22 Jun 2023

With automation and AI transforming industries, it is imperative for sales teams to seek innovative ways to enhance their own effectiveness and drive revenue growth. ChatGPT, a powerful language model developed by OpenAI is a free tool that can be leveraged to revolutionize B2B sales processes, streamline customer interactions, and ultimately, drive business success. The most impo...

20 Aug 2022

Sales KPI Calculator
In our last blog post Inside Sales Challenges Part1, we started a discussion about the biggest inside sales challenges and discussed lead generation. In part 2 we are going to discuss other big challenges that make every sales manager scratch their head - Measure and Track Sales Process. InsideSales.com after doing thorough research developed the 14 Magic Sales Metrics that the most s...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

17 Jan 2019

sales team understanding
Are you facing situations where you are losing business and don't know the reason? Do you wonder if you just had magic wand using which you could know what exactly your customer wants? Or wonder why the customer who used to buy stopped buying? If you are facing any of the above, there is a way to know the answer. It is fact, one of the hardest things in business is knowing what th...

12 Jan 2019

Sales analytics is gaining popularity and most large companies with field force sales are realizing the importance of it. The definition of the sales analytics is Sales analytics is the process used to identify, model, understand and predict sales trends and sales results while helping in the understanding of these trends and finding improvement points. It i...

14 Nov 2018

Sales data analysis for sales managers
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]In today's competitive market where salespeople are targeting different kinds of customers, and selling different products, sales data analytics knowledge becomes an essential requirement for sales managers. With the help of the right data and analysis, sales managers can identify the factors contributing to sales and identify the areas for future devel...

09 Nov 2018

Sales CRM, SalesForce Automation
Let's get this. Every company which has field force sales staff is keen to try out new technology to get more insights so they can improve sales team productivity. For this, technology solutions such as sales CRM, sales force automation software are the most popular. Technology companies promote claiming a huge scope of improvement in all sales related activities in using Sales CRM and S...

22 Oct 2018

Do this instead of buffalo leadership
One of popular analogy being used in leadership is buffalo leadership vs geese leadership. Let us understand how this applies to sales management and sales leadership roles. One of the biggest challenges for being manager or leader is how to make his team members think and own responsibility on their own. This is not easier for many. Most companies have developed a system to identify be...

19 Oct 2018

Sales competition
Ask any sales executive or sales manager, what is their biggest challenge when it comes to increasing their sales, their response is increased competition. No doubt, most companies are operating in a highly competitive environment. Take the case of the automobile market, whether it is for cars or 2 wheelers, there are 4-5 very strong players in each segment. There are 12-14 Sale...