Collecting WINS Blog
Value Is In The Heart & Mind Of The Buyer
Value. A Buyer's Perspective. I’m going to speak to salespeople as a buyer today. I’m going to plead with you for a moment. It’s a conversation that needs to be had. As your buyer, I have to warn you - you may not like what you hear. Truth be told, I'm not trying to preach. I'm just trying to be straight with my point of view. As your buyer, please, understand VALUE [...]
Why Hiring Salespeople is a Unique Challenge for Your Company
Discover the real reasons why you can't hire salespeople the same way you hire for other positions. According to HBR, annual sales turnover is at an all-time high of 27% – twice the turnover rate of the entire American labor force. Other estimates place sales turnover in the 30%-40% range. Regardless of the figure itself, the fact remains that most companies experience higher rates of success when filling non-sales positions than [...]
Do You Sell the Way People Buy?
Introducing the Universal Buying Cycle™. Most sales and marketing leaders spend countless hours designing new ways to direct buyers down the perfect sales process. They invent shared terminology to communicate this path internally, plot metrics around it and work hard to shepherd buyers to a decision that is in their favor. I know this exercise very well. This is what I did for the first half of my sales career and what [...]
A Need Without Value Is Not an Opportunity. It’s Just A Need.
Is the customer NEED the most important thing we must learn in sales? We may hate to admit it, but we’re creatures of habit. I’m not talking about habits many of us aspire to - waking up early, exercising, reading regularly, etc. There are only a few people that actually hold the good habits. I’m talking about bigger habits in our lives. We’re habitual in our thoughts, our behaviors, and our actions. [...]
Confronting ‘The Challenger Sale’
The Challenger Sale has been called the best marketed but worse executed sales program in history. Is this assessment fair or evidence of sour grapes from a few industry experts who wish they could claim the 800,000+ graduates and 500,000+ books sold since 2011? I am frequently asked versions of this question by executives and salespeople who are considering investing in Challenger sales training, or wondering if their investment was worthwhile. To [...]
How to Build a Foundational Sales Playbook
An old and all-too-common story When leaders build or rebuild sales teams, they often move quickly to hire the best individual contributors available and allow each to leverage their own skills and experiences to find success. These leaders take a hands-off approach, essentially providing new hires little more than a comp-plan, a territory, a desk and a computer. Then they wrap it all up with a few encouraging words like, "go get 'em [...]