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If you’re a parent, you’ll know that your kids model what they see you doing and what they hear you say – not necessarily what you tell them to do.
The same applies if you’re a CEO or sales leader – your salespeople will model the behaviours they see, hear and experience from you habitually.
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Many of my clients hire me because they want more meetings or @bats.
Those with a more strategic orientation choose to work with me because they want to execute a competitively distinct prospecting and selling motion that starts top-down – with the CEO. They do this because they want more quality pipeline, faster sales cycles, bigger deals and more wins.
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Perhaps your sales team isn’t struggling to get enough appointments. If so, you’re one of the fortunate ones.
And, are they winning enough opportunities to hit their quota and for you to hit your number?
If you’re losing opportunities to competition, or your potential customer decides to stick with what they already have after speaking with your salespeople, then competition and status quo aren’t your challenge.
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Sales playbooks are a common tool used in the onboarding of new sales hires. The intent behind them is sound – to accelerate the time to productivity of new sales hires so that they and the hiring company are successful. Seems to be an obvious win/win.
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CEOs and Sales Leaders! If the customer testimonials on your website are from VP, Dir, or Mgr job titles, then your salespeople are prospecting and selling too low.
How do I know?
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Ah, those elusive unicorns! The “A” player salesperson.
Everybody wants them – and there aren’t enough to go around.
So, how can you identify if you’re interviewing an “A” player vs. a good “B” player?
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If you’re struggling to sell in the sales/martech landscape, you’re not alone. But if you don’t take deliberate and massive action to hold and gain more ground in this industry, you won’t be around for much longer.
Many previously successful sales leaders and salespeople are struggling to sell in a fiercely competitive market characterized by heavy discounting by incumbents, companies big enough to buy share and new entrants with exciting new offerings. And potential customers who are not responding to prospecting messages.
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You’ve probably heard the expression, “peel the onion”. It’s a metaphor for understanding root cause or discovering the impact of an issue or objective.
Here’s how to quickly spot if your salespeople are NOT doing discovery or root cause analysis well – if at all.
There are two ways to spot this.
Read moreCEOs and Sales Leaders what are you doing to make sure that prospecting is a team sport in your company, involving all your reps, and not just a few who do it whenever they “feel” like it?
Working with organizations around the world I see this over and over again. Indeed, I like to refer to this lack of process around finding new business as random acts of prospecting.
Read moreWhen I talk to CEOs, sales leaders and their teams I’m often struck by how hard they work at articulating a strong value proposition.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts most of them default to a list of “we cans” or “we wills.”
Read moreCEOs and sales leaders, how often do you find yourself or your sales people talking about gatekeepers?
Do you realize that just using the term may be hurting your organization’s ability to generate new business?
Whenever a salesperson has a mindset where they think about an EA or secretary as an adversary and treat them as such – they are making a big mistake.
Read moreHere’s something you won’t read anywhere else – if you want your sales team to sell more and sell faster tell them to STOP selling value.
When I speak to CEOs and sales leaders I consistently hear the same thing “our sales people have got to get better at selling value. They just don’t sell the value of our solutions.”
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Chief Sales Officers! You want your salespeople to sell value – when most of your sales managers can’t execute the basic business conversations you need.
A few weeks back I shared how most sales organizations struggle to sell “value.”
That’s because most salespeople don’t know what “value” means (it’s never been defined to them) or how to uncover what value means to their customers (most important).
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If your salespeople use presentations to sell your product/solution/service, then please read this, because you’ll hit your number faster.
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If you don’t measure this, may I gently suggest that you should at least take a look at your metrics to see how your team is doing. At most, you could start checking this metric weekly as a lead indicator of pipeline health…
Read moreI’m constantly speaking to CEOs and sales leaders from across the world about their growth challenges and objectives – sharing ideas and insights that dramatically accelerate their and their team’s success. I love it. Totally rewarding.
And, what’s really interesting is how often these conversations are repeated…whether they happen with potential clients in London, Toronto or San Francisco.
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It all starts with you. Everything.
There are some things you can control and some things you can’t.
One of the things you can control is how you use language to frame a situation. The right words can affect, not only how you feel, but also influence the way others see you as a professional.
Drowning? Slammed? Be Mindful of your language…it affects your wellbeing and productivity.
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The people designing your sales curriculum and approach have never had and can’t execute the business conversations you need.
EVERY sales leader I speak with wants his or her sales force to sell “value.”
Read moreIf your organization is getting insufficient sales results, it’s generally for one of two reasons.
The first is a lack of clarity. Many sales people just aren’t clear on the purpose of sales (why they do it).
Is it just to sell stuff? Meet an arbitrary quota? Crush their number? Make commissions?
All of those reasons are not very purposeful or inspiring over the long term.
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“They’re not our target customer.”
“They don’t buy what we sell.”
I’m paraphrasing – and, this is what I’ve heard from several leaders of BDRs, SDRs and inside sales teams (who do outbound prospecting) who have pushed back when I’ve advocated taking a top down approach – that is, prospecting to the CEO of that ‘must win’ or ‘named account.’
I get it. I do.
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