We have talked previously that the concept of strategy is all about growth. Virtually every executive that we speak with has organic revenue growth as one of his or her top priorities. As corporate balance sheets have continued to improve, the volume of acquisitions has continued to accelerate and multipliers…
If you have ever watched the NFL Draft, you can feel the tension and drama when the Commissioner announces a draft pick to the world and then proclaims the next team that is “On the Clock”. In that scenario, the NFL team has a set amount of time to make…
As someone trained in Lean Six Sigma, I see a lot of content focused on the concept of “Lean”. Eric Ries has had success with “The Lean Startup” and we are proponents of the concept of a Minimum Viable Product, which we used with the launch of our INK Sales…
There are all kinds of interesting discussions we get involved in re the Art and Science of Sales. Ponder this for a second as you think about the strategy, structure, processes and tools that exist within your Sales organization. What would happen if your Finance department operated in a similar…
At the close of a two day sales strategy and training event with a client last week, the question was asked whether Buyers go through similar preparation and training. Although we made the joke that we were doing the same work with their Buyers next week, there is a certain…
Sir Anthony Hopkins is one of the most respected and successful actors in the world. I was reading an article about him the other day and I was struck by his process for preparing for a play or a movie. He stated that he always reads his lines out loud…
As we meet with various sales leaders and salespeople, we are finding a common theme emerging. Many salespeople are presenting their “solution” to the client far too early in the sales process. As we dig into the reasons for this behavior we have uncovered some consistent explanations as to why Premature Selling…
Recently I was chatting with a colleague who was down in dumps about his sales team’s inability to properly forecast the opportunities in the sales pipeline. “We have a large number of opportunities at the top of the funnel and nothing that is ready to close.” When…
The term Value Proposition may be the most over used and misunderstood business phrase since Partner. Organizations often use Value to describe generic, unproven statements about their product or service that could also describe any of their competitors. If you are curious about how your organization views and is aligned…