Bye bye, BANT? A round-up of new qualification frameworks

BANT. You’ve heard it a million times. It used to be the go to acronym for prospect qualification – failing to clearly establish a potential customer’s budget, authority, needs and timeframe early on would result in long sales cycles and low win rates.

Why sales squander leads – and what to do about it

Here’s an exercise - ask each person on your sales team to explain how they manage their leads. Whether it’s an inbound lead from marketing or someone they met at last week’s conference, there should be some type of system in place. Right?

How many different answers would you likely receive?

Why B2B Sales has to confront the Value Gap

In survey after survey, the average sales person’s inability to effectively communicate the value of their offering has been rated as the most frustrating challenge facing today’s CEOs and Heads of Sales.

They are right to be concerned. The statistics are truly horrible.

The price and value relationship - 4 tactics to employ

Over the past 6 months, how many times have you heard somebody say “We have to add/deliver/sell/prove value!”. Most likely, it’s somewhere in the high 30s. Thanks for the concrete advice on how not to sell on price.

3 sales fundamentals to master

In the world of more complex b2b sales, where an investment in your product or service will actually require changes in the organization – I would argue that the fundamentals for success are still the same, despite the Internet and new technologies.

Why sales processes need to support artisans not create automatons

The evidence that formalised sales processes improve sales performance is absolutely overwhelming - a raft of studies have shown that companies that have implemented structured sales processes outperform companies that haven’t by anything from 20-45% or more. So why are so many companies still so reticent?