When one loves to explore data and has access to a huge database of salespeople over 685,000 strong, what happens? Well, for me, I can’t help myself. I frequently analyze elements from that database. Recently, I went mining for insights on consultative selling.
If you visualize your sales as a pipeline, with leads going in one end and revenue coming out the other, it’s easy to see that the rate of flow through that pipeline matters.
One hundred years ago, most men and women wore hats and dressed up to go everywhere. Sixty years later, Dress for Success was founded and at the same time became somewhat of a thing where if you wanted to be successful, you needed to dress like you were successful.
My articles begin with analogies so we'll start by asking, has baseball changed? Games take longer, there is role specialization, starting pitchers rarely complete games, hitters are stronger, pitchers routinely throw in the mid 90's and there is a trend towards either hitting a home run or striking out.
I’m always stunned by how little win/loss analysis we do. Of course, when we win or lose a deal, there is some reason code–usually some drop down in CRM that gives us a handful of choices about why we won or why we lost.
No matter how much we try to simplify, some things will never be simple. We can automate, systematize, create processes, buy software - but in the end, complex b2b sales will stay complex.
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