9 Ways to Waste Time at a Planning Meeting
Lots of companies are following Shopify’s lead and encouraging, if not requiring, fewer and smaller meetings. Some of you may be dubious about the anti-meeting craze. You will defiantly continue to insist that the leadership team periodically congregate to make decisions affecting your company’s future and viability. You might even think that the result of […]
Customer Context Determines the Value Prop
Imagine a plastic water bottle. The one sitting on your desk, or in the fridge, or the half-empty one that’s rolled under your passenger seat. What’s the value of that water? It depends. If you have access to safe drinking water coming out of the tap, the value is negligible, arising from marginally better taste […]
Selecting Target Verticals as an Early Stage Company
“How do we prioritize target industries?” This question comes up often in my conversations with founders strapped for sales resources and under pressure to deliver a repeatable revenue stream. At companies with a long sales history, industry-specific activity tends to be focused on two types of markets: Where most revenue has come from in the […]
At your next Sales Meeting, create listeners and story tellers
I bet you already have a long list of launch announcements and product training sessions for your sales kickoff. That’s important information, but it’s not enough. If your sales people are still having difficulty engaging executive and business audiences, even after that expensive solution selling training you invested in so recently, it’s because they lack […]
Top Sales People Collaborate and Problem-Solve, then Close
Just 4% of salespeople in the United States sell 94% of the goods and services, according to a study by Gallup and Harvard University. What does this small segment of highly successful sales professionals know that others don’t? A study conducted by Cranfield University School of Management and Silent Edge identified eight common sales styles used […]
Sales tools to invite collaboration
One rule I established when I founded my advisory practice is that sales is about listening and collaborating, not presenting. I had watched the cost of sales at many companies skyrocket because highly qualified sales opportunities would dissipate when elaborate sales presentations fell flat at the very first meeting. These presentaitons, like most other sales […]
Does Your Buyer Focus on the Pain or the Gain?
The most successful B2B salespeople clearly understand that they’re selling to people and not just to businesses. While they take time to understand their customer’s business, they know that identifying each individual buyers’ decision-making mindset is essential to making a sale. One key aspect of the buying mindset is motivation: Is the buyer focused on pain […]
CIOs have no time for you
Many tech companies see relationships with CIOs as the Holy Grail of their sales and marketing efforts. But should you really spend the money and effort it takes for effective CIO egagement? Pro’s of targeting CIO’s: CIO’s have the power to approve or veto technology purchases, so relationships with them can be critical to getting […]
Interview with Rajat Paharia: Creating loyalty using Big Data and Gamification
I recently had the opportunity to chat with Rajat Paharia, founder and chief product officer at Bunchball, about his new book, Loyalty 3.0, pivoting startups, and the differences between the business of games and the gamification of business. Lilia: You were one of the first to see the potential for gaming methodology in marketing. What sparked […]