B2B Street Fighting Blog

the new oil for salespeople

Posted by Brian Dietmeyer on Mon, Dec 29, 2014 @ 03:58 PM

oil_canI know, I know… the sales / marketing disconnect has been talked and written about for years. The problem now is that we need to fix it. With the rapid market shifts in competitive advantage and strategy, the new oil for salespeople is knowledge. Marketing (and to a degree, product management) has been unfairly tasked with providing this knowledge to sales. I say unfairly tasked because the role of marketing and the agencies that support them is not the granular level of knowledge, in real time, that sales needs to compete and win. Their role is higher level branding and perhaps lead generation. 

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Tags: negotiation skills for sales

Is CRM a "tax" on salespeople?

Posted by Brian Dietmeyer on Fri, Dec 19, 2014 @ 02:51 PM

Is_CRM_a_taxOne of my partners, Dave Knopfler, is fond of saying "CRM is a tax on salespeople." Really, who likes taxes? I think he's absolutely right. Technology was supposed to help salespeople compete, however, it never fulfilled that promise which is why 74% of organizations report low adoption. For sure it's added some value for management in terms of pipeline management and forecasting (even though average forecast accuracy is still below 50% and the odds at a Vegas craps table are better).  

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Tags: negotiation skills for sales

why winners win

Posted by Brian Dietmeyer on Wed, Dec 03, 2014 @ 04:04 PM

why winners win

Ask salespeople why they win and they say "relationship" and why they lose, they say "price." Our win/loss practice leader Hugh MacDonald has executed over 20 billion dollars in win/loss reviews over 12 years and points to a different reason; "Salespeople win when they show customers how they meet their needs at higher confidence and lower risk than alternatives." In fact, we believe this is the very definition of business value; how you meet customer need incrementally better than an alternative. 

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Tags: negotiation strategies in business

Mining "little data"

Posted by Brian Dietmeyer on Mon, Nov 24, 2014 @ 04:26 PM

data-miningBoth Strategy& (formerly Booz & Company) and the blog strategy+business point to the emergence of "little data," a phrase we began employing a few months ago.

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Tags: negotiation strategies in business

are you 'writing a prescription' before hearing the symptoms?

Posted by K. (Karen) G. Fraser on Mon, Nov 17, 2014 @ 04:00 PM

Put yourself in this scenario – you wake up every day for a week feeling unwell, well below par.  You don’t have any broken bones, or spots, or bruises;   you have no visible signs of an illness or injury.  You just don’t feel well.  Eventually you go to the doctor, wait patiently in the doctor’s waiting area, and when it is your turn, take a seat in the doctor’s consulting room.

How would you then feel if the doctor does not talk to you about the reason for your visit?  She (or he) just immediately starts to write a prescription for you.  Rationally we know that this is not the right way to proceed.

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Tags: negotiation skills for sales

use insights, but is this going too far?

Posted by Brian Dietmeyer on Fri, Nov 14, 2014 @ 09:51 AM

insightUsing insights to sell is exactly the right thing to do. However, it's all about the execution. Recently I spoke with an executive who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with two major consulting firms to develop insight to be used by their sales teams in customer conversations. The sales team however felt the data was a bit above their pay grade. That executive then hired a marketing communications firm and invested over 500 hours of senior leadership time to white board the insight such that sales could actually use it. This same executive estimates that after all this, only 50% of his salesforce is going to be able to execute the strategy.

Aberdeen Group just reported that "insight needs to be job relevant and intuitive to use in order to drive adoption and engagement." Without a doubt, a knowledge based approach to selling is the only way to compete to sell at the speed of change today. The knowledge just needs to be at the right level for both your sales teams and customers. 

For more info, take a look at these articles.

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Tags: negotiation skills for sales

what's all the buzz on precision guided selling?

Posted by Marie Dudek Brown on Thu, Oct 09, 2014 @ 09:44 AM

In case you were in the middle of closing a huge deal and  missed the live webinar on October 7 entitled "Are You Teaching Your Sales Reps to be Fighter Pilots?" the recording is now available.
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Tags: webinars

Are you teaching your sales reps to become fighter pilots?

Posted by Pat Lynch, CSO Insights on Thu, Oct 02, 2014 @ 04:14 PM

During the height of battle, a fighter pilot will have to assess and act upon up to 17 different pieces of information. If you start counting up all the tools, data and information a sales rep may have to deal with – CRM, Business Intelligence Analytics, dashboards, pipeline reports, the buy/sell cycle, marketing automation, discovery research, LinkedIn, networking, calls, appointments, emails, and presentations - it should not be a surprise that sales performance has been impacted negatively.

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Tags: negotiation strategies in business, affiliations

WEBINAR: Are You Teaching Your Sales Reps to be Fighter Pilots?

Posted by Marie Dudek Brown on Wed, Oct 01, 2014 @ 01:31 PM

During the height of battle, a fighter pilot will have to assess and act upon up to 17 different pieces of information to win their battles. Do your reps have the right information at the right time to win their deals (battles) quickly and repeatedly?
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Tags: webinars, affiliations

ask what your customer is thinking, but be careful how you ask...

Posted by K. (Karen) G. Fraser on Thu, Aug 28, 2014 @ 04:33 PM

Twenty years ago, salespeople were trained to ask customers certain questions (What is your budget? Who will decide? What date are you working toward?).  In this age of easy access to extensive information, asking these questions, especially without value context for the customer, does not generally help to obtain the information a salesperson needs.  In fact, asking the questions the way we were trained 20 years ago might hurt your credibility.

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Tags: negotiation skills for sales

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