This article was first published in the May edition of Top Sales Magazine. You can subscribe by clicking the link at the bottom of this article. It’s a fairly basic principle that in order to be able to sell something, we need to know something about what we’re selling. But is it always true that someone who knows a lot about their products or services is inevitably a more effective salesperson than someone who only knows a little? I think most potential customers would be concerned about buying anything from a salesperson who did not appear to know what they were talking about. But I am also ..read more

The latest edition of the International Journal of Sales Transformation focuses on the critical role that trust plays in sales. Here's my contribution: Trust is an essential foundational element in any sales environment - and it can (and must) take many forms. Perhaps the most obvious manifestation lies in the relationship between the salesperson (and the vendor they represent) and the customer’s decision-making group (and the organisation they represent). But trust must also be established in the relationships that exist within the vendor’s organisation, between the vendor and their commercia ..read more

In the previous article in this series on Outcome-Centric Selling® I addressed the importance of researching, targeting, and engaging the key roles in your ideal customers - and now I want to turn our attention to identifying and targeting the key trends and trigger events that are most likely to convince these key roles in our ideal customers that they need to urgently address the issues we have chosen to target. We can establish our most promising target markets and audiences by identifying the important business issues we are really good at addressing, the common characteristics of the orga ..read more

I have known Dave Brock for ages, and have always enjoyed both his insights and his company. He’s one of the most thoughtful and inspirational people in B2B sales. He recently had the brilliant idea of asking his many contacts to explain why they are so interested in in selling  - you can read more here: https://partnersinexcellenceblog.com/why-im-so-interested-in-selling/ I thought you might find my response interesting... Dave’s preface:  Bob is one of the more thoughtful consultants I met. We “discovered” each other hanging out with some of the same people and sharing ideas ..read more

In the previous article in this series on Outcome-Centric Selling® I addressed the importance of identifying and targeting the common characteristics of our ideal customers - and now I want to turn our attention to identifying and targeting the key roles within those most valuable potential customers. In this context, “key roles” means the powerful stakeholders within your ideal customers who are most likely to be responsible for dealing with the issues you have chosen to target. There will probably be many people who are interested in the issue - but our goal must be to anticipate, identify a ..read more

This article was first published in the March 2024 edition of Top Sales World Magazine There’s a clear correlation: great salespeople ask great questions. But they do much more than that - they have thoughtful, balanced conversations that leave both they and their customers thinking “that discussion was a really valuable use of my time”. According to Neil Rackham, author of the evergreen classic SPIN® Selling (a source we’ll return to shortly) there are - broadly speaking - four potential outcomes from any sales conversation: The salesperson, on the basis of the information exchanged, decides ..read more

In the previous article in this series on Outcome-Centric Selling® we addressed the importance of identifying and targeting our customer’s most pressing business issues - and now we are going to turn our attention to identifying and targeting our most valuable potential customers. Unsurprisingly, these are the organisations that are most likely to be suffering from the issues we have chosen to target and are determined to do something about them. Our “ideal customer profiles” reflect the common characteristics of these organisations. But - as we’ll see - we must not restrict our thinking to th ..read more

This article was initially published in issue 10.1 of the International Journal of Sales Transformation.  I suppose this article could have been titled “what do I wish I had known or done in my first day as a salesperson?” - and maybe I might have benefited from reading it then. But that was a long time ago, and in a world far, far away - when both B2B buying and B2B selling were very different. Whether it’s your very first job as a salesperson, or you’ve just moved from your previous sales role and started a new sales job in a new company, what you choose to know and do in the first few ..read more

This is the first in a series of articles that explores each key building block of Outcome-Centric Selling® - and provides simple, actionable guidance for putting them into practice (by the way, if you can’t wait, and would like a fuller appreciation of all the underlying principles and concepts, you could always download our guide to Mastering Outcome-Centric Selling or sign up to our Academy). Perhaps the most fundamental question that every salesperson (and sales organisation) needs to answer is “what business issues should we be targeting”? This is not about how great our company is, or ho ..read more

In my last article, I suggested that our prospects aren’t really interested in our so-called “solutions” - what they really care about is achieving valuable business outcomes. In this article - the first in a series on the building blocks of Outcome-Centric Selling - I want to start by defining what we mean by outcomes, and why they are so important in the current business climate. By the way, if you can’t wait, and would like a fuller appreciation of all the underlying principles and concepts, you could always download our guide to Mastering Outcome-Centric Selling or sign up to our Academy ..read more