Fatal Sales Failures: Why Not Commoditize?
Anthony Iannarino on the topic of how to avoid commoditization.
Fatal Sales Failures: See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil
Barbara Hauser explains that sales suffer when the company practices a culture of “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil.”
Get Out and Stay Out of The Commodity Trap
A lot of The Whale Hunters client companies believe they are playing in a totally price-driven market. They do not see any opportunities to compete other than on price. When they lose a deal, they assume they lost it on price.
The problems with that zero-sum game are that there are always limits to how low the market can drive prices (before vendors abandon the market) and that every vendor is vulnerable to price-cutting by any competitor at any time.
Re-Post: Can You Deliver What You Sell?
For a long time, I’ve been exhorting clients to be certain that the sales team is selling what the operations or implementation team plans to deliver. In the past couple of weeks, The Whale Hunters team has been on the receiving end of that potential mismatch, which compels me to write about it again. Here’s some context that may resonate with you as a seller (and possibly even as a buyer)!
Are You Building Trust or Just Fixing Blunders?
We came home from the grocery with a little mesh package of new red potatoes. Also a package of baby portabella mushrooms. Planned to use them on the same day; did not demand that they stay fresh for even three days (although that wouldn’t be too much to expect, would it?)
As I started assembling the roast pork tenderloin dinner, I discovered that the potatoes were rotten. Not just mildly old—completely unusable. All of them. So good husband returned to the supermarket to get replacements. A few minutes after he left, I opened the portabellas. Whew! Old. Unacceptable. So from a very expensive, high-end so-called “luxury” grocery store, I had two high-priced items on the same day that were unfit to eat. From a provider whose minimum requirement should be “food that is fit to eat on the day you buy it.”
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X-Ray Emotions – How Women Can Read a Room in a B2B Sale
There are natural advantages women bring to the B2B sales process including their ability to read a room and understand what’s going on inside a buyer’s head. Women are especially good at reading emotions and assessing a buyer’s fear.
Fear Trumps Advantage–Every Time!
We had a great whale hunting session working with the Asia/Pacific sales team of an international company. This company specializes in “spend management.” They help their customers significantly reduce their purchasing costs for many goods and services.
In the course of the workshop, this team reached a very interesting and unexpected insight about their most promising business deals, which was this:
We are not closing the proposals that demonstrate the very best ROI for our prospects. In fact, on our very best proposals, where we believe we can have the biggest positive impact for our customers, we are only closing 20%.
How would we explain that apparent anomaly? Something’s going on that they don’t understand.
On Boarding Your New Client Smoothly
The trickiest part of whale hunting for small and midsize companies is to capture your sale: deliver your products and services as promised once you’ve made the sale. Big contracts with big customers are not business as usual for many companies. Smaller companies are often long on energy and enthusiasm but short on operational processes, policies, and rules. And big customers have higher expectations than many of your smaller customers have.
So, how do you bring a new whale on board smoothly?
Can Technology Substitute for Real Customer Knowledge?
I received a very disconcerting email this morning from amazon.com. It was the typical occasional email that amazon.com customers receive, recommending books that I might enjoy.
Amazon, of course, is known for its ability to understand its customers’ taste and to make recommendations on that basis. The entire system is technology-based, not human-based. That is to say, amazon.com doesn’t really know me at all; it creates the illusion of knowing me by crunching data about my browsing and buying habits on its site.
Sales Position Open: Rock Stars Need Not Apply
I can’t tell you how many owners and CEOs I talk to who are looking for a rock star with a rolodex to save their sales. But today’s complex B2B sales require thoughtful, analytic team players who can put ego aside and involve their company’s subject matter experts in the sales process.
Creating Leverage with the Right Tools
Whether you are a die hard whale hunter or follow some other sales methodology, success in sales really comes down to following a defined sales process. I am not going to get into the specifics about any one process, but I would like to talk about the value in pairing your process with the right technology. I look at technology as a tool and not an end in and of itself. Like any tool, when it is used correctly, it can help you do great things.
When is it a Big Deal, and Who Gets to Decide?
Last week I was talking with a VP of sales, who had just returned from a “big deal” sales pitch across the country. Expecting that his team was to present a multi-million dollar sales proposal to the senior executives of the prospect, he found instead a disjointed quasi-meeting. The meeting started 90 minutes late. The chief […]