Jim Dickie is known to many. He is a founder of CSO Insights (now part of Miller Heiman Group) and runs Sales Mastery Group. Jim is the author of The Chief Sales Officer's Guide to CRM and Insights into High Tech Sales and Marketing, and he co-authored The Sales and Marketing Excellence Challenge and The Information Technology Challenge. Suffice it to say Jim knows a thing or two about Sales, Sales Strategy, Methodologies, and also
As a Chief Financial Officer (CFO), you know your role is a pivotal part of the board of directors for a company. Although you are ultimately responsible for reporting the numbers — especially the revenue forecast or projections — you often know the least about the accuracy of those numbers. You have to rely on your sales leads to give you the story. And it’s not always the real story. To get that real story, you have
Software companies are all about constant learning. Just when you think you’ve figured it out, the market shifts, customers speak or the platform evolves.
When I look back on 2018 and reflect on our relentless desire to provide our customers with *real* value - some key learnings stood out that I want to share with you.
The Power of Simplicity: The sales tools and sales enablement market is very crowded
If you’ve been leading a sales team for any amount of time, you know the value of having an action plan to keep your sales organization airborne and on the right course. Especially at the beginning of the new fiscal year.
When you have a solid plan from the beginning, you can make adjustments as you go. But when you haven’t taken the time to do
Next Steps in CRM are meant to give sales leaders visibility into any deal at a glance.
But a one sentence Next Step isn't going to give you the answers you need. How much insight can you really gather from:
It’s always the same. No matter what size or how mature the organization, Next Steps always look like
This is a guest post from Mike Battaglia, Vice President, Sales within the Global Automotive Division at J.D. Power. He is responsible for growing J.D. Power’s book of business with automakers operating in the U.S. and other global markets. Mike manages a team of sales reps and sales operations personnel tasked with supporting automakers across the portfolio of J.D. Power products and services.
How many of you have “asked for budget” in your sales process? It’s ok... you’re not alone :). Now you may all know this, or at least that’s what I thought, until I started running into prospects that had this question in their qualification process. So, for those who still don’t believe that this is a bad idea, here’s the issue: What savvy buyer, who you are still building a relationship with, is going to give up their leverage
As an individual contributor, you were probably allergic to process. You knew what you were doing and didn’t need all the checks and balances.
But as a sales manager, your success is now tied to others. You need to make sure your sales team is doing the right things at the right time — and process is now your best friend.
Think about it. We’re no longer living in
How many times have you heard a legacy company tell you that they have AI and it will change the world? In all my discussions, every product in the market is now professing to have AI and it will change your life! Unfortunately, AI by itself does very little. It needs your experience and learns just like a child learns how to read and write. Now, the reason why a child learns so quickly is that they
Do you know if your reps are being inundated with useless meetings? Do they have enough time to sell after you take out time for updating CRM, meeting on new internal initiatives, training and a slew of other time-sucking items? Did you know that updating CRM is 70% of what they do during the selling time? I thought the same...and tried all kinds of things to get reps more time to sell! At Microsoft, I would always wonder
How many times have you said this to yourself? Based on the 950+ sales leaders I have spoken to….ALOT of times! Personally, I am always fighting for time! As the CRO of a startup that is growing like crazy, I have to always prioritize my time between eating and speaking to prospects. Which one do I do? Of course, at this point, I do what most of my peers do, I look for a new gadget or app
We want to "shorten the cycle", to close deals faster and with fewer headaches. We'd like to find the Decision Makers on our first call, and get them to say "Yes!" as quickly as possible. We want more and bigger deals, no discounts, no committee reviews, no procurement backlogs. No reasons for the customer to delay. What we don't realize is that sometimes the long road is actually worth it. The journey of Discovery, that journey of
Competitors love to be recognized for their success and hate it when they miss their goals. Sales is one of the purest forms of competition. There's no judging panel that gives you points for wearing a nice suit. You are judged on one thing, hitting your sales goals. Sure, we award points for effort and activity for new hires, but after the on-boarding period is up, it's the numbers that count. Announcing the sales numbers on a consistent
“So I walked this very pro-am last year, in similarly chilly conditions, and he was so stiff I legit thought he was gonna snap in half. This year? Speed. So. Much. Speed.” - @GCTigerTracker This is a perfect example of coming back from major surgery (AKA: bad year in sales) with no data to support a comeback, but using sheer determination and hard work to get the “feel” back into his game. The competition didn’t want this. They
Golf...I love the game. It is humbling and VERY rewarding. It's the one game where hitting it hard is not always a good thing, especially if you have a nasty hook :). Playing a round of golf is sure to make you humble and wish you never took up the game. You warm up at the practice range and hit the ball so flush that you feel you will have your best round. You