In B2B, Salespeople usually have to generate 75% of their own leads, and they have to prosecute all of them. Who are your salespeople and how will you manage them?

What can we learn about sales and marketing from legendary sportsman Captain Blood?

For those of you who know me beyond my business pursuits, you will know that – like 100,000 other Australians – one of my passions is Australian Rules Football (to my American friends: no, this is not rugby) and one club in particular: The mighty Tigers – the Richmond football club. In our history, we’ve produced many great champions but probably the greatest of all is the legendary Captain Blood himself, Jack Dyer. Dyer was renowned for being one of the toughest men ever to play the game. Why Captain Blood, you ask? Well, I answer you READ MORE

R.I.P Bob Miller (1931-2017) thank you for transforming our world

It is with great regret that we learned of the passing of Robert B. “Bob” Miller on Friday 22nd September. As a founding member of Miller Heiman and an expert sales concept-developer, Bob remains an educator and inspiration to the many thousands of sales professionals around the world that reap the benefits of his teachings. As part of his work with Miller Heiman, Bob Miller created sales techniques such as Strategic Selling, Conceptual Selling, and Successful Large Account Management — techniques that changed the way the world thinks about sales coaching and training. As a dynamic innovator READ MORE

Ask pain funnel questions in the right order [video]

The best pain funnel questions, asked at the wrong time, will lose you a deal you might have won if you’d asked them in the right order. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-7mxhOkFgA Popular sales training company Sandler uses the term ‘pain funnel questions’ to describe the questions a sales person should ask. I’m going to show you today that their questions are good enough. If you master these good-enough questions, you'll go a long way to succeeding in sales. And if ‘good enough’ is good enough, then have a go at mastering pain funnel questions. But if you want to excel, READ MORE

3 B2B sales trends that cannot be ignored

Forward from Brett Bonser: As a new member of our team, I am delighted to allow Claudia to share with you her findings - on key B2B sales trends that are shaping the future. Don’t let your sales be left behind. Read on, to prepare yourself for the changes ahead. As a business leader, you need to keep up with the rapidly evolving B2B selling environment. Your customers are continuing to change the way they engage and buy. To make things even harder, digitally aggressive new competitors will be entering into the market, intent on disrupting the READ MORE

How busy should your sales people be? [video]

How busy should your salespeople be? How many meetings should they have every week? More than they're doing at the moment, and less than you think. Let me explain why. https://www.youtube.com/embed/saucAqP7lcQ What are you overlooking in your calculations?     Factor #1 Firstly, I would like to highlight why the number of meetings your sales people should be doing is less than you think. Below is the basic math for this calculation, taking into consideration what is often overlooked. You may live in a different country, whereby your holidays and jurisdictions are different, but the same READ MORE

How often should you update your sales and marketing plan? [video]

How often should you review your sales and marketing plan? Whenever it changes, right? I want to give you 39 reasons why that's 100% the wrong answer. https://www.youtube.com/embed/L-9OHGdm0jQ Collaborators working on high-growth plans modify their plans 39% more often than those with slower growth plans.  Today, I will show you this data, with some quick analysis, as well as what you can do to take advantage of this.   Conclusions from data Make your plan a ‘play book’. Get enough collaborators on board. Frankly, 2 – 3 with added access is a working minimum, but consider READ MORE

More sales people needed for growth than you think [video]

You probably know that sales people are needed to support your growth – but we found that high growth businesses are approximately 50% under allocated (50% fewer sales people than needed in their plans). They're kidding themselves! When you get this wrong, it can really hurt. Let me show you how to calculate the number of sales people needed for growth within your business. https://www.youtube.com/embed/gyLMDEiUl1g   Conclusions from the data After stack-ranking all of the customer plans in our database (approx. 2,000 currently) from those planning higher growth to those planning a more modest growth, we've READ MORE

Always Be Opening: Rethinking Sales and the Buyer’s Journey

At first glance, the idea of ABC or ‘Always Be Closing’ seems logical. Isn’t closing sales the primary function of all Sales teams? And if this is true, then wouldn’t your primary measure of Sales performance be the number of deals won? As logical as it might seem, deal closure, as it turns out, is NOT the best primary measure of your Sales team. In our global study of 1,400 companies worldwide, we found that the top performers, those closing sales 38% more effectively, and growing 5.4 points faster, were NOT measuring closed deals. You heard it right READ MORE

Master Sales and Marketing Alignment to Drive Predictable Revenue

Find out how the most successful businesses guarantee predictable revenue in our free webinar in partnership with Citrix. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW77MFgb14Q&feature=youtu.be Get started with Funnel Plan - the free tool allowing B2B professionals visualise their aligned sales and marketing plan, from objectives right thought to granular tactics.     If you require a little more advice on the right steps for a more aligned business, get in touch with us by leaving your details here, or call Brett directly on +61 3 9016 4670.

Can you have too many sales people?

How many salespeople do you need and how do you work that out? I looked at all of the funnel plans that we have in the database and I found that on average the companies in our database are growing at just short of 50%. However, the size of their sales force is growing at just on 80%. What on earth is going on and how should you calculate the size of your sales force and how it needs to change over time? Let's take a look at that in this blog. Use the objectives section READ MORE

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