Ah the proverbial sales funnel. All of us in sales have lived by it and some of us have died by it in our careers. What is it? Has it changed? Who changed it? The sales funnel is a metric driven tool used to measure sales conversion ratios. That is to say the percentage that…
I’m posting a link to a colleague’s site (Pete Ekstrom, founder of the gold call). He is offering a video and audio CD tutorial on how to go about building a gold call script for prospecting over the phone. This is a tremendous value at $65. Details at www.thegoldcallshow.com
There are many different types of sales reps. Here are just a few examples of the different types of sales reps- hunters, farmers, transactional, enterprise, inside sales, outside sales, technical sales, public sector, solution specialists, named account, etc. The type of sales rep that you need is based on what and to whom you are…
Why are sales people generally the only employees in a company given a quota and held accountable to meeting the number? People can talk all day long about key performance indicators (KPIs), but the only real KPI that matters is revenue and what role you played in generating sales. Every functional area in an organization…
I feel like a relationship counselor writing this blog post but most of the technology companies that I’ve worked with over the past 20+ years have had a dysfunctional relationship between sales and marketing. The only thing that varies is how severe the dysfunction is between the two groups. Open disclaimer, I am an unabashed…
What is discernment and why is it important in sales? According to the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary. discernment “is the quality of being able to grasp and comprehend what is obscure”. My old fashioned paper back version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines discernment as the ability “to come to know or recognize mentally”. Over the years,…
What is discovery? How does it fit in to an enterprise sales process? Why is it important? The answers are best told through a real world story. I was providing sales advisory services to a large software company that had cobbled together a “suite” offering through acquiring various small point solution companies. They were trying…