The most important path to effective product management and marketing is a deep understanding of your customers’ needs and alternatives. A successful growth strategy differentiates your product from the competition's and delivers a persuasive value proposition.
Have you had a chance to read the new ebook written by Gerhard Gschwandtner, founder and CEO of Selling Power -- 5 Trends That Will Impact Your Sales Team in 2019? It does a great job of highlighting how B2B sales and marketing leaders can develop strategies that align with these trends.
Potential customers are more self-reliant and in control of the selling process -- thanks to the digitization of the buyer’s journey. With widespread access to vendor websites, industry publications, research analyst reports and online forums, buyers have increasingly less need to communicate with vendors at the beginning of their journey.
Why is it so difficult to accurately identify the average B2B lead conversion rate? One significant reason is that what constitutes a “lead” is subjective and variable. For example, is a lead the contact details from someone who downloaded a white paper? Or is it those contact details plus criteria like company size or job title that provide access to a higher value asset?
For years I've been telling people that value calculators are used for marketing and lead generation and ROI tools are used by sales to close deals.
Until now, that is.
As 2018 comes to a close, it’s natural to reflect on the content and themes that have shaped this blog over the past twelve months. Subscribers were joined by new readers to expand our active community of sales and marketing leaders, as we continue to explore the ever-changing contours of the B2B landscape.
In the world of B2B sales, it’s rare to uncover a new opportunity at a trade show and then actually close the deal at the same show. In reality, all the hours and dollars invested in the show won’t pay off unless opportunities that otherwise would not be discovered are either closed at the show or more likely, closed with diligent follow-up after the show. This makes it especially important to have a winning approach to post-show follow up.
My guest appearance on The Sales Conversation Podcast explored How to Sell Complex Solutions to Multiple Buyers using value selling. I shared practical strategies and tactics to advance your value selling approach with host, Bruce Scheer, founder of Sales Conversation, and together, we took a meaningful look at how to improve sales performance with value selling.
Promotional items given away at trade shows are often discarded by attendees before they even get home. Instead of handing out just another promotional item, consider how you can you can really give your prospect something of value to take back to the office that they won’t even have to carry.
I was recently interviewed by my longtime friend and colleague, Bruce Scheer, CEO of SalesConversation.com. It was great fun being part of Bruce’s podcast series, which covers a broad range of topics that can help sellers be more successful. Before I summarize what we discussed, consider subscribing to The Sales Conversation Podcast on iTunes and listening to the entire podcast on Bruce’s website.
