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.”
Fatal Sales Failure: Forget the Front Lines
Chris Conrey explains that it’s a Fatal Sales Failure to be rude to the “front line” people at a prospect company. Don’t let that Executive Washroom go to your head!
Fatal Sales Failures–And How to Avoid Them
Announcing a guest blog series on “Fatal Sales Failures and How to Avoid Them” featuring prominent bloggers, tweeters, sales experts sharing their stories.
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.
More Ways to Offend Prospects and Ruin Your Business
How you behave when you lose a sale reflects on the character of your business.
Why I Became a Whale Hunter by Dave Cooke
Nothing is more critical to the sustainable success of a business than its abilities to galvanize the organizational team around their accountabilities for growth. While so many businesses place a high emphasis and dependence upon the functional responsibility of the sales teams for their growth, sustainable businesses recognize that increases in revenues are best accomplished through the retention of existing clients and the efficiency with which their team attracts and converts new clients. Sustainable revenue growth is about focusing on developing and maintaining great relationships that add value to the firm and to the client. That is not a sales function—it is an organizational accountability.
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Expert Series Call: The Key to Fast Growth is ‘Discoverability’
Each month we do our Expert Series call focused on growth and sales for small and medium sized businesses. This month, on July 20th at 12pm Eastern, we’re doing our free call with Compendium CEO, Chris Baggott .
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)!
Shifting Forward – Overcoming the Sales Growth Roadblocks
We are all working at a frenetic pace and when we aren’t reaching sales goals, we panic and work from a place of fear, rather than from a place of power. Instead of focusing on the “target” we tend to toss darts all over the board hoping we land anything, anywhere. The result is a lot of tossing and not a lot of points. In reality we are staying in the same place (or losing ground) and not shifting our business forward. In either case, we are expending a lot of energy for little results. This is especially true in going after bigger deals because of the complexities of the sale and the nuances of the buying decision.
The Sales Graveyard: Cold Calling and Other Retired Tactics
Back in 1995, smiling and dialing was expected. A sales person was supposed to get names from trade shows, Thomas Register, Harris, etc. Then they were supposed to start calling. I swear, salespeople taught buyers to not answer the phone. I honestly believe bad sales tactics had a lot to do with the internet boom. Buyers desperately wanted a way to get product information without a pushy salesperson.
USP and Transcending the Competitive Landscape: 3 Fundamental Steps on How to Grow Your Business
Many managers (whether in small, mid-sized or large businesses) who survived the very difficult last few years are working hard to come back strong. You may currently be: restructuring, hiring new talent, revitalizing your marketing plan, becoming more creative with staff resources and how best to maximize them, all while making the best of technology from the Internet to mobile to social media and various data analytics tools.
My advice if you would like to transcend the competitive landscape is to think about Intentional Growth™ and create a plan to establish, highlight, and promote how you are unique as you grow into the future. The critical word here is “grow” and the focus of this post is how your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) will support and fuel that growth.
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The Sales Fairy Tale: HOW TO FIND YOUR PRINCE CHARMING and live happily ever after!
Once upon a time, businesses everywhere searched high and low for the right big account. They marched through the forest and didn’t see the trees. They scoured the earth and met with saber-toothed tigers and vicious lions that sent them scurrying back to their caves. They set out day after day with great optimism only to return home with little or no luck. Until one day, they looked out across the wide ocean and asked, “How do the ancient traditions of sea-faring nations feed and clothe their families during the long and arduous winters?” And they discovered the key of Whale Hunting!