Posts with Category "Sales Conversations"

Leading Sales Conversations When the Seller Drives the Demand

How you run a sales meeting depends fundamentally on who set it.

Imagine for minute you’re the COO of a mid-sized manufacturing company. You’ve been reading quite a bit about how to decrease costs in a supply chain. You do a little research and find supply chain consulting firms. You call a few that happen to be in your area and set up a series of sales conversations with them. In this case, you’re the buyer.

You are driving the demand.

Soon, a partner from one of the firms comes to your office. After pleasantries, he says things like: "So, what’s on your mind?" "Tell me what’s going on that brings me here today." "Before we get started, is there anything in particular you’re hoping to get out of this meeting before we’re done?"

Then the meeting gets underway...

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5 To-Dos When Selling to Senior Executives

By Ago Cluytens

Want to make more sales? Start by having better conversations.

Think about it. You spent months chasing a senior decision maker or prospect, making calls, and sending e-mails, and they finally agreed to sit down with you. You invested significant amounts of time, effort, energy and—sometimes considerable—resources to win them over.

And now you find yourself in a room with a senior executive. Now what?

In this video, I explain my five-step process for ensuring you have great sales meetings that are virtually guaranteed to lead to a next meeting.

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3 Steps to Communicating Your Value in Professional Services Sales

By John Doerr

One of the greatest difficulties in professional services sales is helping potential clients understand what outcomes they will achieve when they work with you. Creating a picture of what outcomes are possible with the solution you present is imperative for two reasons. First, prospects need to be convinced of the outcome and that you can achieve it or they likely will not purchase. Second, if they do not fully understand what you are able to do for them, they cannot communicate it to the rest of the influencers in their organization and your sale may get stuck in endless internal discussions.

Helping prospects to understand the value of the services you provide is an exercise in teaching and learning. Prospects need to understand what will be different for them and their company if they purchase your services versus if they don’t, or if they purchase services from a competitor. In the end, prospects are not interested in buying your services; they are interested in what your services will get them.

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5 Sales Prospecting Techniques You’ve Probably Never Tried (But Should)

By Ago Cluytens

What is the #1 challenge or issue you face when it comes to growing sales for your business?

When I recently reached out to my network and asked that same question, 75% mentioned sales prospecting as their #1 challenge.

The problem isn’t that people don’t know what do to; it’s that what they’ve always done no longer works. Want proof? Think about the last time you met an actual decision maker at a networking event, and that conversation led to a sale. How about from a cold call? Trade show? Advertisement?

The simple truth is this: if you do what everybody else is doing, you’ll get the same results everybody else is getting.

Which, in a world where prospects are increasingly turning off their phone and turning on their spam filters, isn’t much.

So, if you want to stand out (and get more meetings), here are five sales prospecting techniques you’ve probably never tried (but should).

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Building Trust with Skeptical Executives

By Mike Schultz & John Doerr

Sometimes it’s just easy. You meet a person and connect. Conversation flows. You find common areas professionally and personally. Ideas bounce back and forth, and you start talking about how you can work on something together. Before you know it, work is under way, and the collaboration is the definition of one plus one equals three.

Sometimes it ain’t easy. You meet a person, and they’re all business. Getting them to engage with you in any sense is slow. Painful. You open up and share, provide great ideas, and work hard to get the other person to see the value in working with you. It should be plain to see, but it’s not. You’re met with aloofness and suspicion.

You try to engage on a personal level and ask, “How was your weekend?” His reply, “Fine.” Then dead air...

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