An RFP lands in your inbox. It’s from a company you would love to do business with. Your pipeline for the next two quarters isn’t as strong as it could be, and several of your biggest opportunities seem to be stuck in the dreaded “no decision” limbo.
Have you ever heard customers say, “I don’t believe these numbers,” while showing them the business case for your offering? It’s not that the customer thinks you’re a liar. The problem is that many customers come to the table with existing assumptions or prejudices around benefit dimensions. Therefore, your ROI estimates can seem like pipe dreams.
If you are shopping for an ROI tool, odds are that you already agree with us that a homegrown Excel tool won’t get you the best results. But how do you evaluate vendors and make the right choice? Here are four elements to consider.
We recently wrote about the use case for an ROI tool vs. a TCO tool. Now let’s look at the ROI vs. TCO argument a bit differently, from the buyer’s perspective. Buyers are usually in one of two frames of mind: Evaluating your solution against their current environment. I call this the “Do Nothing” scenario because your prospect is either going to buy your solution or take no action (i.e., live with their current state). Looking at your solution against a competitive offering or another alternative such as a homegrown solution. This is the “What Should We Do?” scenario, because the buyer has decided to act but is uncertain about what to do to solve his or her problem.
What’s the best way to get a buyer’s attention, move deals quickly through the buying cycle, and increase close rates? Follow these five fundamental steps. (For a handy summary of these steps, download our tip sheet, "5 Steps to Close More Deals.")
It’s happened to the best of us. You tell a prospect how much your product or service costs and they respond with silence. This is known as “sticker shock” and if you’ve done your job as a salesperson, your customer should never experience this.
What makes sales management such a tough job? There are many reasons, but a very basic one is that your success as a B2B sales manager depends on the performance of your sales team. If your sales team doesn’t perform well and make quota—despite your best efforts to coach, motivate, support, mentor, and lead—then you can’t succeed.
It’s every sales manager’s nightmare. While reviewing the sales team’s monthly sales forecasts, too many opportunities forecasted to close this month at 90% probability are deals that were previously forecasted to close at similar rates of probability. Why so little progress in closing these deals?
Recently I was reading Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax” with my six-year-old daughter. In the book, the character of the Once-ler says, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.” It struck me that this concept is also applicable in the realm of B2B sales and marketing.
At one time or another, everyone in sales and marketing has shared something in common with the character Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory. Although you might not be a former child prodigy with a genius-level IQ, I’m willing to bet that you’ve created marketing materials or had conversations with customers that sound very similar to this:
