Seven Steps to Shorten Your Sales Cycle
Thu, Apr 11, 2024 | Posted by Bob Sherlock
Does your company provide customers with expensive business inputs?
Or are you crucial in other ways to your customers’ business success?
Does your company provide customers with expensive business inputs?
Or are you crucial in other ways to your customers’ business success?
Thu, Apr 6, 2023 — The past three years have been heady times indeed for sellers. From a global pandemic to a robust rebound, and a return to spending skittishness, it’s been difficult to pinpoint exactly how the market is going to react to the transaction of commerce. CEOs need a safe harbor because the marketplace represents a rolling sea of choppy tides. From my earliest days of selling, I’ve found calmer waters by sticking to the basics – a technique known as the four “Rs.”
Mon, Feb 20, 2023 — What are sales enablement tools and why should I care? We are hearing more and more today about the rise of Sales Enablement tools, many AI driven, that accelerate and enhance the Sales Team’s customer outreach. What exactly are Sales enablement tools? Sales enablement refers to technology and related applications that are designed to help your Sales Team do their job more efficiently. It’s more than just call tracking, these tools educate and coach your Sales team making them much more effective in real time. Most integrate into your existing CRM solution while others can stand alone. Through apps, they can facilitate an automatic linkage between your other Marketing and Sales tools, providing visibility into your KPIs and strategies. With 43% of B2B buyers reporting to Gartner that they prefer a “seller-free” experience, Sales Enablement tools are becoming a necessity in the modern Sales Organization for B2B and B2C sellers.
Mon, Feb 13, 2023 — Sales methodology provides the framework for how different steps in your sales process are carried out in the pursuit of sales development, customer success, and revenue growth. There are countless sales methodologies, and many are very similar or built around the same concept. In Spin Selling, way back in 1980, Neil Rackham looked at the differences between highly successful salespeople and those who were underperforming. He showed that the successful sales reps asked higher quality questions and built a methodology around this evidence.
Mon, Feb 6, 2023 — As a CEO, you’re tasked with improving your company’s bottom line. You and your leadership team may have a good handle on your marketing strategy, but prior to moving forward with that strategy, it’s a good idea to conduct a sales assessment to ensure your sales team can execute flawlessly. What’s at stake? A lot. One study indicates that more than two-thirds of lost sales are a result of flawed sales methodologies.
Tue, Jan 31, 2023 — As someone who loves to cook, today I am reprising a popular recipe – bringing back a post from the recent past that is ever more relevant today. It’s a tried-and-true concoction that can help you serve up a successful lead generation program. I marvel at the fact that CEOs continue to be disappointed by their marketing outcomes. In fact, 70 percent cite that marketing isn’t delivering for them as expected. Art Saxby, Chief Outsiders CEO, has expertly covered the difference between Sales and Marketing in his blog. I suggest you read it to make sure you have a baseline of understanding, and greater clarity, about the distinction between the two disciplines.
Mon, Jan 23, 2023 — The numbers don’t lie: Companies that align their sales and marketing functions win more business, keep more customers, and reap far more revenue than those who don’t. However, true alignment for many organizations can be evasive, and for others, it can be entirely absent. In our experience here at Chief Outsiders, we find that many organizations mistake cross-functional communication for alignment. With the need to plan business strategies to withstand times of economic uncertainty, it’s now even more critical for your sales and marketing teams to be on the same page.
Tue, Jan 17, 2023 — When it comes to corporate synergy, there’s perhaps no greater return on your investment than to align your sales and marketing efforts. Though it’s simply common sense to have the two revenue-responsible departments working in sync, it can also mean dollars and cents. One study found that sales and marketing teams, when well-aligned, can wring out 200 percent more revenue as a result of their collaboration. You may already feel like this cross-pollination is happening at your company: Key personnel are collaborating on projects, keeping each other informed, using a common language, and possibly even delivering cross-functional reports from Salesforce, Tableau, and other analytical tools.
Tue, Jan 10, 2023 — Today’s CEO has to work harder than ever. With a tightening economy, fears of a recession, and a post-COVID marketplace that remains hard to read, the CEO truly is in the hot seat. With an average tenure of fewer than seven years, according to some estimates, the CEO has little runway with which to work in creating market and revenue success. It’s an unfamiliar place for many CEOs – particularly those in the SMB and mid-market space. They’ve built their business on a foundation of great industry knowledge, hard work, dedication, and a healthy dose of sweat equity. But in changing times, and with little understanding of market forces outside their particular industry, it can be difficult to get an infusion of the right market insights needed to build next-generation strategies for success.
Wed, Sep 21, 2022 — To win at the growth game, ownership is everything – and in fact, you would agree that the leaders in the marketplace truly “own” the customer journey. But if you’re among those looking up at the market leader, it’s possible that you have a secondary ownership problem –- an inability for all your cross-functional teams to own their role in the sales funnel, which is a big part of the customer journey.