In What Great Salespeople Do, Michael Bosworth and Ben Zoldan argue that sales is not primarily a rational process. As a result, attempts to discover needs through diagnostic questions and pitches based on ROI analysis miss the mark. Instead, the central sales hurdles are emotional: The prospect has to admit that the status quo is not good enough…
In Hope is Not a Strategy, Rick Page argues that complex sales require a strategy that goes beyond a well-structured sales call to include efforts to influence the buying company, the individuals making the decision, and the process by which they will make the decision. Only through a keen awareness of all three of these elements can…
In Selling to Big Companies, Jill Konrath argues that success in closing large accounts is not a matter of making more outreach attempts to more companies or creating more persuasive pitches about your unique features. Instead, she argues that success requires a laser focus on the small number of customers that best fit your offering and making…
In Economical Growth, Chris Pham outlines his strategy for creating a top performing sales development team that creates qualified sales leads to pass to account executives to work and close. This digest focuses on Pham’s methods for outbound outreach. He outlines how to to create provocative email campaigns at scale, describing the seven different value…
(This is the second part of a four part article on running sales at a startup. You can find the first part here and the third part here). II. Strategy Strategy means deciding who your best potential customers are and how you’ll reach them. Strategy development requires that you think before you act. New hires often…
Ferrari’s Formula 1 racing team decided to keep driver Kimi Raikkonen for next year despite the fact that his performance this year has been merely adequate. Raikkonen’s teammate, Sebastian Vettel, has scored twice as many points as Raikkonen and Raikkonen has made some painful mistakes. Were they right to keep him? It depends on the…
(This is the first part of a four part article on running sales at a startup. The second part is here. The third part is here.) Let’s say you’re running sales at B2B SaaS startup, either as the CEO or as the sales manager. Your company has 20-60 customers and you’re wondering what to do next….
Tadhg Kelly has a great article about competitive strategy in the video game industry. It’s a good read for people who like the industry but it’s also an excellent example of conceptual clarity in describing strategy. Here’s the quote I love: “Pretty much every business competes on four basic vectors: meaningful features, distribution, marketing stories and…
Mark Suster has a great post up about negotiating exclusivity deals. His argument is that the conventional wisdom that startups should never offer exclusivity (an agreement to not sell a product to certain customers) is wrong. He points out that offering exclusivity can get partners to agree to strategic deals that they’d never agree to…
In SPIN Selling, Neil Rackham argues that the most important determinant of sales success in major sales is building the customer’s perception of value by using specific questioning techniques early in the call. In his view, this is more important than conventional skills like closing techniques or objection handling. He encourages salespeople to focus on developing explicit…