Why B2B Buying Decisions Are Taking Longer Than Ever

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Mindful selling, Sales Coaching, Sales Forecasting, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Pipeline, Sales Planning, Sales Relationships, Sales Training

Are companies taking longer to make buying decisions or does it come down to impatience on the part of the B2B sales person, in a hurry to reach their sales targets? It seems nowadays buying decisions are taking longer to make than in previous years. This slow purchasing process isn’t just happening at the enterprise level in large scale businesses, it’s extended right across the board.

Protracted buying is dramatically slowing the sales process. The flow-on effects of such time delays are causing blow-outs in the cost of sale for many

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Learning how to ride the Boom AND Bust economy

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Marketing, Resilience, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Planning, Sales Results, Strategy

These turbulent, challenging and sometimes volatile times we find ourselves living in are making many of us rethink how we do business, how we live our lives and how we engage with the world. Unless you are hiding under the doona, the rest of us are witnessing and experiencing a major transition from the Industrial Revolution to a brave new world of the New Tech paradigm.

This transition is exciting and frightening at the same time because the ‘new order’ is not ordered at all. It keeps changing at a rapid rate leaving a constant sense of unease. Many of the …

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What are the 3 Sales Essentials that make for effective selling?

By / / Communication, Prospecting, Sales Planning, Sales Skills, Sales Training

When we meet with leaders to discuss their sales challenges in achieving sales effectiveness we find that the source of their problems often stem from three key areas: sales planning, sales prospecting and effective sales communication with clients.

Whatever our vocation, we all need to make contact with and communicate effectively to secure the ongoing custom of members, supporters, sponsors or clients to make a living. Yet too many people still leave selling to chance. They do not have a robust sales process in place that works for them …

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Setting the sales agenda

By / / Prospecting, Sales Planning

If you or anyone in your team is struggling to open a client meeting effectively or if you feel awkward and lost for words, and your client or prospect is shifting in their seat, then you need an agenda.

One of the best ways you can kick off a client meeting is with an agenda. An agenda guides you, keeps you and your client on track and lets everyone know what the client meeting is about. Does this mean you stick to the agenda all the way? Well, probably not, because with any agenda things can change.

However, beginning with a clear …

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Are your sales people at risk of leaving?

By / / Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Planning, Strategy

How many of your sales people are thinking about a career move right now?

How many of them have come back from their holiday break wondering if they are in the right role or company?

Sales people are one of the highest “at risk” groups in terms of turnover (average of 26% compared to the national average of 14%). Some industries have sales staff turnover up into the 70-80% range i.e. high churn call centres.

Some of the reasons sales people give in their notice is because:

  • they have not had the success they had hoped to achieve and have not attained their financial …

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How much training should I give my sales team?

By / / Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Planning, Sales Training

Highly effective sales people and teams do not happen by chance. A study by Aberdeen Group (2009) of 8,500 top performing companies with a turnover in excess of $50 million, showed that the highest performing of these in each of their industries provided their sales teams with no less than 8 days of focussed sales training per year, and this did not include product training.

Another Aberdeen Group Productivity report (2008) showed that top-performing sales organisations were 24% more likely than all other companies to either have in place, or have short-term plans to implement, …

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Planning for 2011

By / / Marketing, Sales Forecasting, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Planning, Sales Research, Sales Training

Budgeting and developing strategy for 2011 should be near the top of your ‘to-do’ list right now or be bedded down already. People complain about being too busy and never having enough time, however if you do not make time for regular planning you will let everyone down.

Make time to work on:

  • Forecasting
  • Evaluating staff hiring and implementing staff development plans
  • Ensuring that your marketing calendar is planned through to June 2011 at a minimum

Right now we are working with several clients on their sales plans for 2011 as well as planning out their 2011 sales training schedule.

Here are …

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Why Sales Managers need to work on the business, not just in the business

By / / Sales Forecasting, Sales Management, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Planning, Strategy

Playing “catch up” is a common challenge for organisations of all sizes. Whether you have enjoyed a period of rapid growth and prosperity, or encountered some unexpected obstacles or losses, with little warning, businesses can discover that their decision making and activity has become very reactive. Too much time is spent putting out spot fires and reacting to situations, while too little time is spent on pro-active and strategic activities.

The very real and legitimate day to day business pressures result in many (if not most) decisions being made on an ad-hoc basis, with each one disconnected from the next. The …

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Noise Reduction part 2: Is too much information making you miserable and losing you sales?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, CRM, Sales Planning, Sales Research, Time Management

With information comes choice and without proper guidelines and filters in place, too much information and too many choices can lead to indecision. Indecision can then lead to paralysis making us unhappy, unproductive, and at worst, ineffective. In sales careers, or any role for that matter, too much information and the subsequent indecision is a real killer – in fact, making no decision is far worse than making the wrong decision.

Barry Schwartz, professor of social theory at Swarthmore College in the US and author of The Paradox of Choice states “too much choice is …

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What’s channel stuffing and why is it problematic?

By / / Ethics & Values, Sales Forecasting, Sales Management, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Pipeline, Sales Planning, Strategy

How much do you actually sell? How profitable are your sales? How accurately can you forecast your sales results? How many ‘returns’ do you receive? How often do you need to discount? How often are you left with old stock? What are your sales cycles? Are your sales people rewarded on volume only or on margin, account growth, account retention, and customer satisfaction?

The answers to these and other key questions will tell you just how effective a sales force is functioning, how they measure their effectiveness, how they think about their business, their customers, their careers, and how likely they …

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