Insights

Effectively selling depends on continuous skills reinforcement. Why? Because, the human brain is wired to forget. Research on the “forgetting curve” suggests we forget 50% of new information in a day and 90% within a week. And, the amount of “new information” sales...

It’s an old saw - sales and marketing just don't get along.   Sales is filled with “transactional” types who only care about money while the marketing “brainiacs” can turn a clever phrase but are often too abstract - so the stereotypes go. Charlie Chung, VP of Sales...

Winalytics is a funny name. But it captures perfectly what makes a top sales team different.    Top teams find and act on their “win” or success patterns a lot faster than middling teams. And, they use playbooks to make these win patterns repeatable. We all live...

Sales coaching raises rep performance by 19% on average...but only if you also enable the marketing and customer success teams who feed your sales team! In the first of our 3-part series on “sales coaching to improve performance,” we have shared some whys and hows...

Top performing sales teams are different. They use playbooks to accelerate performance. Think about it. A sports team would never take the field without regularly practicing their playbooks. But many sales teams have no shared plays to guide buyer conversations. Just...

Cringe-worthy moment. I watched a role play recently where the rep called his boss, who was playing the buyer, by the wrong name. And then he did it again.  The discomfort, even over a recorded Zoom, was palatable, like watching the most uncomfortable episode of The...

“Intent data” is all the rage right now. But intent data can be misleading. To accurately surface buyer’s intent, focus first on self-solutioning content. A Google search on the benefits of intent data offers promises about finding “the heartbeat of modern marketing,”...

“Our success in moving from a freemium offering to department selling to enterprise selling all came from getting really good at personalizing value for individual partners,” says Jeremy Dean, Vice President and a founding executive, at Hypothesis.   Hypothesis offers...

Content is king is a common refrain, but not all content is created equal. For your buyer and customer journey, content that personalizes value is all that matters! Sarah MacKinnon, in a recent article aptly titled a “A Content Tsunami,” shows 91% of companies...

Content amplification. It’s a fancy way of saying let your buyer decide. It means put the same content in multiple places so your buyers can choose where and how they want to engage. The great majority of top of the funnel (TOFU) content used to be consumed through...

It’s an old saw. Sales people get lots of training and coaching…and then they get promoted to sales manager and, suddenly, it stops.  Why? We don't assume sales people know everything they need to know the minute after they get hired. So, why do we assume that...

Companies are investing ever greater amounts in personalizing the buyer and customer journey. Too many fail to recognize that personalization starts on your website. Gartner, McKinsey & Company, and Forrester have all done research showing companies proficient in...

“Your customers are the source of all truth,” says Raul Ochoa, Founder at DoGoodWork. “Great company growth stories start with that simple principle.” Raul's firm specializes in helping clients develop their demand generation and growth marketing strategies. He firmly...

We are failing in demand gen efforts. Personalization at scale offers a solution.   For too many organizations, personalization means using generic, or AI generated, content in ham-handed and increasingly ineffective ways.  The work around building and executing...

The right sales meeting prep can dramatically increase your deal velocity. And, the good news? You can do it in about 15 minutes. That is why skill #4 in our Sales 3.0 Series is building your skills for a quick, targeted prep session before each sales call to make...

Securing next commitments in each sales meeting is your #1 driver of deal velocity. That is why skill #3 in our Sales 3.0 Series is building your skills to use the last 10 minutes of each sales conversation to agree on the next committed actions from both buyer and...

Leveraging trusted relationships through channel partnerships is one of the easiest ways to break through to buyers who are being bombarded with information from social, digital, and traditional media.  “Channel partnerships have become more important than ever,” says...

No one really cares about your product. That is, unless it solves an important problem for them. That is why skill #2 in our Sales 3.0 Series is building your expertise with micro-presentations highly tailored to each buyer’s goal to replace a product pitch. The sales...

AI has sparked both excitement and apprehension. With its ability to automate tasks, process vast amounts of data, and mimic some human characteristics, AI has already started to transform business and will continue to do so. As far as the sales profession, I have...

Land and Expand is a key growth strategy for any multi-product company. Less obvious is that the #1 driver of land-expand success is the go-to-market leadership team’s mindset. “There are lots of things that have to be well aligned for land and expand to work,” says...

Sales 3.0 Series, Skill #1: Start every sales conversation with discovery, rediscovery, or confirmation on your buyer’s why. Why are they talking to you? The sales profession is still recovering from the disaster of the Sales 2.0 period (2011 to 2019).   Sellers were...

Creating faster account expansion is always a priority, particularly in a challenging economy. The key to expansion is continual discovery across your entire go-to-market (GTM) team. “Rather than being siloed focusing on a single product, you have to always connect to...

We are in a Sales 3.0 world. Your mindset drives your performance. But, there is a catch.   Almost all your sales training has created the wrong mindset -- a mindset in which the seller journey dominates the buyer journey.   Below I share four sales practices that...

Customer Success (CS) has become vital to sustainable sales growth. Recent headlines tell the story: "Why Customer Success is the Future of Revenue Growth" and "Why Customer Success is Vital to the Future of Sales."  So why is this? This strategic role of customer...

For growth-driven businesses, the buyer journey needs to take priority over the seller journey. “We have to think about accountability to the buyer for each go-to-market team,” says Roderick Jefferson, author of Sales Enablement 3.0. “It cannot be about sales above...

