11 Aug 2022

Tech events
With COVID almost out, the years 2022 and 2023 will be a season of live network events and shows. I have had a chance to attend 2 already and I see a huge set of companies participating it is buzzing. Bangalore is the happening place for events like this. So as with any show, companies from a host of different industries are visiting the city to promote their offerings and vie for futur...

16 Aug 2021

Why is type of selling required for B2B? Most people relate to sales based on everyday sales they have experience in their lives. Undoubtedly, every day we do many transactions of giving & take or buy and sell, but are these transactions really the same when it comes to doing sales with businesses and enterprises? Do these everyday sales help us in selling innovative solutions,...

24 Aug 2020

Cold e-mail prospecting
E-mail is an essential part of the B2B lead generation and prospecting process. Pre-COVID with a lot of face-2-face meetings and conferences, e-mail was used more for transaction purposes. But top B2B marketers, Salespeople always know the power of e-mail and have been using E-mail as a primary way to generate leads and appointments ever since. And since COVID-19, the importan...

06 Mar 2020

How to stand out from competition
Competition is the name of the game in most markets. One of the ways most companies want to stay ahead of the competition by being better than competitors. Most salespeople when they meet buyers, highlight how their solution is better in terms of pricing, features, service, etc. I will tell you, to stand out from the competition, why trying to be just better than the competitor is not...

27 Jan 2020

KAM
You must have heard people working in big companies use the terms "key account management" and "strategic account management" every now and then in their conversations and discussions. But if you ask each one of them “What is key account management?” or “What do you mean by strategic account management”, be assured you will receive a different answer or explanation from each one of t...

07 Jan 2020

Consultative selling in b2b sales
The word 'Selling' is something many people do not like to associate with. They feel 'Selling' is bad or is being pushy. Now even some salespeople don't find the word selling comfort to them. But irrespective of the word 'Selling' people like or not, everyone is seeking the benefits of selling. Whether someone is keen to convince his manager to develop a new idea, wants to influence t...

12 Dec 2019

Sales performance culture
Q. What really differentiates a high-performance sales team vs avg. performing sales team? A. Good training that's it, quick answer! OK! As a sales training and coaching firm, you may think that we are just selling the concept of sales training! So don't take our word for granted! Most people believe products, good market access, experienced sales team matters. We definitely...

04 Dec 2019

B2B Sales Negotiation
Sales negotiation is quite easy provided one is very well prepared in the overall subject. But what most people overlook is the process part of the negotiation. There are many elements that go into the sales negotiation and it is difficult if one doesn't stick to a process. In this blog, we will list the 7 common elements of any sales negotiation. The priorities and importance of...

19 Nov 2019

Innovation selling
Recently we worked with a company that wanted to serve the education institutes with the innovative solution towards teaching in an experiential way. There is a lot of innovation that has gone into this solution to understanding current student grades, their gaps, progress. But when salespeople visited and promoted these solutions, the response wasn’t great from the teachers as well...

06 Nov 2019

Mental barriers for sales success.
Everyone in sales is looking for success, but very few are able to achieve it consistently. Why is that? There are many reasons, but primarily selling is not taught formally anywhere and many are naturally not good at sales. Also, the salespeople are under pressure that most people can't take. Selling requires to be of help, be at ease with people who have little or no wish to se...

17 Oct 2019

Many sales opportunities get stuck at the end of the sales process and do not close, leading to frustration for sellers. Especially in the B2B sales with all the hardwork of proposals, pilots or demo stages and presenting the commercials, some buyers catch cold-feet and delay the closing. How can this be addressed is a common question among many salespeople? One of the key rules t...

12 Sep 2019

We keep meeting many companies and also salespeople. When we ask, what are their biggest challenges, 2 common challenges expressed are pricing and competition. Most buyers are challenging the salespeople on the pricing part and there is always a competitor who is out there who is willing to undercut the price to win the orders.  How do sales team can handle this? Firstly ...

05 Sep 2019

Sales training initiative India
Hiring any service is a challenge as there are many factors involved which are not easily quantifiable and also cannot be tried like a product. Most people try to simplify by going with referrals or known contacts. That might work at the individual level, but at an organization level what is required is to follow a process and have a clear evaluation criterion. Just like evaluat...

25 Jul 2019

Handling B2B Pricing challenges
How would you respond if your customer says any of these below? I will buy the product provided you a discount of 30% There are other players who are giving 20% less, so why should I buy from you? If you increase the price, I am planning to switch to another player I just listed 3 questions but as a salesperson, you might face many price-related questions as above. So, i...

13 Jun 2019

3 mistakes companies make in implementing sales CRM
Do you have a plan to implement Sales CRM in your organization or if you are using Sales CRM already, then keen to know how to improve the ROI? Then from our studies as well as interacting with companies who have successfully implemented the sales CRM, there are 3 common mistakes to be avoided. Not having a sales CRM Strategy The 1st biggest mistake is to roll out sales CRM with...

17 May 2019

Competitive selling
Recently one of our client who is into selling Auto component solutions wanted to know how to become the preferred supplier to some of their top tier vendors. The challenge he said is the customers are defining the specifications and also giving an acceptable price range. The customers are inviting many suppliers who can match the specification the vendor has defined. Client was ke...

30 Apr 2019

Can you increase price and retain your buyer?
The no.1 challenge most salespeople face in retaining their existing accounts is to keep them from switching to competitors. Due to this fear of losing customers, salespeople are always worried about communicating price increase to customers. Recently a client of ours told, " Many buyers threaten to switch to low priced competitors and hence our salespeople struggle to communicate pri...

16 Apr 2019

How to build trust with buyers
In the recent article from LinkedIn on the sales statistics, it is mentioned TRUST is the No. 1 attribute of the salesperson which is critical for B2B sales success. Here are the statistics, 51% of decision makers rank trust as the No. 1 attribute they want in a salesperson.Virtually 100% of sales professional say trust if “very important” or “important” to winning new business.88% of...

08 Feb 2019

Depending on the business types, buying environment, solution types, selling and sales complexity must vary. In the article, we had mentioned 4 types of sales expertise depending on the buying environment and solution type. Just for brevity, let us put this again here, Sales people expertise vs solution type As we can see from the above 2x2 matrix when the buying envir...