Posted on September 15th, 2008 by Dave Stein
For those of us who are students of competitive selling, every day of this presidential race is a crash course in competitive strategies and tactics. As I write this, the polls (right or wrong) say that the Republicans have closed the lead the Democrats had been holding. McCain slowed Obama’s momentum and has created some of his own. [...]
Filed under: Big Wins, Competition, Sales Strategy, Sales Tactics | 2 Comments »
Posted on August 27th, 2008 by Dave Stein
I’m very pleased that traffic on this blog has grown significantly since I created it last April. With that in mind, I suspect some of you who are new to this blog may have missed some of the earlier posts. Here are the most popular, based upon this blog’s Top Posts stats: Observing a Sales Training Program (Part 1) [...]
Filed under: Buyers, Competition, Dave Stein, Humor, Measurement, Methodology, Opportunity Management, sales process, Sales Strategy, Sales Tactics, sales training, Sales Training Companies | No Comments »
Posted on August 19th, 2008 by Dave Stein
Part of what ESR does is to identify, size, and prioritize the gaps that exist between our clients’ sales teams’ skill sets and what is required for them to win more business, sooner, and at higher contract values. There are different ways to categorize those gaps. For the purposes of this post, let’s look at basic [...]
Filed under: Account Management, Big Wins, Competition, Measurement, Opportunity Management, Relationships, sales process, Sales Strategy, Sales Tactics, sales training, Sales Training Companies | 1 Comment »
Posted on July 29th, 2008 by Dave Stein
I read an article in Fortune about Gary Reiner, CIO of GE. He has a $4 billion IT budget. That got my attention. He also runs GE’s $55 billion sourcing function. Now I was really interested. In the article Reiner talks about the relationship between sourcing and IT. He said, “On the direct side, we [...]
Filed under: Buyers, Competition, Measurement, sales process, Sales Tactics, Technology | 5 Comments »
Posted on July 28th, 2008 by Dave Stein
Before I started ESR, I consulted with a small company that sold a well-know ERP system as well as their own professional services to Tier 1 automotive supplier companies (Magna, Delphi, Dana, and Johnson Controls are examples of Tier 1′s). During one sales strategy session we found ourselves faced with a challenge. One of the salesreps was determined to get [...]
Filed under: Big Wins, Buyers, Presentations, Sales Strategy, Sales Tactics | No Comments »
Posted on July 11th, 2008 by Dave Stein
Paul Lanigan is the Sandler franchisee for Ireland. I’ve been reading his newsletter for a while. Paul posted a recent comment about an article published by ZDNet UK entitled, Top 10 reasons to avoid IT salespeople. Whether you work for a tech company or not, you need to read this article. It’s not often we get [...]
Filed under: Buyers, Opportunity Management, Presentations, Professionalism, Relationships, Sales Tactics, Technology | No Comments »
Posted on July 8th, 2008 by Dave Stein
If you visit the best sales blog sites, you’ll no doubt stumble upon Paul McCord. Paul has a lot to say about an old silver bullet—referral selling. I call referral selling ”old” only because the practice of leveraging existing customer relationships has been around for decades. In fact, not enough sales people build this potentially powerful lead generation strategy into their [...]
Filed under: Book Recommendation, Buyers, Measurement, Pipeline, Relationships, Sales Strategy, Sales Tactics | 1 Comment »
Posted on July 3rd, 2008 by Dave Stein
Geoffrey James writes a terrific sales blog. He’s the rare journalist who really understands selling. (One might argue that he’s the rare sales pro who can write really well.) I’ve mentioned him before, plus he’s in my blog role. I was honored today to have him pick up on my A Few Good Men metaphor for [...]
Filed under: Professionalism, Sales Tactics | No Comments »
Posted on July 2nd, 2008 by Dave Stein
There are companies that must compete on price in many, most, or even all deals. That’s a function of what they are selling, into what markets, and against which competitors. With that being said, too many companies often wind up competing on price because they simply aren’t very good at selling. The ”sales ineffectiveness” affliction that so many companies [...]
Filed under: Buyers, Competition, Sales Strategy, Sales Tactics | 3 Comments »
Posted on July 1st, 2008 by Dave Stein
I was honored to receive an advance copy of Linda Richardson’s newest book, Perfect Selling. It’s the best step-by-step book on sales call execution that I’ve seen. Perfect Selling echoes the strong, skills-based approach that Linda’s company, Richardson, takes working with their clients on sales performance improvement engagements. If you’re a sales leader, order a copy of [...]
Filed under: Book Recommendation, Methodology, Opportunity Management, Sales Tactics, Sales Training Companies | No Comments »
