In order to sell your value, you need to discover your business fit and sell this fit to decision makers. The business fit is how your two companies, working together, drive critical business outcomes for the customer. These outcomes typically come in the form of objectives that are attained,...

In our last Tip, we emphasized the importance of doing your homework to optimize your message, as well as your delivery of the message. Set the stage for your closing question by making a compelling case that a relationship between your two companies will support their efforts to drive specific...

In our last Tip, we talked about getting a closing forum scheduled and setting the stage for the closing question. In this situation, we have the most important thing in place – a meeting with the decision maker.

To best position yourself to get a “yes” from the decision maker, you...

In our last Tip, we talked about the importance of identifying the decision maker in order to close effectively. Now that we know who the decision maker is, we need to figure out how to get a meeting with them. After all, it’s hard to close a decision maker without a suitable forum.

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There is one constant in sales – for us to be successful, we need to close and close well.

What does it take to close? The subject of this Tip is one of the most basic factors associated with closing – we need to identify and gain access to the decision maker.

Although a...

As sales and relationship management professionals, we are trying to steer customers and prospects to make decisions in our favor. These decisions will allow us to help them drive important outcomes. Gaining these commitments is rarely easy, and in many cases, we have to overcome serious...

As sales and relationship management professionals, there are few tools more important to our success than our network. We look to develop coach relationships, uncover and gain access to decision makers, and deal effectively with gatekeepers. 

Throughout the course of the pandemic our job has been getting more difficult. Restricted access to customers and prospects, supply chain issues, and an environment of general uncertainty made acquiring new customers and managing existing customers much more challenging.

As we move...

Many of us are feeling pressure now more than ever. We need to win new deals, extensions, and renewals. At the same time, things are more complicated than ever before – there are more stakeholders involved from the customer side, we face internal hurdles, economic uncertainty looms, etc. This...

Most of us find ourselves in competitive situations where we need to do some homework to understand specific competitors better. Here are a few thoughts on how to do this well: