sales management
38 Systems Thinking Questions That Expose The True Structure of A Buying Decision
In complex B2B sales, every deal is more complex than it looks on the surface. A potential buyer contacts a salesperson and asks a few questions. Inexperienced salespeople might take the conversation at face value and assume that the person calling them knows what they want, understands the full scope of the situation, and has the full authority to make the purchasing decision.
What Is a Way of Selling?
In complex B2B sales, your Way of Selling is what differentiates you from other organizations in your market. It is much more than just your sales process, strategy, or what your salespeople do on a daily basis. It includes culture, mindset, professional development, marketing, and positioning. Ultimately, your Way of Selling defines the experience your buyers have, your reputation, and the sales outcomes you achieve.
Chat-GPT Has An Answer for Everything. But Are Your Buyers Asking the Right Questions?
Today, almost everyone from college students to professionals turn to AI chat bots as a first line of investigation when they have questions. From describing the plot of an assigned reading, to surfacing insights about the market, AI has an answer for, quite literally, anything.
Reaching the Real Decision-Makers in Complex B2B Sales
Salespeople are told to “get to the decision-maker.” This is, of course, sensible and obvious advice - but reality is often more complicated. In complex B2B environments, where multiple stakeholders shape the buying decision, identifying and engaging the real decision-makers is rarely straightforward.
Why a Shared Mental Model is the Missing Piece in Complex Sales
In the world of complex sales, we spend a lot of time talking about prospecting, pipeline, win/loss analysis, and how to reach the right stakeholders. We invest in more training and coaching, better strategy, and processes. We hire more effectively, purchase enablement technology, and still… sales effectiveness rarely improves by more than a margin.
4 Things Tokyo Taught Me About Sales Discipline
I was in Tokyo for the first time recently. My son and I went there for a little vacation, and I was struck by how clean and orderly everything is. In a region of 38 million people, I expected a lot more noise, chaos, and pollution. We found none of that.
