You’re about to engage in a sales conversation with a prospect where a business issue or pain is known, or highly anticipated. Let’s recall that the guiding principle is to avoid jumping from that known or anticipated pain to an outright suggestion or potential solution. Take Your Time You have to diagnose the situation before […]
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May 29, 2017
SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall 2017: Good Progress with Room to Improve
Probably the most significant new thinking to come out of the Sirius conference was an update to their Demand Waterfall. The Demand Waterfall was first introduced in 2006 and was updated in 2012. The new version reflects the new realities of the self-driven buyer, sales and marketing automation, and the high prevalence of groups (as […]
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May 1, 2017
Dario Priolo Interviewed for CMO Insights Video Series
Recently, SPI’s Chief Marketing Officer, Dario Priolo, was interviewed for the CMO Insights video series. Watch as he and Jeff Pedowitz, President and CEO of The Pedowitz Group, discuss how technology has changed the way we deliver sales training to our clients. Also learn how we’ve found success with a newly implemented, highly impactful Account-Based […]
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April 17, 2017
Be Different – Stand out in the Crowd
Sellers are often so focused on helping their buyers find the best solution to their business issues that they often fail to protect themselves by differentiating that solution from the competition. In today’s highly competitive environment, understanding what differentiates your solution from the competition, and then being able to position and defend that differentiation, is […]
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April 5, 2017
The New Standard for Developing and Enabling Sales Talent
At SPI, we believe that improving sales performance requires much more than just a sales training class. That’s why we developed SPI-1, a revolutionary sales performance improvement platform for developing and enabling sales talent. Decades of sales experience has taught us that to be truly successful, sales organizations must have the following: Sales Process – […]
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March 13, 2017
Planning for Sales Collaboration
In our latest book, The Collaborative Sale, Keith Eades and I explored what sellers need to do to sell successfully to today’s well-informed and empowered customer, whom we call “Buyer 2.0.” In our research, we discovered that even if buyers agree on the estimated value of a proposed solution, they may still delay making a […]
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February 6, 2017
Change Your Daily Selling Habits. Become a Micro-Marketer.
Get started with Social Selling in 2017 by identifying goals against which you can measure your success and building a routine of activities that you can repeat often and track results against.
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February 4, 2017
Making Sales Conversations Matter
All sales leaders know their sales team’s success depends largely on the ability to converse in a compelling way with customers. Whether their team sells over the telephone, through web collaboration, or face-to-face, effective sales conversations are fundamental to achievement of sales results. In our book, The Collaborative Sale, Keith Eades and I described the […]
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January 4, 2017
What do sales managers and reps need to succeed in 2017?
As you kick-off the start of the new year, you undoubtedly have some ideas you expect will improve sales performance. Before you invest, I encourage you to read this research report. Our “Voice of the Salesforce” survey is a resource for our clients and for sales leaders who are in the process of planning for […]
October 20, 2016
Research Introduction: What do the Most Successful New Sales Leaders do Best?
If you’re a new sales leader and want to know what the most successful new sales leaders do better than the rest, then you’re in luck because I have some insight. At SPI, over half of our new clients are sales leaders who have been in their roles for less than 6 months. Many have been […]
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October 17, 2016
The ABCs of Optimizing Territory Coverage
In a previous blog post about planning for effective territory coverage, we recommended that sellers take time to segment accounts into three groups: All accounts with high business potential, regardless of level of relationship Accounts with high relationship, but little or no new business potential Accounts with low relationship and potential, or are simply as yet […]
October 5, 2016
Survey: Sellers Want Better Account Planning and Executive Selling Skills in 2017
On September 14, SPI released a research report entitled “Voice of the Sales Force,” which analyzed the compiled opinions of 565 sales professionals employed in a variety of industries, worldwide – one of the broadest studies of its kind. The survey solicited sellers’ perspectives about what they need to be successful in 2017. The report’s […]