a prospect, the key question you’re solving for is “Why should this person listen to me?” That’s the introductory phase of the sales process. Once you overcome that and the prospect is listening, now your challenge becomes “Why should he care what I’m saying?” That’s the discovery phase. You’ve moved that […]
Sales Process, Step 1: Introductory/Listening
A few weeks we brainstormed around the topic: “What can we (seller) actively do to push a buyer along his buyer journey?”. Fact is, that you only sell when the buyer wants to buy. You have only 2 options: wait until he made his journey on his own or with the help of someone else. […]
Do you even need SaaS sales?
Funny story: had the chance, a few months ago, to get an American “influencer” on the phone. In this case, “influencer” means someone with a lot of followers on all the social media platforms — but not necessarily any revenue stream outside of speaking or maybe writing. The influencer was trying to get a company […]
Buying is about losing the status quo
If we’re speaking frankly, there’s a lot of bullshit out there (sorry, had to say it) about customer behavior and the buying cycle. People assign it to a host of factors that have absolutely nothing to do with it, especially in B2B cycles. In fact, we often think selling is about building up — relationships, […]
Your sales approach isn’t about you
And what’s your sales approach? For sales reps and principals, there is a big battle in terms of sales approach. Let me set this one up for you. Some salespeople are commission-only (not all, but some). In those situations, they need to be proactive at getting leads, nurturing leads, and closing deals — because it’s […]
Content marketing does work for outbound sales
There is sometimes a belief that content marketing, which is normally associated with inbound sales and marketing efforts, doesn’t work with outbound sales. That’s actually not true — and thinking that is a mistake for your business. Content marketing is about educating people (ideally). A lot of times people do content marketing — or claim […]
Outbound sales is sexy again
For much of the last half-decade, it felt like outbound sales (“traditional” sales) was dying and inbound sales (content-driven) was replacing it. At the end of 2015, people were writing articles about how inbound killed the cold call — the cold call is a staple of outbound sales — and others were saying the whole […]
My 3 favorite books about Modern Enterprise Sales
Let me share with you my 3 favorite books that inspired and thought me about Modern Enterprise Sales. If you need fresh inspiration read them in that order: Aaron Ross “Predictable Revenue”, Matthew Dixon “The Challenger Sale” and Mark Roberge “The Sales Acceleration Formula”.
20 Sales Metrics for Outbound Enterprise Sales
Conventional wisdom holds that revenue-per-sales-rep is the one and only sales metrics that ultimately matters in sales management. Partially true but sales process optimisation is all about identifying key strengths and coalescing the sales team into an efficient and scalable sales machine.
