As sales leaders, we all know that crafting a skilled, productive sales team is essential to our ultimate success; experts consider the keys to building a successful team a balance between art and science: a careful combination of skills, experience, education, and personality traits. New research, however, reinforces what we at ValueSelling Associates have long believed to be true: there’s a...
Ever wonder why some buyers effortlessly make decisions to move forward, while others never engage or take action? When momentum with your prospect stalls, it could be time to shake things up. We need a fresh approach to turn cautious prospects into active clients. Consider this: Prospects expect a sales pitch. They expect us to tell them what we’re all about. Rather than tell our prospects what...
In today’s world, there are a few realities that every sales professional is acutely aware of. The first is that there are many alternatives available for every prospect you have. Not only are there alternatives that are competitive to your solution, but you are often fighting for capital to even have your solution on the purchasing agenda in the first place. The second reality is that in most...
If we only understand sales, we’re just salespeople to our prospects and nothing more. We can’t just be experts in selling. We need to be experts in our customers’ industries, too. When we understand the overall industry, prospects’ business, and their specific issues, we become business experts. That’s the key to selling value, and that’s when a sale can start to happen. Sometimes we get so...
Given the slow worldwide economic recovery, it’s an appropriate time to review our core tactics. Many of us are finding our clients and prospects are risk averse. Here are some effective strategies you can proactively use to increase your sales, no matter what the economic climate brings. You might be asking “Who will buy from me now?” when so much seems to be at risk. The ValueSelling Framework®...
As sales professionals, you probably know a lot about the capabilities of the products and services you represent. However, being a “solution expert” alone is not enough to differentiate you from your competition. If you are perceived as a trusted advisor AND a solutions expert, you are in much better position to win their loyalty and business. And gaining that trust means demonstrating that you...
You’ve labored for months with a prospect who seemed interested in your services. She returned calls and replied promptly to emails. Everything was moving right along and then … nothing. Nada. Radio silence. No more returned calls. No more email exchanges. And no explanations. Frantically, you mentally retrace your steps and re-read email threads to find clues behind this maddening silence...
Today’s slangy emoji text culture may have you thinking that formally written communications are a lost art. Don’t believe it. When it comes to professional communications, poised and precise prose rules over the casually misspelled messages passing between colleagues. This is especially true for sales professionals, since selling is fundamentally a communication process. No one wants the strides...
When it comes to a successful negotiation, which is more important: strategy or skill? The definition of the verb, negotiate, is to “deal or bargain with others, as in the preparation of a treaty or contract or in preliminaries to a business deal.” In a sales context, the key definition is to “bargain in order to create, or culminate, a business deal.” Sales professionals are often negotiating...
Between January 2013 – March 2013, we at ValueSelling – India surveyed 130 end-user organizations, about their sales effectiveness practices and challenges, that the sales leaders face today and what the best do. We all know that buying has changed significantly in the last few years. Customers are flooded with information, today the customer has access to 20 times more data about you and your...
