sales tools

Complexity Leads to Commoditization

I get into a lot of conversations about the increasing Complexity in our customers environments and how that rolls down hill to us. All of our worlds are getting more complex as competitive environments intensify, access to information continues to expand and expectations continue to rise. What is the impact…

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Who Is Your Real Competition

Building upon last week’s blog, if we are selling CHANGE, then who is your REAL COMPETITION? Although we all have worthy and formidable competitors, in this new world, our primary competitor is our CUSTOMER or PROSPECT. If you have 100 deals in your sales funnel, more than half of them…

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The Art of the Fast Start

It is January 2nd and for most, the first day of the new business year. As an Executive or a Sales Leader, are you and your teams ready to roll? The implication of the question is that there was a lot of thinking and planning done in Q4 to get…

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Bring Your Own App?

I saw this headline the other day and I was intrigued by this concept given the work we do with executives and sales leaders in the area of sales strategy and effectiveness. It was heightened by an inquiry we received from a rep from billion dollar plus organization. She was…

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The Top 2 Levers for Organic Share Growth

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…

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Fish Where the Fish Are

I have always liked the fishing metaphor for sales. There is vast opportunity, but spending time in the wrong places yields poor results. “Most of the world is covered by water. A fisherman’s job is simple: Pick out the best parts.” –Charles Waterman A rare occurrence happened the other day.

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The Lean Sales Organization?

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…

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What If Finance Operated Like 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…

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