Curiosity is an important skill for all of us, but not so much in our sales conversations. Great selling is based a lot more on consistency than it is on curiosity or creativity. I am thinking about this because a CRO recently shared his view that improving curiosity...

“What’s the one thing that will make you more successful?” Mastering that simple question in your buyer conversations will make the difference between top and mediocre sales performance. All sales and deal velocity comes from helping a buyer see a path to a more...

Customer success teams are in an ideal position to orchestrate expansion sales. And, staying anchored on customer value makes expansions a role-aligned activity.  “Our first focus always is providing value to our customers,” says Leslie Ortego, VP of Customer Success...

I am back in Latin America with my family. It is a place I love. It is a place of so many formative experiences stretching back several decades. It was in Latin America that I learned what it meant to be the “other.”   As an eight year old, I was one of two white kids...

You have probably heard of a Total Addressable Market (TAM), but how about the less commonly discussed Total Reachable Market (TRM)? It’s an important concept that will have big implications on how GTM teams ‘do more with less’ in this economic cycle that requires...

An account-based marketing strategy (ABM) is a “people-based process.” You have to ensure your whole internal field team is educated first before you can effectively educate buyers. That’s how Zora Senat, Chief Commercial Officer at Verisk Marketing Solutions (VMS),...

I used to think I was naturally empathetic, then a family member’s crisis showed otherwise. I have always been curious about other people, what makes them tick, and what they need. I listen actively, recap often, and make sure everyone is included in the conversation....

Account expansion is hard, right? Maybe not. Hilary Riley, VP of Partner Success at Mainstay, has a more strategic approach to account expansion – it is all about working a mutual success plan. “You have to make sure you regularly go back up to the balcony and take a...

It’s been a long, often lonely, journey. But I’ve found my tribe. I started my professional career as a Ph.D. social scientist doing qualitative research for a decade at Stanford and the RAND Corporation. I loved the focus in the Academy on learning, evidence-based...

There is a persistent disconnect across Go To Market teams. Does any of this sound familiar? Marketing develops branding and messaging that isn't used by DemandGen or Sales  BDR teams set meetings that Sales views as poorly qualified and a waste of time Sales develops...

Today will be interesting. I have to tell a CEO that “yes, he really does need to lead go-to-market strategy.” Revenue team alignment has to replace revenue team acrimony. I want to be as polite as possible. But, wow, conflict between these sales, marketing, and...

For ABC Fitness, like many businesses, the pandemic was a do-or-die moment. Unlike other businesses, ABC used the crisis as a moment of opportunity to get better and stronger. “We took that time to really think through a lot of our strategy and our approach to sales,”...

Simple story, important insight. Your customers are the source of all truth. I was connected with a CEO working to turn around a company with a disruptive video infrastructure technology. They’d quickly gotten to $1MM in ARR then stalled. This CEO had a previous exit,...

Personalization is a human skill. When we focus first on others, we do better ourselves. Few individuals demonstrate this principle in such a compelling way as Kimberly Moore, Co-founder, and CEO of Go Together. She has had great success as a line sales producer,...

One simple thing sets top revenue teams apart from other teams. They get buyers to answer this question: “What is holding you back from reaching your goals?” The focus on gap discovery leads to top performance for at least four reasons. The first is that it anchors...

“We do that already!” blurted out the VP of Marketing and VP of Sales almost in unison at a once promising $10M MarTech company.   Growth had flatlined. So, a board member asked me to answer a seemingly complex question:  “Why is this promising company underperforming...

“In the early 1900s, sales was a trusted and admired profession,” explains Todd Caponi, author of The Transparent Sales Leader and The Transparency Sale, “so much so that President Woodrow Wilson took time to keynote a 1916 national sales conference during World War...

I had a verbal altercation on Christmas Eve. It was a valuable reminder that the “flight or fight” response wired into our brains is toxic. I was on my usual running route that morning. I had just stepped off the curb into a crosswalk. Out of the corner of my eye, I...

“It is now cheaper to build your own audience than to sponsor. But to stand out, you need to find a niche that a group of people really cares about, and go deep on that topic,” posits Chris Savage, Founder, CEO at Wistia, a B2B video marketing company. We’re all...

“I’m not sure Winalytics is a fit for us, but I’m glad to talk if you feel there is a fit,” emailed a VP of Sales whose CEO has expressed interest in partnering with us. My response: “If you can share the top two or three areas you’d like to see your team improve, I...

To build a culture of service to others, focus on personalization. Anyone who has ever volunteered with teens on soup lines will know exactly what I mean. One type of teen will show up on time and do everything asked of them, but do very little to engage patrons they...

“We should always be pushing ourselves and our customers to grow and do better,” is how Marci Trares, VP of Customer Success at Activator, opened our conversation about the Customer Success (CS) team's role in supporting revenue growth. All CS leaders understand their...

“I delete hundreds of emails every day, but I responded to yours. So, let’s get going.” That is how the CEO of an industrial automation company began a meeting with me at a recent  conference. His interest was piqued, but he was also in a hurry to get to the point. It...

I am a 2nd degree black belt. I got there by always checking my ego at the dojo door. I started karate at 47 to have an activity I could do with my then 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter.   At the beginning, I was bad, really bad - the bottom quarter of any given...

“The best marketing strategy is helping people,” says Daniel Cmejla, VP of Community and Brand at Chili Piper. “Since we are all wired for connection, one of the easiest ways to help is to support authentic community development.” Daniel defines an authentic community...