A competitor’s unhappy customer may not be ready to switch suppliers. A complaint is not a buying signal A salesperson can spend a meeting listening to a long list of problems with the current supplier and come away thinking the deal is almost certain. Yet the customer…
Cold calling remains effective. Salespeople often avoid it anyway A new survey of 153 sales managers and salespeople suggests that direct…
B2B customers no longer need a salesperson to read out specifications. Value begins with diagnosing the real problem B2B customers come to salespeople better prepared and increasingly find…
Customer statements lose value when a company reduces them to keywords without context and consequences A customer may say they need “better visibility,” but that does not…
A weak pipeline does not necessarily mean weak sales execution. More low-quality leads can make the problem worse When the sales pipeline weakens, the first reaction is often pressure for…
Marketing and sales cannot align in a single meeting. They need to define together whom they actually want to win Conflict between marketing and sales often begins before the first contact…
Margin is not lost only in the final negotiation. A salesperson can give it away in the very first conversations Companies often respond to declining margin by tightening discount…
A marketing lead is not yet a sales opportunity. Weak qualification forces salespeople to waste time on the wrong people Marketing and sales can evaluate the same lead very differently. Marketing…
In complex B2B sales, more than contacts get lost. The greatest damage comes from context scattered across people A long sales opportunity can last for months and involve several…
CRM and sales-engagement tools solve different problems. Poor integration between them, however, creates worse data CRM should preserve the shared history of customers, opportunities and the…
In complex B2B sales, tracking the opportunity is not enough. You need to know how the customer actually makes decisions Meetings, presentations, a new contact, or a submitted proposal can create…
AI-enabled buyers may know your competitors and prices before the first call. Salespeople must add what research could not reveal Some customers enter a sales conversation with AI-generated comparisons of…
AI can prepare a customer success plan in half an hour, but it cannot take over the relationship or complex decisions Customer success staff often move between technical support, renewals and…
