Closing sales in today’s environment is a real challenge. If you’re in sales or sales leadership, I expect you’re nodding your head. Sales cycles are getting longer, more opportunities are being lost to no decision, and the economy is unpredictable at best ..read more

There's such a thing as being too close to a problem, and we see that as a frequent challenge when it comes to improving sales performance. In our recent study of nearly 400 sellers and sales leaders, we asked sellers how challenging they find various selling skills/behaviors. For the 16 skills we asked about, less than 55% of sellers found each very challenging. And when we take out the two outliers (prospecting and winning large deals), that number drops to less than 38%. Is it simply that these skills come easily to sellers? Are they so well trained that they're able to overcome obstacles ..read more

You’ve worked on building rapport with your prospect and you’ve uncovered their aspirations and afflictions. The question then becomes, "So what?" If your afflictions don't get solved, so what? What won’t happen? Will they get worse? How will they affect the bottom line of your company, division, or department? How will they affect your life ..read more

Have you met Morgan? A terrific sales rep. Except recently, Morgan has slipped out of the top tier of the leaderboard and I think I know why: she struggles to adapt to the new selling environment ..read more

How is the current state of the sales environment impacting sales organizations? Which sales and enablement issues are most challenging for leaders to tackle? What are the top sales priorities for the next 12 months? How should they be addressed to ensure they're achieved? To find out the answers to these questions, we surveyed 322 sales, enablement, and company leaders globally, following up on our original research conducted in 2019 ..read more

People often ask us, “What should we do to drive sales success?” It’s a complicated question. You’ll need to consider the following factors, among many more: What to tackle When to tackle it What results the organization should be targeting Where you can get the biggest bang for your buck What it really takes to get those results ..read more

You’d be hard-pressed to find an organization that didn’t want its sellers and sales teams to meet their goals in the face of challenging conditions and do so with high win rates and strong pricing. Sales training is one obvious way for organizations to build such teams. While sales training often fails to meet its promise, our research shows that highly effective sales training is correlated with higher win rates, sales goal attainment, and premium pricing ..read more

Ask 100 sellers at 100 companies why their customers buy from them, and you’re likely to hear 100 answers with the same underlying theme: the value we provide. Sellers describe their value to us in several ways: we get results. Our relationships are very close. They get from us what they’ve always wanted (but never gotten) from other companies. We bring innovative solutions to the table. And so on. Pretty obvious, right? To win sales you must maximize value ..read more

One of the first things sellers learn is to keep it simple. Yet when it comes to a particularly hot topic in our industry, sales leaders do anything but. Rather than apply the K-I-S-S principle to sales productivity, many leaders instead turn to technology, tracking, and top-down governance ..read more

Sales leaders with a finger on the pulse of B2B sales know that marked change is underway. Some changes have been spurred by the global pandemic, with others hastened by the uncertainty of the economy. For their new report, Future of B2B Sales: The Big Reframe, authors at McKinsey & Company spoke to more than 50 heads of sales across a range of industries and geographies to better understand the shift in the B2B sales environment. They identified 5 key themes ..read more